He Shoots, He Scores! Authentic Selling

Our son is a peewee hockey goalie and, as usual, we started the season with a trip to our favorite sports store. He'd outgrown his skates, and his stick was cracked, so we brought in all his gear to see what was still OK, and what needed to be upgraded.

An eager young salesman volunteered to help us and we were soon trying on goalie skates and asking him for his opinion about the size of goalie pads, different kinds of goalie pants, and how to choose a stick - we were hoping to get another year out of as much as we could. We'd gotten used to excellent, knowledgeable service at this store, and trusted that they would genuinely help us.

As we worked with him, our confidence and trust started to slip away - he wasn't familiar with how to do up the straps on the pads, didn't know how to attach them to the skates, and said things like "they look too small to me, you should maybe get the next size up", but with no explanation or reasons given. Hockey gear isn't cheap and we weren't eager to buy new stuff if we didn't have to. In fact, we were on the verge of leaving without buying anything to see if we could get better help somewhere else.

Thankfully, another salesman whom we'd worked with before walked by, and we asked for his opinion. This guy knew his stuff and showed us how our existing pads were too short to fully contain the knee, and exposed it to injury. He brought us some pads a couple inches larger than we had even been considering, helped strap them on, and showed us four or five points about how to size pads properly. He also helped choose a new stick, explaining a couple of different schools of thought on sizing goalie sticks. With his knowledge and expertise, we happily and confidently bought more gear than we had originally intended. Good for us, good for the store.

With the first saleman, it would have been far better if he'd just said he didn't know, and found someone else to help. Or help us only with the parts he really knew. He was trying to SELL us new gear, but almost lost us as a customer.

What the second salesman provided, and what we were looking for, was information and help to decide for ourselves what we needed to buy. It's a big difference. Authentic selling means knowing your offering inside and out, and working with your customer to see what will work best for them. Help solve their problem, and honestly help them buy the best solution, and they'll come back every season.