Awesome advice, Katya!  It’s also one of the differentiators between sales and marketing.  When I worked in automotive sales, my peer review said that I didn’t produce as much as I should because I “cared too much about the customer.”  As a marketer, I found that I can, as the old song goes, “Accentuate the positive.”  Even after the sale, the marketing involved continues to make the customer “feel” good about the purchase that was made to continue the relationship.  The unfortunate part about sales is that, every now and then, the sales role is to make the prospect “feel” uncomfortable with their current way of doing things, since only when the status quo changes is an individual motivated to move the relationship forward to the “committed” stage.

Product pushing has been long dead, and it’s really now about relationships.  With the ocean of resources available online, people already know what they really want – and if they need additional information, a click on the PC is all they have to do.  Armed with enough information, they won’t go to just any salesperson.  They’ll go to a seller who they know they can trust. And that goes back again to the question of relationship.

Thank you for this post!  It is energizing and inspiring to be involved in the business of caring, the only way to produce effectively, profit or non-profit…everyone is held in the palm of ethical business manners.  Everyone matters!  The customer will return again and again when they know that you know they care!