Never say never!
In sales, a common objection is "I'm happy with my current supplier”. And when confronted with this, most sales people give up and go fish in another pond.
And that can be a big mistake because it's not the early bird, but the persistent one that ultimately gets the worm!
Here’s an example from the other day…
It's been years since I was a Telstra customer. After a series of major debacles about 7 years ago when they totally stuffed up our phone and internet connections, we moved all our services to other providers.
Over the years we've periodically got calls from a Telstra call centre asking us to move back to them.
My response was always the same… "Not in a million years – especially after what you did before!"
And so it was the other month.
Got a call. It was a Telstra rep. I was not in a good mood and started to tell him where he could put his deal. But he was persistent and asked me what I had to lose by listening to what he had to offer.
I'm always interested in how well sales people are doing their jobs, and what I can learn, so what the hell… I said, "go ahead, tell me”.
Fifteen minutes later, I was still listening. The deal sounded pretty good on the surface, but I'm thinking, "Do I really want to go through the hassle of changing? What if they stuff up again? And I want to see the fine print.”
"Is there anything you can send me in writing?” "No” "But I want to see this in writing” "You can go to the website”
I told him I'd have a look and call him back in a couple of weeks. (Classic fob off)
"This is an outward bound call centre – you can't call in – I'll have to call you back. I'll call you tomorrow.”
Grrrrrr…. Big mistake on his part. I'm feeling some pressure here – and do not respond well to this sort of tactic. I came VERY close to telling him to "shove it”.
"No you won't – give me a call in a couple of weeks”
I thought – "It's going to be interesting to see if he calls”.
Well, give him his due. He did.
I hadn't looked at the deal, so I asked him to call back in a week.
He told me that he could only call me back within 3 days – as the "system” wouldn't allow any extensions.
Well that turned out to be a blatant lie. He tried a number of times when I wasn't in and finally got me 2 weeks later!
So we went through the deal. The bundle was great. A lot cheaper than our current providers and they were throwing in a bunch of stuff as well as $180 in credits. Quite obviously they wanted the business and were willing to "buy it”.
One of my main criteria for switching internet providers and bundling the phone service was they would get me "cable” rather than ADSL. (We're quite far from the exchange so ADLS can be slow and cable speeds would be great).
"Absolutely – we can do that.” "Really? We're a battle axe property – over 100m from the road – and I suspect you can't do this.” "I'll run some tests”.
So they "guaranteed” they could get cable to the residence. On that basis I gave him the go ahead.
So all in all, you could say his persistence paid off. However he could have and very nearly did, lose the sale with the way he conducted himself and his pushy attitude in the beginning.
But the story doesn't end here.
A week later a courier delivers a new ADSL Router.
Huh???? I asked for Cable – what's going on?
So a call to Telstra showed that our friend had not put in the request properly. His notes were almost non-existent and the new guy had a lot of trouble figuring out what had been promised.
So we sorted that out. Strike one!
A few days later, our internet connection went south. I called our current provider to be told the connection had been switched to Telstra. But no one had bothered to tell us this was going to happen – and anyway – it was supposed to be cable. Strike two!
A week later a technician arrived at the door to deliver the bad news. As I suspected, we were too far from the road to get cable to the door. Strike three!
So in effect, a major promise made by the "salesman” (who absolutely assured me it could be done), couldn't be delivered.
Not a good look for Telstra. And frankly, if the deal hadn't been so good, I'd have told them to cancel it. And the thought of reconnecting all the other providers and the wasted time involved was a factor too.
And here's the final irony. Got a another call from their call centre wanting to "book in the technician” for the cable installation. "Don't you people read your call notes?” "Oh, I'm sorry – I see someone's already been out and said it couldn't be done.”
So what are the lessons here?
First of all, "not now" doesn't mean "not ever".
Circumstances change. And if you're not in front of a potential client on a regular basis, you'll never be able to present a better deal.
Even if someone says they're happy with their current provider, if you can say something along the lines of…
"I understand you're happy with your current provider and I'm not going to try and sell you something. However would you be open to hearing about what we could do (to reduce costs, Improve productivity etc.) – and then if it makes sense, we could take it further?”
It's a non-confrontational, low pressure approach and many people will say yes.
And finally, getting the order is one thing. Make sure your implementation, delivery and after sales service stacks up. After all, that's where the rubber hits the road and why people pay you.
Rashid.
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