Sales Laundry

Archive for April 27th, 2009

Opportunities pop up from time to time to make small seemingly unperceivable cuts in product quality that will bring more profit to the bottom line.

 The problem with that strategy is that in the “everyone connected to everyone” information age we live in today, we notice these things and we tell others.

1937 Disney created a masterpiece in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .

1959 Disney released Sleeping Beauty. 

1967 Disney released the Jungle Book.

1970 Disney released Aristocats , their first release after Walt Disney died.

1973 Disney released Robin Hood.  

1991 Disney released Beauty and the Beast 

 

…and in 2009 someone noticed something odd, built a video clip to capture it, and we all began to talk about it.

A global brand made a decision to cut a few corners many years ago that today seems a bit unbelievable and more than a little disappointing.  Will we still go to the theme parks?  Yes, because for most of us, the value of watching our children immerse themselves in the “Disney experience” means more to us than knowing our own childhood experiences were a little more smoke and mirrors than even the adult in us could have predicted.

While the cut in quality may not result in significant sales loss or lower than expected revenues, it will certainly move at least a few Mousekateers to lower their opinion of Disney and hang up their mouse ears. 

 

Why is product knowledge training painful on so many levels?

 

 Customers don’t want it unless it is in context to their situation.  Sales professionals don’t want to spend their time learning volumes of information they are never going to use.  Vendor representatives and Sales Managers don’t want to build the training materials or dedicate time to conducting the training, and no one wants to pay for it, citing cost or the money wasted when a trained sales professional leaves the company.

 So how could we make the transfer of product knowledge better for everyone involved?

 

What if we changed the way we train new sales professionals?  Teaching them about the industries and customers our products serve.  Teaching them the most common issues our products and services fix and teaching them the specific questions to ask to uncover prospect problems and questions to ask that point to a feature or competitive advantage for our product.

 We could teach some product basics, but no hard core product knowledge.

 

 What if we built product knowledge into an application accessibly via laptop, the web, or mobile phone that had all the data aligned by questions we train on and sorted/searchable by keyword, question, problem, solution, specific question, industry or application?

Pay once for building the application and maybe for loading updates, instead of paying to load every new sales professional and subsequently reload every sales persons head with knowledge with every model transition and new product rollout.

 The sales professional still learns the product information but learns it dynamically, as he is asked for it.  Learning this way also lets him/her associate the question, the context and the answer together in a meaningful way that completes the leap from raw product to actionable customer benefiting knowledge aiding in sales efforts.

 This would certainly put an end to the problem of having a sales professional full of product information with either no training or ability to ask good questions and make the product knowledge useful. 

 This could shorten the onboarding/ramp up time for a new sales professional.

 

Would it work?

 The smoke test would be if the sale tool was able to find, gather and serve up information quickly enough, and in a meaningful way while the sales professional sat across from the prospect.

 Give me your thoughts?  Does this exist somewhere? How does your company load product information into your head?  Is it effective? 

Image courtesy of liq.wa.gov

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of.  If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

 

Question:  What is the most effective form of prospecting for business machine outside sales?

 I am new to outside sales and my company does not provide much training.  They had me watch some Tom Hopkins videos from the 1980’s, but there was nothing on prospecting. There also are no senior sales people from whom I could get information on what has worked for them. 

The company I work for is a multi-line dealership; we focus mainly on X Brand and Y Brand copiers, although we sell several other brands and types of equipment.  We have small business customers to global oil companies.  My plan is to get as many new customers as possible, but the cold calling (door to door) I have done hasn’t generating any positive results. I am in a very competitive market with 7 other copier dealerships in a city of approximately 300,000 people.

A) What is the most effecting form of prospecting? 

B) What questions should I ask potential clients when prospecting? 

C) Is a script really necessary when cold calling and if so how do I write one that doesn’t make me sound like every other salesman?

  

Answer:  A) The most effective form of prospecting is using referrals. Outside of that, the best form is the warmest form of prospect you can get. (People you know, friends of people you know, contacts from reference accounts with your company, etc.)  A cold phone call, or as is typical in my area for business machine salesmen, a cold walk in the door is the most difficult. 

B) The questions you should ask depend heavily on the client and what problems you are trying to solve.

C) A GOOD script can be very beneficial in giving you a repeatable process. What is in the script and how you say the script will determine if you sound like every other salesman?  Here is one good cold call approach.

 

It looks like you have some transactional customers or customers that understand your products and shop mainly on price and you have some consultative customers that might be looking for your assistance to help them develop some solutions to their problems with document security, workflow, document management, etc.

 For this discussion, I am focused more on the transactional customers and some ideas to get in the door.

