"You can do it!"

Building off my last thought on the previous post...

Every week's newsletter, and so much of the training stuff I'm supposed to read, talks about making goals for yourself, selling more, being a better sales associate, selling more add-ons with cameras, selling more damage-protection warranties with cameras... And it's all said in "Self-improvement" language: setting goals, focusing on your weak areas, all that BS. Dude, we're just selling cameras! Most importantly, what we really do is provide information (filtered, selected information, all right) to the customer, and then cross our fingers hoping they will choose to buy. We can't be PERSUASIVE - we can just point out our low-price guarantee, and our easy refund policy, and all the free stuff and discounts that you get with this or with that, in what common situations this or that pays for itself, what this or that can do for you. That's not that hard to do, especially as it's the same list of stuff every time. The newsletters say things like "make goals for yourself about improving on your weakest areas, be that selling damage-protection warranties, selling membership club cards with photo-finishing, or demonstrating/presenting products to customers". "Keep those goals attainable but challenging". Or articles by sales associates who say "I worked hard until every customer who gets a camera also walks out with a damage-protection warranty". How the heck do you do THAT? Sneak it into the transaction and hope they don't look at the receipt?

All we can do is give information. To hope, or rather, to EXPECT, that the customer decides to buy, does not make a lot of sense. I sure as heck will not feel bad, or less secure about my selling abilities, if I am unsuccessful at selling for a while, because, statistically, there will be streaks of people who will end up deciding not to buy. With all the "You can do it!" BS must come a "Oh no, I failed, I must suck" disappointment from having invested emotional energy into "improving" something you have no control over, and then failing, which you sometimes will. No, whether or not I sell is NOT in my power. But of course, corporate would hate it if any of us ever figured that out...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home