June 2002 Track Selling Times Integrity Pays
Integrity Pays:
"Being a Trustworthy Salesperson"
by Dick Boudreau
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Richard Boudreau is the Western Region Manager of AmeriPride Uniform Service and has over 35 years of sales management experience. AmeriPride, located in Verona, California, is a multi-national organization operating 196 production facilities and service centers throughout the United States and Canada. Today, AmeriPride services over 200,000 customers each week and is counted among the five largest garment service and linen supply companies in North America. For more information, please call Dick at (323) 587-3941, send e-mail to richard.boudreau@ameripride.com, or visit www.ameripride.com.
A distorted perception of salespeople is still pervasive in the selling industry. Clients have a difficult time trusting salespeople due to previous decades of slick salesmen saying and promising anything to make the sale.
We need to extinguish this image and replace it with one where the emphasis is on building trusting relationship with the clients we service. Max Sacks International and others have made tremendous strides in eliminating the slick salesman perception. They teach working with clients to come up with solutions that are win-win for both parties.
Being a trustworthy salesperson takes more than building rapport with your clients. You must maintain the relationship with service, promise and quality. There is no other way to build the trust. I am in the service industry, and we have a large volume of repeat business.
What helps us immediately gain trust is that clients know we will see them weekly, and we cannot let anything back slide. While the client doesn't see the salesperson regularly, he/she will see a representative of our company. This representative has to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the company by servicing the client weekly. We never want to be thought of as a company the client is stuck with.
Our company differs from our competitors because we have tied in technology with selling, giving us a very compelling offer to our clients. We provide radio frequency technology to accurately track our garment service, which eliminates delivery inaccuracies and reduces garment loss. It is significant that we have only a five percent error on 20,000 garments in any one plant. Our tracking system is unmatched in our industry. Our salespeople can make a promise that the rest of the company can deliver. This is a win-win situation and fosters a trusting relationship between our sales team and their clients.
I teach my general managers to walk away from business that is not a win-win situation. In other words, if the client cannot benefit from our services, then our sales team does not make the sale.
You are in the wrong business if your only motivation is to make a sale no matter what. You will never gain a client's trust without servicing the client and making the sale based on their needs, not yours. We try to make sure that we over deliver and under promise. It is extremely upsetting when we make promises we are not able to keep. Everyone loses.
Isn't it a great feeling when you get more from a company than you expected? If I'm eating in a restaurant and the waiter goes the extra mile to make my dining experience extra special, I will leave that restaurant with a smile on my face. More importantly, I will recommend this establishment to everyone.
Salespeople who are in business sectors where there are only one or two contacts with a client, such as in the automobile industry, need to consider how they go about closing the sale.
Do you make arrogant promises, knowing you will never see the client again? This brings up the slick salesperson image once more. Are you successful? Look around, and see what the successful sales professionals are doing. They are following the principles necessary to gain a client's trust. Learn from them, and make every sale a win-win opportunity.
The best sales professional I ever knew was in the auto industry. He knew his product and how to demonstrate it. He also knew how to gain my trust. This salesperson was sincere and an absolute gentleman. He turned a car purchase into a business deal and made it a win-win situation for both of us.
Points to Remember:
- Maintain a client relationship with service, promise and quality.
- Never promise more than you can deliver.
- Make every client interaction a win-win situation.
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