Why Everyone Hates Salespeople
We don’t deserve it, well most of us don’t deserve it, but there is a very strong negative perception of salespeople. Pushy salespeople, dishonest salespeople, bait and switch salespeople, disappearing after the sale salespeople, the list goes on. We only meet that client once, but they have met so many dodgy salespeople in the course of their careers. They have seen the worst of everything in sales by the time we get to them. We might be sweetness and light, but those who have gone before have muddied the waters. We start from underneath the water line in terms of trust and have to rise up into the fresh air, to show we are here to help the buyer succeed. Stereotypes about salespeople abound and like me, I think you will struggle to come up with one that is positive. We have to show we are different.
The good news is that surveys show that buyers still look to salespeople for advice and information on their purchases. This is natural because hopefully the seller will have deep and expert knowledge on the suitability of the product or service for the buyer’s needs. We do this ourselves when we are out consumer shopping. We ask the clerk about the product we are going to buy and we can tell immediately whether they know what they are talking about or not.
When we are being ”sold” by a salesperson an alarm bell goes off in our brain. We must remember that everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Listening skills are always a struggle in sales. Our brains are very concentrated so we are constantly filtering what we hear, searching for signs of interest or signs of resistance. We race ahead of the conversation, start tuning the buyer out and put all of our brainpower into the wondrous comment we are going to make. If they waffle on too much, we might lose our thread or they may change the subject before we can inject this gem, so we cut them off and talk over the top of them. We need to let them be heard, check for understanding to make sure we really have got it, before we begin introducing our solution.
It is natural to talk about ourselves, our company and our products and services. What happens from Day One of joining the firm? We are taken through the hard core details of the product, because product knowledge is considered a foundational stone in building a sales career. This is all true, however some organisations don’t venture beyond this. They get stuck on themselves and neglect to teach their salespeople about spending time understanding the customer.
The customer needs to know their needs are understood first before we can even try to build the trust. If we begin our discussion like this, “Thank you for your time today, let me tell you about us and what we do”, then that is pretty average and sadly somewhat standard. It would be better to start, “My only role here today is to help you grow your business. I would like to know if that is possible and the way to do that is to clearly understand your business and what you need. In the process I will show, if it makes sense, where we can fit into the picture”. Which conversation would you prefer with your buyer hat on?
When I started selling encyclopaedia’s door to door, my first job out of High School, we had to memorise word perfect, a twenty five minute sale’s pitch, coordinated with leafing through the gorgeous product pages. Many salespeople are following a script today as well. It might be those dreadful pitches we get over the phone, where you can hear from the cadence that they are reading it off a screen. Or it might be the pitch of a thousand deliveries. The salesperson has given this so many times they are bored with it. The lifeblood has been drained from the words and phrases and it is dead on arrival. If you are hearing too much of just your voice, ask a question and shut up. Get the buyer talking, because that is where all the useful information you don't already know is located.
Flailing arms, wild eruptions of energy, piercing eye contact, loud delivery, exaggerated body language all point to a salesperson out of control. Their enthusiasm for what they are doing has trumped their common sense. Perky is good in some cases. Overly perky is not and there is a clear line between the two. The problem is what is the preferred style of the buyer?
Are they conservative and see all this excess energy as childish. Are they shy and retiring and want to call for sunglasses, because of all the radiation glare coming off the salesperson? We need to channel our energy effectively and appropriately depending on who we are sitting in front of. The failing salesperson has one calibration, no matter who they meet. Everyone gets the same treatment. I might like overly perky myself, but I might be a small minority of buyers, so what happens to the others? They all get put off by you and you get put out the door. Remember to tailor your communication style to what the buyer likes and you will find it much easier to make sales.
Why Japanese Salespeople Won’t Question The Buyer
Consultative selling, value selling, insight selling, etc., all rely on one crucial factor to be successful. That is the use of questions to get enough information to make sure the buyer hears what they need to hear, in order to choose that salesperson to buy from. This problem is not exclusive to Japan. There are failing salespeople scattered all around the world, because they are making the most basic mistakes. There is an astronomical amount of free and paid information available today about the best practices of selling. There is always a big swathe being cut right through the middle of this output devoted to asking the buyer questions. Despite all of this goodness, the majority of salespeople never study anything and so fail to drink from the sale’s fountain of youth.
Whenever we teach salespeople in our sale’s courses, we invariably find their questioning skills are either non-existent or very shabby. Once they get the structures and the practice, we see them become much more professional in sales. In other words, they can do it. So what is it with Japanese salespeople that they won’t ask the buyer questions? During a recent sale’s training session the following reasons were offered up by the Japanese salespeople taking the programme.
Here are seven reasons why salespeople here say they won’t ask the buyer questions during the sales call.
Somehow the buyer is perceived to be quick to temper, anger and unhappiness if they are questioned. The idea is that this is not the behaviour the buyer is expecting and a frosty sales call is in scope immediately if questions are asked.
