Selling With Integrity

What does it mean to Sell with Integrity and how does that affect sales and profitability? I used to work for a large software company as an instructor and pre-sales consultant for the Business Intelligence division of our company. I was doing a lot of training in a large business park in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Each night after the training class, the salesrep for this territory would have potential clients come to my classroom and I would answer any questions they had about the software and demonstrate how to implement key features of their business analytics application, so they were confident our software would they needed it to do.

This one manager and his co-worker loved what I showed them and were ready to buy now. During our conversations, I discovered that the previous manager had bought a similar piece without taking advantage of that company's without taking advantage of the the 30 day free trial where he could thoroughly test our company's software to see if it would meet his business analytics needs. He simply bought the software and then found out later that it couldn't do all the things he needed. This failure on his part cost him his job.

When the current manager wanted to buy on the spot based on what I showed him, I cautioned him not to base his decision solely on what I'd shown him. Instead, I advised him to to take advantage of our 30 day free trial to prove to himself and his superiors that out software could meet their needs completely.

If he didn't take advantage of the 30 day free trail and it turned out that our software didn't meet all his needs, he could be the next manager to be let go by his company. When I said that, the manager looked somewhat surprised and shocked by my honesty and putting his needs above the immediate sale.

After the meeting was over, I called the territory's salesrep and told him what happened. He was angry with me since he was counting on this sale to meet his quota, especially since this was going to be a site license for this client and there was a lot of revenue at stake.

The next morning, that manager called my salesrep and bought the product immediately. He told the salesrep my genuine concern for his well being and success had impressed him, so he was going to skip the 30 day free trail guarantee in case there he encountered problems with our software.

I call this approach Selling with Integrity, which means you put the customers needs and success above the immediate desire and need to close a deal. This approach may take a little more time but it's worth it since it builds trust with the customers and they become a great referral source for other potential customer who need reassurance that our product will meet their needs. It can also lead to additional sales with this client and more revenue.

So remember, always put the customer's need above the immediate need to close a sale. If you don't you may lose that customer. If could also cause the 1-20 Rule of Marketing to kick in. With this rule, if you satisfy 1 customer, he'll tell 1 customer in another company about their positive experience with your company. But if you dissatisfy that 1 customer, he'll tell 20 other customers in 20 other companies about their bad experience with your company. That can kill more potential sales and ruin your revenue stream.

So always put the customer's needs first and watch you're sales and customer satisfaction grow!

PS/This methodology also applies to all other categories of employees in a company who deal directly with customers. If these folks also treat their customers with integrity and caring, it will reflect positively on the company!!