If you are employed with a manufacturing facility, then ‘tis the season for visits from salespersons, who bring with them their sacks full of treats; cookies, chocolates, crackers, or if you’re lucky, some of old grampa’s cough medicine in a 26 oz bottle. Whether you consider them generally annoying or essential to business, the salesperson typically spends the last couple weeks of the year visiting customers and spreading holiday cheer.
The world’s economic machine runs because of the sales efforts of the organizations who either manufacture, provide or distribute goods and services. I’ve always found it odd during my years in sales, when I’d show up to a company who distributes fluid power components, and then read a sign on the front door hypocritically warning visitors “No Solicitation!”
Selling fluid power components and service is a difficult task on the best of days, with competition on every corner, customers too busy for a meeting and gatekeepers who swear by the methods of the Guardian of the Emerald City Gates, “But nobody can see the great Oz!”
If this is the season for the salesperson social visit, then why not make it the season of salesperson welcoming? They are, after all, just working hard to put food on their family’s table, and oftentimes visits this time of year are casual, lacking the pressure of closing attempts. They may be dropping off a Christmas card, or perhaps a few treats, providing you with a few minutes of relief from your busy day. Even if talk comes to business, it should be welcomed for the advantage it provides to any enterprise.
Think about where the world would be with no sales. If you are a fluid power distributor, nearly every product you sell involved a visit from the manufacturer’s sales team, which could have been the result of a cold call to your office or at your own request from their website. Even after years of supplying their product, a subsequent visit from that sales team would have introduced you to their innovative new product line.
Sure, with the modern, internet-driven nature of today’s business world, it’s easy to find technical information, product releases and news articles covering scientific advancements. However, if you ask anyone who’s been in fluid power distribution for any length of time, they’ll tell you how important relationships are between both manufacturers and distributors and those distributors and customers.
If you’re in the manufacturing industry, then you have machinery in your plant, and I can tell you this; it didn’t fit on Santa’s sleigh. You either had a salesperson visit to discuss your needs and requirements, or you sought-out the machine manufacturer yourself, and a sales team showed up to discuss those very needs and requirements. If not for the sales industry, your water mill and aerial ropeway would have left you obsoleted decades ago.
So for the next couple weeks, whenever you get a salesperson visit, invite them in for some coffee and chat. Ask them about their kids, what they do in their spare time and even discuss some of their product lines. A successful business is diverse, and you never know if you’ll stumble on a product line that can skyrocket your sales.