How not to sell.

Hi, there

I am not a natural sales person - in fact, its the hardest thing to do is try sell someone something. I always find myself thinking that if someone wants something, they're going to buy it and if I have what they want, they'll come to me. I'm starting to realise that it isn't quite as simplistic as that, because you have to go through the whole process of building relationships and letting people know that you are there (especially when you're only an on-line store. I think that is why I found this little story I received on e-mail the other day so interesting. What is your preferred sales technique? Happy reading!

Regards,

M.

P.S. The extract comes from Early to Rise - a business newsletter I get everyday.

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You should sell to your customers... But not like this

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"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By Suzanne Richardson

Zap! My AC adaptor was dead as a doornail. Since I work from home, my laptop is my office and primary means of communication with ETR writers and staff members alike. Panic started to set in. So I immediately called Dell to order a new AC adaptor as quickly as possible. I needed the adaptor and I needed it right away, which meant that Dell had to do very little work to make the sale. But the sales rep I spoke to managed to make me so frustrated that I hung up and called the computer shop down the road instead. It's possible that you or your salespeople are making the same mistake as the Dell rep. If so, you could be driving your customers away. Here's what happened...

The sales rep asked me for my computer ID number so she could understand more about me and my computer. I told her that my AC adaptor was dead and I needed a new one right away.

"Have you noticed that your computer is running slowly lately, especially when you have a lot of applications running?" she asked.

What does that have to do with anything? I thought. But, giving her the benefit of the doubt, I said, "Sure, sometimes."

"It looks like you're using almost half of your memory," she said. "Would you like to upgrade?"

Okay, I thought, she either didn't listen to my problem or she doesn't understand my urgency. "Yes, I'll consider that at some point," I told her.

"But right now, I really need an AC adaptor."

"Oh, of course we can do that for you. But I just want to make sure that your computer is running at top capacity," she said. "Would you like to upgrade your memory? It will really help your computer run faster."

"Yes, I understand that," I told her. "But I work from home and I need an AC adaptor right away. That's why I called. And once that problem is taken care of, I can think about upgrading my memory."

"But if you upgrade your memory now, I can offer you a special rate," she said.

"That's not my problem right now," I said. "My problem is that I need an AC adaptor."

"If you don't upgrade your memory right now, you won't get this special price," she said.

"Thank you for your time," I told her and hung up.

Michael Masterson has said many times that customer service and sales should go hand in hand. If the product or service you offer is worthwhile, selling it is a service to your customer.

"If you limit the benefit you provide to that which - and only that which - your customer specifically requests," says Michael, "you are much, much less valuable to him in the long run."

But that doesn't mean you should try to badger people into buying something they don't want. And it definitely doesn't mean that you should ignore solving your customer's primary problem in order to make a bigger sale.
Michael puts it like this: "As businesspeople, it is our job to provide more and better products and services to our customers, to help them solve their problems, meet their needs, and achieve their ambitions."

The key idea here: You want to help solve your customers' problems. In my example, my problem was that I needed an AC adaptor. Had the sales rep helped me order what I needed and then tried to convince me to upgrade my memory, I would have been much more receptive to her offer. (I really do, as she suggested, need more memory.)