Buying isn't Selling

I recently read a very thought-provoking article by Kristin Zhivago entitled “Are your customers using social media to warn others to stay away?”  Yes, go and read the article so you understand what this post is all about!  Sheesh, do you want me to do ALL the work for you? J

In brief, this is the scenario – Kristin wanted to buy a voice-recording piece of software or app.  She had clearly identified a number of must-haves and don’t-wants so started shopping around.  Here’s key quote No. 1:

The buying process was PAINFUL

I do have a great deal of sympathy with some of her comments.  It’s clear that some of the claims made about certain products were actually lies – she wanted ‘beep-free’ recording and about half of the products sold as ‘beep-free’ weren’t.

She also makes some very pertinent points about companies not being aware of what is being written about them on review sites and discussion boards.  Here’s key quote No. 2:

Thinking of your experiences as a buyer, I bet there are lots of times you’ve decided NOT to buy a product because reviewer comments scared you off.

This is where the provoking started!  Kristin goes on to say that ‘sellers’ aren’t doing enough to monitor or respond to what is being said about them.  Here’s key quote No. 3:

This is why selling is so broken right now. Customers are talking to each other, revealing the ugly truth about products, and sellers are nowhere to be found – either to help, set the record straight, or fix their crummy products.

As a professional salesman, albeit in a B2B role, this claim irks me somewhat!  I guess I see ‘selling’ as a distinctive activity within a company, separate from ‘marketing’ – who will be generating the claims put up on the website, ‘customer service’ – who should be monitoring what is being said about the company and feeding this back into ‘marketing’ and ‘product development’ who should be fixing the crummy products!

I see selling as an active process, in which the seller engages with the buyer, determines their needs and suggests the best product to meet those needs.  I don’t see it as a passive one in which the buyer is left to fend for themselves and is (sometimes) given false information on which to make their judgements.

I would also ask that if you are willing to pay from nothing to $20 for something, what do you expect the selling process to look like?

I do actually think selling is undergoing some sort of crisis at the moment (which will be the subject of a future post), but not for the reasons Kristin outlines.  I think a better claim would be ‘this is why on-line buying is so broken right now.’

So, am I just annoyed because all of us ‘sellers’ get tarred with the same brush?