Monthly Archives: September 2010

What is the hardest answer in sales?

Strange title!

The answer is no, I cannot help you.

Over the many years in sales, it is something you learn the hard way, from experience. The product(s) which you sell will not meet everyone’s requirement.

Your aim is long term customer that will return to you with future requirements and getting an order at any cost is the quickest way to loose a customer.

Build a relationship

The premise, more orders, more profit, the answer must be – possibly.

Developing your sales is more than just getting orders, and in the current climate, for some people, that is often at any price. A few businesses that I meet, have a policy that, more orders on the book equates to larger profits, which is often not the case, especially if they have cut the price to get the order.

From the many years ‘on the road’ as a sales engineer/manager, I spent a majority of my time speaking to and visiting customers with the main aim of developing a relationship & this does take time.

As has been mentioned before, people buy from people, and if you do not have some form of business relationship, your chances of landing the order is significantly reduced.