Salespeople are pushy!
Don’t shoot the messenger!! Pushy, insensitive, arrogant – and they don’t listen! These are the top responses when I ask my workshop delegates what they think of salespeople. Few refer to any positive traits… And these delegates are usually salespeople themselves!
As someone who works in behavioural psychology, it got me wondering why there’s such a mismatch in what salespeople try to be – and how they are perceived.
When I ask my delegates what people WANT in their sales person, none of them say:
Closing ability
CRM skills
High levels of activity
Pipeline management
Able to bounce back after a rejection
Capacity to hit monthly quota targets
These skills are how sales people are measured by their sales managers (and their organisations). none of which matter to the customer! But these are what salespeople concentrate on, because people do what they are measured (and rewarded) to do.
Furthermore, sales training seems to concentrate on ever more ‘clever’ sales techniques to win more business – close more deals. This simply sounds manipulative and adversarial. Customers are not ‘prey’ to be stalked, pounced on and ‘closed’.
So, I took a completely different view when I wrote my own sales course. Called “Sales Lessons From The Customers You Are Trying To Sell To” it looks at the whole thing from a CUSTOMER’S perspective.
What does the CUSTOMER want at each point in the sales process – from ‘unaware’ through to ‘product ambassador’!
The course is on Udemy – and you are quite welcome to check out the free lectures to see what you think.
All the best for now.
Andy
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