Now, I really don’t dislike sales people, but there are those that drive me crazy, especially those that can't take 'no' for and answer. It is starting to look like salesmanship is a lost art. We have people that don't know how to talk, those that are rude, and my favorite... the ones that feel their opening line has to be a lie.
In truth, salesmanship is an art. It is combining the gift of gab, and working with the possible customer, listening to them, playing to their desires, and then giving them the information you need them to have and leading them to a proper decision. It is about creating a relationship with the person and keeping them feeling good about you and your product. This is something that a lot of people can not do. It is something I do not do well, which is why I hate trying to sell what I do.
But what has happened is that sales is now mostly done by phone, and the people who do this work are not trained past the script they are reading, and they do not care about an ongoing relationship with the customer. These people usually work for a call center and not the company selling the goods. Their relationship starts and ends with a single call. So, they are not concerned with keeping you feeling good about the product.
Since this person does not work for the company that they are selling for, they do not care how you feel about that company after the call is over. I mean, if i were to make a sales call for me, even if i don’t make a sale, I would want to be pleasant, and leave the person feeling good about me and my company even though they did not buy anything. Because next time i call, they might remember that, and change their minds.
I have one salesman that comes out every year selling advertising for a small local phone book. He is nice and pleasant, and I know him by name. Every year he asks, and every year I say no. But, one year, I said yes.
People who call on the phone will probably never talk with you again about the product they are currently selling. They may beat the odds and end up calling you about something else for some other company, but you will never know that. So, they do not have a relationship to foster. They just have this one window of 30 to 60 seconds. After that, they just move onto another ‘victim’. So, if you are not buying, especially when they hard sell you (and I am a person that does not react well to a hard sell), they either get rude, or simply hang up, because I have wasted their time when they could actually be making a sale.
I would many times get a phone call and as soon as I know where it is going and what they are selling, I will tell them that I am not interested. And then I get “well, ok, but have you tried...” spiel. And when I tell them again, they acknowledge it and still keep going. That is when I get to the point where I ask if they know what “I’m not interested” means. A lot of times I just hang up on them as they just keep on going. Other times, they just get rude and hang up on me. Now, would I ever want to buy something from a company that is rude to me over the phone? And the point is that it could even be a local company that I might at some time be interested in their services.
But because our corporations have a ‘do it cheaper’ mentality, they hire these outside call centers to do their selling for them. But what they don’t see is that these ‘sales people’ that they are getting are turning people off from their product instead of making them feel good about the company.
And all these calls are made by computer. When you get hung up on, the live person was not available. When you answer, it routes it to someone if they are available. A lot of times, my answering machine gets messages like, “press 1 for...”.
But what makes this look bad is when I answer my business phone with “Caring Palms. This is Brian.” and get “Hello, can I speak to Brian.”
Yes, common sense and common courtesy have left the building.