Though I am sure that bigotry does exist in every profession, my experience leads me to believe that it is much less prominent in the sales profession. Green, the color of money, is the primary color concerning most salespeople. As we look through Paul’s treatise on transformation in Colossians 3, we learn that Paul warns us about bringing our old prejudices into our new faith.
Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
What Does a Buyer Look Like
While bigotry isn’t as prevalent in the selling profession, many salespeople believe that they can identify by outward appearance you can buy from them and can’t. This is a dangerous precedent to set in one’s sales career, and to fight against it; he must fight against his own human nature.
Our marvelous brains are designed to categorize information and process it quickly. At the most fundamental level, our brains are seeking danger and things that will harm us. Part of the process of allowing information to pass through the danger filter is the quick determination by our primal brain of whether the information is recognized. If the new data is recognized and deemed not a threat, then our secondary brain quickly attempts to access historical information based on the identification. It is not until all of that is done before our third thinking brain processes the information. Tens of thousands of times every day.
Is Your Customer Ready, Willing, and Able
Three things must exist with any buyer before they are willing to make a purchase. First, a person must be ready to purchase. This is a most deceiving stage, even for the customer, and we will discuss this stage more in later blog posts. For now, think of readiness as being the right time and place.
Secondly, a customer must be willing. I meet many salespeople who are ready to make a change in their careers. They know that where they are now is not where they want to be. They know that they have the ability to make much more money than they are making. The problem is, they are unwilling to do the things necessary to make the change. The pain of failure has not yet grown great enough to compel them to take action.
Lastly, the customer must be able. He can be ready and willing to buy from me, but if he does not have the money or credit required to afford my product, his readiness and willingness don’t matter at the time. The ability to buy is where many salespeople fall by the wayside.
Old prejudices arise in almost every salesperson. They are filtering brains unconsciously began to make assumptions about people based on many things that have no bearing whatsoever on whether a person has the ability to purchase a product. This is where I think Paul’s admonishment in verse 11 comes into play most heavily.
Relational vs Transactional Selling
One of my favorite pastors of all time, Dr. Adrian Rogers, once said in the sermon, “the difference between love and lust is that love is interested in what it can give, but lust is interested in what it can get.” That is about the best definition I’ve ever heard. I talked to my daughters all the time along with reading them 1 Corinthians 13.
These unconscious prejudices that fool our brains into thinking that we can tell who has the ability to purchase our products can very easily turn us into salespeople who lust for customers instead of loving them. When this happens, salespeople become transactional instead of relational. Salespeople stop trying to solve problems and build ongoing relationships with customers. They start seeing people with dollar signs and become predators. Their customers become prey, and accordingly, flea at first sight of their predator.
Conclusion
One of the most difficult things to do in life is to rid ourselves of prejudices. Many people see prejudice as a heart condition, but it is more ingrained in our operating system. Most people don’t even realize they have filtering processes at all. The next time you are on the sales floor or making sales calls, try to identify when you are making assumptions about the person you are speaking with. These assumptions happen so quickly we barely even recognize them. It requires us to slow down and to think about each action we take. That’s good practice anyway. Ask season salespeople to tell you about times when a person made a huge purchase order from them who they initially believed was as poor as a church mouse. All of us have those stories if we have been in the business long enough. Hopefully, we’ve learned from those stories and ridden ourselves of our prejudices.
