Quirky Sales Professionals
Welcome first time visitor. If you like what you see, you can receive free twice weekly posts by email or RSS feed. See the right side of the screen for instructions; it only takes 10 seconds. You will receive a verification email if you choose to receive by email. If you don't immediately receive this, please check your spam folder. We will never sell or misuse your email address.
There is a theme in this sales blog that will never change. That theme is: We are most effective when we feel free to express our unique personality with our customers and prospects. Our customers like to see us, not some synthetic version of us. In my many years in sales I can honestly say that the sales professionals who are loved the most - and I do mean loved - are some of the quirkiest people on the planet.
“Oh no, it’s sales time.”
What do We Like About People?
Do we like someone because they are flawless? No. The irony is that we like people for their odd traits as much as we like them for their identifiable strengths. This is their identity. It’s a package. Our customers like us for the same reasons. Life is counter-intuitive sometimes.
What do Customers Hate About Suits?
I love to attend meetings when a large company brings in 20 suits to help make their case. And by suits I mean guys and gals who are clones of one another sharing the same clothes, hairstyles, verbiage, education, experience, disposition, training and age. Here’s a basic sales tip: customers hate this. When they see an army of suits coming their direction they immediately think, “Oh no, it’s sales time.” Customers like buying from real people, not people that look and talk as if they were put together on an assembly line.
We Keep Hurting Ourselves
The world is filled with generic sales professionals. The more generic they are the more they lose their identity. This diminishes one of the most important aspects of creating a relationship, individuality.
I’m not suggesting that sound sales concepts be thrown out (like those found in this sales blog, of course). I am advising that we give ourselves permission to relax a little in front of the customer and reveal our true temperament and character. It’s key to creating a lasting relationship with our customers. Quirky can be good.
Related information: Can Hillary Clinton teach us something about sales?
To receive this sales tips blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer
Tags: personality
We'd like to hear your feedback on this post - feel free to comment below!
August 11th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Amen! One of the best sales people we ever had was a surfer dude type to the T, laid back, accent the whole nine yards, outsold Everyone.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Thought todays blog was very interesting! I agree with a lot of it, especially that you need to be yourself. I also understand that by “suits” you were describing what I would assume would be “empty suits?”
I bring this up because it’s an interesting debate these days. I subscribe to the “know your audience” theory. Ex. If you are meeting with C-Level excecs at IBM, bringing a team of “quality suits” with different expertise would seem to be the BEST approach rather than the worst? Regardless, that was the only situation in many where anyone would bring a team of people on a sales call.