Do Your Business a Favour, Train Your Sales People.

I recently had a bad experience with a car company whom used every ‘bad’ sales technique in the book. I mean shockingly bad, manipulative, deceitful and hurtful sales tactics. It was quite embarrassing really.

I won’t publicly name the company, however let’s just say due to a large marketing campaign, you cannot escape their name right now. The bad experience I had got me thinking; why compromise long standing customer satisfaction over short term sales success?

Let’s get one thing straight. The sales people we dealt with had been trained. But they had been trained BADLY. Very badly. They acted like vultures upon arrival, and although they seemed willing and able to help at first, when it came to the ‘nitty gritty’ of a sale they soon shown their true colours.

Before we go into some scary examples of their dodgy tactics, allow me the chance to show you what happens to your company image when you do not train your sales team well…

These are just five reviews taken from the company in questions Google site and their Trustpilot site which have been written in the past couple of months. “Pushy & Rude”, “…attacked by sales staff…”, “Super Pushy…”

Scary isn’t it? If you, as a potential customer, saw these reviews before you visited this site, how would you feel? Would you feel comfortable on arrival? Or will you automatically have your back up? Would you even want to visit the store??

Reading through the majority of the reviews, many customers have walked out of this ‘super store’ due to over pushy and rude staff. This company is losing sales left right and centre due to poorly trained sales staff whom only have the short term sale in mind. As mentioned earlier in the post, these sales people were trained. It was clear to see. But to me, it appeared they had been ‘trained’ by a dishonest, old fashioned sales ‘professional’ who was clearly still living in the 80’s.

Training sales professionals poorly is clearly much worse than offering no sales training at all.

Here’s some of my personal favourite examples of shoddy sales tactics used during my visit to this store. My partner and I had found a car that we liked. It fitted the bill, did everything we needed it to (and more) and was going to work well. The sales person assisting us had an audience of all of her colleagues watching us from a distance of about 10 metres (high pressure tactic). She mentioned she felt that she could do the price at a big discount (£X) to what was listed, and she would go inside and call the Managing Director. She went inside, and yet her sales team voyeurs stood in front of the door; I am guessing to stop us following her in or warn her if we ventured in. She appeared shortly after to tell us that she had spoken to The Managing Director (This was at 9pm by the way), and he could not do it for £X, however could do it for £X+Y, just a small rise to what was originally offered.  It was this point I did lose my calm a little and called her out on her lies and her deceit.

What we witnessed here was a test close (the initial offer) followed by the authority call, followed by the final close. The training this person would have been given, is if the customer is willing to part with £X, then they should be willing to part with £X + Y., so push for that higher amount.

Here’s another bad example. Whilst going through the purchase of the car, we were invited to take up the offer of an indepth warranty. For all intents and purposes, the warranty does look good and appears to offer you the chance to protect your car. We told the sales person that we would not be interested at this stage and we thanked him for his offer. His response? “Let me go and check with my manager to see if there is anything he can do on price.” Once again, another shoddy way to bring an authority figure into the game and force some pressure upon us. The mistake this sales person made however was that we weren’t sniffing at the price, a discount would not have sold us, so why did he want to offer a discount? Anyway, he reappeared minutes later with a miraculous deal that could save us 30% of the initial price. Quite an exact figure actually, almost as if it was pre-planned?!  Once again, we declined the offer.

Here was his next response; “Well I would advice you take it. Finance companies like to see you are looking to protect the investment and a warranty gives you a higher chance of getting accepted.”

“Oh really now?” Came my response, “Have you ran it through to see if we will get it accepted yet?”

“No.”

“Well why don’t you try it, and we will see what happens without the warranty.” Low and behold, we got accepted and the poor sales person lost a chance to earn some commission.

Now here is the thing. Sales Training sometimes is not just about making more sales. It is about training your sales people to be more ethical. Honest. And to keep your company’s reputation intact. If people catch on to dodgy sales tactics, like this company employs here, their image is only going to be left in shatters. This company is now fighting a losing battle. Online reviews everywhere are screaming out about their bad tactics and poor salesmanship. They will lose customers, and have had people walk out already.

Sales training, provided by us at Paragon, will help you to get the sale and also help you to achieve full customer satisfaction. We train for the long term and understand the importance of your company image.

My advice for this company, and I have sent a proposal to this effect, is this: allow me the chance to spend a week with your sales team. Let me watch, observe, and operate on the sales floor. Allow me to train your sales people to a high standard and let me rectify the poor image you have already obtained in such a small space of time.

Sales do not need to be pushy, or manipulative. If you feel they do, then you and I need a chat. Never sacrifice a short term gain over a long term pain.