What would you buy?

It was a hot day; I had just finished walking the customer through our good, better, best line of flatdeck trailers. He seemed impressed by a couple of the units in fact he commented “I am not sure what I want now….what would you buy?”. 

I thought about it briefly and then gave him an honest answer. In the last several weeks I have covered for trailer sales staff two days. Both days were holidays on which we were short staffed and I drew the short straw, hence I was covering. That said, I enjoy interaction with customers and I do not get to do direct selling very often anymore. The reasons I enjoy the interaction are far removed from just making sales. So I reflected on why I like jumping in on the sales process from time to time and wanted to share.

1) I like to reinforce customer service. When I cover for sales staff, I do not ever try to do a hard close to sell a trailer. My goal is to help the customer in their purchase decision, even if it means my organization cannot help them. At Flaman the number one goal is Customer Service. As a leader in the organization it is my job to live that goal, so providing customer service is one of my main motivations. Interacting with the customers helps me to understand what our sales team has as obstacles for providing customer service.

2) I like testing our product brands. When I am qualifying what a customer needs I walk them through our good, better, best offering and that often means showcasing different brands. I make a lot of buying decisions for the division on paper. That’s fine but what I believe is correct or what I think is best for the customer could be very offside. So taking the opportunity to showcase the brands lets me learn how the customer feels about the different products and the features and benefits, as opposed to what I think they feel.

3) I like interaction with our customers. As a VP of the company you can get distanced from the front lines, as a result you are removed from the stuff that matters: delivering value to our customers. Seems like a trite statement to make, but getting out in the yard is a true litmus test. I come back from every customer interaction with ideas of what we can do better.

4) I like to sharpen the saw. I used to do a lot of direct selling. I still teach selling techniques to new members of the sales team. That said the saw gets rusty without use. Getting out to the yard helps sharpen the skills for the next time I teach trailer sales techniques.

5) I like to listen and learn. Collecting marketing data on customers is great, interpreting the data is great, but talking one on one with the customers as to how they found out about our brand or what brought them to our yard….priceless.

6) I like honestly answering the question: What would you buy? The truth of the matter is that there currently is not a product brand in our yard that I wouldn’t buy. When I order product I focus on creating value for the customer. Sometimes I have to admit product has come in from a manufacturer that I would not buy. We discount it, tell the buyer why we are discounting the product, take our lumps, get rid of it and never buy it again. So when the customer asked me “what would you buy?” I was happy to say any of the three I have shown you but here are different reasons/circumstances why I would buy each one. The customer then made his decision and was the happy owner of a new Trailtech L270 Tilt.

This post has no digital marketing insights, but sometimes you need to get back to basics in order to understand what to do next in the new world of marketing. The purpose of marketing is to create sales opportunities and I believe you cannot get a more clear understanding of your customers buying decisions than actual interactions on the sales floor. It is fine to pontificate and brain storm about purchasing behavior and how to create leads in a board room, but sometimes getting dirty in the yard is the best marketing research you can do.