There is the fear that the salesperson might ask a question which the buyer can’t answer and the buyer will lose face. This is insulting and a guarantee that the salesperson will never do any business with that company ever again.
I have experienced this myself. We deal with a lot of HR people who are looking for training on behalf of line managers. When I asked the HR team certain needs based questions they clearly had no idea, because they weren’t briefed or had no insight. They said they wanted my pitch. I resisted that option. Instead I innocently asked if I could talk directly to the line manager, to find out what I needed to know. I was immediately bundled straight out the door.
The types of questions needed to be asked are quite specific and quite direct. What are you problems, what is not working, where are you failing, why aren’t you fixing it, etc. The whole culture here survives through indirectness, vagaries, tonnes of grey. Ambiguous conversation is a well refined art in Japan. Asking direct, pointed questions upsets the social harmony, so this must be avoided.
Asking a dumb question is also a fear. That would be embarrassing and show a lack of professionalism or a lesser intellect. It reveals poor research before the meeting and so a cavalier attitude toward the buyer. You have to know the industry well to hone in on pertinent issues. Failure to ask smart questions says you are clueless and not to be taken seriously. Better to keep that dirty little secret to yourself, by keeping your mouth shut.
Asking about the current state of the business, the firm’s plans, strategies, pricing, delivery quantities, activities etc., is usually confidential information and it is highly presumptuous and arrogant to be asking for this forbidden data.
Because salespeople are mainly trained by the untrained, that is to say, their seniors, who were trained in the same sad way by their seniors too, the bloodline of question asking ability ran out decades ago. Pitching without having any clue what the buyer needs, never even registers in the salespeople’s mind as an issue because they think their job is to turn up and go through the flyers or the product catalogue. They think, “Questions? Who needs questions, when I am here to tell the client everything about the product, so they can buy it”.
I remember when I first got to Japan, I noticed that very low ranking people in very large companies, were treated as superior by the Presidents of much smaller firms. Social hierarchy is very defined here by both the size of the company and the rank of the individual. By definition the buyer always outranks the seller. The buyer’s point of view is that the salesperson will pitch their offer and the buyer will tear it to shreds and reject it. No questions brooked, entertained or tolerated when God is involved in the sale. Therefore salespeople are in no social position to be asking anything to God, the buyer.
I am sure there are other reasons, but I think we have captured enough of the flavour of the issue. What this nefarious list points out is the imbalance in power between buyer and seller. That is not true though in real life. If I had the cure for cancer, who has the balance of power, me the seller or the buyer? The seller obviously, because we have not had a satisfactory drug developed yet to cure cancer. We have to think of our business solution the same way. We have the cure for the cancer impacting the buyer’s company and our job is to get it to the buyer as soon as possible.
To know what ails this company we have to ask them crucial, private, secret information. To be allowed to hear the sacred truths, we need to build trust. We need to set up the questioning permission before we proceed. If we do this correctly, then gentle as a lamb, the approval to ask questions will be forthcoming and away we go. Do your salespeople know how to ask and receive that permission? If they don’t then get them trained, so that they can achieve that vital step, that all important trigger to the sale.
What To Do When You Screw Up The Delivery
Sales is the front of house part of business but often the delivery of the product or service is done by someone else. They say that the real measure of the service culture of a company is the decision by the guys on the loading bay not to drop the customer’s package. They are not highly paid, the job is pretty dull, boring and thankless. If you can get the people at the bottom of the hierarchy to buy into the vision, mission and values regarding customer service then you are a rare bird. Most of the time the disconnect between what the suited denizens of the executive floor, with their thick carpet, tasteful, expensive paintings and carefully selected executive assistants are thinking is taking place and what is really going on, are light years apart.
Sales is often a hotbed of exaggeration. Wild and fanciful promises are made to secure the sale at which point the back office gets involved. Production deadlines are totally unrealistic, the pricing is a sad joke that won’t stack up, the quality level promised cannot easily be achieved. Bad things start to happen because now the system is being subject to trauma. The delivery is entrusted to the lowest common denominator for reliability and performance. The “care factor” hovers close to zero. The customer’s promises are vaporised and they are not happy.
In Japan the blame game is well established. Mistakes are not acceptable in Japan, so first order of business when making a mistake is to take zero responsibility for anything. The second order of business is to hide the mistake if possible. Absolutely no early advice to the boss that there is a problem. Keep it under wraps in the hope the boss never finds out at all. If that doesn’t work, then deny everything. Failing that, blame somebody else. The group accountability system here is genius in avoiding individual retribution. We are all responsible, so none of us are responsible. Perfect.
Does the customer just roll over and accept this. Absolutely no way. They go on attack and are relentless on getting justice. Knowing this you have to wonder why the guilty parties don’t fess up and accept the blame? In litigious societies like the USA, no one accepts blame for anything, because they know they are going to court against a fired up lawyer looking for their percentage of the judgment. Well in Japan, they do eventually take responsibility , but only after being given a thorough tongue lashing by the buyer.