 In general, if you know where you are going to be cold calling the next day, I would spend some time the night before looking these companies up on the internet, reading any press releases or news about them or anything on the person you might want to meet with so you can come in with an idea of what they do and how you might be able to help their business, as opposed to just stumbling in and hoping for the best.

 Here are some ideas that might help you stand out…

 Looking for angry copier stories

 Create a contest every week or every month, looking for the best angry copier stories and give gift certificates, dinner for 2, toner, spa treatment, etc. as prizes.

 Take a pocket tape recorder or a Snap HD camcorder, depending upon you budget and your ability to pull it off, and walk into these businesses telling them you are looking for angry copier stories of the worst, meanest, paper eating, toner spewing, cranky, always needing repairs copiers in town.

 Record their stories, and get the details on the copier you need to help sell them a new one (brand, age, clicks, monthly repair bills, how often it breaks, etc.)

 Ask for referrals to other people they know that have angry copiers.

 To make it fun, go in with a couple of photos of beater copiers with good stories about them if asked.

 Every week/month go back and award the certificate to the place with the worst copier, take a photo/video and put it on your website so your contest can build a little credibility.

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 Talk to security guards or building management of larger office buildings and see if they will let you set up a show in some vacant space.  Offer up a 1 day rental of the space as a last resort.

 Go around to every office in the building with a flyer letting them know there will be a show on a certain date and time.  If you have the budget, cater in lunch, if not provide snacks, door prizes or some compelling reason to show up.

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 Put ads in the paper/Craigslist and sell your trade in copiers.  Use this as a lead source.

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 Look for good copier technicians.  While cold calling, tell them you are trying to locate good copier technicians and wondered if their guy was any good. Find out who he is, who he works for and a number if you can. Then ask questions about him like, when he fixes your copier, does it stay fixed? How often does he have to come back out? Etc. 

Part 2 of the strategy is calling up the technicians and taking them to lunch if you can, and offer up referral fees for leads to where the broken beat up copiers are in town, regardless of brand.

Part 3 of this strategy is building up a short list of the best copier repair guys in town that you can (as an option) refer people to the best of the best if they are under contract for multiple years with a competitor.

Part 4, which is a bit out there, would be to setup a separate web page with reviews and rankings of the local copier repair guys. Advertise the URL to the people you talk to and let them give their feedback to help other office managers find and pick the best repair guys to keep their equipment running. Of course the site should be branded with your information all over the place to remind them of who is providing them with this fantastic information.

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Simple cost per page demonstration.  I don’t know what the numbers are today, but the last time I was looking at a copier it cost me 25 cents for every page that came out of an inkjet printer, a nickel for every page that came out of a laser printer and a little under a penny for every page that came out of a copier.

If the numbers still work, you could walk in and put a penny on the counter and a quarter, and when they ask what you are there for, point to the coins and say you are there to show them how to save 24 cents every time they push print.

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 Sponsor events that help show off your products. Help charities print flyers, contact the local dog catcher and offer to print flyers for lost family pets for free, print Christmas programs for churches, help the Girl Scouts sell some cookies. Provide volunteers/staffers with your card and put a small tagline on the bottom of every document you can print if you think you can pull it off. “Brochure printing provided by Dave T. Smith over at XXX Office Machine Co. 555-555-5555”

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A critical metric is contract expiration date, so set up events or put your dollars to work supporting other events and provide a service or something of value that would make someone want to go to the trouble of finding their contract expiration date and give it to you. Maybe free coffee and doughnuts, maybe a raffle, a free car wash on Saturday morning, etc.

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 Build a transactional referral program. On the bottom of every invoice, business card, mailer, technician work order, etc. include a flyer or information asking for referrals.

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Build a relationship referral program. Talk to your existing client base, your insurance agent, your barber, and anyone else that has been happy with your service and ask them if they would bring a friend or meet you for lunch with them, or introduce you at one of the events mentioned above.

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Analyze your territory and find the community leaders and active voices in the community and get your equipment in their hands as a trial or a demo where it makes sense. These could be civic organization leaders, church leaders, politicians, local media, school boards, etc. The point is to find the people that influence others in your community and get some of your equipment in their hands and point to them/use them as references.

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 Don’t know if it will fly in your business, but you might try offerings free contract audits. Help people out by evaluating their existing copier contracts making sure they are getting a fair deal, understand their usage guidelines, and know their expiration dates, etc., regardless of the brand. Make it a valuable service for them, not just a sales pitch. Maybe partner with a local leasing company to do an independent review or to look at aspects you might not be familiar with. Of course that leasing company should be using your equipment.

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Stay in contact with everyone you meet.  The number one car salesman in the world mailed out cards to everyone he met every month to make sure he stayed on the top of their heads when they started thinking about buying a new car. Read about him here…
http://tinyurl.com/d9kk2b

 Good Selling!