Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Sell with Purpose

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...It struck me the other day after a couple of phone calls trying to find reps for a client that we are losing the art of selling. It seems that many reps I talk to these days are not particularly interested in selling as much as they are in finding a principal that will fit exactly into their line card, filling a need that they have to satisfy a particular customer. More often than not they will say something like, “Look, Dan, I need someone who can build good flex boards for one of my customers. That’s all I want. If you can provide me with the right company I’ll be happy, but that’s all I’m going to do for that company. I am not going to prospect for them, I’m not going to go to any meetings or do any forecasting or anything like that. I have one customer who has what they provide and that’s all I’m going to do...nothing else.”Then I read in the paper that Best Buy is in deep trouble because people use their store as a show room to look at the goods, try them out, take a few notes, and then go home and order the product online. I was in Best Buy with my wife a few months ago when she was in the market for a new computer. Unlike me, she likes to ask a lot of questions making sure that she gets exactly what she wants and needs. On this particular afternoon she had to go through three sales people to get her questions answered. And these were people who worked in the computer department. They didn’t know and I might add didn’t seem to care to know anything about their products. They were just not engaged in trying to sell anything to anyone. They couldn't have cared less whether or not we bought anything from them. They had no interest in making the sale even if that sale would have been worth well over $1,000. I’ll tell you what Best Buy should do in a minute; it’s not that complicated.These two incidents made me think about sales. It made me remember the old days of the true salesperson, they guy who was so engaging and so helpful that you almost felt like you were going to have to buy something from him, just because he made you feel like you wanted to. He was so good that he made you want whatever it was he was selling whether or not you needed it. Whatever happened to that guy?As I work with different companies, helping them with their sales efforts, I find that there are two kinds of salespeople: Those who are salespeople and those who are salespeople by title only. The true salesperson will take the cards that are dealt and play them into a winning hand. If there is a recession on he will find a way to use the recession as a way to increase his sales. She will always be selling not matter what the obstacles or challenges arise. When she has spare time she will cold call potential customers--never giving a thought to the theory that cold calling doesn’t work and she will get orders. She will make cold calling work much to the chagrin of that old, experienced salesperson who probably told her cold calling doesn’t work.The true salesperson will take a to new directory of potential leads as hungrily as those guys in Glengarry Glen Ross wanted Mitch and Murray’s special packet of leads. The salesperson by title only will work with the directory for less than an hour, or until he finds a fault in it (like the name of a contact who has left the company) and he will condemn that directory as being out of date and worthless and go back to doing what he always does--finding 50 reasons why you just can’t sell like you used to in the good old days any more.A true salesperson will embrace change and try to figure out how to make that change work for her. Whether it be social media or a new sales technology, she will find a way to successfully use it in her daily life. The salesperson by title only will use change as another reason why you just can’t sell anymore. That it’s not the good old days anymore and anybody worth their salt should just get out of the sales business. And on that point, as far as he’s concerned, he’s probably right.Every salesperson should get a hold of and read, study, mark-up, and pass on to others two great new books about the basics of sales. The first is New Sales Simplified: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development by Mike Weinberg; the second is The Accidental Sales Person: How to Take Control of Your Sales Career and Earn the Respect and Income You Deserve by Chris Lytle. Both are published by AMACOM Press.Now, about Best Buy, here’s what they need to do: First, train their people, make them experts--true experts in what they are selling. They should be so proficient in talking about their products that people will want to come in and talk to them about new purchases. Second, the company should develop a hybrid sales approach where if they don’t have what the customer wants in the store, they will go online with the customer find it, and buy it together from the Best Buy website. After all, why would you ever let a sale walk out the door? They should try this…it will work. But there are stores just like this already and I’ve been in one or two in my life. I think they’re called Apple stores. It’s only common sense.