Why people hate sales professionals
You’ve probably heard people say — maybe you’ve said it yourself — they hate being sold.
I think that’s completely untrue.
People love to buy, which means they love being sold.
What they really mean when they say they hate being sold is they hate feeling pressured to buy something they don’t need or want.
Or, even if they might need whatever it is they are selling, if they get even the slightest whiff that the salesperson is only out to get something from them, the walls of resistance and objection immediately go up.
No one likes to feel suffocated. Neither does anyone like to be chased (or worn) down until they finally fork over their money.
So, at best, the consumer perception is that sales professionals are a necessary evil.
Despite what they may try to project, many sales people themselves aren’t particularly fond of their customers. In this Internet Information Age, people are more and more educated and the assumption (which you’ve undoubtedly heard if you’ve been in sales for any length of time) is that “Buyers are Liars.”
This presents something of a dilemma for the spiritual, magnetic entrepreneur — who also necessarily is a sales professional. They strive to approach sales and marketing from the perspective of positive energy exchange, where both parties are enhanced when the marketing and sales processes are employed.
And even they in times of stress (when you “need” to make the sale to pay the rent or the mortgage, for example) are tempted to resort to this adversarial relationship between sales person and client/customer.
Thinking of these things reminds me that we sales professionals need to be alert and conscious that our intentions and actions are congruent with a progressive, spiritual paradigm of marketing and sales. The traditional model has effectively dishonored both buyer and seller for centuries. It’s led to this perpetual tension between salespeople and customers (“Salespeople are all Proverbial Used Car Sales People only out for themselves” and “All Buyers are Liars.”) that is present in the Collective Imagination long before anyone opens their mouths.
With these thoughts swirling around in my head, I watched the following short clip on YouTube of Mike Moore (of Making Customers, Inc.) giving a training lesson about this very thing.
The clip is only 1 minute 38 seconds long but still makes a powerful point:
What more can you and I consciously do to move toward a more empowering and powerful relationship with our leads, prospects, clients and customers?
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Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video, under a Creative Commons license
