This week, having travelled several thousand miles to specifically audit the precision fabrication supplier, I really saw the value in great salesmanship. In this scenario, I was the buyer and the auditor of their business.

The first company I visited were very impressive as were the General Manager’s technical knowledge. This gave me great confidence and comfort that they would deliver a quality product due to his salesmanship: he was confident, professional and enthusiastic in selling his company to me and I was actually proud of how good a job he did.

The second company really interacted as a technical sales team and coordinated beautifully. I was not disappointed when I visited the factory itself as they really take care of their customers and their products. They open collaborated with me to try and find alternative solutions to meet the target price. All of these technical sales teams actually made the decision process easy for me. It’s true that the sales person is such an important role in demonstrating the value and benefits their company can offer.

However, in the third company, the strong interest and technical ability was there, however, their facility did not inspire confidence that they would have structured process to deliver consistent quality. They simply don’t know that orderliness and cleanliness matters in the selling process.

It was interesting to note, I had between 15 and 20 touch points with the sales people before I even met them, and they were all steps in the sales process for both me and them. Every one of those steps were necessary. Nowadays, sales is more important than ever and it was really interesting to see it from the other side.

Kieron | CEO of Dynamic Innovations