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Why do sales people forget that they are also buyers?

May 11, 2011 by Dale Furtwengler — President, Furtwengler & Associates, P.C.

A strange transformation takes place when a person takes on a sales role. It doesn't matter whether it's a "sales professional," a solo entrepreneur, a business owner or CEO of a major corporation; when we go into that sales call we forget everything we know about being a buyer.

We forget that as buyers we want to be:

• Treated with kindness and respect.
• Educated so that we can make an informed decision.
• Allowed to shop around before making a decision.
• Contacted after the sale to assure that we're happy with our purchases without an attendant sales pitch.

What we, as buyers, don't want is:

• To be sold; we're intelligent people quite capable of making our own decisions.
• Someone who is so hungry for a sale that they aren't listening to us.
• A salesperson who has a one-size fits all mentality.
• A salesperson who views their job as selling instead of educating.
• To be forgotten as soon as the deal is done.

How can we overcome this natural tendency? Print out the list of what buyers want above. Just prior to entering a prospect's office or handling a retail customer's transaction, glance at the list to remind yourself of how you'd like to be treated. Extend the same treatment to them.

The few seconds that this takes can dramatically increase the number of customers you acquire, your customer retention rate and the price that you'll get for your offerings. Now that's a low-cost, high ROI approach to selling.

About Dale Furtwengler

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