This little piggy went promoting

December 24th, 2009

A rep in the Southeast sent out a brilliant promotion that apparently tripped some bah humbug gene in a distributor.

The rep reps a toy company. He sent an email offering a turkey or a ham for sending in up to date contact information in response to an email.

While most everybody anticipated a real turkey or ham, we got a little toy turkey and a toy pig from the toy company the rep reps. Inside was a holiday card with refrigerator magnet that gave the rep’s show schedule for 2010 and a coupon for bucks off a real turkey or ham at a national chain.

It was a really good promotion. The rep got a list cleaning, the distributors got a sample to show their kids and customers and everybody had fun.

Well, most everybody. One distributor in Florida needs a sense of humor injection from his HMO. Perhaps he can get it when he gets his swine flu shot!

I thought it was brilliant. I showed the pig to my two year old grandson who promptly stuck it in his mouth. That was a surprise that I didn’t expect and an image that I will carry for a while in my mental picture book.

I’m also recommending to distributors that they show plush toys to customers. This was pretty cool.

Happy Holidays from us to you.
nowell

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Playing with Toys and Having Fun

November 24th, 2009

My favorite younger daughter has been having conversations with my favorite younger grandson. He, being just a month past turning two, is finding lots of things to talk about now that a larger circle of adults can understand him. Today, she related a conversation that started with his saying, “I want to go to work.”

Mommy asked, “What do you want to do at work?”

FYG replied, “I want to play with toys.” Now that sounds like a job I would enjoy! (Oh, wait… I get to play with toys at work and I do enjoy it!)

What came to mind later is that I got into this business in 1977 because I got to play with cool toys and sell them to people. Perhaps the biggest change in the business in the last 32 years is that there are more cool toys to play with and sell every year than the previous one. That seems to be one of the few things that has not changed in the business, however.

I remember a time when “EQP” wasn’t a word or condition. I’m even old enough to remember a time when I could keep most of the industry inventory in my head while discussing client needs with my customer. That has all changed.

Today we need a search engine to find a pencil or pen out of the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of variations on that single theme. Thirty years ago, people came in four sizes and a single shirt style worked for every gender. Today we have to keep several hundred suppliers in mind when looking for “just the right garment” to fit our client needs.

What I realized tonight is that I still love my work and my profession in part because I still get to sell and play with cool toys. Perhaps my favorite younger grandson is much smarter than he sounds. After all, any kid that wants to go to work and play with toys just might be one to groom for the next generation of our profession.

My favorite older grandson and I have been making sales training videos and sample kits of our new products. We do this on the Wednesday’s he gets a half-day off from school. I pay him because he is saving up for some cool Lego toys of his own but he is earning his money doing things that I had to do early in my career.

Being 10 years old means that I don’t expect as much from him as I might from an employee but I am frequently if not always surprised at how diligent he is helping PopPop in the office. He gets to play with cool toys, too. (Video Camera, automatic paper folder, plastic bag heat sealer and movies on the DVD) While his verbal skills are much more advanced than his young cousin, he is quite articulate when he remarks, “It was a good day, PopPop. I had fun.”

Well, I had fun today, too. I got to sell some cool things to people who like to sell cool things to people who like to buy cool things. Everybody got to play with cool toys and have some fun and make some money.

How cool is that!

Happy Selling!
—–

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I surrender!

October 7th, 2009

Back in July, I lamented my inability to stay focused on task when booting up my computer. I casually mentioned that my new job made working at home a challenge. Well, I’ve recognized that it is much, much more than a challenge… it is a daunting rift in the fabric of my life.

For sixteen years, my life has been one of selling my products and services in a face-to-face environment. That’s what I’m good at. That’s what I like. That’s what I miss in this New World Order… Face-to-face.

Unfortunately, when I look at the bottom of my paycheck, it isn’t my name on the signature line. The name there happens to be the arbiter of my activity, my boss. Since I have dedicated my professional life to whatever he deems important to our enterprise, his desire for me to work on the phone and computer, in pajamas if necessary, is not considered a suggestion. It is my marching order.

I gave it a good try. I really did. I even used the computer while dressed in my bathrobe and made calls on prospects. Of course, between calls, I made coffee, unloaded the dishwasher, got irritated that my wife was using the printer for her business when I needed it for mine, and just generally found life getting increasingly complicated.

Stress levels went through the roof and the fallout was unbelievable. I spiraled into a deep depression that ate a week of “tivity,” having the intention of performing “ac,” but leaving the residue of “inac.”

