Death of the Word "Salesman" - continued

Just when did the word "salesman" leave our vocabulary.  It probably started when service was replaced for price. As businesses were forced to cut costs to continue to be price competitive, even basic services were eliminated.  Another possible reason was that businesses stopped valuing the higher cost of providing service.

Today,  "Directors and Vice Presidents " instead of "salesman" make presentations that include a lot of visual support. Powerpoint presentations, corporate brochures and materials supporting national and international corporate identity have replaced  the simple approach of identifying how a client will be "sold" through the service that would be provided directly to the client.

Paul Simard of Codman TCN in Boston told me a story of how he recently won a significant amount of business where several national companies were vying for the same account. All of the other firms showed up with sophisticated PowerPoint presentations, company brochures, etc. Paul showed up with out anything but himself.

He verbally described who he was, what services he could provide and set forth to describe examples of other situations similar to this client's needs that he was successful in serving. He also verbally gave names of people that they could call that would recommend his services.

The power of the sale is not the power of a large corporate structure that a salesman may be part of. The power of the sale and the presentation is that salesperson and how he can address a need.  It does not make a difference if you are a "one man office" or tied to a multi-national company. The sales process begins and ends with the relationship between one salesman and his client.

Large real estate firms such as CB Richard Ellis and Grubb and Ellis are fighting for their corporate lives. They have consistently lost money in the best of times and now in a most uncertain time in real estate. They are consistently trying to re-identify and re-position themselves to find a market niche that would create profitability. The problem with these firms is that they are large corporations in the business of salesmanship. They spend so much time branding corporate image (at a high financial cost) creating layers of bureaucratic responsibility and spend no time developing the art or focusing on the individual sale.

My network affiliation, TCN Worldwide, consists of individual firms throughout the world that have chosen to remain independent for this very reason. Rather than create layers of bureaucracy, TCN focuses on creating relationships that are served by one broker in one market and another broker in another market. It works, because each broker recognizes the importance of making sure the client is serviced properly. If not, the business could be lost. Simple belief, but few corporate firms follow this practice.

The final nail in the coffin of the word "salesman" occurred when businesses decided to become the "end all" instead of the solution to a specific need. Today, it is very difficult to separate a true commercial real estate firm specializing in leasing office space and a commercial real estate firm that also does accounting. Across America, firms have decided to enter areas of business that they do not have any expertise in. But because it is similar to their business model, or because they have access to clients that they could sell other services to that are somewhat related, they decide to enter that business.

What happens is that not only does the level of service drop, but the entire section of business suffers because traditional businesses are forced to reduce services to compete on price. In the end, salesmanship dedicated to service is replaced in favor of price and the "true salesman" is replaced by people calling themselves  "Directors, Vice Presidents and Team Coordinators".