Go for the jugular? Or build the relationship?

Sales - What’s your thoughts?  

I have been in sales all my working life. From before actually as I can remember as a young child making ‘perfume’ out of rose petals and selling it around the village for 50p – managed to buy a few sweets from the ice-cream van with that!

In all honesty, my first sales job was in a shoe shop (Barratts for anyone who remembers them) where I learnt about add-ons (KPIs), then I was a travel agent (A.T. Mays, First Choice and Thomas Cook) where first I learnt about commission, and then about customer service.

Why in that order? When I started I was young and hungry. I was also on a YTS (Youth Trainee Scheme) wage. It was ￡25 per week. So, my only way to supplement it was with commission and I learnt that quickly. I was good at it, but, if you came in and said you wanted to go to anywhere except Turkey, and there was a big incentive on Turkey, you can guarantee you left that office with a booking to Turkey!

Great sales person, but did I ever listen to what the client wanted? Not really, not unless it suited me… Early on I was always the top salesperson. The one to beat, not just in our shop but often within the company. I did start to notice though that sometimes clients would come into the shop and when I went over to serve them they would say they were waiting for someone else. Sometimes they would wait for over an hour to speak to one consultant in particular. I never had that. No-one ever requested me or waited to see me.

I brought it up during my review one day and my manager said that I was a very aggressive seller. She said that if she were sitting in front of me she’d just hand me her cheque book and say to write the cheque. In a way it was a compliment, but I didn’t like it. I always felt I was really friendly with the client sitting in front of me, I never saw it as aggressive, but it did make me stop and think.

So, over the next few weeks and months I started to change my approach. I learnt how to listen better and really understand what the client wanted. I stopped chasing the commission and instead helped them chase their dreams. Do you know what happened? They started coming back to me. I started to get a lot of repeat business, and still was getting new clients. I remained as a top sales person, I made way more commission AND I learnt about customer service.

Fast forward to now. For the past ten years I have worked in B2B roles. When I analyse it, I realise that it’s the same job in essence, I’m just selling something different. I speak to potential clients, find out their needs and wants and offer either a solution or a way to make it better / easier for them. I focus now more on relationship building rather than sales.

Let’s meet for a coffee. Let’s catch up. What do you have coming up? You don’t need/want what we have to offer? No problem, let’s keep in touch anyway, you never know… This is more my mantra now. A lot softer, but, in my opinion, far more effective.

I was inspired to write this after catching up with an acquaintance this morning for coffee (decaf tea in my case, but that’s another story!) and he told me a story about some business he won years ago, big business, with the same method, and also told me a story about one he’d heard of, from a former company I used to work for, which backfired – big time!

I would love to know your thoughts on this. Is the relationship approach better, or do you go for the jugular, and if so – does it work?

And on that note - anyone free for a coffee / catch up soon?