Some time ago I wrote that a good technical salesperson must have a good knowledge of what they are selling, have excellent interpersonal skills and a good basic organization. They must also be able to speak foreign languages (or at least English), be goal oriented, have an open and constructive attitude and, at the same time, the ability to transmit this to the customer.
Essentially, they must have a good cognitive background (which in some sectors – and ours is one of those – also translates into having technical skills of a certain level) combined with a series of often innate qualities.
The question I ask you is:
do you think there are skilled sellers on the market today?
I ask this because I consider that the tendency of businesses these days is increasingly to throw people into the world of selling at the deep end to the extent of “these are the customers, this is the catalogue, study the product and go and sell”.
I will give you a concrete example related to the Christmas period (as we are almost there). As we know, it is often the case that stores (large or small) take on extra staff during busy periods. The problem is that in many cases (and I refer above all to the practices of large chains)
they do not provide any kind of training.
And so here the problem in these cases in my opinion is twofold. On the one hand, anyone who buys and goes shopping in a specialist store expects to find a seller who is knowledgeable on the product that they are selling. Which very often does not happen.
On the other hand, unfortunately this tendency negatively impacts on the general perception of the actions of these “on call” figures (who are mostly young employees), precisely because the lack of skills is attributed to the workers themselves despite the fact that, in reality, this is not their fault. How many times have we heard: “the youth of today can’t do anything!”.
The fear I have is that unfortunately this is how it also works in many companies in our sector.
These companies, in other words, rely on
networks of sellers who, in many cases, despite being skilled in the art of being able to sell, are not informed on the product, precisely because they are not adequately trained.
The consequence is that they are not able to offer customers the correct product, even if they have it in the catalogue precisely because they do not know its characteristics.
This applies not only to mechanical components of low economic value but also to very expensive equipment. I am often reminded of a dispute that arose some time ago about the conformity of a gear that we had sold because it had been checked with an instrument that had nothing to do with the type of measurement that had to be taken.
The lack of adequate training is more frequent, from what I seem to see, in larger companies, but not so much due to issues related to the type of structure in itself, but rather to the fact that there is a greater turnover of staff.
A turnover that is not necessarily related to the shift of workers from one company to another but rather to the fact that it is common practice for employees of the same company to change jobs, often placing them in roles for which they are not prepared.
But this is another matter entirely…