I called a couple of friends who do not object to my bitching and complaining about life (as long as it doesn’t go on for too long) and received much needed kicks in the behind camouflaged as helpful suggestions and support. A few more fits and starts, a few more well delivered “suggestions” and I was ready to go do something else because I couldn’t sit on the kitchen chair any longer.

Now, after three months of fighting it, I’ve given into the realization that I am simply not a stay-at-home-worker. I’m moving into an office space. It will add about $6,000 to my annual expenses but it should increase my productivity by 1000% or more.

It will take a small bit of adjustment time but I’m up to the task. Life will be simpler. I will have a chair to sit upon at a table to hold my portable computer with wireless cell phone modem for internet access and a cell phone with Bluetooth headset so I can talk and type.

I will have to learn new tricks yet again but they seem somewhat easier than the ones I need to learn now. After all, how hard can it be to learn to drive to work in pajamas?

I’ll let you know down the road.

Happy Selling!

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“What did you do in the war, Daddy?”

September 8th, 2009

An email group I belong to allows us suppliers of promotional products to toot our horn once a month. Today was one of those days. While the purpose of the exercise is to sell ourselves to the customer members of the group, we often, due to the nature and quality of the people involved, get to grapple with deeper questions of purpose and the nature of our profession.

Today brought up a topic that I can only describe (non sexistly- just substitute “Mommy”) as the “What do you do, Daddy?” question. We have all had to answer this on occasion. In this case, the topic was really, “How do you answer the “What is your business?” elevator speech.

Reading the responses from my esteemed colleagues filled me with joy, wonder and contentment because I realized that I get to earn my living as a sales professional and it is an honorable profession.

I quietly pondered my answer while sitting on the deck at sunset, watching a million colors of red to deep purple march across the sky, obscured only by the occasional puff of smoke from a truly fine Perdomo Reserve La Tradicion Cabinet Selection Robusto cigar, a birthday gift from a good friend.

It was easy to enjoy the moment because it is the first time in several days that the temperature is low enough that I am not sweating through my clothes. I have a cup of “coffee talk” with a healthy shot of Irish cream whiskey at my side. The fading light of day is being held at bay by a headlamp of ecologically friendly LED’s so I can see the keyboard. (There is no appreciable glow from the front of a good cigar to light the way.)

Thinking of what my job and business does is, in the strict sense of our profession, applicable to almost every business and industry in which sales professionals ply the trade. If you wish to use it as a base for your own answer, take out the references to my business and apply your own.

“I work in an industry that allows me to help every manner of person and activity survive, thrive and prosper by providing printed advertising, promotional and inspirational material that helps them succeed in their endeavors. My company is at the pinnacle of a business that exists for one reason only: We help hard working, intelligent people be heroes to those people and institutions necessary to their survival. Our products and services make a difference in this world.”

To all my friends and colleagues in the business of selling, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart that I can walk with you down the sometimes torturous path that we often travel in the pursuit of our life’s work. Thank you for forcing me to think about what we do and why we do it. Thank you for helping me understand that without helping fulfill the dreams of others, I can have no dreams of my own.”

Happy Selling!

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Got DELETE?

August 27th, 2009

I am a member of three email forums in three different industries. I average 166 emails a day, about 70 of which forward to my Blackberry. Partly, this is because I have my Blackberry set to vibrate when I get an email and since I carry it in my left pocket, I get 70 little cheap thrills when it buzzes and shakes.

My Outlook sends and receives nine email accounts when it synchronizes and I have four more emails that I have to check manually when at a computer. Add two Facebook accounts, two Twitter accounts, Linked In, Plaxo and a few others I can’t even remember and it adds up to a significant amount of time in front of a computer screen instead of in front of a client. Managing this mess is a nightmare on (Oops… had to stop and enjoy the incoming email buzz in my pocket… sorry, got distracted!) some days and simply an annoyance on others.

This, however, is the mark of the modern sales warrior and it must be mastered. I imagine it was as hard for an old time warrior to change from a bow and arrow to a musket as it is for me to change from a regular phone to the modern communications suite. There is simply no choice because the world is running away from all of us at a rapid rate.

Several times a year the topic of email proliferation comes up on each forum I’m a member of and each time the complaint is the same. There are too many irrelevant emails and not enough time to process them. Unfortunately, the number of emails rises every year while the amount of relevant ones remains the same. It is akin to looking for your golf ball ten years ago in a clean patch of grass that today contains a bramble of sticker bushes. It is harder to find but you still have to look for it.

