You’d better love what you sell.
That’s what successful salespeople do.
First, a true story about company loyalty…on steroids! My father was a very hard-working Coca Cola salesman. No matter the weather, rain, or shine, snow, sleet, hail, whatever, he was out there every day driving on the back roads of Maine, delivering his heavy cases of soda. And, he like all Coke salesmen, (sorry there were no Coke sales women back then) loved his product, He loved his company, and he loved the product. He loved it to the point that if he came to your house and saw Pepsi in your fridge, he would pour it out and replace it with Coke, free of charge.
The rivalry between Coke and Pepsi salesmen was hard core, they loved their company and hated the other company. True story (sorry this is a bit scary) One time, the company that made their coolers, you know the ones they put in the stores with their logo all over them, mistakenly delivered a Pepsi cooler to the Coke plant where my father worked. So, what do you think they did? Of course, they should have called the company and asked them to replace the cooler with the right one, right? But did they do that? Nooo.
Here’s is what they did. They loaded up the cooler on a Coke truck and took it to one of the guys’ houses. They filled with it with ice and beer. They drank all the beer, and then they took sledge hammers to the cooler and completely destroyed it. Then, and this is the best part. They dropped it off in front of the Pepsi plant, filled with empty cans of Coke!
Now that’s being loyal to your company!
Oh, there is one more story about my father and his loyalty to Coke that demonstrates that he did have a sense of humor after all. Later in his career he showed up at a family Halloween party dressed in a Pepsi uniform and carrying a six pack of Pepsi! The family couldn’t believe it. He was the hit of the party.
How about you? Do you feel you are selling the best product on the market today? Are you so proud of what you sell, that you brag about it to everyone you know? Are you so confident that your products are the best products on the market that you make it your mission to make sure that everyone who needs it buys it. And do you actually feel sorry for those poor customers who don’t take advantage of your product and all the benefits it comes with?
To be a successful sales person, you must feel like you’re doing your customers a favor by giving them the opportunity to buy your products. You want to tell as many people as possible about the great solutions to their problems you’re offering them.
Then, the next best thing is getting your customers as excited as you are about your products. Enthusiasm is contagious, and the more enthusiastic you are, the more enthusiastic your customers will be.
If you have the right sales job, and you believe in your company and its products, you’re going to be jumping out of bed in the morning, anxious to can talk to as many people as possible, converting them to becoming fans of the products you’re selling.
The true job of a salesperson is to get the customer off the fence, and onto his side of that fence. And, the best way to do this, is to demonstrate the true value of your product. If all the customer wants to talk about is price, then you have not done your job properly. You must convince your customer that your product is so valuable, that he will want to pay, what you have convinced him the price should be.
A perfect example of a “valuable” product is college. People feel that a good college education is so valuable to their children that they will pay any price. Think about that for a minute, the price of a Harvard education is now a quarter of a million dollars, and still people are breaking their backs to get in…and they only let in one out of five applicants. Now that is perceived value!
And, that’ exactly what we have to do with our products. Raise the perceived value so high that our customers will feel guilty even haggling about price. And, to do that you have to love your product, love it as much, as much as my dad the Coke man loved his product. It’s only common sense.
