My husband returned home from the car dealership yesterday after having all four tires replaced (yes, it’s expensive to own a sports car), and told me that he ran into Glenn.

Glenn is the salesman who sold me my first Acura.  Then he sold me my second Acura.

He treated me with respect, talked to me like an adult, and never once tried to scam me.  And every time I took the car in for service (twice a year, at the most), Glenn came looking for me to say hello and see if I was still happy with the vehicle.

A couple of years ago, Glenn called to say thanks for the past business, and to let us know that he’d moved on to a new sales job with Mercedes.  About six months later, he was named one of the top salespeople for Mercedes in the region.

When it came time for my husband to purchase a new car, you can guess which brand he chose. He also drove 20 miles out of his way to buy the car from Glenn, when he could have easily dealt with the dealership in our neck of the woods.

Now Glenn has moved once again, to our neighborhood dealership.  We expect to receive the next edition of the dealership’s quarterly newsletter and see that Glenn has been named the #1 salesperson for the entire autopark.

Glenn could sell a bottle of water to a drowning man.

Is your salesperson better than your product?

If your revenue has taken a dip, it could be because that salesperson you didn’t fight to keep has moved on, taking customers with her.

The relationship a customer has with an outstanding salesperson will outlast any product, any day.

Loyalty is a tricky issue, and personal connections are embedded in ways no product can achieve.  Especially in the right brain of the female consumer.

I’ll be buying a new vehicle in the not-so-distant future.  Let’s just hope that by then, Glenn hasn’t moved on to selling Winnebagos.