There are thousands of sales trainers and motivators all pitching their
services, books, programs, etc. Some of them you’ve no doubt heard of
like Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Joe Girard - to name just a few. Many of
these trainers and motivators are available for hire for public
appearances, corporate events or for private training sessions, etc.
Plus every major industry has their own select list of sales trainers.
In the jewelry industry alone, there are literally dozens of trainers
for hire. Any of the above could, as the expression goes, “sell ice to
an Eskimo”.
Many of these sales trainers have called me up to
offer their sales training services to our company and I politely turn
them down. I explain how we do business and they try to convince me that
we are losing sales with that approach. I get the feeling they think
I’m totally naïve and that we’re missing out on making a lot more sales
than we otherwise could if we followed their advice and sales methods.
Quite frankly, they may be right, but any other way just isn’t our
style.
We want to feel good about how we conduct business. It’s
an integral part of who we are as a company as much as the product we
carry and the people that we hire. We stay as far away as possible from
the sales shark types and instead look for bright, warm and truly caring
people. More like charismatic teachers than pushy sales personalities.
We
believe in providing our customers with as much information as
possible, show them the merits of our products and treat every customer,
just as we wish to be treated when we go shopping. We don’t like to be
manipulated, so why would we possibly want to do that to our clients?
Sales
trainers will tell you that a salesperson needs to find out how much a
customer wants to spend and then “lift the sale”. In other words, they
should try to sell the customer more than they planned on buying.
But that’s just not our style.
Sales
trainers will train sales associates to go for the “add-on” purchase.
In other words, try to sell their customers an additional item or two
more after they have purchased the item they came in for. Even fast food
employees were trained at one time or another to ask “do you want fries
with that”?
That’s just not our style.
Sales trainers
will often train sales people to ask questions that will result In a yes
answer In order to get them in a yes mood so that they are more likely
to say yes, when the sales associate “asks for the sale” or in sales
terms “goes in for the close”.
That’s just not our style.
Sales
trainers say that if a sales associate can’t “close the sale”, then you
need to T.O. (turn it over) it to another sales associate. Some stores
will even require that the sales associate turn the sale over to another
associate or a Manager if the sale is not made.
I even know of companies that mandate that every customer be “turned over” as many as three times if they have not purchased.
That’s just not our style.
While
we do ask our sales associates to turn the sale over to another sales
associate if they feel that they are not able to establish a good
rapport with the client. We do this because we believe our customers
would rather work with someone that they enjoy working with more. But we
would be out of business before we would ever think of pressuring a
customer by bringing in a “closer”.
I often jokingly refer to
us as the Mahatma Gandhi of sales. We just don’t believe in pressuring
customers to buy. We hate it when we are pressured so why would we want
to pressure the most important people in our business, our customers.
I’m often amazed at how stores think that they are different than their
customers. Who doesn’t hate to be pressured when they go shopping? Who
doesn’t dislike being manipulated by salespeople?
So why do so
many companies continue to sell like this? I guess it must work or they
wouldn’t keep doing it. However, I’ve always felt that if we educate our
customers and then they don’t purchase from us, it’s because we either
didn’t have the right product for them or we didn’t have the right
product at the right price. In any case, we do not allow our customers
to be pressured and every single associate at EE Robbins
knows this and would never think of pressuring their customers. They
know that at our company that if I hear of one customer feeling
pressured by one of our associates, that associate will be given a
strong reprimand. Then if it happened again, they’ll likely be looking
for a job.
We call our approach “Golden Rule” selling, in other
words, sell to others just as we want to be sold to. I don’t know if we
invented that term, but I do know from shopping around myself that most
companies do a great job of talking the talk when it comes to customer
service, but very few walk the walk. If after reading this blog, you
don’t “buy” what I’m telling you here, then please feel free to shop at
either of our stores and see for yourself. And if you feel that I’ve
exaggerated any part of this, please don’t hesitate to let me know at emerson@eerobbins.com.
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