The best salespeople are most Aware.
Sitting in a coffee shop in Tunbridge Wells the other day my wife and I watched a young man selling The Big Issue on the street corner opposite (outside The Body Shop if you know the place). Or more accurately perhaps, he was trying to sell The Big Issue. In spite of quite a lot of effort on his part we didn’t see him sell one copy in 20 minutes. He tried very hard to get some form of engagement, in the few seconds that pedestrians saw him in front of them, but without any success. He was relying a lot on a welcoming, friendly smile as, I subsequently found out, English wasn’t his first language. I became interested enough to count the foot-flow on the pavement he was standing on and it was a very busy day with 48 people per minute walking by. We watched as nearly 1000 people walked past and no one bought. It got me wondering what was going on and what lessons we could all learn from his misfortune.
The first question I had was what exactly was he selling? What were the benefits that a purchaser received? I’ve since done a little online research and I don’t seem to be too unusual in occasionally buying The Big Issue in order to feel like I have helped someone out, someone less fortunate than myself; I don’t think I have ever read it. So, really, buying The Big Issue is a charitable transaction for the most part; this young man was providing an opportunity for people to be publically benevolent. But, no one was taking him up on his offer.
He was standing on a bit of pavement that was very narrow, due to roadworks, and so he was actually a human obstacle in peoples’ paths, in the middle of the flow, rather than a passive and discretionary point of interest on their journeys. I began to speculate that creating an abrupt barrier like this was not likely to produce the best instinctive response in his potential client base. The easiest thing to do, with no time to think, was just to rush by. He might have had more success if he had given people both a little more time to consider just how benevolent they were feeling that day and enough space to avoid stimulating a flight response in them by baring their way.
Today, we are all a lot more cynical about charitable giving than I remember in my youth. This is particularly so on our apparently dying High Streets where “chuggers”, buskers and others asking us for money in one form or another, seem to thrive. However, people still manage to sell in this tough environment and the ones who are most successful are the ones who are most empathetic. (It’s what good Estate Agents excel at and why we choose one over the other to sell our homes in this poorly differentiated sector.) They also understand that trying to sell to people who don’t want to buy from you is a very inefficient and wasteful activity. People who are good at selling are often just more aware than others. You might say that Awareness is the big issue in selling.
To my mind, this young man was failing on both counts: he didn’t understand the feelings of his prospects, as they tried to swerve around him on the pavement; and he didn’t learn from his lack of success and try something else. My wife and I may not have helped though; rather than tell him what I thought could help his business, we felt so sorry for him that we walked around the roadworks in order to buy a copy of The Big Issue from him: he seemed relieved that finally his charming smile had paid off and we felt we had helped him out, a bit. I’m not sure which of us was the most misguided.
Mark
