Sales Laundry

Remember when you only had to find and fill a Need to get a sale?

 Remember the good ol’ days when the sun was shining and everyone including our clients were augmenting their budgets with bags full of cash that randomly fell out of the backs of garbage trucks, freely spending bucket loads of money on big, medium and small needs alike? 

Me either, but don’t tell the new guys.

Today, clients aren’t spending their money so freely and sales are down, but the good news is we are saving a lot of money on printer ink because these forecasts are just so much shorter.  Apparently the majority of our clients do not have any needs that need filling right now, so what is an enterprising Sales Representative to do?

 Stop looking for needs.  Start looking for agony with flaming critical, heart ripping consequences.

 Corporations are the legal equivalent of people, so if it helps, look at them that way to get a better understanding of how to approach them.  Think “injury” here.  

You can live without a Band-Aid, it may not be as neat and tidy, but you can live.  Think bigger.  Start looking for companies in Intensive Care Units, needing your product in order to survive.  Those needs will get addressed, because if they don’t fix them, they die or face catastrophic game changing consequences.

 “But Val, I sell fly swatters, if they don’t buy my product the worst thing that happens is there are a few more flies buzzing around, how does that help me?”

 Maybe you change your message from “Get rid of an annoying pest” to “Avoid diseases that flies transfer from dung heaps and decaying matter to your food that can lead to kidney failure in young children, seizures in toddlers, or in some cases, death*.”

 If your customer’s are not buying, it is because the need your product is filling is not a real or percieved priority right now.  Change the priority, change their perception, find a client with a bigger need you can fill, or find something else to sell.    

Want another example?  Look at what Kellogg is doing to reposition Mini-Wheats.

If you are stuck and can’t think of any deeper problems, add a comment and I will give you my best ideas, otherwise watch for a post in the near future that will detail a step by step process to help you find those deeper problems.   

*I am not making this stuff up.  Read Diseases from House Flies.