It occurred to me today that there are a lot of paradoxes in the world of sales. I don't know if they have always been there but I sure have seen them in bunches recently.
"The customer is always right." Uh, actually the customer is usually wrong. In the business world any given company has an "expertise" and that is the product or service they deliver. Outside of that, they are trying to muddle along and make all the other aspects of their business "survive" so that their moneymaker, can make money. I have been in the telecom industry since 1999 and as a general rule of thumb, my customers don't have a clue about their services, what they pay for them, what they have, how long a of a contract they signed, you get the idea. What I find truly perplexing is how many of them will try to tell me what they have and when I inspect to make sure I get it right for them, they become guarded and paranoid. Now, I realize there are plenty of evil manipulative salespeople out there but I am not one of them. Frankly, if you don't think you can trust me then why on earth would you consider doing business with me? Do your research, you will find out in quick order that I don't have a criminal record and I am very active in my community. I'm a good guy.
"If you take good care of the customer they will be loyal to you." Yup, again, not true. A good friend of mine was telling me a story about how he's had a rash of clients that he took fantastic care of and 6 months after signing up with him, have called to inform him they were switching to a competitor because they "found a better deal." If they found a better deal, that means they were looking for a better deal or at the very least someone called them and offered to save them more money. Now that is loyalty for you!
"Having a great product goes a long way to winning the business." Sorry, this one is wrong too. Value and worth have little bearing on the customers decision to buy. Perceived value and worth is where it's at. I know my industry fairly well and I know my competition. I know where I am comparable to them, where they are better than me and where I am better than them. Despite that, I have one competitor that will almost always win when I compete with them. Do they have a more reliable product? Nope, it actually under performs compared to industry standards. Do they have better sales people? Nope, most of their reps haven't been there more than 6 months and most of them wont be there in another 6 months. Their sum total of telecom experience goes right along with that, in other words, they don't know what they don't know because they have not been through the grind of this industry. So why do companies choose them? RAW HORSEPOWER! Boy is their Internet fast, really fast! Especially for downloading stuff (not so much the other way). I actually had a customer tell me that they were moving all of their services to this other provider because it was about $100 month less than me and it was a lot faster and they really wanted that speed. When I asked them about concerns for reliability ( they told me in one of our meetings that they currently use this other company as a back up connection and it has gone down a few times in recent months) they said to me AND I QUOTE "well, if the phones go down we still have our cell phones and if we couldn't check email for a day or two it's not really a big deal." So let me ask a couple questions of my wonderful readers today. First, could you as a business decision maker, make that statement with a straight face? Could you truly tell me that sincerely and not bust out laughing? Second, would you want to do business with a company that puts so little importance on their company communications? That statement says if we could not service our customers for a day or two or we had limited ability to service them, that would be okay. We could get by.
"A great salesperson takes great care of their customers." Again, not true. Sales and customer service have little or nothing to do with one another. Many salespeople will tell you they provide outstanding customer service and many of them really want to, but customer service is all about the process's the company puts in place to support the customer. Often times your sales rep has little or no ability to influence such things.
Again, some of the really good ones really do try to take care of the customer after the sale. But there are plenty of award winning top shelf sales people out there that blow out their quota every month and win all kinds of awards and trips and bonuses and commissions, but when it comes to the customer they could care less. They purely view their job as sales. They sell it and the company must figure out how to support it.
So, I am sure some people will argue with me, disagree with me and even tell me I'm an idiot. It's okay, I'm used to it. As a sales person with deep convictions, I am used to people arguing with me, disagreeing with me and even telling me I'm an idiot (or worse). But I believe in what I do and I genuinely try to help my customers even when it doesn't directly benefit me or my quota.
What I take comfort in, is that many of you are reading this right now thinking, "Y'know what, he's right."
Thanks for reading today
Mike Shelah
BTW, thanks again to the 450+ people that read my blog last week, that was truly exceptional. Be sure to check out my other blog www.40milesforautism.blogspot.com
You hit on some things that are very true. Value is really important to establish with the customer. If they don't see the value, they will just be comparing specs and cost.
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