Finding Sales where you least expect it

Guest Contributor: Albert Luk
Albert's Posts - Albert's Site


We replaced our photocopier in the office last month. While, in and of itself, this may not be a big deal, it was quite instructive in how big businesses miss the easy sale because they pigeon-hole their thinking into only sales people should sell. In fact, every employee should be a salesperson for your good or service. Let me explain.

We leased the photocopier two years ago when the office had 4 people in it. Unbeknown to me (since this preceded my arrival and I am not in charge of the office machinery regardless), the photocopier was refurbished and the needs of an every growing office soon out-stripped the capability of the photocopier. If you are in the office equipment business, you know that heavy use of machinery not intended for such volume leads to predictable results.

Paper jammed. Parts overheated. Toner spilled.

After a while, everyone in the office knew our photocopy repairman by first name. Since the machine was on warranty, I suspect the company was losing money on the warranty considering the cost of labor, travel (gas prices being what they are now) and parts. Our office, now over a dozen people on a busy day, simply outgrew the photocopier. Of course, no one was happy- neither customer, frustrated by frequent break-downs as symbolized by toner stains on the carpet from one repair job (a literal black spot on the vendor), nor vendor, perplexed how a simple photocopier could consume so much time, energy and money.

Do you know how we ended up with a new photocopier? The repairman, completely at wit's end at this point, suggested that there was a new model that would cost us less to lease but do more. It took us a second to say yes.

The point of this story is that easy sales can sometimes be made by non-sales personnel since they are on ground more often than a periodic sales call and can assess client needs better. The repairman knew of our need, having lived it with us, and knew the solution. Since the context which we knew him in was non-sales, we didn't have our "sales defenses" up when he made a sale- which wasn't so much a sale than a solution to everyone's problem.

In fact, if that repairman had said something sooner, the vendor would have had a quicker sale. But the repairman is not trained to think in that manner- sales people sell, repair people repair. However, what if repair personnel are trained to sales situations and offer a situation right then and there in a non-salesy manner or pass this opportunity to sales staff? Would a business be more effective than a salesperson grinding out 6 meetings to make the same sale?

No one wants every employee in a business to be a sales-person but if you silo off your employees to functional job descriptions they won't help you trouble-shot issues and present sales opportunities. Training non-sales staff to be on the look-out to find ways to create solutions for clients is just another way to increase sales in tough times.