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How often do you get the feeling that once the salesperson you are dealing with finally gets that you’re not interested in buying from them, they abruptly start to close down the conversation and usher you to the door?It’s like “Now that I see that you’re not going to but anything from me, I’m not prepared to invest anymore time in you.”This type of salesperson is looking for the easy sale and when they sense it’s not coming they want to dump you and move on to their next target.Effective and honest sales is NOT about the quick and easy sale that can be scaled.These quick hitters spend their time designing their sales process to minimize the amount of face-time they have with a potential client and maximize the number of pitches they make during the day to yield as many sales as they can.And some sales organizations add an additional component to the sales process — “the closer”. This is the dude or dudette that enters the client meeting when it’s obvious the client resists buying.The closer’s role is to harden the interaction even further and push for the sale. The logic is simple: if the client isn’t buying from the first salesperson, maybe, with more push and a different person they will soften up and buy.This “get ‘em in — get ‘em out” pressure process gives the sales profession a bad name. It’s the stereotypical hard sell approach devoid of any meaningful human interaction with the potential client.The salesperson in this scenario cares little about the person and more about the product.
It’s about leadership
This is not a sales issue per se, it’s a leadership one. The reason the sales process is based on speed and superficiality and not quality is because leadership actually believes that it’s the only way to meet sales and revenue objectives.And they prioritize getting sales over anything else, including building long lasting relationships that will not only spawn a regular flow of sales, it will also create a referral network that will increase sales beyond expectations.It’s hard to believe in the sales world today, replete with experts pronouncing how critical it is to focus on building intimacy with clients that the impersonal hard sales process is still practiced by many if not most organizations.Either the pundits have it wrong — and they don’t — or leaders don’t trust that people will hand over their money if they are treated to an amazing experience with one of their sales professionals.I think leadership is so focussed on showing good performance in the short term that they simply cannot risk investing resources to build long term health.They say the priority is to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty but their actions belie their intent. I mean how can you even promulgate a relationship building strategy when sales compensation is driven by how many dollars they generate today?Also, what’s the response if customer feedback is extremely negative; that people absolutely hate the sales approach used?My experience so far is that your views are politely listened to and abruptly ignored; organizations generally are not interested in forsaking a immediacy in favour of a longer term horizon.What’s the solution? Will a person continue to be subjected to the pusher and the closer who are only interested in you saying “yes”?I suspect so, because I don’t believe leadership has the jam to make the change.If you’re in sales I ask that you push back if you are being asked to push or close products. Take a stand for the people you engage everyday to buy from you, and push for a sales process that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of the client.And if you’re a potential buyer, go somewhere else where sales actually likes humans.
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