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Professional Visitor or Professional Sales Person?
| Guest post by: Sue Barrett |
Article Overview: I am seeing a lot of time wasted by sales staff aimlessly chatting with clients. How often are you left with the feeling that your sales people are seeing clients, but beyond the "hello" and general chat, nothing of substance is happening? I call it the phenomenon of "professional visitation".
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Professional Visitor or Professional Sales Person?
I am seeing a lot of time wasted by sales staff aimlessly chatting with clients.
How often are you left with the feeling that your sales people are seeing clients, but beyond the "hello" and general chat, nothing of substance is happening?
I call it the phenomenon of "professional visitation".
Often the cause can be isolated to a sales person's reticence to ask the "hard questions". Preferring to operate at a more superficial level, there is little chance the sales person will ever become involved in negotiating their way through customer demands and price issues.
Contact time with customers should always be productive. It is not just us who are busy - so are our customers, and the last thing they want is an interruption to their day that does not yield results.
Have a look at this profile and ask yourself are you employing professional visitors?
- Continual rounds of visits to clients they are comfortable to do business with.
- Lengthy amounts of time spent establishing "rapport".
- Difficulty zeroing in on real customer problems rather than symptoms.
- Inability to effectively negotiate the way around the "price" question.
- Sticking to the "safe" but irrelevant topics.
- Walking away with no advancement in the sales process.
- Selling the same old products/services, not adding new ones.
- Customers continually asking for more discount.
- The customer controlling the sales process, not your representative.
The professional visitor hesitates to get into the fray with customers as they are not comfortable being assertive. The cost to you becomes more volume at the expense of profit, a failure to see opportunities with customers, and longer than necessary decision cycles. Are these costs that you can continue to carry?
If you have any of these people on staff, you have a problem. Have a look at some of my other postings for how to get them performing better.
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Article Tags: customer demands, customer problems, establishing rapport, failure, interruption, li li, little chance, phenomenon, price question, professional visitors, question li, reticence, sales person, superficial level, ul
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About the Author: Sue Barrett RSS for Sue's articles - Visit Sue's website Sue is one of the leading voices commenting on sales today. Sue has a unique way of getting to the heart of the matter - she combines extensive knowledge, research, insight, and practical experience with a deep sense of compassion to bring forth a more enlightened way of thinking and participating in the world. This makes her stand out from the usual crowd of existing business commentators. Her ability to distill complex ideas and relate them to life's everyday challenges and opportunities has audience members and readers leaving with a stronger understanding of "self" and how they can begin to achieve excellence through purposeful action. Presenting and writing on a wide range of topics about the world of 21st Century selling Sue's presentations and articles include sales philosophy and culture, sales leadership and coaching, sales training, selling skills, resilience, neuroscience in selling and more. Sue's articles are some of the most widely read in Australia and she is gaining a following overseas as well. Besides publishing on Barrett Sales Blog site, Sue has been the lead sales writer for www.smartcompany.com.au since 2007, and is also regularly published on other highly regarded publications such as Australian Anthill Magazine, Niche Magazine, Marketing Mag, Business Chicks, and Business Deals. Click here to visit Sue's website   Great at sales but they dont fit the culture Five reasons to Mind Your Emotions Walk a mile in my shoes Through the looking glass Costing cutting at the expense of sales Bad move |
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