Passion
A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I were out and about running a bunch of different errands and trying to get some business taken care of. I am sure you know the feeling; you keep saying I can do that later and then it is much later, and you need to get a million things done in one day. Well it was one of those types of days, so we just decided to take a Saturday and get it all done in one swoop.
As we were running our errands and going in and out of different businesses, I began to notice some themes, especially when it came to the salespeople. (Occupational hazard, I guess) The one thing that I noticed that really interested me was between the salespeople who seem to be trying too hard and the ones that were just being themselves and “going with the flow.” My wife and I were looking for a new stereo system for our car so we went and looked at a few different retailers. Now as you probably know, every electronic store offers pretty much the same thing. Often the salesperson makes the difference.
The first salesperson that we interacted with was nice enough and certainly knew his stuff including: features, inventory, prices an so on but there just seemed to be something missing that I could not put my finger on until we reached the next store. The salesperson at the second store offered the exact same information but did so in a way that got me excited to buy from them. After making the purchase from the second store, I started to think about what was different in the approaches of the two salespeople. Then it hit me, the first salesperson while competent and knowledgeable lacked energy, and a passion for the job. The salesperson was almost robotic in going through the presentation whereas, the second salesperson was genuinely excited to help us and his passion for what he was selling is the thing that sold us. Of course people have to be who they are and you should never fake enthusiasm but it is a lot more fun for the customer if the salesperson enjoys what they are doing. Some jobs work without passion; I do not believe sales are one of them.
FINAO – Brad Huisken, President – IAS TRAINING
