Are Minorities Ruling Your Sales Decisions?
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) recently banned radio stations from playing “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits after it received a SINGLE complaint from a ‘minority group about the use of the word ‘faggot’ in the song. People who are familiar with the song know that it was inspired when Mark Knopfler overheard a conversation between two blue collar people in an appliance store as they watched a music video and one of them used the word ‘faggot’ to describe the musician. This song has been played tens of thousands of times in Canada since it was released in 1985 but one person has effectively prevented it from being aired again. Unfortunately, this type of knee-jerk reaction is common.
When I first started writing my newsletter more than eight years ago, I once mentioned a particular company in a negative way and immediately received backlash from ONE subscriber who lambasted me for mentioning the company’s name. Since then I have been cautious how I present information in my newsletter and blog. Here’s how this reaction by a few people affects your sales decisions.
• One prospect expresses concern about your price and you immediately think that price is the sole reason people make buying decisions. Or, you believe that ALL of your competitors are cheaper and that your company is pricing itself out of the market.
• One customer says they are dissatisfied with your product and you instantly start to wonder if other customer’s feel the same way. As a result, you begin to lose faith in the value of your products and services.
• One prospect hangs up after you make a cold call and you automatically believe that every person you call will behave in the same manner. This causes you to rethink the value of cold calling and you scale back your efforts to connect with people using this approach.
• You try a new approach with an existing customer or new prospect and it backfires so you think, “That doesn’t work” and decide to stick to your standard approach even though it doesn’t seem to working as effectively as it used to.
• Your company introduces a new product and the top sales person says, “Our customers will never buy this” so you decide you won’t present or mention it to your customers.
• A coworker attempted to expand his sales by approaching a new channel and was met with resistance so you decide to keep selling to your existing accounts and customers even though you think a new channel would benefit from your offering.
• Your idea to improve one of your company’s products or services is rejected so you vow to stick with the status quo and keep new ideas and suggestions to yourself.
The most successful sales people don’t allow a small group of people determine how they do business. Not everyone is going to agree with your approach, your ideas, your solutions or how you do business.
That’s okay. Your goal is to focus on the majority. Stop allowing a small percentage of people to dictate and influence your results. Focus on the majority, not the minority.
