Trust and Ethics/Understanding Buyers/Customer Retention

Ok here is the last question for you:


Ruth, the southern regional sales representative for Digerby Shoe Corpora*tion, was driving to the office of Ed Brown, the buyer for one of her largest accounts. Ruth knew that Ed would want to discuss sales trends today, and
the subject made Ruth nervous. Ed had 10,000 pairs of the Rocket style on order,
scheduled for delivery over the next six months. Sales of this style were falling off sharply on the east and west coasts, and Ruth recognized that it would not be long before this sales trend hit Ed's market.

Ruth was faced with a dilemma. If she told Ed that sales were falling off on the coasts, he most likely would want to reduce or even cancel his order, and she would not earn her commission money-money that she had been counting on to put a down payment on a new house. On the other hand, if Ruth did not tell Ed, he might suffer great losses. Moreover, if Ed discovered the news of the sales trend on his own, he might never trust Ruth again.

Ruth pulled into the parking lot of Ed's firm and walked into the reception area. Ed, who had come to greet her, asked, "So how is the Rocket selling these days?"

Ruth, struggling for words, responded. .

5. Should Ruth tell Ed the truth?

6. Does Ruth have any other options?

1) He could have gotten to know the buyer's boss some. Find out what he's looking for, what purpose he's looking for from my products, etc.

2) Leave quietly, send a thank you card to the buyer, and boss. Offer to buy the boss dinner at the place of his choice, and discuss what problems he had, specifically.

Should have said... "Here are a few ways that

Wow first post here!!

In order to find out the real answer to this question we need to first understand how motivational Ray is as a speaker and how strong his presentation was..

I have been speaking in public now for 3 years and have always learned to seek first to understand then to be understood.

This reminds me of a time I was speaking at a major real estate shop and I had the same sort of response from there leader. I was about 1 hour into it had the Managing Broker give me the same attitude. He stood up and said “If anyone wants to stick around they can but I am out of here!” so I stopped looked at him and asked “what is it you do not like?” he replied in a gruff voice “These new ideas you have sound good on the other hand we have been doing things the same way now for 20 years why change?” To which I had to respond “You know I generally offer ideas to the manager on how to help change business you on the other hand are the owner of the office and after visiting yesterday I felt as though your whole office needed to change that is why I pulled everyone in! But seeing your attitude and knowing the fact you run the business I can now see where the problem is.” About that time he told me “Well who here agrees” as he turned his back and noticed 100% of the people with there hands in the air!! He quietly sat down and listened for the next two hours.

Anyway long story short they now have the top sales team in there area. And he and I are good friends. So Sometimes people need to hear what they are not expecting!

Thats great man you did great
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Great question. Let me first qualify my answer by saying that I'm not a sales expert. My experience is limited to being forced to learn a thing or two about it in order to sell my services. I've gotten some training and have been educating myself. I'm fortunate enough to have someone I can call and consult with when I blow it.

That said, I have to agree with retiredandbored. I've also been speaking in public for a number of years. Making a presentation and sitting down one-on-one with a client are very different skills. (I'm actually more comfortable with speaking in front of a group, so I've had to work more on my one-on-one skills.)

First, I'd first have to ask myself whether I was the buyer's preferred vendor or just a "throw away" to satisy the company's "multiple bid" policy. If I were a throw away, then I'd have to assume that the buyer was not in my corner providing me with accurate information. But if that were the case, I should have found that out from the get-go, and not invested six months into a bid I had no chance of winning. If I was the preferred vendor, I'd have to ask myself why my presentation was so far off the mark. Did I so totally misunderstand the company's needs, or was the buyer so completely disconnected from the decision-maker as to provide me with such inaccurate information on which to base my presentation?

This is why some salespeople refuse to do business unless they can get directly to the decision-maker. I know of one sales consultant who submitted multiple bids in behalf of a client. In his book, he gave a bad grade to all of them, because not a single one even tried to make an end-run around him to get directly to the decision-maker.

Another thing to consider is the presentation itself. Maybe it really was all crap. Too often, presentations focus on the vendor, its products and supposed benefits, and too little on addressing the buyer's needs, how it solves their problems, and what it will increase or decrease. It's not about "features vs. benefits" we've all heard about. It about increasing or decreasing something that the company wants increased or decreased to produce a result. You must get to the heart of that, and demonstrate how your product/service can help the company accomplish that.

So my final question would be, did the buyer truly know what the decision-maker really wanted to accomplish? The buyer's motivation for wanting the product may be completely different from the decision-maker's, and that may be part of the reason the disconnect occurred.

If I were Ray, I'd be on the phone with the buyer, asking a lot of questions.

Any CEO can be an arse anytime they fell like it. To be honest, I don't think that having gotten to know the CEO in this case would have made much difference. Why, you may ask? In the position that this person holds, he can basically do whatever he wishes whenever he wishes to do it. He is in a position where he does not give a crap and you could have said one word wrong after getting to know him and it would have set him off.

Also if there is something going on that day in that person's life, anything could have set them off. Not all situations call for knowing the CEO. I am talking from having had hubby deal with CEOs where he used to work at. Now mind you! There are few and far between CEOs that are decent human beings. But for the most part, most of them are not.

What he should do now? Find out in a round about manner what the CEO likes and how to present it. Not neccessarily get to know the CEO. Ask around to others who have presented to this person and what caught his attention and kept him sitting there through the whole presentation.

Often times if you enter a back door to a situation, you tend to be more likely to get things going off the first time.