How To Avoid Being an Expert Dunce

Imagine entering a retail store and seeing a large black cloth with this sign on it: ‘Behind this cloth is a display of interesting, exciting products and a very special offer; customers wishing to see the products and the offer should ask an assistant and the cloth will be removed for your convenience and pleasure.’ A ridiculous scenario, of course, and one doomed to abject failure.

Now, try to guess how many so-called consultants, professionals and sales people experience abject failure each day by ‘hiding’ their knowledge and skills, not with a black cloth but with very weak service strategies. There are literally hordes of such people in business, and their favourite saying is ‘There’s nothing happening out there’…and they ought to know because they are the ones who are making nothing happen!

The reason I mentioned ‘very weak service strategies’ is that the strongest form of service in any business is to help people achieve what they really need, or put another way…helping them to achieve the best possible outcomes with products and services they buy. This service is called ‘selling’ and it is simply not available from most consultants, professionals, sales reps, retail sales staff and people in hospitality. This is bad news for customers and even worse news for business people, because better sales income can only be achieved by creating better service outcomes.

Just a few examples of expert dunces at work are as follows:

• Accountants or financial planners who will do anything you ask them to do if it will help you, but who will never sell a service you didn’t ask for…but which you really need (such as financial or business plans, tax minimisation, protection of assets, development of assets, risk insurance, etc.)

• Consultants across various key business disciplines who have valuable solutions for both clients and prospects, but who will not pick up the phone and organise meetings…to help find the problems that match their solutions • Sales people who try to sell ‘products’ instead of selling ideas that generate more productivity (to customers, products ‘cost money’ while ideas ‘make money’. Selling productivity involves presenting the best ways to achieve excellent, improved results with your product)

• Doctors that are always there when we know we need them, but who are never there to attend to needs we don’t know we have (almost all of medicine is predicated on ‘waiting for’ patients rather than ‘waiting on’ patients, retrieving rather than developing health - a situation that our great, great grand children will certainly not tolerate!)

• Retail sales staff who ask no questions to find and satisfy greater needs, and who behave like glorified supermarket bag packers • People in the hospitality industry who successfully ‘take your order’ but fail to offer greater pleasure (how many restaurants do you know that ‘sell’ their dessert service?)

• Professional speakers who offer memorable presentations and training sessions, and then neglect to sell or even mention that they have books and other reference material for sale (I refuse to divulge how I know about this example)

The Very weak service strategies (selling approach) used by the guilty parties include these generic gems:

• The silent treatment. This involves not even mentioning that certain products or services are available from you – a sure-fire way to miss out on sales and save time in the process!

• Asking insipid questions. These include ‘Would you like to hear about such and such?’, also ‘Have you heard about such and such?, plus ‘Are you interested to see our latest such and such?’, and ‘Do you have time to discuss such and such?’ When the customers say ‘No thanks’ to all of these questions, the questioners might be forgiven for saying ‘Not to worry, you’re not the only one!’

• ‘Presenting’ the product or service. This most often involves an indulgent and drawn out explanation of your product or service, and attempts to involve the customer in a game called ‘spot the eventual benefit to you’. Not surprisingly, most customers won’t play. This is the equivalent of offering a cure for which there is no known disease!

Real selling, the strongest service you can offer, involves these steps:

• Knowing that both customers and prospects need what you sell, and accepting that they have no idea that they need it (e.g., hardly anyone has anywhere near enough trauma insurance, and yet most people are oblivious of this serious deficiency)

• Knowing that what you sell can definitely create better outcomes for people (a form of critical knowledge you have gained by seeing for yourself that what you sell has worked very well for certain customers)

• Knowing that the best ‘approach’ to both customers and prospects is one that a) aims to point to areas of opportunity rather than to threaten their current relationships with product suppliers, and b) enlightens them with news about problems/opportunities [relative to your product] that affect most people, and then frightens them about the problems/opportunities that might affect them personally, and then c) lightens their concern by ‘presenting’ an interesting and easy to access solution to their problem or opportunity • Knowing that the best way to create satisfaction for the customer and sales success for your company, is to provide a step by step ‘prescription’ that helps the customer or prospect to buy your solution…in a manner that is manageable and therefore acceptable to him (showing how to facilitate the financial arrangements, etc.)

• Knowing that after the purchase, it will be necessary to offer ongoing assistance to the customer, so as to ensure that he succeeds with your product Take away one or more of these selling steps and great difficulties will arise; read them over again and try to imagine what the absence of a single step will mean to the selling process.

Notice that each selling step starts with the word knowing, for this is what you are really offering to both customers and prospects. Products and services are in plentiful supply, but knowledge about why products are seriously needed and how best they can be used…is possessed and ‘displayed’ by few business people. Displayed? Yes, which brings us back to where we started and the obligation to merchandise our knowledge…as opposed to covering what we know with the equivalent of a black cloth, hoping that customers and prospects might ‘ask’ us to offer our strongest service. They never will, and nor should they have to. And then as knowledge is displayed and sold, more knowledge is needed…and so the cycle and relationship of learning and earning continues in a natural and healthy way.

The purpose of this article is not to point the finger so to speak, for we are all guilty in varying degrees of being expert dunces from time to time. This is a reminder, especially in times of economic uncertainty, that we are all sitting on goldmines that offer inexhaustible opportunities.

If you are technically very competent then congratulations, however to have knowledge and not ‘merchandise’ it is a waste of the valuable resource you have created…and an impediment to the creation of greater knowledge!

John Lees is a speaker, consultant, trainer and the author of 10 books...specialising in marketing & sales.

Website: www.johnLees.com.au email: info@johnlees.com.au



How To Avoid Being an Expert Dunce - To learn more about this author, visit John Lees's Website.

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