Politicians are the WORST kind of Sales People but they get my RESPECT!

Why are they the worst? One word people, TRUST!

I talk about ‘trust’ in my sales training sessions a lot, as without trust you can’t possibly hope to influence people. How do you win peoples’ trust? Quite simply, you say you are going to do something and by when, then you DO what you said what you would do, by when you said you would do it!

How do you lose trust? You say you are going to do one thing and then do something else! You never reply to questions with a straight answer. You over promise and under deliver. You are all over us during the ‘sale’ but then never available afterwards. You work for one company (and tell us it’s the best thing since sliced bread), then jump ship to a competitor and tell us we should move our allegiance too! When things go wrong it’s never your fault.

We see through these sales people just like we see through some politicians and when we do we slam the door (both physically and proverbially) in their faces.

It’s very easy to criticise politicians but as fellow ‘professional influencers’ they also deserve our respect. Here’s why?

·     Imagine a sales role where every few years your customers got a vote on whether you should keep your job!

·     If you think you need resilience for a career in sales, try politics.

·     Every word you say and everything you do (even privately) is under constant scrutiny by political hacks looking for a story.

·     As we saw less than one year ago with the horrific and cruel murder of Batley & Spen MP, Jo Cox, serving in public office makes you a potential target for assassination.

·     Imagine all YOUR expense claims being checked and cross checked forensically and then made public! ;-)

·     I also hear some are pretty awesome at handling objections!

Be sure to look out for examples of the good, the bad and the downright ugly of ‘political selling’ over the next few weeks. Thankfully the campaign window is quite short for this particular election and will soon be over. Just like in sales, some will win and some will lose. 

Thank you for reading!

Stuart Allen ~ MD of The Sales Performance Company Ltd

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