Salespeople Have to Be Something Really Special
There was a time that, if you were a good sales person then there wasn’t much competition, your value was based upon if the other person liked something about you, or what you had to sell, it was about trust. These days, because people have become so reliant upon the Internet and automated shopping processes, long gone are the days that people were more interested, or persuaded by the skill of a salesperson when compared to the convenience of actually not needing to speak with anyone.
Far less nonsense
For a long time, the world of sales training was very different. Sales trainers have spent decades layering new fake and even more advanced manipulative strategies on top of old insincere and manipulative tactics. It worked like this: devise a means to trick people into buying, or into believing they had no choice but to buy. Then give your method a clever name, so your audience thinks you know some magic trick they don’t.
As a result, you were “marketable” to your clients, and, it gave rise to the dislike of ‘being sold to’, the need for no nonsense product purchasing, and, the birth of things like being able to sell on Google shopping, as and when you chose. The problem is that all of those approaches have not just trained salespeople, but have also trained customers.
People only put up with nonsense for so long and, more now than ever before, they can detect BS from a mile away which is great news for companies that are doing the right thing and conduct themselves ethically.
Customer care calls
Once upon a time companies would go out of their way to contact you as a customer, or prospective customer to establish a relationship and to ask for feedback. Feedback is one of the most powerful tools that a company can have, if they make use of it properly, they can ask you about any part of your buying experience to find out if you are satisfied and, if not, what they can do to improve the experience for the next time you wish to use their services.
At some point or another you may have experienced a moment of amazement, something similar to the miraculous relief from back pain, whereby you receive a call from a company that isn’t actively trying to sell you something. They simply want to know how they can improve what they do. One of those rare moments that leaves you thinking, wow that was really unexpected, a company that cares.
For business owners
If you run a business or a part of the management team then it’s really important to only change the most crucial parts of your business. There are some things that used to work really well, they inspired confidence from customers and had a big part to play in your success to date.
Consider the idea of dropping all the crap that customers don’t like, moving with the times but also keeping some of those more traditional personal services that changed prospects into buyers.
