In February, I rounded out a 49-plus year career in sales. That’s a long time to do any one thing, and you would hope that length of time would produce some insight into the nature of the whole selling process.
Actually, all those 18,000 days did was to confirm something my dad, also a lifetime salesman, told me before I even began my career.
My dad offered the advice that to keep your sanity in that not always noble profession, you must remember one fact: It’s very hard to sell anything, but it’s not that hard to help people buy things. These two approaches may sound the same, but the difference is immense.
Think of it in this way. There are salespeople, there are good salespeople, there are great salespeople and there are peddlers, in the order of their success. Now, great salespeople sell a lot of stuff, and peddlers don’t, but people buy so much stuff from peddlers that in the end, they outperform even the best salesperson.
A salesperson makes a proposition that he tries to get the customer to buy into. A peddler determines what the customer’s needs and wants are, then tailors his approach to fit them.
Over dinner the other evening, I heard a classic example of that concept from an old friend who very recently retired as general manager of one of the world’s finest resorts.
Fred was sitting in his office one afternoon when his phone rang. On the other end was his resident manager who reported that the four-time all star pro football player staying in their most prestigious suite was sitting by the pool, drunk and in a booming voice was using language not even fit for a locker room. He was terrifying the other guests and the employees were too afraid of his 290-lb. all-muscle body to try to make him go to his room.
