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Perfection remains always out of reach
I read a quote this morning that got me thinking back on my early years in sales. Because I was raised with a strong perfectionism streak, I was always looking for the “best” solution. Naturally everything fell short. It tended to undermine my sales until I learned instead to focus on what the customer wanted and felt he needed. Based on that criterion, I helped customers buy. Doing this, I was always a sales leader despite my perfectionism.
The seed idea that got me thinking this morning was the following quote from Larry Wilson that Tom Justin included in his book, How to Take No for an Answer and Still Succeed: “Everyone is seeking an adequate solution. Not the best one. No one really knows what that is. They want what works.” There is the key point, “They want what works.”
In the 1980s when I was in computer sales, I remember sales representatives I knew complaining about how IBM ruled by fear, uncertainty and doubt or FUD. A person could be selling a superior computer system to a major corporation only to have the IBM rep get to CEO or Chairman of the Board and ask if he really wanted to risk their business by moving away from IBM. What I gleaned from numerous war stories was that IBM was rarely the cutting edge product and maybe even had problems. Their strength lay in their strong customer support.
Obviously in these cases, the top management was less concerned with the benchmarking figures which showed how superior the new product was technologically than with what worked consistently and as dependably as technology at that time allowed.
I still believe in finding the best solution you can. But there comes a point where even I have to say, it works, that’s good enough for now. Tomorrow you may know more but for now it’s more important to help your customers buy what is an adequate solution that works than to suffer the problem or put off the desired results in hopes that waiting will bring a better solution. Besides, if you help them solve their current needs now, your solution may put them in a stronger position to upgrade when a better solution arrives. After all, our PC industry and automotive industries are built on products getting better every year and customers upgrading every few years.
Don’t let perfectionism kill your sales – there is no perfect product. As a heart-centered, soft sell salesperson, you can with integrity help customers buy products that don’t meet your ideal standards provided you tell the truth and avoid lies. Just be certain that what you recommend works because above all else, that is what people want.
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