September 2010
How to Soft Sell a Hard Drive
by Stewart Hirsch on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 (post #664)
I love my computer tech guy. He’s smart, savvy and responsive. Never lets me down. And even though I’ve got a small business, without servers and multiple users or even using his enterprise server, he treats me the same as he does his larger clients.
While he was logged in fixing my computer problem, he told me a story about a new client. He got a call from a local company looking for a replacement drive for a server. He’s not in the parts business, and could have simply told them that. But that’s not David Winter of Winter Solutions. Instead, he asked them about their problem and its impact because he was concerned and wanted to help. He learned that the hard drive crashed, and business was at a standstill. He asked who was helping them through this crisis, and learned they were dealing with it themselves. They were going to order a new hard drive, and anticipated they would have to re-enter a year of data over several weeks. They found David on line in their search for a hard drive.
David just happened to have a drive on hand that would fit their server, and offered to get it to them that day, and install it. If they just bought the hard drive, there wasn’t a lot of money in this for David, and maybe not even a new client. But that wasn’t the point. By genuinely caring and trying to help them, they decided to have David assist, and in 48 hours, he recovered the original hard drive data, got the business back up and may have landed a significant client.
Interested in learning how to increase trust anywhere, with anyone, anytime? Join us in Washington DC in September. Click here to find out more.
Stewart Hirsch is an Associate with Trusted Advisor Associates LLC , and heads its Trust-based Coaching practice. He is founder and owner of Strategic Relationships. Read more about Stewart at http://trustedadvisor.com/consultants.stewarthirsch/.
posted in Trust in Leadership Development and Strategy, Trust-based Selling, Building Trusted Advisors