Getting Customers to Flock Back to Your Salespeople

Last night at dinner, my 77 year-old father showed us the obituary he had saved from when his father died. Abe Kurlan died in 1968 at the age of 68. Since I pick up the most subtle of patterns, the first thing that ran through my head was that I might make it to 86! It also got me thinking about what Abe did for a living. He was a car salesman back in the day when before he could sell you a car he had to teach you how to drive one!

I mentioned in a 2007 post that sales had skipped a generation and I provided some history about what selling was like back in the days of World War II. But last night I got to thinking about what made him so successful at selling cars. People loved him.

I remember conducting some training about 15 years ago for a local distributor and one of the salespeople took me aside and told me that I would never be anything like my grandfather. He made the point of saying that my grandfather was so likable, so caring, such a good person, that his entire family returned to Abe to buy all of their cars. He wondered why I couldn't be more like that!

But that's it. People returned to him in much the same way they returned to their family doctor. They made him part of their family. He had a great reputation. They could trust him. And the incredible part of this? He was selling USED cars for the last 25 years of his life. Not quite what you think about when you talk about a used car salesman, is it?

We spend an awful lot of time helping salespeople with their process, mindset, tactics and strategy. We spend a lot of time helping them to overcome and work around their weaknesses. We need to spend some time helping them develop the kind of honest, caring, respectable approach that Abe had, that family doctors used to have, that will cause customers and clients to flock back to them and not consider anyone else.

I call that SOB Quality, when your prospect or customer pays more attention to you than to any of your competitors.

Getting Customers to Flock Back to Your Salespeople - To learn more about this author, visit Dave Kurlan's Website.

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Related Businesses - Evan Elite Authors

Dave Kurlan Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

George Ludwig George Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website

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