Do you teach your team to sell or to lie?

Rob over at Businesspundit had this to say:

Employee: They were looking for the cheapest DVD player we carried.

Manager: But if you sell customers the higher priced model, when they get home they will use all the extra features and they will be so happy!

I wish sales managers would stop doing this. Giving customers what they want is a far more successful strategy than assuming they are idiots, and giving them what you think they should want. Purchasing decisions contain many intangible factors that can only be discovered by asking questions.

Man, Rob is right on with this one.

Why do sales manager feel that they have to come up with a lie in order to help their team sell the product?

The fact is sometimes the product the customer is looking at is the one they need to buy.   Yes, the item that is a few dollars more may have a few more features and maybe a slightly better deal for the customer, but the one the want to buy is the correct one for them.

Sell the product the customer needs and they will come back and buy something else, ore they might recommend their friends to shop with you.    People want a simple solution.    I was in Costco the other day and a customer wanted to cancel their Executive Membership.    No matter how hard the customer service person tried to explain to them that they would lose money by cancelling, the customer just got more and more frustrated.    Sometimes the customer isn't ready to see that they are getting a better deal and you just have to do what the customer wants.     Arguing with a customer to convince them they are making a mistake doesn't get you anything other than an angry customer.

Sell them the product you need to sell them and you stand a good chance of selling a product that frustrates them because it has more features than they need, or one of their friends tells them they wasted their money.