Sales Laundry

Today I was volunteered to help a relative move some stuff from storage and was otherwise minding my own business when I got smacked in the head by a sales lesson.

Mid morning, as I was driving over to the storage facility, I passed a guy on the side of the road holding a small sign that read Car Wash.  Glancing behind him, sure enough there was a small charity car wash in the parking lot well underway.

The people washing the cars were smiling and visibly having fun, but the guy that was chief in charge of advertising and converting prospects into car wash customers, otherwise know as the guy holding the car wash sign, looked unhappy and was clearly not making much of an effort.

I was surprised the car wash was making any money but did not think much about it as I was on my own mission.

When I got to the storage facility it quickly became obvious that this was not going to be a one trip job.  So much for “just having a few things to move.”

I loaded up and made my first run.  After unloading, I headed back for the next load.  Sure enough, the charity car wash was still underway, but by now the cranky guy had been replaced with a guy that was smiling, dancing and having fun with the cars trying to coax them into the car wash.

Clearly his efforts were having more of an impact because there were more cars being washed and a few lined up waiting their turn.

I was still on my mission, so once again I ignored the car wash guy and stopped by the storage facility to try to squeeze everything into one final load.

Nope.  That was not going to happen, there was so… much… stuff.

Fortunately I was able to get it all on the third run and headed home.  Once again, I saw a guy holding up a car wash sign.  This was a new guy.  He was holding the sign up high, smiling like he was thrilled to be spending his afternoon attracting customers and helping out this charity.

There was something wrong, though.  The sign he was holding up with a big smile, beaming with great pride was upside down.  People driving by were clearly disturbed by this and tried to wave at him or yell at him.  Some even stopped to let him know.

Sitting at a traffic light observing this up ahead, I was surprised by the quantity of cars jamming that parking lot, in all stages of getting clean.  I found myself really wanting to know what they were doing to quadruple their business from just a few hours before.

As I got closer to the car wash sign guy, he was trying to make contact with me, smiling bigger and waving his sign, still upside down.  Getting closer still, but strategically not too late for me to slow down and turn into the car wash, he flipped the sign over the right way, smiled even bigger and politely tried to gesture the cars into the car wash, and it was working.

I immediately got the message.

If you are just going through the motions like the first guy, you might get lucky enough to attract a few customers.  Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut, as the saying goes.

If you engage your prospects directly in a positive high energy way, you will attract more customers and be more successful, as the second guy demonstrated.

However, to experience maximum success, you need to figure out a way to get your prospects seeking to engage you.  One upside down car wash sign compelled prospects to want to engage with the car wash sign guy to help him correct his mistake.

My guess is that once the people driving went to the trouble to engage the car wash sign guy on their own, trying to be helpful, it was a short step to continue being helpful and getting their car washed for charity.  Maybe they felt better about participating in the charity car wash on their own terms instead of being coaxed into it.

What I find more remarkable is the upside down car wash sign guy expended 10% of the effort of the high energy second guy, but was 4x-10X more successful than those that were there before him.

10X the conversions, mind you, with the same cost of sales.

How expensive was it to flip a cardboard sign upside down?  Yet it was effective.  What can you do to compel your prospects to want to engage you?  How can you change your one way marketing message to a two way conversation with your prospects and clients?