Episode #135: Why Everyone Hates Salespeople

We don’t deserve it, well most of us don’t deserve it, but there is a very strong negative perception of salespeople. Pushy salespeople, dishonest salespeople, bait and switch salespeople, disappearing after the sale salespeople, the list goes on. We only meet that client once, but they have met so many dodgy salespeople in the course of their careers. They have seen the worst of everything in sales by the time we get to them. We might be sweetness and light, but those who have gone before have muddied the waters. We start from underneath the water line in terms of trust and have to rise up into the fresh air, to show we are here to help the buyer succeed. Stereotypes about salespeople abound and like me, I think you will struggle to come up with one that is positive. We have to show we are different.

The good news is that surveys show that buyers still look to salespeople for advice and information on their purchases. This is natural because hopefully the seller will have deep and expert knowledge on the suitability of the product or service for the buyer’s needs. We do this ourselves when we are out consumer shopping. We ask the clerk about the product we are going to buy and we can tell immediately whether they know what they are talking about or not.

When we are being ”sold” by a salesperson an alarm bell goes off in our brain. We must remember that everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Listening skills are always a struggle in sales. Our brains are very concentrated so we are constantly filtering what we hear, searching for signs of interest or signs of resistance. We race ahead of the conversation, start tuning the buyer out and put all of our brainpower into the wondrous comment we are going to make. If they waffle on too much, we might lose our thread or they may change the subject before we can inject this gem, so we cut them off and talk over the top of them. We need to let them be heard, check for understanding to make sure we really have got it, before we begin introducing our solution.

It is natural to talk about ourselves, our company and our products and services. What happens from Day One of joining the firm? We are taken through the hard core details of the product, because product knowledge is considered a foundational stone in building a sales career. This is all true, however some organisations don’t venture beyond this. They get stuck on themselves and neglect to teach their salespeople about spending time understanding the customer.

The customer needs to know their needs are understood first before we can even try to build the trust. If we begin our discussion like this, “Thank you for your time today, let me tell you about us and what we do”, then that is pretty average and sadly somewhat standard. It would be better to start, “My only role here today is to help you grow your business. I would like to know if that is possible and the way to do that is to clearly understand your business and what you need. In the process I will show, if it makes sense, where we can fit into the picture”. Which conversation would you prefer with your buyer hat on?

When I started selling encyclopaedia’s door to door, my first job out of High School, we had to memorise word perfect, a twenty five minute sale’s pitch, coordinated with leafing through the gorgeous product pages. Many salespeople are following a script today as well. It might be those dreadful pitches we get over the phone, where you can hear from the cadence that they are reading it off a screen. Or it might be the pitch of a thousand deliveries. The salesperson has given this so many times they are bored with it. The lifeblood has been drained from the words and phrases and it is dead on arrival. If you are hearing too much of just your voice, ask a question and shut up. Get the buyer talking, because that is where all the useful information you don't already know is located.

Flailing arms, wild eruptions of energy, piercing eye contact, loud delivery, exaggerated body language all point to a salesperson out of control. Their enthusiasm for what they are doing has trumped their common sense. Perky is good in some cases. Overly perky is not and there is a clear line between the two. The problem is what is the preferred style of the buyer?

Are they conservative and see all this excess energy as childish. Are they shy and retiring and want to call for sunglasses, because of all the radiation glare coming off the salesperson? We need to channel our energy effectively and appropriately depending on who we are sitting in front of. The failing salesperson has one calibration, no matter who they meet. Everyone gets the same treatment. I might like overly perky myself, but I might be a small minority of buyers, so what happens to the others? They all get put off by you and you get put out the door. Remember to tailor your communication style to what the buyer likes and you will find it much easier to make sales.