Being a salesman is a very challenging job, especially today when companies are cutting down on every type of expense. For example, budgets at some companies are being slashed on every non-essential item ranging from providing pizza during working lunches to the many companies even discontinuing the availability of free coffee in their break rooms. We’ll come back to this thought in a moment.
So let’s say, for example, that you happen to sell computers. In today’s economy you would most likely have a very hard time convincing your corporate customers to buy their employees new computers from you.
Even if you spend numerous hours delivering your pitch with your customers and sharing with them how your new computers would benefit them, it is highly likely that they will turn a deaf ear on you because of many reasons. First, they may not have the budget to buy your computers. Second, they may already be content with the computer supplier that they currently have. And thirdly, you may have not proven to your customers that you can bring a lot more to the table to help and support them in what they do best.
I remember a time when my friend Therese was an account manager for a Japanese information technology company. She had this one corporate customer who was planning to build a Wide Area Network (WAN) to connect all of its branches to one another. It was a potentially big project so Therese got all of her pre-sales team together and drew up a proposal that she delivered to her customer. The customer liked the proposal a lot, and in the end short-listed three suppliers, including Therese’s company. It was all going well for Therese and she was sure she would be able to close the deal. Unfortunately, as so often happens in the end, the parent company of her customer had intervened and chose to remain with its current supplier as the winner.
For a brief period of time, Therese asked herself repeatedly where things went wrong. She thought she had a winning proposal and she really believed that this project would be awarded to her team. In hindsight, Therese realized that perhaps she could have forged a better relationship with her potential customer as well as its parent company. And most importantly, she learned that this was not just about having a winning proposal but it is about winning your customer's trust.
Therese replayed the many meetings that she had before and suddenly realized that although her customers were interested in the products she had to offer, her sales calls were very formal and “to stiff” to build a great personal relationship with any of the meeting participants.
Therese realized that she needed to find a way to make her meetings a little more laid back and what she finally thought of was the idea to bring donuts and other treats with her to all her meetings and to have at least ten minutes of pre-meeting time mingling with her customers while sharing these treats with them in a casual yet happy atmosphere.
In fact, formal research has shown that sharing food with people during a meeting can be used to any sales person’s advantage as this allows their customers to get know more about the sales person as an individual. Thus, the sales person should be able to create a better personal relationship with their potential customers.
So armed with her new knowledge of the value of sharing food during a sales meeting Therese carried out her plan for the next big project that she had. Therese brought donuts with her that she shared with her customers and, of course, she had a fun chat with them and even discovered a few new personal things about them. After several client meetings, Therese won over her new customers and closed the deal.
So the moral of my story is, if you also want to be a successful sales person, you need to be able to forge good relationships with your clients and this can even be made by doing something as simple as sharing donuts with them. This simple and inexpensive gesture can surely help you attain your customer's trust, loyalty and appreciation in this time of corporate cutbacks and “foodless” meetings.
