The Big Sell
- Aggressive sales? Kathryn Wright (flickr)
I got a letter in the post today about an e-marketing event I’m due to attend next week. It’s entitled Guerrilla e-marketing which makes me wonder how the simple object of selling turned into an act of warfare.
I never really thought about sales until I took a job that required me to sell stuff. I wasn’t called a salesperson. I was not in marketing. I was an advisor. I was a customer advisor trying to sell financial products. Now, before you all hit the off switch and throw your computer out in disgust I should point out that I left that job some years ago. I left because the role was not what I had been promised and because I found out that I hated selling.
When I joined I was told that my role would be largely about customer service and helping people. I was told to discuss products with customers that I thought would be helpful. The longer I stayed there the more apparent it became that what they actually wanted was for me to ask every single customer if they wanted some product or other – a loan, an overdraft, a savings account (told you it was years ago!). If you couldn’t match them with a product how about an account review?
I was bad. Very bad at sales. Sometimes I sat next to the guy who was the best at sales and I could hear him saying the same thing to every single customer. I wondered if the customers in the queue behind could hear him repeating himself as well. He was playing the numbers game – nothing fancy – no tricks – it probably annoyed a lot of people but he got his sales.
Strangely I never got the urge to adopt his technique. I found it impersonal and I knew that if I was a customer I would be desperate to get away from him and I certainly wouldn’t be falling for his sales pitch. Then again, perhaps I viewed it very differently from my side of the counter. After all, I got to listen to it all day. Customers would hear it much less and in a completely different context. Even so, it still seems like an aggressive and callous sales technique and I HATE aggressive or thoughtless selling!
That’s why I’m nervous about the guerrilla e-marketing event. I hope it will be educational and filled with useful tips and techniques but I’m worried they’ll be telling me I need to e-shot the whole of the UK threatening their children. Is it an overreaction based on my previous bad experience with sales?
I will let you know how it goes. In the meantime I’d be interested to hear about your sales experiences from either side of the counter, computer or headset!
