It was a hot and fruitful discussion.
But that was not what I remember the most from yesterday's one hour plus session...
First, the topic was about diet and how the bizarre standards set by the authority seem to confuse rather than helping people. For instance, a cup of rice means differently to different people. They know what a container is and how it looks like but to use it as a measurement brings up multiple interpretations. If the health and nutritional body recommend two cups of serving to a particular food, then one person takes it as a full cup of his favorite mug, which could easily be twice as big as another person's favorite cup!
So, that was one thing we discussed...
Then the customer brings up the issue of high glycaemic index food and how it influences obesity in today's society.
A funny fact was brought up also, and it's worth some afterthought.
It goes like this:
The folks over here like to take certain shrubs as salad when they have their main meal, usually consists of rice, lots of rice. Now, when they find the meal to be extra delicious, with rice, anchovy sauce, and grilled fish, they tend to eat an extra serving of rice. And that's unhealthy. The amount of fiber in the shrubs would not be enough to cover the amount of carbo they consume in one meal.
My customer then coined the phrase, "Healthy food is bad taste food."
And his reason is simply that lousy taste food causes you to eat less!
What an idea, don't you think?
And there were a few more topics that we discussed and dragged the session for slightly more than an hour.
At the end of the session, before we go our own way, two of my customers who happen to be husband and wife, talked about their children and who gets to fetch them from Grandpa's place:
"You go. I was too tired from my travel yesterday," said the husband.
"I can, but you need to sit in for me while I go and fetch them. I can't leave the clinic just like that," replied the wife.
"Hell, NO! I'm too tired to do that too. You gotta figure something out. I'm gonna hit the sack long this time," said the husband with a huge grin. The wife frowned for a second then with a smile, handed her husband the key to the clinic.
Ahhh...
This was what I remember most from yesterday's session - not the intellectual discussion. The warm and jovial attitude of these two customers means a lot to me.
It showed me the human side of my customers...
...and they, after all, are just human.
Not "God in White Coat" as many duped their profession to be.
And the lesson for this?
It takes a human being to sell to another human being. That's why there's a "person" behind every salesperson. If the product is enough to move on its own, companies might as well send out the brochures, DVDs, Webcasts, audio recording, and what have they, on the product materials. But sales don't work like that.
It requires a human touch.
And only a human can give that.
Not even half-human can.
By half-human, I'm referring to sales reps with scripts and tools ever ready to shove them down the prospects' throat. They put the product, not people first.
The new generation of salespeople, I'm inviting other like-minded people to work around sales methods that put people first. It's not going to be easy, trust me, but you'll find it to be more fulfilling than other sales methods or strategies ever employed.
Sell from human to human...
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