Better Teachers, Not Relentless Sellers (& The Lloyds Bank Fine)
Whilst a mindset to push your products onto others was a way that was accepted, shouldn’t we now become better teachers?
In the light of the recent £28m Lloyds bank fine for mis-selling of insurance, the crux comes down to the importance of focusing on targets, not customers. Shouldn’t a mindset now be placed on educating others to buy into what you stand for and to create a relationship where others value your opinion and behaviour?
The Reality Of The Old School Sales System
To the staff of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax whilst the fear of redundancy looms with the failure to meet sales targets, pressure doesn’t make life better and a relentless focus on numbers is never going to be sustainable. We need a change of mindset to drive profitable customer action.
When pressure is put at the top tier of a hierarchy that is ruled by an old school approach, rather than learn and adapt to improve what you have with new systems that can improve and evolve a way of working, the pressure from an antiquated system is passed to the levels below and the weight is felt on everyone else.
Rather than a company reflecting on it’s own practices and moving on, blame is put firmly onto the lap of others, in Lloyds case the staff that were forced to be ruled by targets. What Lloyds have now done is completely lose the trust of consumers.
The Future Is About Being Relevant
The future has to be about how we need to change our way of thinking, communicating and marketing our products and services.
The attitude baton now needs to be passed from relentless selling to concerted education. As we are all becoming better informed as gatekeepers of surplus information, to allow information to be accepted it needs to serve a purpose and act upon our pain points (to create an action). Rather than being treated as part of a homogenous mass, we now want to be treated as individuals and people to treat us as humans and not part of an automated silo.
I received an email this morning for an exhibition and the first part of the message read ‘Dear Mark Masters,’ the delete button was pressed within a second. That felt even worse than a ‘Dear sir’ or even better the simple ‘Hi.’ It’s now far more likely to feel as part of passing thought than as a relevant human.
Regarded As Teachers Not Commercial Peddlars
The only way we can become regarded as a credible source of expertise is to become more selfless in looking to educate others to a better way of working that helps: create more time; sell more; live a better life; be more successful in an industry; do things better.
To be stuck in a tired old wheel that is based on a faceless approach to selling where integrity, engagement and belief comes second to a corporate hierarchy of ‘the way that we’ve always done things here,’ is a recipe for failure.
To teach others requires a change of attitude and mindset, but does have longer-term viability.
