After reading the article of @eommaZel about the phrase that the customer is always right , I remember the time that I am still working as a Sales Representative. I experienced to work twice in the given position. The first one was way back 2012 and the second one was way back 2014 but I will share to you now my experience on my second job as a Sales Representative on one of the mobile brand here in the Philippines. I don't know if it's still in the market now as I don't see it anymore in the cybertech zone of the malls.
As a new sales representative.
As a new to this industry , I don't have any idea about selling this kind of product though I have a previous experience on being sales representative but I do it on field and my clients there was an internet cafe so there's a big difference with my new job even if it's also about sales. The first thing the I did is observed my colleague on how they entertain customer and how they handle them and convincing them to buy the our product.
At first I am not comfortable on doing it as I have no totally knowledge about our products but as the time goes by I learned how to deal with customers and I learned how to be accommodating to all thier questions about the product. I remember the time that I sold a high end unit of a phone and it was fullfiling to me that time.
All about Sales.
From the word itself sales , our main goal as a sales representative is to sell our products with a high numbers of sold units per day. We don't have any quota in our kiosk because we don't also have an incentive that why sometimes we are not so encouraged to sell more units because we are not getting any incentives for that but we always do our best to sell because if we don't have any sales our team leader and the owner of the company will pressure us and throw different hurtful words to us as if we didn't do our job correctly.
Not all days are lucky days , there are times that we experienced that we don't have any sales and it saddens us because we know what would happened the next day that's why sometimes we do the sales talk in a exaggerated way just to have sales and because of that sometimes we recieved complains.
Complains that I encountered.
This is just one of the complains I recieved in the kiosk , I think I am two months working that time and we have a Nigerian customer. I am the one who assist him and I'll make sure that I explained to him all the specification of the phone and the rules of our store in terms of replacement and warranty. I told him that we can replace his unit if there's a factory defect within 7 days and the phone should have no scratches and physical damages like broken LCD is not allowed on the one year warranty. He agreed to all I explained and then he purchased the phone.
After a couple of days the Nigerian came back and complains that the phone is heating when he was calling for a long time. I check the phone and that time it's not hot and I told him that it's normal to the phone that became hot when it is used for a long time and we can't replace it for a new one because it is not factory defect. I also told him if he insisted the replace thingy I will be the one who got a charge to it. The Nigerian is kind and already leave the kiosk after my explanation.
After a couple of days he went back and show to me that he has a new phone and I just smiled to him but deep inside I am pity for the guy because he didn't used the phone that he bought on us but I don't have a choice because that's the rules of the store.
Kind customers.
Even though we recieved complains on the store , we also recieved compliments on a kind customers that we assist and accommodate. They are the ones who came back to the kiosk and ask for some help regarding thier unit and we help them for free. The other one is a customer that share some stories to you while asking for some units and you end up sharing a stories too. I remember one of our customers that I help regarding his data connection, after I help him the next day he gave me a KitKat chocolate but he's not the one gave it to me but her younger sister. There's also one customer who gave a pizza and did you know what's her reason why she gave that? It is because we are true to her and we don't do sugar coating to our product.
Competitors.
Honestly we didn't consider them as a competitor but a friend. What I'm talking about is the other brand of phone beside our store. Maybe they are truly a competitor in the market but during my stay on that store , my neighborhood stores or other brands are kind. Sometimes if we don't have any sales yet and have many they will refer thier customer to us and said the our brand is good too and also affordable. If there's no customer we do talk and friendship created. We are not calling each other by names but we called each other by the phone brand.
These are just few experienced of mine when I was working a Sales Representative. There are many more but I choose not to share it here because it is not good example to the readers. Selling is fun if you will enjoy it. I learn how to be confident on engaging with people because of this job and I learned how to handle customer and stay calm on every situation.
Same with online selling, you have to have that patience because you will be encountering different attitudes of customers especially that you are only conversing thru messenger.