Why Traditional Selling is Not Dead - only Traditional Salespeople!
Will Offen
Sales and Business Strategies to Build Powerful & Consistent Growth. Sales Success is measured by the Value of Customers Engaged.
A couple of years ago I undertook a major re-focus in my business. After many years of working direct with client companies, fixing broken teams and building new ones, I felt it was time to fully embrace the power of the internet and reach out to a wider audience.
I must confess, at the beginning of the change process, I began to feel I was going to need some kind of lobotomy to remove the old fashioned and outmoded principles and processes that I have practiced for the past 40 odd years that, according to the information I was collecting, clearly had no place in the modern world of internet sales!
Of course, I quickly realized that what I learned all those years ago, and have gone on to practice and perfect, is no different today, internet or no, than it has always been.
Sure, the internet makes a difference – but it does not change the rules of engagement, the emotions of decision making and the value of people skills. The internet after all, is simply a vehicle – a vehicle for reaching potential prospects and giving them information that helps them find what they want. Whether or not we believe that the personal element is unnecessary somewhere in the process of creating the sale, largely depends on what we believe the process and purpose is all about in the first place.
Ask any gathering of salespeople, as I have 1000’s of times, to describe the purpose of selling, the answers will be varied and mostly involve description such as, “making money”, “selling products or services” and “finding a prospect’s needs and challenges and providing the right solutions”.
Can there be any doubt that the last answer is the correct one?
Do it yourself buying?
If we care at all about our prospect’s satisfaction, both throughout the sales process and after (i.e. will they be absolutely delighted with the actual sales process and the final solution), we simply cannot leave prospects to search out the right answers alone, particularly when purchasing significant products or services. They need help to properly identify their wants, education to convert their wants to needs and guidance to find the best solution. Of course, the more complex the solution, the more complicated will be the process required for the prospect to be able make the correct decisions.
One thing that certainly hasn't changed over the years is the general attitude towards selling as a function. Most people, unfortunately, view the process and the people involved with suspicion and mis-trust. For as long as I can remember, the trend has been to try and sidestep salespeople and use a ‘do-it-yourself’ process. Buying a household product such as a washing machine for example, now requires the purchaser to decipher the label and make a choice by reading technical details, before then finding a counter to place the order. There are certainly very few stores that have the required knowledge available to give anything like guidance on the correct solution for the individual customer. Most purchasers in this situation will use price as their major deciding factor, missing completely the need for understanding that the correct price is the one for the product that fulfils their needs efficiently. The internet unfortunately panders to this trend and perpetuates this “DIY” notion.
The internet does not mean the death of the salesperson, far from it. For sure, it produces more challenges, but mostly in the shape of extra competition for prospects and there's always been a regular supply of new kids on that particular block. However, maybe there is opportunity in this particular challenge?
Loyal ambassadors – higher profits.
I have believed in, and focused on, the power of client centricity, for more than four decades. The power to influence a prospect to comfortably make the correct decision, requires total interaction and full engagement. Not only does this produce highly effective sales, it also produces contented clients who become loyal ambassadors for our businesses – reducing our cost of marketing, increasing the quality and quantity of our clients and positively impacting our profits – and no internet sales process can, or will do a better job for our clients or our businesses!
Whatever the vehicle used to reach prospects and complete the sales process, proffesional salespeople take full responsibility for total client satisfaction. They are never happy just making sales but understanding the need to make highly effective, client centric sales, ensuring that prospective purchasers realise the true value of the sales processes and seek out those services.
The rewards of this excellence in service far outstrip the efforts. The overall result of Highly Effective Sales is reliable business growth and long term stability. But here's a warning! The internet is indeed powerful competition with the reach and influence to educate and inform. Salespeople and sales businesses have less choice to be mediocre and must offer more than an average service. The old traditional, self-serving techniques just won't cut it any longer. In the long run, it will be only the exceptional members of the profession that will survive.
Success and rewards are a by product of service. Excellent service results in excellent rewards - mediocre service results in mediocre rewards!
As sales businesses, we must ensure that our client facing staff are fully trained and continually developed to be a vital component part of our client acquisition process. We must become a go-to solution and an indispensable part of any prospect’s buying process - by doing so, we will be alive and kicking for centuries to come!
I’ll finish with a story:
CFO. “We are spending far too much on staff training”.
CEO. “It’s worthwhile, we need to do it”.
CFO. “But what if we train them and they leave”?
CEO. “And what if we don’t, and they stay”?
And a quote:
"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. “
Theodore Roosevelt
Will Offen is a writer and international speaker. He is the creator of “Clients for Life’, which is available as a book, an on-line course and an in-company workshop. His free Face Book training and support group, ‘Masters of Communication’, designed to help everyone 'Harness the Powers of Communication', is open by application.