Shrewd salespeople don’t play by rules but still clinch deals

Sometimes bending rules helps a salesperson to be successful. Fotosearch 

By JOHN KAGECHE

Progressive salespeople don’t acquiesce to authority and cut corners in the field that would make the employer cringe.

When a sale is brought to the office for processing, it is assumed that what the company theory says should happen in the field, did.

But the progressive salesman is not the king of wishful thinking; he learnt long ago that being a salesman is akin to being a soldier.

Whereas months of training and anticipating every conceivable scenario is important, following the model exercise when under heavy gunfire in the field is suicidal.

Consider the mild case of the bank sales rep. The askari manning the gate gets him to jump the queue often because the salesman buys him lunch and once gave him a T-shirt branded with the bank’s logo.

Precious time

He completes the account opening form in the women’s washroom because it’s the only place the female prospect can be free from her boss’ eye during working hours.

If, for the account to be opened, the employee must write to the employer requesting for the letter confirming employment, the progressive salesperson will have standard copies of the drafted letter as part of his arsenal with gaps for name and employee number which, once obtained, he will input and give the employee to sign.

Unlike those doing as they are told, he will not wait for the employee to do it but will personally take the request to the secretary in HR, who drafts letters, and cajole her to work on it urgently.

If ID and pay slip copies are needed, while the rest dutifully await the prospect to make the copies himself (and in the process wasting precious time), the progressive salesperson long ago developed a rapport with the person manning the photocopier and (again) his unauthorised copies take precedence over authorised company work.

While the bank insists that all documentation must be in order before an account is opened, the salesperson gets all the documentation and has account opened but not necessarily in that order.

The order is dependent on the situation at hand. Like a soldier, he adapts to the situation at hand. If the situation needed the prospect to have the bank account before payroll closed and the paper work was incomplete but forth coming, then the account opening takes precedence over paperwork.

He is able to bend (he doesn’t see it as breaking) all these rules because he has invested in relationships that see him through them.

These actions gall many who do not understand his world — they see the actions as indiscipline; yet when the chips fall, these spectators become like passengers who may have complained about the matatu they were in cutting corners but now jubilate that they successfully beat the traffic and arrived at work in time.

The foregoing does not imply carelessness on recklessness on the part of the progressive salesperson, far from it. One understands the gravity of one’s responsibility.