A few days ago I walked into a bicycles store located on Thomson Road, Singapore, looking for a pair of clip-on road bike shoes to replace my old ones that recently parted away with its soles. No matter how I like cycling, I don’t care much about the technicalities and subtleties such as the part names and models. Living in modern world with abundant info accessible a pocket away from my hand, I always believe that there are always more practical way to get this info rather than keeping it in my mind. You may say this as laziness induced by smartphone and tablet proliferation. Apart from that, when everything fails, there is always a good sales person with cheek-to-cheek smile ready to help you with whatever you need and enthusiastically walk through all the options. Alas, I relied to my assumptions too heavily that it blew me hard when it proved to be wrong.

Last time I purchased clip-on shoes were four years ago and all the details slipped my mind naturally. So, I started browsing around inside this store, a Thomson road branch of a famous bicycles outlets in Singapore. I landed my eyes on several models of nice-looking clip-on shoes hanging in the wall and tentatively approached a sales guy sitting behind a glass counter. I asked some questions and he answered without showing any interests at all. Thinking that he could have explained it better if he just cared to walk out from the counter and came to the wall where the shoes were showcased, I requested him to get up and showed what he just said. He did, to my relief, and we continued our conversation near the shoes on the wall. I continued with my questions because I wasn’t sure the cleat model I had on my bike. Rather than walking through it patiently to a walk-in customer who only knows how to cycle but with minimal knowledge on the part names, he kept on pointing out the mistakes I had made when I used the wrong part names. Long story short, I was fed up and said “forget it” to him while walking out of the store with big disappointment. It did ruined my day. The blow  was harder to me because as a sales guy myself I would do my best not to treat my customer that way under any circumstances.

On the way back home, I dropped by another bike store. The treatment I got was totally different. With warm welcome and friendliness, the shopkeeper patiently asked me to describe the pedal cleats I have since I wasn’t sure what model it was. With strong confident, he was sure what I had was this certain model and even promised that I could always return the shoes if they didn’t fit well. He mentioned he didn’t have my size but welcomed me to try a bigger size, an offer which I gladly took. It was still too big for me unfortunately. In the end, he suggested me to go to a certain website for cyclist which I happened to know and checked online if any store had my size to reduce my search time. I was overwhelmed by his sincerity and enthusiasm. I could tell he is passionate about his job and the products he is selling. Even though I didn’t get what I was looking for, I made a mental note to come to this store for anything related to bicycle in the future. He may not realise it but he just got a potential customer whom may not only bring some business to the store but also give good reference.

A successful sales person has a few things in common, one of them is enthusiasm and passion. Passionate sales person thinks his job not only as a job but as a call to his being and the reason of his existence. He sees sales as a way to put his principles into work. If his personal goal is to bring benefits to his family and society, he will see the sales effort he makes as a way to help his customer. By helping his customer, he helps his company to achieve its business goal and in turns helps his own family. My experience tells me that if we have this spirit of helping our customer meet his requirement and his needs, our sales revenue will follow. Help your customer and in the end you will help yourself, your loved ones, and the company you are working for.

Of course, helping our customer doesn’t mean that we agree and yield to whatever they want. Closing the deal is one thing, but the delivery of the service is also important. How can we deliver our service and help our customer if the revenue is not good enough to justify the cost of doing business and profitability for our own business to sustain.

Besides passion in sales job, a successful sales person must have passion about the products and services he sells. Taking my experience in those two stores as an example, the salesman needs to be an evangelist of bicycles, even better, has cycling as a hobby. An excellent car salesman is the guy who likes everything about automotive and most of successful camera salesmen are avid photographers. It doesn’t matter which one comes first. You may get the hobby after you work as a sales or the other way around. A salesman who is lucky enough to work in the store or industry where he has passion is a good consultant to the customer and he has no problem of keeping himself motivated. He is enthusiastic in serving his customer because he believes in what he sells and he believes he is bringing some good values to the customer.

Putting these two qualities in the perspective of my good and bad experiences in bicycle stores above, we can conclude that the first salesman was not motivated enough in helping a customer. He may not have strong passion in sales job and/or may not be a bicycles enthusiast. He will have problem staying motivated which will result in his losing his job eventually or he will get a wake-up call someday that he is not really up to this. I hope I am wrong and that what happened is just another bad day for him. The second guy, on the other hand, has two qualities to be successful in his job or his own business someday if he decides to. A sales job is a good seed to grow entrepreneurship and a succesfull entrepreneur must be passionate about his business.

Are you passionate about sales profession? Do you believe strongly in the products you are selling that you can call yourself an evangelist? If yes, then you are on your way to happiness and you have seen the bright light at the end of the tunnel.