I am posting this question because of recent experiences in being a door-to-door salesman. I am selling Verizon FiOS (Fiber Optic Service). Any one in the Philly area needing this, please contact me. There, you have my pitch, but that is not the subject of this blog.
My own answer to the question is obvious. You treat your customers as you would want to be treated as a customer. This is just a simple variant of "do unto others..." But I find myself at odds with management on this simple question.
Management is concerned about "the numbers". Every customer I encounter, I am to overcome all objections, and "close" the deal on the first call, no matter the concerns of my customers, whether it is bad timing, they need to discuss with the husband or wife, etc.
My approach is like planting seeds for the harvest. I don't need or want the instant gratification. I want to till the soil, plant the seeds, watch the rain fall, the plants grow, and eventually will come the harvest.
A recent experience will illustrate the point. Three of my customers (the company calls them "leads") are neighbors. Real neighbors, that is, not just living in proximity to each other.
The first person invited me into his workshop, where we had a nice extended conversation. We spoke a lot about about FiOS, and many other things as well. We found one extremely interesting thing in common, people and a place we both had experiences with. I left him prices, my card, and time to discuss with his wife. Waste of time, management would say, I did not "close" the sale. But I was enriched, and I will follow up with him later.
The second person, an 86 year old World War 2 veteran, also invited me into his home, and we too had a very pleasant extended conversation, again finding unexpected things in common. I had no expectation of selling him FiOS, because he was happy with his old fashioned phone, rabbit ears, and only used the Internet, on a dial-up basis, for occasional email. I told him, in that case, he did not need what I was selling. To my surprise however, he asked me for a price, and ended up interested in a service that would cost him about 3 times what he is paying now. Again, from management's point of view, a waste of time. I did not "close" the sale.
In the meantime, he looked out the window and said "Oh, Walter is home", his neighbor, whose door I had already knocked and gotten no answer. When I then went to Walter's home again, I was told several things. First, he was surprised that I caught him at home, because he is hardly ever there. Second, he and his lady friend were at that very moment discussing FiOS, with one of the mailers open on the counter. Third, he was interested in the information I had, but did not have time to complete an order at that time. I talked for a little bit, and his friend, who currently has FiOS, was telling him "Walter, this is what you need". "Okay", he says, "I want it". I asked him when I could come back to write the order. "Right now!" he says. Which we did.
Posted By: Steve Williams
Friday, February 12th 2010 at 10:04AM
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