Little things matter for 'sales king'
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Lim Hee-sung
By Park Jin-hai
For Lim Hee-sung, 41, numbers always show what he has achieved.
Lim was selected last year as the “sales king” of Hyundai Motor for the sixth year in a row.
He sold 343 cars in 2014, almost one a day. In total, he has sold about 4,000 cars since joining the nation’s largest carmaker as a salesman.
“The common image of a salesperson is a ball of talk and one who comes to you with a purpose,” Lim said. “The moment that people feel uneasy about the presence of the salesperson that should be considered to be a failure.”
He said he did not approach people as a “sales clerk” but as someone who could be a counselor for such things as defective cars and taxes.
He regarded the 5,000 customers and potential customers listed in his smartphone as lifetime customers.
“What I’m doing is not big or special,” Lim said. “A year after someone makes a purchase from me, for instance, I call in to check if everything is OK and test drive the car.
“If the customer has asked me to check a defect, I return the car after having it washed so that he feels he has been cared for.”
Lim said the trust he has built up with his customers often leads to referrals. He receives about 150 calls and meets more than 20 customers a day.
He now earns 270 million won ($246,000) a year. But life was not always easy.
“I was the last in class at high school and couldn’t go to a college,” Lim said. “Then I met my wife and she gave birth to a daughter.
“To make ends meet, I delivered gas tanks but I had to quit because I suffered an injury to my back. I started working at a gas station that later went bankrupt.”
He said that when he applied for the sales job, he thought it was his last chance.
Lim said his family was the power behind his success.
“When I was working filling up a dump truck, my wife and 4-year-old daughter came to ask my boss to lend my salary in advance,” Lim said. “Then my daughter saw me and ran through the noisy dump trucks.
“Distracted, I dropped the hose and soaked my entire body with fuel. But my daughter wrapped her body around my oily leg. At that moment, I made my mind up that I would work hard every single day.”