Do Your Salespeople Build or Lose Credibility?

I received an email from the president of a telemarketing service in which he talked about:

• the history of his firm
• the success of his firm
• the effectiveness of his firm’s telemarketers at getting appointments with senior leaders
• the cost-effectiveness of his service
• the training of his people
• the ability to customize their scripts to our offering
• the certainty he had that this would work for us
• his ability to prove that they could add value to our ability to meet with senior leaders.

Wow.  How impressive.  Only two questions came to mind:

1. How did he know he could be so successful in marketing our services to our market?
2. If they were so good at calling senior leaders to generate interest and schedule appointments, and he could prove it, why didn’t he call instead of using email?

In a training session I delivered this week, one well-meaning salesperson said he had a quick point and went on to talk for quite a while before I pointed out that this wasn’t a quick point.

Your salespeople lose all credibility when their actions and behavior are not consistent with their claims.

Think about your salespeople for a moment.  Are they consistent (actions support words and vice versa) with you?  If you find inconsistencies with any of them, the inconsistencies with their prospects, customers and clients are likely to be even more severe.