The 'phoney' way of selling

When you are in Sales every day is a learning day, you are always looking to hone your craft, refine your approach, improve your chances of success in every stage of the sales process, even if its just by a teeny tiny 1%.

But the fastest way to accelerate that learning is to put yourself in the buyers shoes.

Recently, I had to search for a solution to resolve an issue I had with diverting my (PBX) office telephone number to an answering service when busy or out of hours.  (My broadband and phonelines share analog lines on the Virgin Network).

Simple!  You would think so right?

I put the call out to my network to recommend people in the telephony industry that might be able to advise or offer a solution for my situation.
Result:  I got two recommendations and followed up with the first one straight away.

Phone guy 1:  We had a brief call and arranged to visit me on site. He arrived on site and was friendly, personable and began to assess the situation.  I explained to him that I did not want to have to replace my phone system if at all possible. After careful consideration he offered to solve my problem by replacing my current telephony system with his solution and he would bill me for calls going forward  and broadband would remain as is and he would prepare a quote.

The quote never came....

Phone Guy 2:
Same as above, but this guy's approach was to diagnose the problem (my current state).  Assess my current infrastructure.  He checked how many lines I had.  Called my service provide to make sure.
He asked me what I wanted to achieve (my future state)  Then said you can do one of two things.  What would you like to do.  Bottom line he solved my problem on the spot and charged me a call out fee for same. 

How do these two approaches compare:
Phone guy 1 was selling his solution, Phone guy 2 was solving a problem.

​Don't be phone guy 1, be phone guy 2 all day long....

PS.  If you need more from your current system, I recommend Tony from Netcore....he's in the business of serving not selling.