Fraud alert

When dealing with salespeople, who can you really trust?

Can you tell when someone is lying?

 

About lying. As someone put it “we politely lie from the: and how has your day been” or “as soon as we start talking”

A polite lie are of c socially accepted but a total lie is not.

But most times in business you can not /will not / don’t have time to check the sellers statements but you go rather on gut feeling and it is usually right.

I find myself in a rather sad position. I trusted and was convinced by a seller and i have very good ears and actually are very aware of when a person are lying or not. This seller represented a booking company that was supposed to do the cold calling for me and they were very good on the phone so i hired them. The contract was sent and received it was clear by the contract that they were new on the market but not on the phone so after a few revisions i signed. just before i did that the owner of the firm contacted me and tried to up the price per booking but i flat-out refused since it was already negotiated he finally understood that he would lose me as a client if he didn’t stand by his price so that was a strong indicator that they had cash flow issues (why else try this just before signing the contract.)

Then they started to book and they called and mailed the results and it looked very promising once again problems arose due to them being new and not having a back office in working order these where only minor but annoying things but it adds up.

Then when the meetings actually started to kick off i got list after list with faults in them. It was double bookings and distance that was humanly impossible to do in the timeframe between meetings. once again they were very smooth but the surface started to crack when they could not rectify these wrongs. I was bound by contract to pay in advance for every five booked meetings even though they had not occurred yet. after paying for 10 i started to stall so i would not have to pay more since their front cracked more and more. excuse after excuse came and went and nothing was done to solve the problems.

Then i started to get out to the customers that was booked out of 24 booked meetings there where only 5 left eventually that was real.

So then we come to the money bit. They had then received forward payment on 10 meetings but only booked 5 so i had to demand money back naturally. They said no problem. Oh dear. Of course there was problem. Now they don’t want to payback since they wrongfully says that they had done their job but the booked customers wasnt there because of other reasons.

Then you go from lying and trying to do your best to being an outright fraud.

Actually if they were going to go down this route from start they should have just not booked any meetings and taken the money and run.

 

Can you trust anyone in business? Yes and no.

There are a lot of people you can trust but you will have to try your cooperation out first and then stick to it fortunately most are genuine and not borderline frauds like this company.

No you should try to always have your back covered since sometimes with elaborate scams they are played out over years.

Like the infamous shipping company in london that a few years back disappeared after conducting successful business for a couple of  years they simple took the money for one fully loaded ship and run and that had been their plan all along.

Related articles

• $15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO Fraud Allegedly Exposed By Alarmingly Sane-Sounding British Lord (stevehuff.wordpress.com)
• SCAM ALERT: Former Electrolux Vacuum Salesman’s Fraud, Threats Suck (b-townblog.com)
• Police Alert: Fraud Devices Found on Cash Machines (westbridgfordwire.com)
• Knock knock… what to do when solicitors come calling (magnoliavoice.com)
• Office of Securities alerts consumers to fraudulent business opportunities (necontact.wordpress.com)
• Microsoft support does not call you – fraud alert! (quickgamer88.com)

In good times and bad times

Oh no a recession is on the way, crisis after crisis and on top of that some more credit crunch.

So what do when you have a sales team that goes more and more negative by the minute,hour and day.

Selling is all about being open and listening for opportunities that present themselves and if you are a goal oriented salesperson you will create the opportunities yourself.

So with a team that is on a negative spiral you need to break that trend quick, decisive and no nonsense.

You can look at it this way (from past experience).

Trying to avoid contacting customers:

No at this time a day they are doing x. ok but most are not doing x and that’s who you will end up talking to if you are out there.

No one is interest this week since there is a major sport event (olympics, soccerfinal, mma final, etc). So then we should perhaps sync our Calender with every major sports event to avoid wasting time? maybe even get a tv here to the office?

The Customers (very few) who actually are referring to the event taking place will be saying so instead of no im not interested.

Stop making excuses of any kind to not contact customers. You have to make this clear to the team in no uncertain terms. period.

So how about the recensions and “bad times” if everyone is actually having a bad financial time there would be Zero contracts!

But in good aswell as bad times there are contracts coming in. So someone must be selling something even when it’s not easy.

That someone should be members from your sales team.

The sales team will have to work harder to get the contracts but in doing so they will enhance their repertoar and sharpen their skills and as long as you are adamant that the contract is out their they will only get better and better (or be forced to quit).

You should really consider to take on more members to your sales team since the good ones out there will be looking for the very few companies that has the spunk and backbone to invest in their sales teams in bad times and you can make some really good recruiting now.

The other side of the coin is add-on sales to the customers that you already have. Nurture them and take very good care of them since bringing a new customer in when its bad times will cost you dearly as opposed to keeping the existing one. (in good times it will cost about 5 times more to take in a new as opposed to selling the same amount of products/services to the existing one).

So your deal here should be:

There is only a different set of opportunities here now than it was before and I will adapt and use those to make more money than before!

The first business meeting

So let’s get onwards,

1. Be prepared, read up on the company you are to visit (homepage, news, articles products any and everything you can get your eyes on.)
2. You are a welcome person act like it. (you would not have a meeting otherwise).
3. You are expected so be on time or at the most 5 minutes early.
4. When booking you should have made it clear that the meeting should take somewhere up to 60 minutes.
5. Dress accordingly
6. No matter what be polite (even if they are far from it)
7. End the meeting with a thank you for the business or as you will make business in the future see you next time

Ok you are now in and the person /persons are potential costumers.

Good and keep this in mind until you walk out the door (unless you sign a contract then and there of course).

Ideally like we discussed on the last post you have now been introduced to the company and their products. The customer is not hostile and you have gotten past the niceties.

Your turn!

I suggest you use the same tactic as you did when booking the meeting:

Try and cut to the chase (time is money).

Use the words you used when booking  five to ten words that you think will be the best ones for your business and that will make the customer really interested in your product / service. These you now will use to build up your pitch with.

Now add some positive sounding words around these so it will be an understandable and preferably strong short catch phrase.

The catch phrases are excellent places in your pitch to get the customer involved. Ask them what benefit they themselves could see in your products /services. Get them talking once you have presented 1 or 2 key points to get them on the same train. Dont let them take charge of the meeting however then it could end very soon you should be in charge of the conversation but let them talk and guide them to where you want them (towards your closing pitch. and a signed contract.) This is the key to be succesful or unsuccessful as a salesperson. If you can control the conversation in a nice and relaxed manner and create rapport with the customer they will be likely to buy now and continue to do so in the future. If you lose grip on the conversation you will have a customer who don’t know how to present your product (and they should not) so they will try to end the meeting.

Rule: Guide / control the meeting towards your goal signing the contract.

Road 1 :If you go into the meeting with a firm mindset to walk out with the contract in hand then go for it.

Road 2:If you go into the meeting wanting to get a contract in a few months time you still will be needing to act in the meeting as if you want to sell now but not pushing the signing in the end but leaving it open for the coming meeting.

Walk,talk and act like you are 100 % sure that you will get the contract until you have walked out of the door.  This will make a stronger impression about you and your product and increase its value to the customer.

If you have the contract congrats!

If you don’t?

Make sure you end the meeting with booking a new one on the phone or in real life and make sure the customer understands that it is for the closing so they are prepared to sign or say no (usually they have some confirmation questions first).

Onwards and forwards! go out and try!