Selling your cooperative.

• Author: Sayne, Garry
• Position: Marketing techniques for rural electric cooperatives

Selling is the promotion to acceptance of a concept, idea, service or product. It is not an event but a process. Good sales people are goal orientated and success motivated. Success is a purchase agreement with the customer's signature, and there is a mutually agreed manner of payment if the sale is for a product or service. The process is measured by the willingness of both salesperson and customer to do business again.

Rural electric cooperatives have great people but very few great salespeople. The past never necessitated their presence, but the future will. Cooperatives need to sell now. They need to sell concepts, ideas, services and products.

Conceptually, cooperatives need to sell the philosophy that they will be a viable competitor in an open market. If your cooperative has joined Touchstone, you have invested in a marketing concept which requires selling. Examine this excerpt from Touchstone's position statement. "The Touchstone Energy brand, a concept and a promise that we are consumer-driven businesses, provides a meaningful declaration to the public of who we are, what we believe and why we are the superior choice for energy services." Think carefully about the choice of words used: concept, promise, believe and choice. Selling is the promotion to acceptance of a concept, idea, service or product. Touchstone indeed asks for every cooperative employee to "sell" this concept and to do it with belief.

If you are not a Touchstone partner, you have or you will enter into a marketing alliance or partnership which will require conceptual selling.

Customers become keenly aware of your beliefs and your commitment. They sense in your voice inflection and in your mannerisms whether you truly believe in your position.

The following is an excerpt from the book Guerilla Selling, Jay Conrad Levinson, Bill Gallagher, Ph.D., and Orvel Ray Wilson, authors.

Building Credibility

Guerrillas know that, ultimately, buying is an act of faith for the prospect. The decision depends on whether they believe in the product and the salesperson. Even though the process occurs unconsciously, there are four "C" factors that affect credibility.

1. Consistency

   The first factor people weigh is prior experience. Have you been consistent with them in the past, and how so? If you tell someone that you're putting the information in the mail today, then it's important that you do just that. If you've been nasty to a coworker and decide to butter them up a bit because...