If I were a salesperson...

I won’t claim to be a professional salesperson. Far from it. My sales experience is limited to a high school job selling computers at Circuit City and ad sales at my college newspaper at Purdue University. That being said, as a person whose career is heavily based on the activity of buying, I do encounter many sales professionals. Because I interact with so many, I do feel somewhat qualified to offer my advice on how to improve in this field of business. To all my friends in the sales business, remember that the point of this site is to provide constructive advice and not gripe about things I can’t change. See this as a open forum of customer feedback to the service you provide:

Only sell what you have a passion for:

If you don’t believe in the product you’re selling, then neither will I. A person motivated to work in any form of sales is obviously going to be swayed heavily by the financial possibilities of the job. That being said, you’re not going to be able to reap those benefits long term if you have no faith in the source of your livelihood.

Not every product or service is going to be sexy or cool, but find the aspects that you admire. Perhaps the company you’re representing as a whole has made great strides in a certain category, or perhaps the product you’re selling is the first to do something different. If you can’t find any of these things because you’re selling a dime-a-dozen product, then find somewhere else to invest your energy. Why pour your talent into a product which you as an individual cannot invest yourself into 100%?

Always ask permission to take someone’s time:

This will vary by industry, but certain types of buyers are managing relationships with hundreds of different people. In my eyes, the best way to exhibit good customer service is to respect your prospects time.

-Before launching into a sales call, ask if the prospect has time.

-Instead of asking the prospect to respond WHEN they have time, ask them to respond IF they have time.

-Don’t ask for a quick 15 minute meeting with every intention of taking an hour.

The product/service that grants you the biggest commission isn’t always the right offering.

There will be two types of situations here. 1) The customer doesn’t know what the best offering is for their needs. 2) They know exactly what they want and need you to provide the transaction at a fair price. In the first case, offering the option which reaps the largest commission is a short term win, but a long term loss. If the product or service doesn’t deliver, then the long term relationship is either severed or discontinued due to lack of value being provided. In the second situation, offering an alternative product which offers a higher commission, when the customer asked for a specific other type of product may cause no sale to happen at all (especially if the buyer senses your motives). Shoppers in any category are smart these days and the smart ones will think about the seller’s motivations. Make sure that at least some of those motivations are geared towards pleasing the customer.

Show people what they don’t already know:

A list of your competition with you at the top doesn’t prove much you’re going to be the best solution to my problem. A smart buyer can pull all the same information themselves. Not only that but they can pull the information that you selective chose to leave out. Stats and data are great but they don’t sell the product. I learned this even during my days at Circuit City. Most customers don’t care that a TV has a 5000:1 contrast ratio. They care about having a clear picture. The job of the salesperson is to create the bridge of raw data and pure benefit to the client. Telling that story well (and not making the prospect connect the dots themselves) is what sells products.

The prospect isn’t the salesperson

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been asked the question, “What do we need to do get your business?” Even in my basic college sales course where I was tasked with learning “SPIN” selling I know that a good salesperson should never ask that. A prospect is already being respectful by offering their time to discuss their business; they shouldn’t have to sell themselves on a product.

Asking what it takes to win someone’s business is an exhibition of laziness. It shows the lack of interest in building an understanding and relationship. A salesperson's job isn’t to find out what they need to do to convince a prospect that they are worth investing money into, their job is to show the prospect what they will lose if they DON’T invest in the service/product.