170: Selling Beyond The Sale

<p>Selling Beyond The Sale</p> <p> </p> <p>The main goal is always to get the sale agreed.  To get the buyer to say “yes” and specify when delivery will take place.  All of the efforts are concentrated here but  is that enough?  Over promising by salespeople is legendary.  They do this to get the sale over the line.  The potential damage to the brand is not in their minds because that is not their department.  “Production, Logistics, Marketing and Customer Care need to take care of that stuff, my job is just get the deal done”.   This thinking is a pact with the devil in sales and leads to a lot of heartaches down the road.</p> <p> </p> <p>The supreme focus on the sale is a big mistake.  As I always keep harping on, it isn’t the sale we should be focused on - it should be the next sale, the reorder, the next assignment.  The current sales discussion we are having with the buyer needs to be mindful of the value we have claimed being substantiated by what we deliver.  That means we don’t blow up the supply elements of the company to make them do the impossible, in ridiculous timeframes, because that is when problems will arise around quality.  We do what we can to make the client happy but we don’t drag our brand through the blood and the mud to do one deal. </p> <p> </p> <p>Reputation in the market is everything.  A client pressured me to cut some corners on our quality to satisfy some costs calculations.  I told the client that If we do it this way there will be pushback and unhappiness.  He wasn’t phased in the least and wanted it go ahead anyway.  I was mesmerised by the opportunity of a new sale and a new client and went along.  What I didn’t think about at the time was that for him there was no risk.  I was carrying all the risk because this was my brand and not his in the firing line.</p> <p> </p> <p>It was a mess as I predicted, but again he wasn’t phased.  I wasn’t happy because by now it had dawned on me that my brand had just taken a hammering.  At my cost and my insistence, we re-did the training for hi