I Am Not a Salesperson. I’ve heard from various acquaintances over the years that if you are, it’s important to dress fashionably in prestige brands, have the hippest gadgetry, and so on, to impress customers.
I heard this again last night from a friend of a friend, who goes around to various wine shops and restaurants and gets them to try selling new wines from her distributorship, or something. We were smalltalking and got onto the subject of (hand)bags as she was carrying one very much like one I have. Hers is a Coach Willis bag. Mine is a Court, which I got cheap & used off eBay, like most of what I own. I wasn’t carrying it last night – I was carrying my BaileyWorks Kit Courier, a gift from my wonderful husband (the BaileyWorks owner is a dear friend). Coach leather bags are practically bombproof, and so are BaileyWorks (fabric) bags, so after we chatted about how indestructible Coach bags are, I started showing off my BaileyWorks bag to her. She said something about how it was very nice but you know in sales you have to look good, it really matters what you carry, etc. etc. Basically implying that as a salesperson, she could never buy a non-prestige handbag, since it could hurt her sales to be seen with it.
Now granted, a nylon bike messenger bag is probably too casual for any Business Not-Casual wear, but it made me wonder: do people really scrutinize salespeople’s accessories? or what brands of anything they use, if what they’re selling isn’t related? For instance, consistently the most sartorially perfect and brand-kitted people I see in my normal life are pharmaceutical salespeople in doctors’ offices. Do they need to be?
I have worked for the last nine years as a salesperson in high end German luxury car dealerships. In my experience the most consistently successful salespeople were always well groomed and took pride in their appearance (with only one notable exception). It’s not so much of a brand thing for us as it is a professional image. It’s not even about wearing a suit and tie. In Milwaukee that was SOP but here in Atlanta we wear polo shirts and dress pants.
For me, I am more confident when I am well groomed and sharply dressed. This confidence is definitely part of what makes me a good salesperson.
On a side note to a question you didn’t ask, there is a strong correlation in my business with a salesperson’s looks. The better looking you are the better you tend to do. I wouldn’t say this is a causal relationship, but it probably goes to the confidence thing.
In general, yes. Being seen as successful = being seen as credible. There is also a sense where salespeople are “living models for the product.” If you are selling/ modeling wine, as your friend does, it will help to look like a model in a wine ad. She needs to be clearly living the lifestyle that’s associated with drinking fine wine. A realtor would be another example–wanting to give the impression that people associated with the house you might buy are prosperous, well groomed, fine, upstanding people etc.
That said, I once met a woman at a work function and wondered what she did for the company. She was obese, frumpily dressed, bad haircut, no makeup, about 45-50 yrs old. I eventually found out what she did, and she was probably making $500K/ year in technology sales, based on her position with the company. So there is the option to know the heck out of your product, be persistent, and do an incredible job of listening to your customer and succeed at sales without looking the part. Still, if she had looked the part she might have been higher up in the organization.
To some extent I think it depends on the product. Luxury consumer goods seem to require this the most, technical products less so.
That makes a lot of sense. For products which are primarily evaluated by testable criteria (can it do X, does it have a Y, is it compatible with Z, etc), the emotional components of sales might be less important. For products that are sold first on emotion and only secondarily on function, like luxury goods, the salesperson needs to be part of the product’s image or emotional ‘aura’.
Perhaps the name brand helps because it increases the salesperson’s sense of self worth. Every time the woman in the OP’s example looks at her bag, she might think that she MUST be a successful salesperson because she can afford that bag.
As a customer, if I notice a name brand, or if I notice the fancy address and/or decor, I’m liable to think that this salesperson is making a lot of money, and can afford to give me a bit of a break on the price, if s/he wants my business. I don’t want to deal with a particularly sloppy or unkempt person, but name brands and the like don’t necessarily make a favorable impression on me.
Pharmaceutical sales to doctors? Isn’t that about as technical and out of the public eye as industrial computer sales?
It’s not like drug companies hugely advertise prescription drugs to the general public (at least they don’t in Canada). As for over-the-counter drugs, we get plenty of advertisements for headache pills and the like, but go to drugstores to get them. I don’t ever recall a pharmaceutical salesperson selling to the consumer here.
I’m guessing that you don’t watch a lot of American TV. We are bombarded with ads about various prescription drugs, and all of them urge us to ask our doctor if Drug X is “Right for YOU!!!” We then wonder if all this advertising is why the newer drugs cost so much.
A bit off topic, but…
Interesting bags, emmaliminal, but you might consider suggesting that your friend put actual bag sizes on their website. I was looking at the laptop bags, but I can’t tell what the differences is between a small, medium, large, M-T or L-T are.
