Selling vs Service. Does Your Company Need an Attitude Adjustment?

Do you work for a company where there is intense pressure to sell?  

These kind of companies typically demonstrate an overriding executive level fixation on financial performance instead of customer service.  Financial success is driven by two things: growing revenues and cutting costs.  When these tasks become the overwhelming fixation of senior executives, your company may be in need of a serious attitude adjustment.  When executives create a corporate culture where there is this intense pressure to sell in order to sustain revenue growth,  they are almost certainly also creating a corporate culture where customer service takes a back seat.

When companies lose focus on customer service and only look upon their customers as an entity that you sell things to, it's a problem.  They've lost sight of why customers are doing business with them in the first place and they're on the road to ruin.   These companies need to undergo a major attitude adjustment from Selling to Service.  Here's why. 

No one likes to be sold.  Not in their personal life and not in a business context either.  When you sense that you are "being sold", what happens?  Your barriers go up and the skeptical listening center of your brain goes into full gear.  We instinctively don't trust someone who is trying to sell us something.  It's takes hard work and artful salesmanship to overcome those barriers and actually sell anything.

On the other hand, everyone likes to be helped.  It's why you're greeted in a store with "How can I help you, today?"  When was the last time anyone greeted you with "What can I sell you today?"  When we think someone is trying to help us, our barriers disappear and we usually experience gratitude rather than skepticism.  Over time, gratitude grows into trust.  And trust creates customers for life.  This seems like a total no-brainer to me.  Why would any company want potential customers to feel skeptical (ie- always be in selling mode) when they can choose to make them feel grateful and trustful (ie- by being in service mode)?  

If your company is always stuck in selling mode, it needs an attitude adjustment.  The primary focus of any company should be on service as opposed to selling.  If the executives are only looking at sales metrics and not service metrics, something is wrong.  When you're successful at service, sales follow.  When you stink at customer service, you will soon stink at sales, too.