TouchPoint Selling

Sep 16 2009 2:52PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
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By Rick Heaston

Here I go again, back on my soapbox. I just can’t help myself; I’m seeing things that just make me crazy.

Lately, I’ve had a couple builders ask me to shop their competition, both in US and Canada and I’m not believing what I see. But I’m getting ahead in my story, let me start at the beginning.

It seems like every seminar I attend, trainer I listen to, or article I read, there’s something about first impressions. In other words, everyone agrees that customer’s make quick and fast judgments and form quick and fast opinions. Most of the time this isn’t a problem.

Rarely do I run into a sales person that doesn’t understand that good grooming and a good opening help tremendously in making a customer comfortable. That’s not my point. My point has to do with your sales office.

Isn’t your sales office also a part of your customer’s first impression? And when you go somewhere new, don’t you look beyond the person?

I’ve visited at least fifty different sales offices in the last month and I was, quite frankly, shocked. I witnessed everything from piles of paper on the floor to selection samples stacked against the wall … and from fax machines on the sales person’s desk to a half-eaten lunch on the back counter.

I’m not saying this is true everywhere, there are plenty of “drop dead” offices, but there are plenty that are just the opposite. What’s a customer to think?

At a recent party I had a friend jokingly tell me he had just been diagnosed with a terrible disease. Not exactly knowing what to say or where he was going I “bit” and asked, “What’s going on?” Straight faced he said, “Creeping Obesity”. Still not understanding I blurted out, “What’s that?”

“It’s where you gain a pound a month for a year and then wonder where it all came from”, he said. Even though I was the dupe of his story, it caused me later to wonder if more than a few sales associates might have a touch of it too. Let me explain.

For a sales associate, “Creeping Obesity” takes shape in their sales office. It’s a piece of paper here on Monday and a selection sample there on Tuesday, you get the picture. All of a sudden it’s, “Whoops, where’d all this come from?”

Maybe the most devilish thing with this disease is that you didn’t notice it was happening. And worse than that, didn’t realize how it was affecting your customer’s first impression?

All I can say to finish is, “Food for thought.”