The Truth About Selling Steel/Steel Buyers Basics

During my 31 year selling career I learned many lessons from my experiences and from those around me. Some of the lessons were learned the hard way and were quite stressful and others brought sheer joy during the entire process. The secret is to figure out how to experience the joy of selling and then maintain that experience over one’s entire career. This is not to say there is no stress in the sales process, there definitely are competitive processes, pressures from your work environment and then those you place on yourself.

Let’s start with the latter – the pressures one places upon one’s self. A good salesperson has to be “wired” a little differently than those who are unable to sell at a high level. Part of the wiring is the ability to self-motivate oneself to go out into the unknown and expose one’s self to new people and to maintain composure through rejection and disappointment. It is that process of living through disappointments which helps mold your sales persona.

Most new sales people will start the process of phone or direct sales with a sense that they are imposing upon the buyers with whom they are trying to gain both attention and trust. This apprehension exists with virtually all new salespeople and is best dealt with quickly or it can nip a career long before the bud starts to bloom.

I used to tell sales people that I was training, the first contact with a buyer is usually a forgetful experience – at least for the buyer. They tend not to remember your name and within a day or two may not even recall that the phone conversation ever occurred. So you should not fear making a fool of yourself.

The initial contact(s) for you, the new salesperson, is to test your ability to put coherent sentences together, ask questions which bring responses that add to your knowledge base and begin the process of understanding the targeted company’s business as well as the personality of the gatekeepers who are preventing you and your company from obtaining business from this company.

We live in a new world surrounded by email and websites and many other forms of distraction which prevent one-on-one human contact. Yet, in my opinion, the steel industry is one where relationships are primary to the sales process. The development of the buyer/salesperson relationship will begin once the salesperson has discovered the key to receiving the attention of the buyer and then gaining their trust.

We have written a number of articles on both sales and purchasing and they are available on our website under the Resources Tab. You may want to spend some time there to see what we have had to say on the subject matter in the past. And, as always, we welcome any questions that you might have: Info@SteelMarketUpdate.com.