As sales professionals, we can be a mighty proud bunch when it comes to our accomplishments.
Many of us, who have won awards, proudly display them in our office but we might be hurting our efforts with our customers and potential customers.
Dan Kennedy in his book, No B.S. Trust-Based Marketing tells an interesting story about this . . .
“A friend who was a car salesman once told me that it seemed people always got anxious and nervous when he took them into his office, even if they’d been relaxed and friendly with him on the lot looking at cars. He chalked it up to unavoidable anxiety about ‘talking turkey’ about a car to buy and its price. When we went into his office, I immediately saw another reason for everybody’s sudden leap in blood pressure: they were seated, backs to the door, facing him at his desk, and above him, on the wall, a row of framed certificates and plaques, all attesting to his prowess at devouring his prey; top salesman awards.”
Dan goes on to suggest that we put up pictures of us with a few of our happy clients and I’m wondering if we could complement those with our testimonial letters and pictures of our customers enjoying our products and services?
“But Paul, my customers never come to my office!”
My advice would still be for you to be careful.
A few scenarios you might want to rethink . . .
Some companies have special business cards printed up with a logo or phrase like “2012 President’s Club Winner”.
Other companies send out announcements on social networking platforms and via newsletters.
Some sales reps will put sort of a mini announcement in their auto signature when they are leaving to go to some exotic place to accept the award.
I have to admit that at first I was rather torn when it comes to this because on the surface I think these things show us as awesome at our craft but . . .
When I put myself in the customer’s shoes . . .
I don’t want you to be an awesome sales person if that means you are awesome at “closing” me, however . . .
I absolutely DO want to work with people who get awesome results for their customers . . .
With the pictures and letters to prove it instead of trophies and plaques!
Your turn . . .
Taking off your “sales hat” and putting on your “customer hat”, do you agree with this thought process?