It is 1:21 pm in California and I’ve been sitting at this darned computer since 6:30 am. I hate it. My left ear is going numb from the Bluetooth clip and my right ear is ringing from the high pitched whine of my external hard drive. The darned phone is vibrating away in my pocket and I just decided what to do with the incoming messages. I’m going to ruthlessly hit the DELETE key and send everything that doesn’t have relevance to the moment or immediate future to the trash bin.

You will not hear a complaint or bitch out of me. You will not hear irritation in my voice (although you might hear fatigue and disinterest). I will simply send the dozens of messages I don’t need to that black hole in the cloud. Bye Bye, emails. I hope you are not collecting in some undiscovered niche in the ether to come crashing down on me in the future. It may not be the best way to deal with the problem but it is my way.

Happy Selling!

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Oh please… don’t make it easy!

July 29th, 2009

I’m looking at a website from a high end top name retail brand (who shall remain nameless but the first name is an LA burger joint and the last name is an island) making their way into our industry. They announced the triumphant entry into our market (how we managed to survive without them for this long must be a mystery to their management) with a supplier blast offering 50% off samples.

Of course, as a retailer’s line, they are typically paranoid. Guys like this usually are when they jump into the promotional market trying to bolster flagging retail sales. In their core business they are kings, and as such, pass gas through silk. You know what they say… “It’s good to be King!” So they can be excused for stupid business decisions. After all, Kings can do what they want… right?

Well, no, that’s not how it works in the New World. These guys are probably seeing a dramatic decline in the $100+ shirt market in resort wear and need to find alternatives to keep their jobs. Like high end retail lines before them, they probably view the promotional market as ripe for the picking. After all, we’re the place that the people who like to wear those shirts live and work. Add the fact that we have 30,000+ sales outlets and our value increases immeasurably.

So why am I ragging on them if they are so good? Well, I’ve been here and done this before. Away back in the last century, a prominent golfwear designer brought a prominent golfing actor into the limelight of the garment business. They had great success in the green grass food chain and decided to leverage it into our business. They hired a very competent sales manager to teach us how to sell expensive clothing. He lasted a few years and was released, I think, because he knew what he was doing and they didn’t agree with him.

Within a three year period, I represented them plus a major sports manufacturer and a major shoe company who brought their “must have” goods to the market. Ten years later, two are gone completely and one is simply coasting on tepid sales. All three subscribed to the policy of arrogance that these companies tend to adopt, thinking that we simply have to sell their high priced product. They don’t know that there are a lot of good quality products for sale at reasonable prices, regardless of the label.

Last week I received a call from my cousin for this exact brand. Since I didn’t know that they were ready to premier the line to the thirsty crowd, I steered her to another well known industry (but not retail) brand. They will be very happy with their selection and they will save thousands of dollars as well. More importantly, they will love the fact that the shirt they ordered will be in their hands very quickly because it will be embroidered in house instead of having the supplier do it.

I’m always reticent to let a blanks provider do the embroidery. Years ago I bought shirts from a very high end sports clothing company for my company’s tradeshow use. I had to use their embroidery, which, frankly, sucked. They totally destroyed a sixty dollar shirt with a two dollar stitch job. I wound up buying thirteen shirts from a friend at her retail location and took them to my embroiderer who really did a spectacular job. So, while I have seen this new player’s massive multi-thousand stitch embroidery on the retail rack, I don’t trust anyone who has not made it a point to digitize a piece of crappy art and turn it into a silk purse like we have to do every day in this business.

Lest you think I’m being prissy, to be fair, if we provide a letter on our letterhead stating that we will embroider it, they will allow us to do so. If you wonder why they do this, it is probably because they don’t want to sell a $100+ sample at 50 back on the chance that one of us will buy it for personal use. (Oh, perish the thought… we might actually wear what we sell!)

Contrast that with the Indian sounding line name I represented in the nineties when the intelligent sales manager remarked that I looked a little ratty and maybe I’d like to buy some samples to replace my wardrobe and show off how good his clothes look. (I bought about a thousand dollars in samples and still wear some of the things I can still fit in today.) In the meantime, any time someone asks, I tell them the line name and extol their virtues.

I never wish anyone ill so I won’t say that I will raise a toast to the arrogant and stupid if and when this line drops off the supplier charts. But, I probably will use them as an example of what not to do in some of my classes.

