Sales: Peer pleasure

Every now and then I’m on the receiving end of a sales effort. Recently a seasoned salesperson called on me to talk about a learning management system I was looking into for hosting my company’s eLearning curriculum. I had actually initiated the search, and Tina was following up on my inquiry.

We shook hands and sat down in our conference room. To get things started, Tina opened the meeting with, “Well, thanks for taking the time to meet with me.” I wonder if she saw the wide-eyed look on my face at hearing her opening statement.

Was the meeting – in my mind – over at that point? No. Had Tina lost the sale before the meeting started? Not really. Did I see her as a peer-level, business focused sales professional who was going to help me figure out the fit between my company and hers? Nope!

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me!” Nary a sales meeting takes place without those words being uttered by the seller. They seem innocuous enough; a common courtesy, right? Let’s look a little closer.

First, a clarification that I feel I need to shout from the mountaintops: I am NOT suggesting that sellers never say thank you to a customer for anything. That’s as absurd as thinking that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” 

What I am saying is that thanking customers for their time reinforces ages-old stereotypes of the customer as the “master” and the salesperson as the “servant.” In an odd way, this so-called “master/servant” relationship has evolved as the default form of relationship in selling.

The idea of building relationships is, of course, as old as selling itself. “Relationship selling” has evolved as perhaps the most common notion in the world of sales. But evolution has not been kind to the notion. Too often, “building relationships” has evolved to mean “building rapport,”  “creating friendships” or “being liked.”

But having rapport is not the same as having respect. Being a friend is not the same as being a peer. Being liked is not the same as being valued.

The unfortunate reality is that, because of the way customers have historically viewed salespeople, most customer/seller relationships have evolved, quite unintentionally by salespeople, into various forms of master/servant relationships – friendly or otherwise. 

Evidence of this is found in Tina’s opening. It was clear to me that that is how she starts virtually all of her customer meetings (I’ll bet she doesn’t open internal meetings with co-workers that way).

Here is the bottom line: if, as a sales professional, you are committed to forming “business peer” relationships with customers – and avoiding the master/servant kind – then you have to stop thanking them for their time.

If you agree – and my experience is that people are either in full agreement at this point or think this Stapleton guy “just doesn’t understand my customers” – then here are five phrases to extricate from your vocabulary:

What to say instead? Well, what do you think my reaction would have been if Tina had said, “Hi Jerry, I’ve been looking forward to our meeting; glad we could make our calendars connect!”