Sell People Not Products

Why have a structured sales process?

You’ve heard it before: People run organizations—not products, not merchandise, not ideas, not even money. It’s people who make the valuable connections between the products, the ideas, and the money. Without the people, these things are meaningless and subject to change beyond control.

Given this philosophy, now ask yourself, are your salespeople selling themselves or are they selling products?

Of course, your goal is for customers to want your products. You also want them to fork over their money to obtain your product. Furthermore, you probably also want them to buy into some marketing idea you’ve concocted so they’ll want to continue to seek and buy the products from your company rather than a competitor. That’s a lot of variables. And any one of those variables is open to attack by competition. What does your company do to get a leg up on the competition? That’s right—improve or change the product, drop the price, or have your advertising team come up with some brilliant marketing strategy or sales presentation to sell customers on your ideas. And likewise, part of your business energy is spent defending these very same things from being outdone by your competition.

Not so defenseless though are your salespeople. They are the glue that holds all of these variables together.

Research into what factors people consider most important when they chose friends and partners consistently shows that people value people who show intelligence, kindness, integrity, diligence, and attentiveness.

Firstly then, you want your customers to see your salespeople as people, not as sales reps. Secondly, you want your customers to see your salespeople as having these very qualities that people seem to prefer.

This means that salespeople need to sell themselves, not their product. Furthermore, you want your sales people to exhibit sales behaviors that will display their intelligence, integrity, attentiveness. A simple example: a salesperson who willingly admits that s/he doesn’t have the answer to a client’s tough question but can find out is much more likely to be perceived as having intelligence and integrity whereas a salesperson who tries to skirt around with an answer that may not be what the client is looking for risks seeming distrustful and incompetent.

Products will change, money will expand and contract, ideas will change, but customers will continue to buy into the salesperson that remains consistent throughout. Customers will be loyal to a salesperson who becomes a valuable consultant or even “partner” to the business. And that’s what you want; customers loyal to a person, your salesperson, rather than to a product, a price, or an idea that will undoubtedly change with the marketplace demand and competition.

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