THE DIARY OF A PROTEAN SALESMAN

With

Rasheed Adewusi

(Rasheed is a Sales Manager in one the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He also runs the personal blog, Wise, Wide and Wild)

This is the most important of all the Sales Enablers because it is actually what you want to sell. The word “quality” here does not exclusively mean the Product/Services must be the best-in-class or the best-of-the-best, it simply means whatever you promise the customer or client in terms of product/service design, features, abilities, etc should be exactly what they will get when they buy the product/service.

Products/Services usually have their target audience, and this influences the design, features, packaging, pricing, positioning, and promotion. In trying to sell a product/service, the ethical standard is to sell the product as what it is and not position it as what the customer desires, except if the product/service is what the customer desires. For instance, a Tecno Pad looks like an iPad Mini, but it is not an iPad Mini; selling a Tecno Pad to a customer who desires an iPad Mini is a wrong move especially if it sold at the same price. The customer will most likely find out and the customer will form two opinions – either you are a dishonest person, or you do not know your onions; either way, you come off looking bad and you will most likely not get a repeat purchase or a referral from such a customer.

In the same vein, not all products/services are tangible or are easy to move around. For instance, software to manage payroll is intangible, while heavy machineries are not easy to move around. For heavy machineries, brochures are usually prepared for sales pitches; while for softwares, prospective clients usually get hands-on experience during presentations. A common practice is for pictures in brochures to look nice and pretty to the point where they look like something from the future, but the machineries in real life look like contraptions from the sixteenth century. For softwares, most developers sell to you and then you realize most of the features you want are locked, then you will be advised (forced in reality) to upgrade to premium to enjoy those features. This is akin to conning, and it severs relationships especially when you are not a monopoly.

Furthermore, Promises such as Warranty, Return Policies, After-Sales Services, Discounts, Gift Cards, and any other incentive that comes with a Sale must be easy to access and free to redeem. The reality is that there is rarely a monopoly market and any lapses will be capitalized upon by competitors. Because bad news spread faster, lapses or disappointments easily become synonymous with the product/service and it might spread to the brand as a whole.

In conclusion, Sales should be a continuous never ending process, once you close a sale, you have to immediately start strategizing on how to close subsequent sales with the same customer. This simply means Customer Retention is an integral part of the Sales Process and this is why Product/Service Quality is very important because if the quality is questionable, most of your sales will be one-off and this will make your work as a Salesperson to be very difficult. The mark of Great Sales people is the ability to build a chain of happy and loyal customers who consider them a dependable authority and help them expand the chain through referrals.