My wife started a catering business last year. She works hard, and she’s built up a great reputation. The business is successful and growing. However, her old Corsa is no longer big enough. She needs to buy a van. Being a lady, she wants it customised – metallic paint, passenger airbag, aircon, rear parking sensors etc. She looks around at local dealers and finds what she wants. The salesman spotted an opportunity, and demonstrated how not to win a client and close a sale.
He didn’t listen, so the initial process took twice as long to get to a quote. He then presented a figure, but forgot about the extras. So the quote – which he kept going back to ‘Ken’ for (sales manager presumably?) eventually exceeded the budget. Nevertheless he almost had us, then … let us go. Why – because he didn’t think!
He called back three days later; the pressure was on as the 20% offer finished at the weekend! We presented him with alternative quotes, which he failed to understand. Eventually, we asked for a formal written quotation. We received a 2-line email with the price.
Fortunately, we’d shopped around. My wife has now just placed an order for the same make but a better spec van, at a cheaper price. And the service (over the internet and phone) was excellent. The guy listened, he was charming, and he’s come up with the goods.
The moral? It’s easy to get encouraged by what appear to be good deals. But bad sales people get in the way. Why? Because they don’t take the time to listen or understand what the customer wants, and then they fail to follow up properly. It’s very easy to shop around these days thanks to the internet. And you don’t need to be a master negotiator. Ultimately, people will buy from people they like. One of the best answers I heard was from a salesman some years ago. In response to the question ‘what do you do best’, he replied ‘making friends with people and doing business with them’.
