As a customer service specialist I have been saying for years that “Service starts within Sales and Sales starts within Services”

This is however applicable to the sales techniques we have been taught for years, even more so than focusing on improving customer service.

The Internet changed all that!

The customer of today makes all the decisions even before they meet the sales person because the information is now readily available.  The sales person’s role has changed dramatically and old school sales techniques will no longer serve the sales process well.

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Sales should no longer focus on meeting targets only, but rather meeting the expectation by focusing on assisting the buyer in finding solutions for their problem. The successful sales person will work more on being attractive and sought after by potential buyers than making a sale. People buy from people and in today sales the potential buyer will feel more comfortable with a sales person that understands their needs rather than their own urgency to sell.

Sometimes sales people get in the way of making the sale by their own desperation and urgency. This is all too common in the smaller business, the solopreneur or even network marketers. ‘Buy my stuff’ just does not work anymore. ‘How can I serve you’ does!

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The successful sales person will incorporate the following 5 actions in their daily sales activities:

1. Adopt an attitude of serving when prospecting. The purpose of prospecting must change from a personal or business need that must be met, to finding people that has a need for the solution that the business’s product or service solves. This naturally means that the sales person will say ‘no’ more than the potential buyer.
2. The sales person must become a researcher to save time. Not everybody is your customer and we all know that, but who is, what are their habits, where do you find them and every detail of your buyer must be known and fully understood.
3. The sales meeting no longer focuses on product presentations demonstrating benefits with a clever close built into it. The focus of the sales meeting has changed to understanding the need of the buyer and has become all about the buyer, not the sales person. Fact is the buyer will buy when the need are met, not when all the benefits are understood.
4. The sales person now has to attract potential buyers online, daily, and initiated engagement to establish if the need can be met. Leads are generated online and content, to educate and inform, made available, will play a major role in being selected.
5. SPAM or pushy sales messages will only result in loss and serve no purpose and is a ‘cop out’ for taking the effort to serve others more than oneself. There are no ‘short cuts’ and the sales process of today takes dedicated, focused, persistent and consistent daily action.

No matter what business you are in, sales will only happen when you serve first. And once you made the customer the business will serve the customer best by offering more solutions initiating more sales.

Then I must conclude that all interactions with potential buyers and customers of your business revolves around service….and sometimes a sale is made!