I recently read someone’s description of a salesperson. Salespeople, they said, “have the ability to position a product or service in a way that makes customers want to buy it.”
No, no, nope, no.
This is not the kind of sales or salespeople any of us wants or needs. Good salespeople (including people who sell but who would never call themselves salespeople) don’t make anyone do anything. They see their job as exploring whether it would benefit us and them to work together now. Their talents are not positioning and convincing but being trustworthy and guiding conversations toward win-win-or-let’s-not-play-right-now.
In your corner,
Mike
PS: For a service business, working together looks like a project that might go from tiny (clean and press the customer’s shirts) to gargantuan (rework their global production and distribution chain). For a product business, working together means providing a tangible something (also from tiny to huge) and related services.
Today’s photo credit: Found Animals Foundation cc