Episode #100: In Sales What You Really Want

Clever, shallow, smooth as silk, glib, “rat with a gold tooth” salespeople are the scourge of the earth. There are no barriers to entry or qualifications to enter this field of sales work. Riff raff need not apply but quite often they do. Some will tell you anything, they live for today and like a shark, are constantly moving around in order to feed.

So, how do honest salespeople get anywhere when the image of the profession is so negative. The key point to differentiate yourself from the shady carnival barker type, sales pond scum and assorted lowlifes giving the rest of us a bad name, is to stop focusing on sales. Instead focus on the re-orders.

This mental shift is fundamental. A sale can be a one-time thing, a transient satisfaction of a temporary itch. The re-order concept is totally relationship based and is linked to the idea of the lifetime value of the buyer. In business, your true intention is to be a long-term partner in achieving the client’s success, on the basis that the more successful they become, the more goods or services you will need to provide them, as they grow and expand their operation.

If your true intention is to build trust, then there will be no attempt to snow the client at the first meeting, to lure them into a false sense of security and scamper off with their money. Rather you ask questions enabling you to best analyse whether you in fact have a suitable solution or not, for the client’s issue. If you don’t have it, you say so immediately - you don’t prevaricate or equivocate.

What you do after the sale tells the client everything and this determines whether this will be a long-term partnership or not. If something goes wrong you fix it immediately, you don’t become mealy-mouthed about what was happened and you hand back the money without hesitation.

No trust or no value – then no re-orders. It is simple and complex at the same time. The salesperson’s job is to demonstrate the trust and supply the value. Ask yourself, are you really doing that? Are you actually on top of it?

Action Steps

1. Think lifetime value of the client
2. Focus on the re-orders rather than just a sale
3. Have a correct intention and be a long-term partner to grow the client’s business
4. Use questions to properly understand the client’s business
5. Don’t argue with the client, be accountable and fix problems immediately