If I were to take the reins of their sales effort for a day I would do the following things:

1) I would cheerfully offer the sample sale to all comers and encourage them to wear the samples on sales calls as well as display in showrooms. (Oh, wait… how many of us have showrooms anymore? Silly me… WE are the showroom!)

2) I would fix the website and make selecting men’s and women’s matching styles easier. Unlike the resort market, we frequently need to source matching styles and colors for corporate events and meetings. Many (if not most) suppliers treat me and women as separate and distinct entities and make it a chore to look for coherence in the line.

3) I would let anyone embroider the shirt. If they screw it up, I would cheerfully sell them replacements at the same price I sold them the first order of blanks.

4) I would do pretty much anything I could to counter the impression that my company is run by a bunch of retail clothing snobs and pricks.

5) I’d then move a lot of goods out the back door and fill the increasing number of orders as fast as I could ship.

That’s what I’d do.

Happy Selling!

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A New Way?

July 24th, 2009

Is the world really changing? Yes, I read the same papers you do and hear the same talking heads that you see on TV but I wonder, “How different, really, is the New World from the Old World?”

As sellers, we live and die by “The Contact,” the one who buys or recommends the purchase that we need to sell to exist. Business book shelves are awash in titles that give us method after method on ways to meet, greet, find, schmooze and work The Contact to achieve a sale. Since business book titles tend to fade quickly from the shelves, (the classics by authors such as Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie and a few others excepted) people like me offer up the latest and greatest ideas for your perusal on how to work The Contact and win at the selling game.

In my newest incarnation as a salesman, I am tasked with adopting New World tools and techniques that are in stark contrast to the last 32 years of selling in the Old World. These include the telephone, computer, GoToMeeting, the Internet and other high tech, low touch tools. I am becoming more expert at using “social media” and the various cute name products like Twitter and Facebook.

Yesterday at our farewell lunch on my way to the airport, my boss, a co-worker and I discussed my new incarnation. Since my co-worker doesn’t control my very existence, I only really care what my boss thinks and in his opinion, I am a dinosaur in the New World. My way of doing business has expired. The “Use by” date passed at least two years ago, if not earlier. This should raise some red flags in my mind but it does not (although, my reasoning is subject to debate). The reason is that I am surfing the wave of change in real time.

I taught my “Building and Maintaining Relationships in the Digital Age” class last week to 54 industry sales professionals and there were only two under the age of 40. The class stresses (as I stressed to my boss) that the New World Order needs Old World skills to prosper. While we may make individual purchases over the Internet from many unknown sources, we form enduring relationships with our buyers by cultivating them. While I talk a good game, however, there are many strong buying relationships in our business between people who have never met each other in the flesh. I know that while it’s possible to forge strong business relationships using Old World tools, the New World tools are more efficient, if not better.

In real terms, if we get proficient in the new ways of selling, we may even make more personal income from smaller sales volume simply by reducing expenses and increasing efficiency. And, since we score our efforts on a dollar scale, the more dollars in our pocket means we’re doing better in our profession. That is a good thing, too.

Happy Selling!

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An unlucky start

July 13th, 2009

Monday the 13th

The 13th is a volatile number. Considered unlucky since “Triskaidekaphobia” was inducted into our culture, perhaps in 1780 BC, it survives today in a number of iterations. When I lived in Manhattan 25 years ago, many buildings didn’t have “13” on the elevator list. Imagine my surprise when I counted the floors from the outside and the 25 story building only had 24 floors! (Yipes, that same math is again at work on Wall Street!)

Today, however, I’m simply facing 13 critical items on a 25 item Things To Do list and I only have time to do 10 of them because of this darned computer. No, it isn’t having problems (unless you consider “Operator Malfunction” a computer problem) but the operator has become mired in the Social Network.

It is 9:12am and I booted up at 7:32 this morning. In the intervening hour and a half I have checked my email three times, my Twitter account once, my Facebook twice and now I’m relating my inability to do honest work on my blog. Jeeze…

In my defense, I only took 1 minute 40 seconds to Google the unlucky 13 and find cites that fueled this missive. However, if I don’t take control of the process, that minute forty will escalate into a major waste of a day’s work for a day’s pay.

Since I started working from home on my computer and cell phone, my productivity has dropped by an estimated 15%. In real terms, that means that I have had contact with 30 fewer prospects each week while saving $22,000 in expenses.

Is it worth it? Saving money, I mean?

