How to Gain the Respect of a Customer

Before making my point in this article I want to make one thing clear. The customer is under no obligation to buy from you, for a good price, and thank you for it. What’s more, many reps fall prey to the “friend” customer. That doesn’t mean a sales call can’t or shouldn’t be friendly, it means the easiest way to get a concession out of a sales rep is “gee, I’d really rather buy from you, but look at this price!”. That customer is not your friend. They’re playing unethical negotiation games. Personally, when I visit a friends shop or hire them for their services, I don’t beat them down on price because I respect them, and I don’t expect them to do volunteer work for me. That doesn’t mean they won’t offer me a discount of some sort. It just means I won’t use our relationship to get them to give up on their price or their dignity.

I’ve heard from many sales reps some version of “I love calling on that guy” or “he’s a real gentleman, a real delight”. I always ask the same question: “Did you get a po?”. I don’t want to say that the sale is the ultimate goal. But the reality is that if I never get the po, I stop going. So, I guess the sale is the ultimate goal if you’re visiting them at their job on a weekday. Saturday BBQs should be avoided, but are a different story, here you really can be buddies. Just be careful who you accept or invite into your personal life, not all friendly customers are built equal and some expect a lot more than others. Astute buyers know what this means and you should as well.

What does it mean to be respected by your customer?

We learn from a young age to show respect and to be respectful. You learn the tacit meaning of this by being “corrected” when your behavior is left wanting. Now that said, the immediacy of respect between the person who is your grandmother is very different from the person who cold calls you. And when you’re the person cold calling someone, you better know what this means. I’ve met many people who dress the way they do and shave when they feel like it because they’re “real”. Their title and salary always match, mediocre and wanting.

You know what it means to receive respect because you feel it. When someone listens actively to what you have to say, considers your opinion and responds reasonably, you feel respected. Even at a basic level, when someone sees you walk in the door, makes eye contact and acknowledges you, on same level you feel respected. When you’re a customer this comes pretty automatic, but I believe that most people know when this is genuine. And it counts when it is.

Being respected by your customer is not about demanding respect

You can’t walk in on a customer, a prospect, or anyone else for that matter and demand respect. What if they refuse? You get physical? I hope you don’t intend to pass through border security ever again. No, it’s not about demanding or commanding respect, it’s about being respectable. It is not just semantics and it is a powerful difference. The tyrant commands or demands respect, the respectable professional gains and earns respect.

Even if you don’t believe in ‘pretenses’, you know that a well-groomed, well-dressed sales rep who has a firm handshake while giving proper eye contact who proceeds to show they know their business, your needs, and how to sell to you efficiently is someone you respect. It may seem abstract because it’s so rare. I’ve sat through too many sales presentations and sales calls where the presenting sales person rattles on about the 100-year history of the company and then explains the intimate details of the product or service that have nothing to do with my business or how I do my job. That person may look great, but they don’t know my business nor how to help me conduct it. They’ve wasted my time.

Flip the equation now, the presenting sales person nails the presentation with comments like “we’ve perfected this process in our 100-year history and now we offer you x for your y customers”. But they are wearing a suit they probably borrowed from someone whose life is only going slightly better than theirs and their hair would make Albert Einstein look suave. He is saying the right things, but his appearance makes you doubt him.

To be clear both presenters scored major points in the respect department, but both gave up a lot of points as well. Sales people are not the most trusted people in the world and a cursory history of salesmanship will explain why. The term “salesy” is a pejorative. It’s an insult to be called that and it should be avoided and it’s not only sales people who are called salesy but anyone cheap and dishonest trying to trick someone. That being said, while the moment you became a sales person many points against you are already on the board, this is exactly where the opportunity lies. And the opportunity is massive.

How to gain the true respect of your prospect or customer

Specific requirements for calling on a prospect will be in a future article. For now, I’ll speak to the requirements of any sales person, male or female, in any industry. Details and nuances may change with the clientele, like with wardrobe, but the core characteristics remain the same.

The first opportunity to gain or lose respect begins down the street. Before you even see the clients building, you’re already selling. Your car is clean, and you’re driving it like a civilized person. You enter the parking lot safely and park efficiently. You already have your materials ready and you know where to grab a business card if required. All this requires prep work. Know where your customer is, use Google Maps or some alternative to know the route as well as what the parking lot looks like. This way you don’t park in the neighbor’s lot or drive into the trucks only entrance. No one may ever know you did all this, but you will, it sets the tone, and you don’t know who sees what. You also don’t know who else is coming or going to the business and you don’t want to be seen scrambling.

Once you’ve parked, you take the materials and your portfolio off the passenger seat and walk to the front door like you belong there, because you do. If there is a receptionist, it doesn’t matter if your customer is standing right in front of him or her, you say hello and tell them who you’re here to meet. Always be respectful, and in this case, be respectful to the person who will be transferring your calls.

Once you’re with your customer you need to be ready to make small talk. You read the weather forecast, and you know whether your local sports team is a bunch of heroes or zeroes at the moment. You also know that small talk doesn’t exceed 5 minutes, ten if you really go far back. Once it’s time for business you need to have a 1-minute, a 5-minute, a 10-minute and a 1-hour sales pitch ready to go. Why? Because things come up in the workday for them same as you. You may have one hour to pitch your complicated sales process, but when a phone call comes to your customer that they have to deal with, your new number one priority just became avoiding becoming a nuisance. Know how to summarize and make plans for a follow up.

In that sales pitch you can talk about things no one cares about like your hundred-year history, if it points to reasons why your company is the best fit. If your selling high-tech solutions, what happened 10 years ago probably doesn’t matter. What your sales pitch does have to have is three things. First, what is your product. Second, why your customer needs it. Third, how they will use it and what it will look like after.

Let’s say your pitching grease to a customer. A proper sales pitch looks like some version, some length of: this is a fully-synthetic impact resistant, water repellant grease that will dramatically reduce wear on your truck u-joints and camshafts, and you’ll not only be replacing fewer parts but you’ll be greasing less often because all the grease won’t be squeezed out of your camshaft bushings the moment your driver leaves the yard.

That’s the 1-minute pitch. The 5-, 10-, and 60-minute pitches range from more detail about these points, to referrals and testimonials and even to a physical presentation. If at any moment your customer has to leave to “put out a fire” ask one of two things. Either when you will resume, or when you will agree to make a date to resume. And then leave quickly, quietly and happily. No one is happy to be bothered while trying to understand options that will benefit their business, and then having to deal with a pouting adult sales person will not win you their respect.

Conclusion

Much of the way we gain and win the respect of our customers and prospects is well known, even if many people don’t bother. The part about knowing their business, what their needs are, and how the solution will look when it’s implemented is a lot to know and you must be constantly learning these three things. But especially if you’re starting out you can’t know much more than the basics of the products you’re selling and maybe not even that much. It’s not over before it begins for you. There’s a limit to how much you can get away with because customers don’t want to spend their days teaching the sales people that call on them. The best way to overcome this issue is to propose a solution “as you understand it” and ask if it could be of benefit to them. If no, ask why. You’ll learn a lot from this answer and it’s a fair question that gets them to show they actually have a reason to say no. If yes, ask what they would need to know to make a decision and get that information for them. If you see that what they require isn’t the case for the product you were proposing, tell them as much and go find that product for them. This is also how you build trust, by walking away from a bad sale today to make a good sale that will last later.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the bar is pretty low for salesmanship. Do the extra work, do the extra prep, learn more than your competitors and I guarantee you that you will have better sales and better margins. If nothing else, the professionals you deal with will appreciate dealing with you the professional and truth be told, being a rock-solid professional just feels good.