359 Developing A Personal Following In Sales

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">For most places in the world, and Japan in particular, when you find a good salesperson, you tend to stick with them.  Why is that?  There is a huge trust component to the idea that this person is someone you can rely on and who isn’t going to rob you blind, so that they get rich at your expense.  There are so many unprofessional salespeople floating around on every continent and this is just base incompetence in action.  Then there are evil salespeople who scam buyers, but this is a very small number of crooks and dirty dealers.  The problem is that buyers are always thinking of the scammers in any sales transaction. They may not have personally suffered at the hands of these scoundrels, but the urban legends are powerful and the warning signals are always being scanned in the sales talk.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang= "EN-AU"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">How do we build trust?  The most basic requirement is to not lie to clients.  Anotherbasic requirement is to have the buyer’s interests at the forefront of your mind rather than your interests.  There are different profit margins for products and services.  Sales Managers have opinions on what you should be selling, there are sale’s contests to push products etc., which can confuse salespeople as to what they are there for.  Any time the equation surfaces that the sale should be more for the benefit of the firm, rather than the buyer, then we are destroying the basis for trust building with buyers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang= "EN-AU"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">Buyers follow salespeople they trust around and if your current firm is evil, then keep your customers and move somewhere else.  What do the new firms look for in you – how many buyers have you got to bring to the company? Don’t put up with anyone in the company trying to get you to compromise your relati