The ‘Tactic’ Sales Guy

You’ve heard the radio commercials. You’ve seen the books at Borders. You’ve heard the feedback from recruiters and management at your jobs…

“Read this book and be a great salesperson!”

“Take this expensive course and improve sales 40%!”

“Don’t let your competition beat you, use these sales tactics to win over your customers!”

Really? So that’s it?

Read a book and sell $1M? Take a class and win President’s club? Give a couple snazzy one-liners to your CIO of choice and become their preferred vendor?

That’s like me reading a CCNA book and now thinking I am on the same level as the network engineers who have been working in this space for years. That’s like me reading a book on Java and now thinking I am on the same level as a software developer.

That’s what is going on today. I see it everyday. Salespeople using “cheap tactic” to try to win business.

It happened to me Friday. A customer called me directly and said his reseller of choice was impossible to deal with. The guy actually used this line:

“I will beat any price on the street. I guarantee you. But I won’t give you pricing unless you commit to me that we are going to business. When you say ‘Yes’, I will release the bill of materials and pricing to you. It’s the vendor’s fault anyway, they won’t give me special pricing on this job!”

Really?

So not only did he use cheap tactic, but he threw his vendor of choice under the bus and lied to the customer. When the customer asked me, I was brutally honest, I said I just got a special pricing request today and I was working on it as we spoke.

If the guy was remotely honest with them and just told him as it was, I am sure he would have gotten to be one of the final bidders on this project.

But guess what happened? The entire company got thrown out. For this little portion of their overall IT spend, this company will never do business with them again.

Which brings me to my point. It takes a lot of time to be invested building strong, trustworthy relationships with customers. It takes effort. It takes listening. Have an open line of communication. Tell then what is really going on. Don’t throw anyone under the bus. Own the entire portion of the business sales cycle. And please, I am begging you, “Don’t be that guy”. It’s painfully obvious to everyone dealing with you.

Happy selling everyone.