by Wahidabi Sulaiman

Created on: June 24, 2009

A successful salesperson never sells anything. Sounds impossible. It is! It is because, not many know this truth. If you know any successful salesperson or if you have ever bought anything from a salesperson before, ask yourself. What made you take that money out of your pocket and place it onto the hands of the salesperson? My point is, it is always the customers who buy.

There are many kinds of salesperson around. There are those who are persistent ones who do cold callings, frequent follow-ups and in a way are a big harassment to the customers. Customers like you and me would avoid or try to avoid them anything. Here, nothing gets sold. Even if it does, it is still the customers who buy because they want to get out of the constant pressurizing tactics used by the salesperson. Repeat sales are always impossible.

Then there are some who just sell whatever comes into the store and may not even know the product on top of their minds. These kind of sales person actually cause the reverse of the sales process. The customers may have already made up their mind to buy the product. However, when they realize that the sales person is not every bit enthusiastic as they are in the product, the made up mind of the customer gets even more made up that they leave the product in the store itself. Once again, the customer has made the call. They will not buy.

There are a gem of others who do not sell anything but customers still get sold. These are the real sales people. Their strategy for sales is quite contrary to the other two types mentioned before. These sales people know that they need to sell. However, they have a different way of doing it. They realize that no matter what they sell, the customers will not buy unless there is a value attached to it. Once the value is identified, the product will sell by itself. This form of identification indicates that the customers are the ones who make the final call on any sales. As such, great sales people would identify the virtues and values that the customer is looking for and service that need. In servicing this need, the customers feel at ease and they are more willing to listen to the sales person and 100% of the time, the sale is closed.

Hence, it is always the customers who buy. The job of the salesperson is to identify the need of the customers and to let them know there is a need. Once this need is communicated to the customer, the customer will unhesitatingly make the decision to buy.

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