No, no, I mean pharm sales to doctors in doctors’ offices, where I see the salespeople as they’re waiting to pitch to a doctor, while I, too, am waiting in the waiting room. This variety of salesperson is, in my somewhat salesperson-impoverished experience, the epitome of what I’m talking about: salespeople who seem to think it’s necessary to look extremely polished and are covered head-to-toe in tony brand names. These are the people that give doctors all those free samples they have to give to patients, and who used to give doctors all that pharm company swag, although I think that’s been made against the rules in the US recently.
As an insurance agent (which sounds so much less slimy than “insurance salesman”) I pay a heck of a lot of attention to how I dress. I’ll use Google street view to scope out my clients’ house before I go meet them, talk to them about their hobbies and their work, all in an attempt to try to figure out how they’ll be dressed when I meet them. I try to dress a half-step above that (if I get the sense that they’ll be there in a t-shirt and jeans, I’ll wear jeans and a polo; slacks and a polo and I’m in slacks and a button down; slacks and a button down means a full suit). I want my clients to get the impression that I’m successful (I must know what I’m doing), but not filthy rich (getting rich by selling them overly expensive stuff). This is, obviously, an incredibly imprecise science, but I try.
It sounds a little skeevy, I know, but appearance does make a huge difference. I much, much prefer to sell over the phone or online.
They’re on there – here; click on or roll over each bag to see measurements. You get there from the little orange “View Size Chart” link on the product page.
In my opinion, the answer is yes, some people do do this. For a lot of people, first impressions are very important. Regardless of what you’re trying to sell me, if you turn up to my office wearing a pair of ill fitting shorts, a dirty sweatshirt and a baseball cap, I’m not buying.
Does this make me a shallow person? Yes, it does. But at the end of the day, you lose a sale.
Absolutely apperance makes a difference. A salesperson needs to look successful. If he looks successful, I assume he’s good at his job enough to make good money.
Here’s an example. A while ago I was getting my kitchen tiled. I had a number of installers come by to give me estimates. The guys who showed up in junky trucks made me think “Hmm… that guy doesn’t get enough business to afford a nice truck. Maybe he’s not any good.” Now, the guy may be the best tiler in the county, but I don’t want to spend my $2000 to find out. The guys who had nice trucks I thought were getting enough business to afford them and they must be doing something right.
But you don’t want to go too far. If the tiler showed up in a Porche, I’d probably think he was charging way too much. So the apperance should be at an acceptable level for the given product. If it’s not, you’re going to have to work harder to overcome the negative superficial impression of being either too nice or too shabby.
The main comment I generally hear about pharma reps is that they are all attractive, and primarily young women (although also some men). The customers in this scenario are all physicians, so the pharma rep at a minimum needs to look comfortable in the income bracket of physicians and people they socialize with. I realize that not all primary care MDs have huge incomes, but they’re still solidly upper middle class. And of course the specialists are often wealthy.
The pharma rep also needs to look healthy, because who’d recommend medicine promoted by sick people?
Also, consider the role of clothes in making someone look credible. A 25 year old woman with a B.A. needs to use every tool in her arsenal to come across as at all credible to a 50 year old physician.
So I think pharma sales is more trying to look like a professional peer, trying to have some credibility, and needing to look the picture of health.
That’s what I was just going to ask filmore. I run a residential remodeling company, and make pretty ok money.
I purposely drive a 2000 F-150 with the company name and logo on it. It’s not a piece of shit, but it’s got some dings in it. The other company vehicles with the logo on it are at the same level. I don’t (nor do my guys) drive a brand spanking new truck for a couple of reasons.
I’m not wasting 40,000 on a truck, especially for a fleet of trucks.
I always buy my vehicles outright, no loans on depreciating assets.
I don’t want to give the impression that I make really good money.
We beat the tar out of our vehicles-they’re work trucks.
Would you hold this against me, for not having the appearance of being successful enough?
Interesting. I would think well of a remodeling company if I knew the owner lived in a very nice, old, lovingly restored house. I would think one could use that as a sales tool - “when we restored the master bath in our Colonial, we used the finest quality blah, blah, blah.”
I probably would wonder if it were more the McMansion type of very nice house.
Do you currently do mostly remodeling work for people who make less than you do? Could you potentially make more money by doing work for people with more money than you have? One lesson I learned when I was in sales* (selling advertising and fundraising) was never to project my own budget considerations onto the customer. You don’t have to answer the nosy questions, just food for thought. Your approach actually strikes me as kinda “Millionaire Next Door.” Nothing wrong with that.
I didn’t suck at it, but wasn’t incredible at it, either. One of the parts I hated, particularly the advertising, was the constant focus on consuming and motivating others to consume–better car, nicer clothes, new this, new that. Good salespeople are often shopaholics.
I don’t want to deal with a particularly sloppy or unkempt person, but name brands and the like don’t necessarily make a favorable impression on me.
