Achieving Sales success 3: Who will you work for?
As a former infantry lieutenant in the British army, this phrase drummed into us during our basic training as officers!
“Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted!”
So along with looking at the physical basis of your new / potential career in Sales, whether you will be working alone from home or out of an office with a team, you MUST also follow this stratagem.
Think about this for a moment.
Before you commit the most precious of your resources to a potential employer – your time energy, your creativity, and the ability to provide for yourself and those who depend on you – surely you owe it to yourself to check out thoroughly a company before you commit to any Sales organization.
Whoever is recruiting you, the HR personnel, or sales manager etc. will of course ‘sell’ you their company, and all that working for them will provide you….
The emphasis made to you will be on the ‘glossy side’ of their business and so expect to be told about ‘the car’, ‘the expense account’ and ‘the OTE renumeration’ but I can guarantee that little will be said on just how you are to achieve that. Put more bluntly, from their point of view many recruiting sales personnel really just to have a warm body ‘out there’ promoting their product…. And your continued employment with them will simply depend on the sales you can generate for them!
However, with my having spent time within this industry, and of course wishing you to experience great personal success, I can bluntly state that the very first stage is for you to evaluate the Company on whom you will depend for your livelihood.
Are you selling lemons or lemonade?
No matter how ‘glossy’ the remuneration package may seem with the OTE ‘potential’ you just have to look at the products or services they off as you will become integrally identified with them.
Products from a well-known manufacturer have the advantage of their reputation with the public. Companies like Stanley, Johnson and Johnson, Toshiba, Sharp, Apple, Black and Decker, Hewlett Packard, KIA, Ford etc. are ‘household names’ and as such will have a greater level of acceptability to customers and this familiarity will reduce customer resistance to sales and make your job marginally easier.
However, if the product manufacturer is relatively unknown you must look closely, from the customers’ viewpoint, at the ‘Benefits’ that accompany it and above all else look at any reviews and reports on the business, the turnover not just of sales but of sale personnel.
What ‘benefits’ are you promoting?
I once worked for a British Firm called Cardiac Recorders which made cardiac monitors defibrillators and the market area being hospitals and ambulance services. The products could be both for individual patient use and for a network such as in an ICU (intensive Care Unit) simultaneously for a number of patients.
Based in London, England, over the years the company had established a reasonable reputation for providing reliable and functional equipment at approximately 50% less than the major competitor Hewlett Packard which was – and still is – acknowledged as having among the best quality of medical equipment.
So, the ‘benefit’ to the customer was a ‘good equivalent’ to the acknowledged top of the range brand (Hewlett Packard) at a much lower cost.
So, too you must evaluate the product that you will have to promote in the ‘marketplace’ and ask yourself – honestly – “Why should someone buy this product as opposed to a similar product from someone else (the ‘competition’?)
Why should they buy what you are selling?
Totally the wrong answer would be to say to yourself “So I can make money…!’ (I will touch on the personal aspects of product promotion in a later blog)
Therefore, I would recommend that you do a thorough ‘recon mission’ on your potential employer. Reconnaissance missions are absolutely vital to the success of an ‘active mission’ and whereas your physical life may not be risked in Sales, certainly your financial life is on the line!
So, look around the premises of a potential employer when you are being interviewed and ask yourself, “Am I looking at an organization that’s able to afford good quality office furniture? is the office sited in a remote corner of an obscure Industrial Park or in a reasonably upscale area?”
A good interview question to ask is “Why is this position open?” which will determine whether it’s due to expanding sales or ‘previous salesman burnout.’ Use review organizations like ‘Glassdoor” to see what the experience of those who have been in their employ.
