What has happened in the world of security sales that questions the assumptions, rules and practices that worked over the past few years and that we therefore automatically took for granted?
By Adhir Uscátegui
Concepts such as customer orientation, quality service and need for abundant information, are part of the current discourse on business and security trade. The idea that profit comes first has been called into question; the widespread sales techniques that left the customer aside are being archived; the old recommendation to be kind to the customer and then manipulate or sell him under pressure is being abandoned. The attitude of the security salesman is different today; puts the customer ahead to meet their requirements: needs and expectations. This requires the sales executive in our industry to upgrade their team, applying innovation to the sales process they follow.
A particular change has emerged in the industry, in the economy, electronic security products, society, administration, management and sales direction: the emergence of information and service as key resources to succeed in business activity and as the skeleton of the sales team organization. Resource is input or input that a process needs to then transform it into a product or output (satisfaction of customer needs). The information must be captured, processed and interpreted; the service, you have to know how to provide it in a way that adds value for the client.
The sales executive can be either master of the tools he learns, or his servant. He will be master if he knows how to "handle" them, "manipulate them"; but if he regards them as dogmas or mechanical recipes, he will be his slave. The point is that the sales executive understands what sales work consists of today, and what role information and service play in it.
Until a few years ago, most sales managers and executives did more or less the same thing their predecessors had done, and more or less in the same way; that is, they did management. If the previous executive had succeeded with a certain way of doing things, why should they be changed?, it was said and argued; a continuity was practiced that in the end was harmful to the sales team and the security company
Today, sales managers and executives will have to do very different things than they did before. And they will do them in even more different ways; that is, they will have to steer towards a future that does not yet exist. The question is, then, what to do again in the sales activity?, and, in what way to do it to differentiate ourselves from the competition?
Imagine that a sales executive, "aware" of all this, initiates a training program, but only for his salespeople; he does not participate because he considers that "he already knows all that". To say that it is known and not applied, means that it was never learned, but memorized. There is no other way to put yourself at the forefront of the team to lead it than, preaching by example, with practice, using the same language.
Today there is a very effective method of selling security, which is very different than before.
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