Something different has just happened to my blog! This latest post is not actually from me. It is from Sue Windley. Recently, Emily Cagle and Adam Vincenzini came up with the fabulous idea of #BeMyGuest. Click on the link for more info but in short it is a campaign for mutual blogging that allows bloggers to share their content with different audiences. I really like this idea and am delighted that Sue is my first ever guest blogger. Please read on and enjoy the work of Sue…
As part of #BeMyGuest month, I am delighted to have the opportunity to provide a guest blog for Robert Pickstone, who requested a story from my sales and marketing career. So here is how I learned my most important lesson about selling. And yes, it is true!
What a Tramp taught me about Selling!
Early in my sales and marketing career, I sold cars. The hard way. Commission only. An English woman selling cars in Scotland!
I was taught the technicalities of selling by men whose lives had been spent in the motor trade. But the most important lesson I ever learned about selling was taught to me by a tramp on a wet Christmas Eve.
The only people in the showroom are the 4 other salesmen and me – all looking forlornly out the window, thinking what a waste of time – no one will buy a car on Christmas Eve when it’s raining.
An old man, dressed in a dirty mac, tied up with string, walks into showroom. The other four scarper, leaving me muttering under my breath that I wasn’t quick enough to disappear with them. The tramp comes across to say hello. What the heck, it’s Christmas, why not spread some good cheer around and just take the time to have a conversation with another human being. So I spend 10 minutes talking about trivialities with a dirty, smelly stranger who obviously just wants to get out of the rain.
Then he says “I want to buy a car”. Oh no – a tramp who’s mentally unstable too! Buy I play along, so we discuss what type of car he would like. I even showed him the cars in the showroom, making sure he doesn’t get in them and get the seats dirty. I can even hear my 4 “colleagues” sniggering as they hide behind the one-way window in the service area.
Then “my” tramp picks a car – a demonstrator. And he wants a test drive. Well okay – let me get the seat protectors (sheets of plastic used by mechanics to avoid getting oil on customers’ car-seats). And I take him for a drive around the East Lothian countryside, all the while worrying that a real buyer might be walking into the showroom.
As we drive back into the garage, he says he likes the car and wants to buy it. “Can I drive it away today?” he asks. Yeah right, I thought – you won’t get finance. “Och hen, I dinna want finance. I want to trade in my old car. Look it’s over there.”
And I looked at his car – a one year old Nissan Micra. All he had wanted to do was trade up to a car with more doors. He gave me the logbook and his insurance – yes, it’s really his. Next hurdle – I price his trade-in and there’s a £2000 difference. “Nae worries, hen. I’ve got some notes in my pocket – not sure how much tho’. Will ya count it fer me?” and he hands me a wad of cash which turned out to be £3000.
I was the only sales person on that Christmas Eve to sell a car in the whole franchise of 15 garages. And yes, he did drive it away the same day. And the best bit of all. As he drove away: “You know hen – this was the 7th garage I’ve been to today and you’re the only person who came and said hello to me. Thank ye.”
It’s easy to make our minds up about other people without knowing anything about them. Now I never prejudge people as I know we are all unique, complete with quirks and foibles! Like the tramp, all we want is someone to notice us and say hello!
Sue Windley is the Marketing Director of the Pragmatic Performance Group, a business acceleration consultancy that supports small and medium-sized enterprises in the south west of England. She is active on Twitter as @DangerousMkting, which is also the name of her blog where you can find all sorts of news and views on all aspects of marketing.
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