can’t sell me

May 21, 2008

“a penny for your thoughts” means solicitation of opinions while “my two cents” is one’s rendering of opinion. these are idioms–say one thing which means differently all together, just cant take it literally. it’s a nifty way of adding color and flavor, sometimes confusion, to the broad domain of human language. i’m not trying to elaborate on the already complex rules and laws of human speech. this one’s far from it. thought it would be a good intro. believe it or not,this is about sales.
been braving through the pressure-laden world of selling for more than a year now. not that i’m good at it, sadly it’s the contrary. i’m still struggling. we are expected to sell IT products and hit our goals every month, or at least twice in every three months. it’s mine to mind really, i’ll just share with you the interesting, “devious” things in the world of selling.
a penny for your thoughts; in selling, as oppose to idioms, we take it literally. it’s more of a penny for our business, or better–-your money for my service. get my point? that’s how we do it, such process so effective that it withstood the test of time: barter system–that’s where it started, or if you want to be pre-historic about it, early cro-magnons might’ve likely traded things off, perhaps a spear for a club, or three sabertooths for a full-grown mammoth. the thing is nothing much has changed, basically you take what you deem is worth of what you are giving. the only major change is the introduction of money, the trade offs became more systematic, fair and accurate. or did it.
picture this, the process of selling is similar to a weighing scale where services, products or businesses are on one end and money is on the opposite end serving as the counterbalance. and with it, a balanced scale denotes a fair deal. there’s just one thing though, put in man’s insatiable need for worldly-goods and it sure as hell tips the balance.
i think it was greed that corrupted what must have been a reliable and effective barter system then, certainly it is still greed thats rocking the contemporary world of trade and commerce today. now put a sales person in the picture, what have you got? a clever sales man out to alter what would have been a fair and precise exchange of businesses for his own gain. not that all sales persons are like this, but there is a considerable number out there.
heard of the expression “i’ve been had”? sure you have, it means one clever saleman did his job, and did pretty well. it’s the common, more proper way of saying “i’ve been fucking tricked”. yes it happens, and it happens a lot here in sales.
now going back to idioms, “my two cents” means my opinion, my take on the matter. in sales we take it literally and figuratively. we value, or need to value, our customers’ opinion and their two cents, literally, their money. it’s their business and their money and once we screw up or caught screwing up were done. without them we are just but hyenas with nothing to prey or, for us newbies, scavenge on. i may be giving you a bad impression of sales persons, but that’s just one side of it. we also know how to do it right of course.
taking care of our customers is more of taking care of our asses, more satisfied customers means repeat  businesses in the future and more sales for us. we invest on every customer we make and let them feel we care about them and their business. once trust is established loyalty follows and expectedly our customer base expands and these customers are the ones making up our top purchasers’ list. now add a hundred or more of these constant buyers and there’s no need to worry about where to get our next sales anymore, like a broken dam, one just cant help but be amazed by the surge of sales.
now that’s every sales persons’ dream. a dream only some were able to realise. it’s not easy and it doesnt happen overnight, not even in three-months-time. it would likely take a year for us to have a self sustaining pool of customers–-and time is a luxury we just dont have. we are expected to sell almost the moment we took our first call right off training. we need to gather our customers and sell while doing so. that’s why some of us tend to do it the easy and wicked way. now here’s where “devious” things come in. jacking up the price is the most common way to increase sales; excessive discount, on the other hand, to close a deal; combination of both is more effective, that is applying discounts on some items and jacking up the shipping cost to get even; misleading info given to cust to close deals; non-existing promotions; selling to resellers when not allowed; and even luring web customers to place their orders to us sales executives in exchange of some dollars off–there are as more ways of doing it as you would kill a cat, some even more evil. but the ultimate feat of all is the snatching of sales or customers from another sales person. nothing more is utterly abhorring than grabbing a sale from a colleague, although not as loathsome when done to another sales grabber. yes, we sometimes take a dose of our own medicine.
so it’s either we choose to do it the long and proper way or the easier one, bottom line is we need to sell and hit our goals each time. take this, what if it’s not greed that pushes sellers to act anomalously, what if there’s more to it than just pure greed, something far deeper, what if its done solely to survive. in the cutthroat world of selling earning is only next to thriving, the need to exist, because the moment we relax and dont deliver the numbers we more become liabilities than assets, and anything other than assets are best out of the company. i mentioned i’m not good in selling, in a scale of one to ten i may fairly hit a five. just enough dose of pooling good custs and “tipping the balance scale” once in a while to raise enough figures. but raising enough figures is never enough, has to be remarkable figures to be considered mediocre. thats how demanding selling could be and now that i’m in sales, it doesnt surprise me when i hear overcharging of customers, or snatching sales from fellow sellers and the likes, oftentimes these are measures taken to survive. either that or to gain something out of it the bottom line is–it’s always the customers who are on the losing end, for once they find out they’ve been had, between survival and greed, its always the latter that comes to mind.