Welcome to Wisdom Selling Solutions

So it is Christmas shopping time.  I have enjoyed being with my wife as we have gone from store to store looking for presents for our kids.  she has set a budget for each child and I am very busy trying to overspend for each one. It is so easy to do, since they want so many electronic gadgets, each of which is more expensive than the old dolls and race cars we used to buy.

I have noticed a behavior in my wife that I believe is quite common among consumers, and which I believe is a teachable moment for all of us in sales.  She will go through a number of stores and not buy from any of them.  she will look at the items they have, then come home and get on the web.  she will scour the Wal-mart, Amazon and Best Buy sites, for example.  she will put items into her favorite search engines, looking for the best deal. 

She does not care at all who she buys from.  She just has a budget and wants to get as much as she can for it.  The more she saves, the more presents each child gets to open.  Her value is in the outcome of the search, not the products themselves.  She wants to delight her customers, and saving money, or even settling for different gifts than they said in order to have more are all on the table.

Hey, does it really matter which approach to a pitching machine we take?  Does it really matter which restaurant gift card we buy?  Does it really matter the brand of punching bag?  Not to her it doesn't.  Her satisfaction is in the deal.  She is looking for savings, for coupons, for unbranded lookalikes.  She knows the web is her friend.  There are lots of options out there, she just needs to ask the right questions.  She can learn the questions to ask merely by trolling through the stores, or even more efficiently, through the Sunday sale papers.

So we may go into a store, talk to the store salesperson for five or ten minutes, and they get nothing out of it.  Is that unfair, or just the new reality?  Is there any opportunity for that salesperson to make a sale?   What about the profit lost by the store for the time that associate is engaged with my wife, who ends up buying nothing?  Is she going to put this company out of business?  Are there enough people like her to scare these stores about the future?

Very possibly the process of answering to the questions above will lead some companies to go out of business, or abdicate the selling process, giving away their value to an on-line or aggregated substitute who sells well but has no particular supplier loyalty.

My assertion is that there is a better way.  This way is a path of wisdom, not of skill.  Not every person who needs to sell for a company has particular sales skills.  However, everyone has the possibility to be wise. That is why Wisdom Selling Solutions exist.  Wisdom is the effective application of knowledge.  We can all develop this through discipline and effort.  We just need direction, sources for knowledge, mentoring and accountability.

I have already talked to some who start to debate the value of this approach, until we get to the issues of trust and transparency.  When we see how important trust is in developing a long term WIN, then we can see how the enterprise can assist the sales process through transparency.

If Kelly had trusted the store she was in to have her best interests at heart, be willing to understand her buying motives, and sit on the same side of the table as her, they may have had a WIN together.  At the least, this would have become her greatest possibility for a future purchase.  Remember in the movie MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET how Santa Claus was working for Macy's, but recommended a customer go to their hated competition Gimbles for a better deal on a product?  Macy's management was livid, but the customers were so happy they went on television to brag about Macy's and how they would be back to buy from them in the future.  Do you think the Macy's management took advantage of this?  Of course. In the long term it was a win.

Let's WIN.