Not sure yet. If I accomplish most of my tasks and save the 30 grand I expect to this year then I suppose it is. It just feels wrong. Sort of like Judas must have felt when he was the 13th disciple to be seated at the table of the Last Supper.

Take a look at how you use your Social Networking tools. Do a “time waster” inventory on your day. If you are at all like me, you will find that you can get an extra hour of productive selling time on the 14th by exercising some discipline.

Happy Selling!

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Making it easy?

June 25th, 2009

Mike Marois died on June 6 and it was left to my friend Marc and me to arrange his burial and funeral. We were the guys who knew him well enough to do it because his sister lived far away and couldn’t do anything to assist. While the circumstances of Mike’s extraordinary life are an entire blog unto itself, for our purposes the focus is on what we do as a company to make life easy for our customers.

Because of the sheer number of complications surrounding his demise, Mike’s body could not be remanded to a mortuary or funeral home. I soon found that funeral and service notices could not be accepted by the newspaper except from one of those sources. I only found this out after a trek through the newspaper “Hall of Hell.”

The daily news is peppered with references to newspaper’s that are dying and expiring. The news is almost funerial in its self pity. What frosted my butt was that there was no way to get customer service in a timely manner in my time of need. The newspapers that relied upon my advertising dollar to survive made it almost impossible to spend that dollar with them.

For example, the LA papers website had a link to Obituaries but that led to 70 obituaries, not to the “how to place an obituary ad” section. In fact, there is no “how to place an obituary ad” section! How stupid is that? Not only is there no link to that information but the link to the “contact” phone numbers is so buried that it took eleven minutes to find it, ‘way down at the bottom of an endlessly scrolling home page. It was as though the management said, “We don’t want to stay in business by providing customer service. We want to go out of business so we can have a pity party for our demise.”

We always get in trouble when we think like a company. We never get in trouble when we think like a customer. If the newspaper had thought like a bereaved citizen then the result would have been a different story. It would have been the story of a $972.70 sale ($9.25 per 25 character line plus $300 for the photo) instead of the everlasting ire of a “never again” customer.

Does your company make it easy for customers to be customers? Do you look at every single point of entry into your business to uncover the pitfalls and bottlenecks that inhibit a customer’s business? If not, you’d better do so in a fat hurry. Like right now. Today. Time’s short and time’s a’wastin…. Now… go eliminate a few bottlenecks in your sales path.

Happy Selling!

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Relentless Selling

June 1st, 2009

While looking over the photos I took on my China trip, I was reminded of the foundation our profession is built upon. The foundation is “Relentlessness.”

“Selling” is more than a profession… it is a way of life and a way of living. Everyone “sells” everyday, be they sales professional or not. My daughter, a mother of two, has to “sell” the kids on doing chores and homework each day. My friend Perry, an architect in China, has to “sell” the government on the value his firm brings to their projects. My grandson has to “sell” the need for a new Lego set to PopPop.

What brought it to mind was the relentlessness of “Number 52” at the Great Wall of China, outside Beijing. Number 52 was the vendor who used all the traditional sales openings (“I remember you…”) as well as forcing her calling card (the number “52” scrawled on cardboard) on me and making me promise to stop by her stall upon returning to the village.

Numbers 18, 26, and 34 also “remembered me” but did not give me a card to remember them so they lost the prospect of a sale. Number 52 not only forced me to promise to stop (with gentle persuasion) but even tried to extort dozens of dollars more than the going price of her goods were worth, to make a handsome profit for her work.

My friend Maria said I was a chump (which is true) because I gave Number 52 $100RMB (about $14 US) more than I should have but I believe that good salesmanship deserves a reward. Maria is a consummate salesperson who has taught me many valuable lessons in my career and she showed her mettle when we assembled the “Nut Ladies” for a photo. I offered them $100RMB as a reward for their participating in the photo. When a few of them tried to bargain with us, Maria just said, “It is $100 RMB for you all and it’s ok… you don’t have to be in the photo.” They all participated and I was reminded of the value of a good proposition.

At the Beijing market, the sellers were less relentless and less effective. I learned that saying “mayo mayo” is a good way to halt an intrusive offer. The really relentless, however, got a look-see and once, got a sale. It was an embroidered dress for my newest little granddaughter but it was $14 US that they would not have, had it not been for their relentless refusal to accept my mayo at face value.

As a sales professional, relentlessness must be a way of life to avoid our economic death. So raise your glass high and toast “Relentlessness” relentlessly.

Happy Selling!

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