Let Them Sell!
One of the biggest mistakes a successful salesperson will make, when thrust into management, will be to think s(he) has the best sales system or tactics available because they’ve sold the most. Heck, they have the evidence to prove it, right? Well, they are right… for them. The further removed a salesperson is from their personality, standards, morals, social and technical abilities or comforts, the worse they will sell.
If you decided to start your own pizza business and the reason you had the confidence you could be successful in this venture was due to the many complements on your signature New York style stuffed pizza; yet you find the majority of your customers are ordering pepperoni. Do you tell them they have to buy your New York style stuffed pizza? Will you punish them for not buying it? Give them only ? of the pepperoni because of their error in ordering? Then why make salespeople sell something or some way they don’t like, can’t get their heads around, are uncomfortable with, not confident in or not proud of?
Passion sells! If you were selling more cherry wood furniture than anyone ever in had your store, and you become the manager, would you try to force everyone to sell it because to you it is the easiest and most profitable? How do you think the guy who bought thousands of dollars’ worth of cheery wood furniture a month before his wife left him and took all the furniture; will feel about selling more cherry wood furniture… especially if he loves oak? What if you have a salesperson that really chokes at selling health insurance? Do you just fire him or do you introduce him to life insurance? Maybe she just loves old people and has a knack for selling Medicare supplements. Maybe he loves cars and would be a great auto insurance specialist.
The first time I sold health insurance I made only $800 per month my first two months selling the way my manager (who was very nice and successful) told me to sell it. He said you never mention a negative when selling. We were selling affordable insurance… other than the price, most everything was a negative. I was doing so bad I had considered finding a different job. However, during my third month I decided to go with my gut feelings and came up with a health plan that made sense to me, which included teaching them how to take the savings and put it away to help cover what the insurance didn’t. By the end of that year, out of around 5000 agents in the company, I was ranked in the top 20. I didn’t have a nice car, I stumbled over my words, I didn’t have all the answers because I was still learning, but I sold because I believed in this plan I had come up with. I was selling the same thing 5000 other people sold but I sold more because I was passionate about the program I put together that was different from everything everyone else was doing. I was being totally honest telling them the positives and negatives and that honesty was comfortable to me and caused people to trust me more, buy from me and stick with me even when the insurance didn’t cover them.
You need to teach agents/salespeople about the product, you’ve got to introduce them to various sales styles, you need to teach them about people and how to read them, but then you need to let them go and use the method and ingenuity they are most passionate about. You may have heard the saying, “A man convinced against his will, leaves, the same opinion still.” If you force them to do things your way, they will do it while you are looking but if they really want to be successful, as soon as you turn your back they are going to do what works for them. If they are more afraid of going against you than being successful, they will continue to do it your way with the conscious or unconscious desire that your way will fail… even if it costs them their job. On their next interview they will tell the company how their hands were tied by the manager who forced them to sell in a stupid manor. If you had the chance you would debate his synopsis of your sales method but you’d be wrong because it wasn’t your sales method that was stupid but the fact that you tried to force it on someone in whom it didn’t fit. You tried putting Cinderella’s glass slipper on her step sister.
Instead of telling your salespeople how to sell, why don’t you ask them? Show them your product then ask them how they would sell it and what they really see in it, who they would sell it to and why. You will be surprised how much more they will sell if you let them sell the way that makes them feel passionate. Teach them to focus on their passion and they will sell and sell and sell. If you are selling a butter knife, please don’t get in the way of the salesperson showing ladies how well it works as a screwdriver.
