Would Your Customers Offer You a Job?

Here’s an interesting way for you to set the bar professionally.

Just imagine the unthinkable happens tomorrow – and you’re current employer just collapses, got sold, or decides to make 50% of the sales team redundant, including – (clearly) unjustifiably and unfairly – YOU!

QUESTION – Would you be able to turn to your current customer base for a job?

Funny situation this – because;

• If you get on really well with your customers – that might not actually help you

• If you’ve done them “secret favours” in the past – that almost certainly won’t help you

• If you’ve constantly let them down – that definitely won’t help you

You see – the problem is – your present career trajectory might not be as definitive as you currently believe it to be. Successful salespeople aren’t just successful at the beginning of their career and then suddenly pop into management and disappear.

If successful salespeople decide to remain at the coalface (which is not such a bad place to be) then, over time, they develop a balance between looking after their customers (commercially and professionally) – and – consistently delivering the best possible deal they can, back to the business that they work for.

If they become brilliant sales managers, they do so while constantly improving their sale skills. Which ensures that they can deliver the required value, insight and education back to their team, while always being able to look after the next influx of prospects or existing accounts, as and when the need arises.

So how do you become one of these Uber-Salespeople or Sales Managers?

I’m glad you asked.

You look after your customers so well that – if the need arises – and they can afford you / or you become affordable;

They will hire you tomorrow! In a heartbeat, without a second thought, no questions asked.

And to achieve that, you’ve got to work out what customers respect in a salesperson.

Not what they like about you – Respect.

Not whether they get the best price or deal – Respect.

And by the way – respect doesn’t mean someone who always gives them a hard time.

When you respect someone – you actually enjoy doing business with them.

Sometimes it’s not possible to work together – so you don’t – but you’ll always respect them.

Here’s the type of person they definitely wouldn’t employ – someone who;

• Rolls over and gives an unnecessary discount
• Bad mouths their current employer
• Agrees with customers about their employers faults
• Constantly turns up late for appointments
• Forgets to charge their laptop before seeing anyone
• Isn’t prepared for meetings
• Sends proposals out late
• Doesn’t try to understand a customer’s real needs
• Breaks promised or doesn’t keep their word
• Sneers or looks down their nose at what they believe to be the second level of the supply chain
• Doesn’t understand the unwritten laws of business attire

So, go in and see every customer with the knowledge and inner confidence that you can help them, a sense of humility that seeks to avoid any type of confrontation – and with the understanding that you’re just as much of a professional as they are.

But here’s the thing;

The customer deserves your respect from the start – You need to go in there and earn theirs at the earliest possible opportunity.

One day we might all have to stand in front of one of our customers and ask for a job. How confident would you be?

So, from now on, treat every sales call or meeting like an interview – because one day – it very well might be.

If you had the choice, would you rather your customers respected your professionalism or simply liked you?

And which one do you think will get you the job?

Here’s my point;

It’s probably the same thing that will get you the sale and turn prospects into customers!

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