Management


Are Your Sales Reps Getting Complacent? SELLING POWER EDITORS


James Owens, an experienced construction equipment sales rep, grinned when he thanked his customer for the order of new loading equipment.


Then the customer asked, “How will your new loading equipment fit my new trucks?” James stared in disbelief. Was he hearing right? “What trucks do you mean?” “Why, the four new ones we added to our fleet just last week. You people don’t have a truck line anyway, do you?”


18 | FEBRUARY 2016 SELLING POWER © 2016 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.


James gasped. “Well, I guess we never had a chance to talk about this. I assumed you had a fairly new fleet. We’ve carried trucks for over a year... but it never occurred to me you’d be needing additional capacity. I thought I’d tell you about our truck line when it came time to replace some of the older ones...”


That’s when James realized he’d lost a big opportunity for a much larger sale.


The above story is true. The sales- person’s name has been changed. His honest account of one of his biggest mistakes reveals how salespeople can – and do – become complacent, how they become victims of assump- tions about their customer’s business, and what the sales manager can do to help them become hungrier to close more than the average business. Let’s begin by looking at the two most common assumptions salespeo- ple tend to make about buyers.


RA2STUDIO / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM


To managers: Keep your reps on their toes!


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32