On Monday evening, I needed to help an elder in the family get flowers delivered to a wedding in a Chennai suburb. When routine online delivery apps refused due to the late hour & remote location, we decided it was time to go local.
A quick google search & several calls later I spoke to the most enterprising florist who pushed me to spend double our planned budget. The conversation was pushy but delightful as he shot down every argument to spend lesser by making it all about my intention & desired result.Ā #GooglePayĀ &Ā #WhatsappĀ ensured we quickly picked the option & paid. Soon I had a pic of the final product.
The wow factor, however, happened 2 hours later. Not only had the florist found the right place but he managed to go up on stage, to wish the couple on our behalf & get a photo clicked for our satisfaction. A final follow up call to ensure we were happy & would give him a 5-star rating online.Ā
Narrating this incident to family, somehow we ended up discussing another past incident, where a pushy telecaller not only annoyed me but made me start disliking the brand A LOT! (Since the company involved has a rep for defamation suits I shall avoid tagging them but they are in the Edtech space & spend millions in advertising).
The sales rep wanted to fix an appointment with my daughter & me, for a home visit by an assessment specialist who would help identify where she needed help (academically) and therefore I would (presumably) purchase the add-ons in their app via subscription. The basic premise seemed fine, just that it wasnāt what I wanted to be doing for my child. It was a gruelling phase for her as it is, with swim training, extracurricular & school work and besides I didn’t think at Grade V she needed this much push. I politely refused the offer. I continued the chat to close the topic coz I had been hounded for the slot for several weeks. Plus, I felt I ought to hear them out. After all, I had downloaded the trial app to check their worksheets & exercises in Math to do over summer break (to beat the ‘summer slide’). When pushed to share why I mentioned that we were unlikely to use the app for the expected 1-2 hours per week and so I didn’t see value in a paid service I wouldn’t use. The ensuing conversation turned nasty at the point where he said āAre you telling me your 10-year-old is so busy she canāt use our appā, followed by āShould you not re-jig her schedule and see how best to fit in the extra work using our app?ā These are 2 of the many questions/statements posed to me during that conversation but it was at this point that something in me snapped – it was some parts marketer and several parts mother in me that reacted. I resented the tone & pompous assumption that every child needs this product intervention and a telecaller (clearly one with heavy sales targets) who spent 10 minutes with me on the phone knew what my child should be doing better than I did. Big HeadButt in my book at least. You can imagine how the rest of that call went. Since then, I have pushed this brand into the pushy sales category rather than one who has the intention of making a difference in the customersā lives. Of course, every brand/salesperson has targets, but as I explained to my 11 yo why one episode won me and the other annoyed me – the best salesperson is the one who helps you navigate towards a win-win by making it about your needs/goals and not their need to sell and is willing to go the extra mile to make you feel like you matter.
In my past work life, I have been a salesperson myself. I have hated months with big targets but I focused on relationship-based selling. And finding people with the need for what I did rather than insist on every lead/person I talked to ‘converting’. In professional life, I have seen the best and worst of sales behaviours and surely more than a few salespeople who are adored by their clients/customers. And I can’t help trying to derive insights from my own personal experience as a customer dealing with salespeople. Which is what this blog is about. So here’s my quick take on 4 things to remember in scripting winning sales conversations.
- Think of your buyer’s life, problems, challenges & motivators. Where does your brand/business fit in? If there is no fit, drop the prospect. Lack of fit could be from affordability, likely use, expectations mismatch and so on.
- Focus on your customer’s WHY. This will help you customise your sales pitch. If you don’t identify a clear why, please don’t skate on ‘why not’, which is very thin ice.
- Make it about your customer. Their goals, challenges and desires. Steering this part of conversation requires skill, empathy and deep knowledge of your product or service. How can what you’re selling help them achieve their stated or unstated needs? Help visualise what life with your solution looks like. If they like that, they will buy. If not, move on. Either they don’t need you or even if they do, may not value you.
- Know when to give up. To continue at a better time or perhaps drop the prospect from your list. There is nothing more annoying than someone who doggedly pursues you without taking hints, subtle or loud.
Does your organisation rely on sales? How does your salesperson behave?
Like my enterprising florist or the tone-deaf pushy telecaller? Do you have similar incidents that highlight the best & worst of sales behaviours? Do share!
Pavithra 