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What do you call yourself?

Written by: Richard Mulvey

Article Overview: Your customer is the most important person in the world to you. Does your job title reflect that?

What do you call yourself?

What do you call yourself?

I have been training sales people for many years and thousands of sales people have been through my courses. At the beginning of each course I ask each person to introduce themselves and, of course, along with the introduction we get their job title. There have been hundreds of different titles but the most common are:

Sales Representative
Sales Executive
Marketer
Marketing consultant
New Business Development Officer
Internal Sales
And, of course, just Sales

Now there is nothing wrong with these titles. Being a Sales Representative, as we have already discussed, is a noble task and one to be proud of.

However, there is a problem here. When you go and visit a customer and you give him a card it says “Sales Representative” You are saying that you represent your company. He gives you his card and it says he is a “Buyer” Buying for his company. So you are on different sides doing different things, representing different interests. You are separating yourself from your customer before you start.

I met someone at a party once and I was chatting to him, making small conversation, so I asked him what he does for a living. That’s what you do at parties isn’t it. You have to ask them what they do for a living to know if you should be talking down to them or not. So I asked him the question and he replied: “I buy insurance”

“You Buy Insurance!” I said, “That’s interesting, what does someone who buys insurance do all day?”

“Well”, he replied, “I spend all day hunting around for the best insurance deals and I buy them for my customers.”

He is actually an insurance salesman. But he sees his job a little differently. He looks for the best deals for his customers and isn’t that just what his customer would want him to do?

Perhaps you should consider changing your job title to reflect what the customer would like you to be. Instead of a sales rep, consider some of the following:

Customer Representative
Client Solutions Provider
Customer Consultant
Customer Support Staff
Customer Services Consultant
Client Liaison Executive

If you give your card to a customer and it states that you are a Customer Representative, you are saying that you are on his side, you are looking after his interests, and you are much more likely to make the sale in the end.

I have many examples of how effective this can be and there are a number of companies I have trained, who have changed their job titles on the strength of this argument. Interestingly the job title that I included with tongue in cheek was “Client Solutions Provider”, but I know of three companies that are using this title very effectively. One trainee sales person who came to my training course had “Catalyst” on her business card and I love that.

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