The Salesperson Called You
[by Judy Herrmann]
I hate sales. I hate cold calling. I hate closing. I hate the artificiality of it and I hate how it makes me feel. For years, I’ve arranged my life so I didn’t have to engage in sales. In 1992, we hired our first in-house salesperson. Since then, we’ve had two other people in that position. By the time our last salesperson left, we’d built a large enough client base and enough name recognition to coast on referrals and more passive forms of marketing. This recession has changed all that.
Many of the people who kept our business growing over the years are currently unemployed. The rest have cut way back on spending. Referrals are down, not because people have stopped saying nice things about us but because the people they’re talking to are in the same boat. And so, for the first time in many years, I’m taking a good hard look at sales. And what I’ve discovered is that what I think of as “sales” is radically changing.
Sure there are still tons of snake-oil schmoozers out there – guys who offer “Guaranteed Results” and sell their “Secret to Success” for just $19.99. But there’s also a new crop of sales professionals who recognize that integrity, honesty and a passionate belief in the true value of you’re selling will take you farther than canned pitches and stilted closing efforts.
S. Anthony Iannarino of Columbus, OH exemplifies this new order. His blog provides clearly written, insightful commentary on selling to a new generation of buyers. Buyers who are smart, savvy, and have little tolerance for old school gimmickry.
He recently posted a two-part interview with business guru Tom Peters. Peters, whose 1997 Fast Company article “The Brand Called You” changed how an entire generation took charge of their careers, notes that today “every person is a salesperson” and adds that “in a crowded market, sales is more important than it’s ever been, not less…”
The good news is that selling doesn’t have to be a phony, soul-killing process. My research has shown me that by figuring out who my best prospects are and what motivates them, offering genuine value in my own true voice, and building real relationships based on mutual benefit and a deep caring for the well-being of my clients and my vendors, I can engage in active sales without losing my self-respect. If you want to know how, read Iannarino’s blog – he says it all better than I ever could.
