Sell Smart To Smart Shoppers

The badlands of Utah

In the world of sales, the most successful salespeople know that if there are only two attributes that a person depending on sales to earn a living should possess, then those attributes should be first and foremost honesty, and second, a keen sense of propriety.

Most people will readily see the importance of honesty, If you represent a company's products falsely, it won't be long before the truth gets out and you will no longer be able to sell the product. Heck, if you work for any company with the slightest measure of integrity, they will most likely fire you immediately for falsely representing their product.

A good salesperson is always upfront with both the qualities and limitations of the product they are selling. A great salesperson takes the time to learn what it is the customer expects the product to do, then marries the customer to the product that will do that specific task for the customer.

However...that can be a difficult task when a customer throws a wrench in the gears with a condition that subverts the customer's own expectations of product performance. That wrench is usually price. Each and every salesperson with a week or so of experience has encountered the customer who wants to purchase the equivalent of a 2013 Maserati GranCabrio for the price of a '93 Ford Festiva.

The general public has been deceived by marketers into believing that price is the single most important consideration when making a purchase...which is, of course, bullshit.

Quality, from the intelligence of the design to the practicality of the engineering to the materials used and  the level of craftsmanship of the worker all factor into the value of a product. The value of a product is the single most important consideration when purchasing a product, not price.

That is due to the inescapable truth that, no matter how low a price you pay for something that is inherently garbage, you are still trading your hard-earned dollars for garbage.

This is where a keen sense of propriety comes in. Propriety in sales is the ability to first ascertain what matters most to the customer - buying a product that will serve them well for as long as they need it, or buying a product that will serve them as a short term solution until they are able to move on to a higher quality  product.

Otherwise known as fitting the customer's pocketbook to the purchase. 

For years salespeople had been trained to raise customer's expectations (and thus, what they were willing to spend) by offering solutions to their cash crunch in the form of easy credit.

Well, easy credit has pretty much screwed up the economy, at least for awhile. It's long been time to return to a more conscionable means of enticing purchasers.

The Internet, and specifically it's access via smart phones, has made it possible for consumers to compare not only prices on like products while they are right in the middle of a transaction, but get customers actual experience with the product.

A consumer can access Google and enter the name of the product+reviews and in seconds have access to every Internet consumer forum that has an opinion on the product.

That makes it imperative for businesses to learn how to market their products appropriately. 

For example, a company that manufactures cheap sofas can advertise exactly that: "This sofa is inexpensive because it's made with a stapled together pine frame and has 13 gauge sinuous springs that will not support anybody weighing more than 110 pounds comfortably for more than a year. But hey, you're young and your taste will probably change in a year anyway, so you'll be able to put it out on the curb sporting a 'free' sign with very little remorse."

Conversely, manufacturers of quality products can learn to advertise the actual benefits of their products while explaining their higher price: "Sure, our sofas are priced ten times more than the crap at Wally's Wonderful World of Warehoused Furniture, but it has a kiln-dried hardwood frame with eight-way hand-tied 9 gauge hurricane coil springs that will comfortably support anybody weighing up to 300 pounds for at least twenty years. Think about that. Twenty years of not having to endure the drudgery of sofa shopping."

"You get what you pay for" should be printed on ads for every product sold, much like the Surgeon Generals warning on cigarettes.

Okay, okay, I admit that would probably never work. But a man can dream...

                                     John Ruskin laying down some truth