
Optometry staff that fail to help clients, are those that fear or love ‘being pushy’!
The people that fear being pushy in business are famous for saying ‘will there be anything else?’, to which the usual customer reply of course is ‘well there could be, yes; I’ve got lots of time to kill so why don’t you tell me all about other ideas that could enrich my buying experience today’…not!
This unsuccessful breed of staff, by any title, see themselves as ‘pleasers’; and indeed they do please the buyer… by not applying undue pressure and by getting the transaction over and done with very quickly.
However, in the process of pleasing the buyer they can also displease the person, remembering that all ‘buyers’ are people, and every person loves to receive ideas that they hadn’t thought of. This is because although buyers – or customers – might know what they want, they rarely know what they need… to achieve the best result.
…although buyers – or customers – might know what they want, they rarely know what they need… to achieve the best result
What Pleasers Please
There are three potential factors that can dissuade Optometry staff from wanting to ‘please people’:
- They are the wrong people for the job! Whether we like it or not, not everyone is suited to ‘the full service’ task of pleasing the customer and then pleasing the person. Large numbers of people see their service role as transacting, rather than transcending… and of course transcending means to ‘go beyond’, or ‘to exceed’, or ‘to surpass’. So, ‘pleasers’ prevent sales, rather than promote sales. In my first senior management role I soon discovered that all of my state managers were completely wrong for their leadership duties, and so I organised for them all to leave… and then I hired people who were right for leading our sales teams, as opposed to ‘managing’ them (sales people must be taught to manage themselves!).
Don’t forget that you can’t do the right thing with the wrong people.
- They are sick of being sold to in distasteful ways when they are customers, and so they don’t want to perpetuate the problem! Feeble forms of selling take place everywhere, such as spam, junk mail, tele-marketing of the worst kind, most TV and magazine ads, etc. Since training for most sales people is non-existent, the great majority are taught by the worst possible selling practitioners, rather than by the best!
- They relate selling to ‘budget achievement’, far more than they do to ‘helping people’! Everyone in sales should know about their own and their team’s budget (hence the earlier point about being ‘self-managers’), but there is a massive difference between business goals and business purpose. The purpose is ‘to please people’ and the goal is to ‘make money’, but since the money only ever comes from people… purpose must always prevail over budget.
Con vs Consult
The people that love being pushy are also the wrong types to please people, and in fact when they do occasionally make a higher sale they usually lose the customer at the same time. To ‘consult’ means to advise and help someone, while to ‘con’ involves the act of persuading somebody for your own good and not theirs. This boorish breed think of themselves as being superior to customers, however they fail to realise that no matter how many words they use when selling, the customer needs to use only one word to repel them.
Professionals Are Winners
So, there are three types of people when it comes to selling in a professional manner: pleasers, pushers and professionals. The third breed in selling, the professionals are a) the right people for the job, and b) they are directed and trained to perform their service and selling roles very well. They listen to what customers want, ask questions to find personal needs… and then outline and recommend the best solution.
Professionals don’t just dream of winning, they aspire to be winners in the true sense of the word, meaning that they accept the need to operate by very high standards… so that they transact and transcend. In the final analysis, high-level service can only be provided by high quality people, and so every individual in business and every organisation must pursue the professional path.
The definition of the word winning is ‘progress through struggle’, and so professionalism is the toughest direction to take… but the rewards of patient/customer satisfaction and sales success make it the only worthwhile choice.
The paths of pleasing or pushing are not tough, they are just rough… with an awful journey and an even worse destination. Work only works well with professionals!
John Lees is a sales and marketing specialist, operating as a professional speaker, trainer, consultant and business coach. He is the author of 11 books on business development. W: www.johnlees.com.au