What do clients want?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add

Clients don’t expect to be coerced, bullied, tricked or intimidated into buying. They don’t expect to be treated like an idiot by sales people who just talk at them and flash brochures or product sheets. Relationships do not work effectively if they are forced!

Clients are now after ‘Business people’who can sell.

Most clients know what they are after even if they don’t know how to articulate it sometimes.

The ‘market challenger’ or ‘early adopter’ clients are open to new ideas and innovations and whilst they don’t know what they don’t know they are often happy to see competent sales people to learn …

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Being authentic in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The 20th century approach of one-upmanship, although still encouraged by many traditional sales managers, seems to be slowly retreating into the shadows of the past as crude and old-fashioned. Polar opposite to the latter, but just as unproductive, are the approaches of:

  • A whining puppy (pleading for a sale trying to make customers feel sorry for you).
  • A chameleon (always bending and twisting yourself to fit any situation, often losing yourself in the process).
  • A parrot (not adapting your approach enough to suit the style if the client).

These approaches often annoy customers and elicit pity rather than trust.

Too many sales people (in particular …

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Ashamed of being in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Value Proposition & Value Add, Wellbeing
  • Need you daily fix of self-help tapes/CDs or guru books to get you pepped up to sell.
  • Have a fragile positivism about sales, which bursts at the slightest criticism.
  • Can’t wait to get out of sales to get a “real” job.
  • Secretly ashamed of being in a sales career – this isn’t what I should be doing, my mother wants me to be a dentist.
  • Fear the loss of approval of your friends, family or peers because you think they will think less of you if you are in sales.
  • Don’t like being called a sales person – prefer titles like marketing consultant or pre-need …

Ashamed of being in sales Read Post »

Who is your brochure written for?

By / / Communication, Marketing, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Social Media, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

Have you ever looked at who most company brochures are written for?

Every sales person or manager I have posed this question to looks at me sheepishly. Their gaze is averted and they appear embarrassed. They know exactly what I am talking about.

What they are embarrassed to admit is that most of the brochures or advertising material that we come across is written for the company glorifying the company and its products, its commitment to customers, its founders or CEOs and so on, rather than speaking directly to the customer about the customers’ issues, concerns or aspirations and how the company …

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Marketing, sales and service silos – why?

By / / Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add

For people in the communications industry it is appalling that there is a lack of real communication occurring between their marketing and sales departments.

All too often I see departments vying for budgets, leadership, ideas, etc. Some people believe marketing drives the engine and sales are irrelevant, or sales are king and what is marketing anyway?

It’s not just the sales people. Some organisations don’t even know the difference between marketing and sales or don’t see the connection between the two in the first place.

This causes all sorts of problems, the likes of which can include:

Marketing initiating a premature campaign and forgetting …

Marketing, sales and service silos – why? Read Post »

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