Why Dogs Make Bad Sales Professionals
I have a German Shepherd dog named Fred that my wife swears I love more than her. Not true…on the vast majority of days. Fred has a behavior instinctual to all dogs that can ruin customer relationships. Fred doesn’t need to know how to sell, so his sales skills aren’t important. We, however, are sales professionals and we have to avoid this behavior of his, no matter how tempting.
“Good relationships…are based on honesty.”
What Is Fred Doing That Represents a Poor Sales Tip?
He brown-noses. He can’t help himself. Every living (and sometimes non-living) thing he meets will cause him to position his nose accordingly. It’s a dog law or something. Cesar Millan tells us that this is a handshake in dog language. Personally, I’m sticking with a handshake.
Why Do We Sometimes Use Fred’s Sales Skills With Our Customers?
We’ve all been given the basic sales advice that if we’re really nice to people they will like us more. We want our customers to like us so we brown-nose them. Studies have shown that brown-nosing is actually effective up to a point. Unfortunately, that point varies from one person to the next and we can’t be sure when we’ve doled out too much doggy language. When a customer realizes that we are brown-nosing, they immediately begin to question our sincerity which can cause all kinds of bad fallout.
Fred is Great, but We Don’t Appreciate His Sales Tips
We develop great customers by developing our relationship with them. Good relationships (as I’ve said many times in this sales blog) are based on honesty. Even though brown-nosing might provide us short-term gains, it usually causes the foundation of the customer/sales professional relationship to erode. Don’t fall for its siren song.
Related information: Is Integrity a Sales Strategy?
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Related posts:
- Training Your Customer, Part 1 of 2
- 8 Sales Tips When Meeting A Prospect For The First Time
- Quirky Sales Professionals
- Are Sales Professionals Relevant Anymore?
- How One Entrepreneur Views Sales Professionals
Tags: dysfunctional
We'd like to hear your feedback on this post - feel free to comment below!
August 14th, 2008 at 7:50 am
I loved this post! You are so right about the dog behavorior! Developing relationships takes time, but really pays off when you are always looking for ways to add value to others, not just brown nose:) One thing that I might add that we can learn from our dogs is the loyalty. Whenever one of my customers or business friends has goods or services I am loyal to them. That makes for great networking and growing your business. Thanks for the email subscription to your great blog!
August 20th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Very funny post. I had to respond because my husband Kevin made a video titled: Why Dogs Don’t Make Good Business Partners. http://tinyurl.com/6c9yus (copy and paste)
Same Idea, but not the same content that you had. You Gave great advice about too much brown nosing. If you are too eager, you will appear just like a puppy waiting for a treat.