If you’re still in sales (you make your living by what revenue you bring in for the organization) and haven’t moved into creating lasting value, then this post is for you.
Here are my suggestions for salespeople in our age of constant change:
- Stop thinking about yourself. If you didn’t notice, it shows. Your prospective and existing customers want you to think about them.
- Stop assuming that your doing me a favor by introducing your product/service to me. Arrogance has only one reward-NO.
- If you are not creating real value (the customer defines this, not you), then start. You find out by asking. Knowledge flows when you do that.
- Make your customer a priority. That means responding to their emails or phone calls on the same day they send/call. When a customer doesn’t feel like a priority they leave.
- If you’re with a company that sees customers as a means-to-an-end, leave. Customers will breathe a sigh of relief that they won’t have to deal with being treated like cattle.
- Learn the art of subtlety. Listen to Puccini or have a glass of 2000 Barolo as a start.
- Stop seeing yourself as a salesperson. Customers are tired of being sold.
We need more people willing to be striking and brilliant in the discipline of creating value, while generating revenue. Anything less is robbery.
Great thoughts, Matthew. Identity is an important thing to protect. It shouldn’t be given over easily.
Amen! and pass the 2000 Barolla to this blog post.
Eric, you are spot-on.
As someone that made my living as a professional sales consultant in the cut-throat medical device industry, I would also add the suggestion that the sales graveyard is filled with those sales consultants attaching their self-identity to a sales transaction or even the satisfaction of a customer.
NO! can be a “revenue producing” and “emotional enhancing” word if you only have the wisdom to understand.
Matthew
men@pause