by Adhir Uscátegui
The history of selling in security is too broad to share it fully in an article as it deserves. Starting the analysis, so that everyone can draw their best conclusions, we can express that the results obtained through it is only "a matter of attitude".
While we know that we depend on the fruits it provides to survive and evolve, reinvesting, expanding, growing in our security industry, etc., we can adopt or assume a passive and even derogatory attitude regarding its execution, as reflected through many customers dissatisfied by the attention received when they simply needed to satisfy a need or solve a problem and had to suffer these experiences.
Perhaps it is due to our Latin idiosyncrasy or to the historical heritage received where the ease of believing that "we know a lot about sales" predominates, but when the results are not obtained in sufficient quality and quantity, it shows us the mistake that is made in supporting this false and erroneous belief.
When a tooth or back hurts, the first thing we manage is to mitigate the pain without making a clear diagnosis of its origin. We went to the nearest pharmacy and requested a painkiller to mitigate the discomfort.
Cultural legacy
In such cases, what should be done if you want to act efficiently, is simply to resort to the specialist (dentist or traumatologist, respectively), who after an objective diagnosis can determine the appropriate treatment to reverse the reason for the ailment. This avoids taking risks to our health by improvisations, in our case to a security advisor.
Over more than two decades I have been able to personally verify, exercising it and contributing to carry it out in many companies of distribution of security products that did not find a certain direction for their management, which can attest that their existence produces consistent results and provide growth and evolution of the business, as long as it continues along this path.
Our personal development in the social field where we grew up and evolved leads us permanently to accept certain models, examples, norms and rules that we consider permanent and difficult to modify called "paradigms".
This psycho-social and cultural phenomenon has different consequences since assuming it as such limits our evolution in the field in which it has been established.
Knowing it can be very illustrative to clarify any panorama in the future for the improvement in its daily exercise in all areas of application.
Among the most generalized and common paradigms in sales within our culture and that affect our sales representatives, we can point out the following:
• It is very easy to sell: it dazzles every observer when a specialist in each activity skillfully exercises his skills and achieves his task in a seemingly easy way.
The Latin error consists of his ability to "improvise" believing that it is easy to try to reproduce his acts to achieve the same thing just by imitating him. Examples of this occur when we observe how simple it seems to be to score a goal in football from the stands, pilot an airplane, extract a tooth, repair an electrical connection, etc.
However, we know that in order to do it effectively and skillfully, it is necessary to learn to do it, experiment, practice and correct the errors that arise in every evolutionary learning process.
When this paradigm is present in managers, entrepreneurs, security professionals who unsuccessfully try to achieve sales results periodically, for the mere fact of not knowing the key foundations of such a vital issue for their business or activity, they daily make decisions with shortcomings that harm their activity more than they can assume.
Among these decisions we can point out the incorporation of representatives in our industry that are inappropriate, to put them in function with essential deficiencies that will threaten the image of the company, its products and brands, in addition to not achieving periodic goals in terms of results.
• Selling is synonymous with "deception": it is undeniable the real effect that a profession exercised in an improvised way, so widespread and for so many years until today, can cause in your image.
Professional selling, which is based on a consultative management when applying professional sales techniques, manages to obtain the results as a result of an inductive action with each potential buyer so that they make their best purchase decisions and with total satisfaction.
• Is it born or is it done?: the mere existence of this paradigm highlights the ignorance about the professionalized management of selling.
Like any profession, it is necessary to desire to exercise it, to possess qualities for the type of offer to be sold, but fundamentally to learn to exercise it efficiently to eliminate all improvisation and deficiencies (malpractice) that harm the image of the goods, services, brands and companies that are represented.
The incorporation of sellers, only with a lot of experience.
The most interesting thing is that this paradigm favors the incorporation of representatives with a lot of experience but also with vices that cannot be filtered because they lack a training process that detects them and replaces them with the respective corrections, generating damage to the image of the company, brands, products or services that are detected when it is already late to reverse.
Conclusions
Those who break a paradigm are called "pioneers", since backed by their firm beliefs contrary to existing paradigms they create a new state of affairs, references or limits thus creating new paradigms.
Their willingness and determination to break them and the achievements obtained by their successful actions make them enjoy the benefits that correspond to the pioneer on their own merit. Even knowing that these new paradigms will be imitated by others and to the point of being supplanted by new paradigms in the future.
Therefore, in the case of the sale it is not a question of inventing new theories but of incorporating the key concepts and foundations to incorporate corrections and improvements to what is currently being done so that a result is achieved in the terms described above.
With this, it will be possible to achieve the coveted differentiation of the offer itself in the security market that is increasingly competitive, the consistency in the periodic achievement of growing sales results of products and projects, reserved only for pioneers who wish to break these or other paradigms, thus becoming successful security sales consultants.
Happy sales!
*If you have concerns about it you can contact the author by writing to the email [email protected]
