Selling to Consumers | Sales Training Blog by Skip Anderson

It's Not "Helpfulness" vs. "Sales-Oriented"

Every so often, a salesperson will tell me that they're too nice to their prospects. "My problem is that I'm too nice...I need to be more sales-oriented instead," as if being nice and being sales-oriented are opposites.

But they aren't opposites. Top sales performers possess twelve qualities. Among these twelve are:

1. Helpfulness (or "niceness," if you prefer)
2. Assertiveness (which could be considered a part of being sales-oriented)
3. Possess a burning desire to make deals (also a component of being sales-oriented).

So being helpful is good. All salespeople should be helpful. But salespeople who score high in the helpfulness category can easily get side-tracked and distracted if they don't also score high in assertiveness and if they don't possess a burning desire to make sales.

So my advice is to not view these qualities as competing qualities. Think of them as complimentary ones that will help you boost your sales performance.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting firm. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips newsletter at www.SellingToConsumers.com

 

 

Hard to Come By

I pay an annual fee to have our waste removal company pick up compostable yard waste from our home every week during the spring, summer, and fall. They gave us a nice big black bin that we can fill with our grass clippings, dead plants, leaves, and tree trimmings each week.

Over Labor Day weekend, I finally trimmed our trees. On the Saturday morning after Labor Day, I dutifully dragged our black bin - piled high with tree trimmings - to the end of our driveway. Then, I dragged a half-dozen large paper bags, also filled with tree trimmings, to the curb.

But the yard waste people didn't visit our house that Saturday. They apparently forgot about us.

I phoned our service provider on Monday to tell them they didn't pick up our yard waste on Saturday. The customer service person responded by saying, "I'll have to see if someone can stop by today."

And then there was silence. I had given her plenty of time to issue an apology to a customer that had been forgotten, but no apology came.

So I filled the silence. "If you can't pick up our yard waste today, will you call me?"

"Yeah," she replied, and our conversation came to an end.

As salespeople, we deal with our customers in many fun and rewarding ways, and we also deal with them when someone in our company has dropped the ball or not followed through on our promises. Even though these events are not our fault, we all end up dealing with customers who have felt slighted. In these situations, it's our job to try to turn the situation around so the customer feels good about us again.

When I called our service provider Monday morning, here is what my consumer ears wanted to hear: "I'm very sorry for our oversight. We should have picked up your yard waste on Saturday. I will see to it that it will be picked up today. And I'll notify the supervisor so she is aware of the problem. Again, on behalf of all of us here at XYZ Company, I apologize."

When your customer deserves an apology, do the right thing and offer one.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting firm. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips newsletter at www.SellingToConsumers.com

 

 

Think Before You Speak

Last spring, I ran into a guy I used to sell furniture with a long time ago.

"Skip!" he said. "Hey...you've put on some weight! [chuckle, chuckle, as he poked me in my stomach]"

Now it's true that I weighed more last spring than I did when I worked with him (he did, too). But what he didn't know is that I had recently lost twenty-five pounds in my never-ending quest to control my weight, and I was feeling great about it. Hours on the exercise bike and hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups and constant effort at controlling how much I ate led to my twenty-five pound loss.

But my acquaintance deflated those good feelings with one thoughtless comment.

Why do some salespeople have such a propensity for talking too much?

Next time I run into him, I think I'm going to say, "Wow, Ralph, your teeth have gotten really yellow!"

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting firm. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips newsletter at www.SellingToConsumers.com

 

 

Indifference

Harry Beckwith, author of fantastic books such as "Selling the Invisible," recently distributed "What Motivates People: The Beckwith 40." The first of Harry's forty thoughts about why people choose one product rather than another is: "Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's indifference."

That's a valuable observation. Salespeople who are able to get past the wall of prospect indifference will have more success than salespeople who don't.

The most effective method for helping prospects to get past the wall of indifference is to focus intently on your prospect's needs and desires. In our sales training, we teach how understanding prospects' micro-needs, macro-needs, and the super-macro need can help foster prospect engagement and lead to vastly improved sales performance.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting firm. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips newsletter at www.SellingToConsumers.com