You’re just a peddler

By Mark LaRosa on May 21st, 2009

I was having a great discussion with a very successful entrepreneur yesterday, and as we were talking about articles he had read on this blog and with the things that I’ve been doing at QuotaCrush, he said to me,

“Mark, all this stuff you talk about is great.  Its the right message, and the right way to sell and think about sales.  However, no matter how much you talk about partnership, and solution selling – remember that most of the world still thinks of you simply as a peddler.”

How true that statement is.  The first impression that most people will have from you in the cold call, at trade shows, or wherever you meet them, will be that you are a salesperson and that you are trying to sell them something.  Therefore, that is why we need to work hard to make sure that our prospects understand that we ARE about finding the right solution that we ARE going to sell them something they need – and that we aren’t trying to just sell them something just to make a commission.

Establishing trust with your prospects is key to crushing quota.