Japan is great for turning up bearing gifts, usually some food items like expensive biscuits, cakes or fruit from a major Department Store, like Takashimiya or Mitsukoshi. A lot of deep bowing is also required while repeating set phrases like “I am sorry, I have no words…”. It sounds better when expressed in Japanese, but that is the raw translation. At this point the unhappy party berates the offender for their failures. If it is a serious enough problem, then the top brass get rolled out to atone as well. This is usually a last resort though.
What do we need to do? Creating the right culture in the company is key. Make sure the WHY is understood by everyone. Also, there needs to be the right approach to handling mistakes. If the team know they are not going to be executed for mistakes, then the chances of finding out early go up. Bosses going apoplectic when problems arise and publically balling out the errant, ensures a culture of keeping problems a secret. We don’t want that because if we can get on to the problem early, we can usually limit the damage. The boss has the money and power to fix things, so the sooner they get involved the better.
It also pays to get the boss bowing to the customer from the start, rather than resisting this. By wheeling in the big boss, we can demonstrate our sincerity in how seriously we are taking this issue. There was a problem with some business in Kobe. The amount of money involved wasn’t much. Nevertheless, I got on the Bullet Train went down there, did a lot of bowing and saying sorry and then came back to Tokyo. That blew off my whole day. However, if you want to establish the right culture about customer service, then you must lead from the front. The staff member who created this problem wasn’t publically humiliated or blasted. They were spoken to in private and assured there had better not be a repeat performance. They were allowed to live on and fight another day.
The British Admiralty in the early twentieth century had a simple strategy. Build the biggest ships, get there first, sink everything. Not bad advice for dealing with mistakes. Send in the big boss, act immediately and keep apologising until they have no more to say.
Attribute Selling For Salespeople
We all know that selling ourselves is the first key sale we have to make in order for the client to buy our services or products. How do we do that without being boorish, a windbag or coming across as if we are desperate? Selling ourselves requires subtlety and nuance. We have to weave this into our sales talk with the buyer in a way which is not obvious or obnoxious. How do we do that?
Clients are primarily interested in a few key things about salespeople. Can they be trusted, are they reliable, do they do what they say they will do? Before we get into a sales discussion with the client we should list up the personal attributes we have, which we think will be of greatest relevance for this buyer. Buyer by buyer, the point of focus will be different, so we want a long list of sterling attributes we possess which we can talk about when needed. Depending on the client and the flow of the conversation, we can dip into this reservoir of goodness and draw out some key descriptors about us.
Telling the client these words is not particularly effective unless they are wrapped together tightly with proof. The best evidence is from actual experiences, cases and examples. We should have a list of these prepared to match with each attribute. If we felt our important attribute was reliability and this was key for the buyer, then we need to bring this up in the conversation in a subtle manner. For example, “I know that in this industry, there are many distributors downstream who depend on surety of Just In Time supply, because they don’t have extensive storage facilities for holding stock. I take it as a point of pride that none of my clients has ever experienced a delay in supply of the product and we have always been able to meet their schedules”. Here we are noting our understanding of the issue, our commitment to serving the client and our peerless track record of achievement. All the while not sounding like we are boasting or puffing ourselves up.
If we feel there is a concern about trust on the part of the client, we can say, “I believe that good business is built on a foundation of trust. My clients do trust me and I know that because of the repeat orders and consistent business we get from them”. So without bragging about how great I am, I provide evidence on my trustworthiness though the flow of repeat orders. These demonstrate that the clients favour our company as a reliable supplier, who services they value highly. The reference point is not us and what we say, it is what the existing customers are saying. Where possible we should reference actual buyers by name. “Mr. Tanaka from XYZ company became my client ten years ago. We have been continuously supplying his company every month like clockwork. We have become an extension of his firm as a trusted supplier who partners with their company to help them grow their market share”.
Trying to tie these things into the sales conversation spontaneously on the fly is a hit and miss activity. Before we get to the buyer, we need to have prepared this cross link of attribute and evidence and have it ready to go. We need to have prepared our examples and be able to dip into the specific case that matches this client and their business. We need to be saying how great we are through the experiences and feedback of the existing buyers. We talk about what mattered to them and how we supplied that. In this way we are able to blow our own trumpet without seeming to be doing that. The evidence part is the key and it has to be real. If the client wants to talk to Mr. Tanaka, then everything we have said has to be true.
Preparation is vital to making this subtle and convincing. Anyone running around saying how great they are invites doubt, distain and skepticism. If the existing client is saying it however, then that makes it all true. We need to have worked up our attributes-evidence construct for the meeting, so that it is ready to roll out when we see the chance. No matter which direction the client takes the conversation, we need to be ready with a story that illustrates we have that requirement and they should rely on us as their trusted business partner.