Marketing and Sales

Have you heard the phrase “The Customer Is Always Right”? I guess this is not new to you or maybe you have heard this a long time ago if you are in my age bracket or if you are in the age bracket of my nephews twenties below, somehow you have read it or heard it somewhere. I remember when I was a ten year old kid when I was playing inside my uncle’s hardware store. I saw a plastic bag hanging in the ceiling with a print that says “The Customer is Always Right”. Back then there were only few plastic bags and more expensive than paper bags. Then I ask my uncle what is the meaning of that? why is the customer have to be always right? what if the customer steal your items? is it right? I don’t know why ask those stupid questions but maybe because of innocence I wonder what those words means.

Then he told me that it’s because through customers we made our living. It is obvious that without customers, we don’t have a business. Period. But it still made me wonder how will the customer be right because sometimes we encounter unreasonable customers and those who waste our time just wandering around and pretend that they are customers. Sometimes they are just asking for a price or asking information about the product but in the end, will not but your product. Maybe the right phase would be “The Right Customer is Always Right”. I thinks thats a better saying by just adding the word “right” . Why I say that? It’s because if you got the right customer, then any demand he or she makes, complains, feedbacks are all reasonable and will be helpful to your business. Having the wrong kinds of customers will just waste your time and energy to figure out how you will improve your business.

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While I was reading the Entrepreneur magazine, two Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs caught my attention. One is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro the toothpaste magnate and the other Mr. Alfredo M. Yao the self made fruit drink magnate. The reason is because of their decisions that turned disappointments into an opportunity. The first one I want to discuss is Mr. Cecilio Kwok Pedro. He is the President and CEO of Lamoiyan Corp. which is the first Filipino company who penetrated the Philippine Toothpaste market.

That market was dominated by big foreign companies ( those that produce Colgate and Close-up). Now Happee toothpaste ranks no 3 in the toothpaste brand. Because of that success he was able to diversify his products into dish washing soaps, liquid detergents, fabric enhancers and other gum formula tooth paste.

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I have a newsletter from Tessa Stowe which is I think similar to other newsletter I got about how as a salesman you should treat your prospect. In summary, it’s about you letting your prospect do the talking and you the listening in order to make the conversation more appealing and not repelling. I think even the most aloof prospect can be tamed if you will follow her advice. So read on….

What To Say If Your Prospect Only Has 10 Minutes

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Selling the wrong thing is what most businesses and salespeople are doing. That is what I observe on many companies specially the one I worked with some time ago. The focus is always how great their product is – always the I, ME, I Am, We and not really what the customer needs. Tessa Stowe’s newsletter is an eye opener and a good guide for sales people or those one-man-band entrepreneurs.

So read on:

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A lot of people think selling requires a lot of effort. The reality is that it is easy to waste time when selling and it is easy to make it a lot harder than it needs to be. There are, in fact, simple tips you can apply which will not only save you a huge amount of effort but will also speed up your sales cycle. Here are just seven of these tips.

Tip #1: Don’t act like a salesperson
The moment you start talking or acting like a salesperson your prospect will put up barriers. They will think you are trying to sell them something and their automatic and natural reaction will be to defend themselves against being sold. Once a prospect’s barriers are up, selling to them requires a lot more effort on your part and it is also much harder than it needs to be.

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One of my sales coaching clients, let’s call him John, emailed me the other week and said his revenue for the month had increased by 29% over the same time the previous year. He said one of the reasons for this was because he rejected a lot of his prospects and fired 10% of his clients. Sounds both illogical and radical, don’t you think?

Prior to John deciding to become a radical, he would try and sell to anyone who was interested. Consequently he wasted a lot of time, money and resources (TMR) trying to attract and sell to people who were never going to buy, or if they did buy, the headaches they caused did not make them worthwhile. He wasted a lot of time on people who were never going to become ideal clients.

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