Category: Sales

If You Don’t Have This, It Ain’t an Appointment

It’s easy for us salespeople to kid ourselves.

Sales appointments have a date, time and location
Photo by Feng Yu

What Does “An Appointment” Mean?

When I get to the end of a Revenue Initiative with a television station sales department, I ask each Account Executive to write up and send me their follow-up plans for each client we met with. Among the questions they are to answer: “Do you have a face-to-face appointment with the decision-maker, and if so, when is it?”

Invariably, at least one AE will write back that they have an appointment — “I’m supposed to call the client next week.”

From now on, every time a salesperson tells me something like that, I will immediately email them a link to Matt Sunshine’s blog post “Follow Up Next Week” Does Not Mean You Have an Appointment.

Sunshine, who writes for the Center for Sales Strategy Blog, puts it very plainly in a subhead:

You Don’t Have an Appointment Until the Prospect Has Agreed to a Specific Date and Time.

Then he explains the problem:

‘Follow up next week’ leads to slow sales because ‘follow up next week’ often leads to a prospect saying something like ‘Oh, you know what, this week is not going to work after all, can you call me next week and we will meet.’

He’s right. When you set a real appointment with a prospect, both of you make a commitment — you both agree to show up at the same place at the same time, ready to do business.

“Follow up next week” is, at most, a one-way commitment. The client asks you to commit to an action without agreeing to do anything in return. Nothing is on the client’s calendar, so there’s no deadline.

With a real appointment, the client has something on the calendar. If they’ve agreed to take a look at their budget to see if they can make room for your proposal, or discuss your idea with their partner, they have a deadline to do it.

Heck, even if all they’ve agreed to do is “think about it”, they’ve got to think about it before you show up for the appointment.

For moving a conversation closer to a sale, the ideal appointment with a local client will be face-to-face — the hardest thing for them to ignore is a human body in their office.

When the customer is unable to agree to an in-person meeting, push for a phone appointment, with the customer writing a date and time on their calendar.

If the client isn’t willing to set a firm phone appointment, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the deal is dead. But it is a sign that the client isn’t as interested in the process as you are.

So don’t kid yourself. A real appointment has a date, a time, and a location. Anything less is… something less.

What You Can Learn From “The Pickle Principle” In Action

“Big doors swing on little hinges.” – W. Clement Stone

The $11 Decision
A Small Customer Service Story

I needed some shirts laundered in London, Kentucky. It was the middle of a multi-week road trip, I was in a Hampton Inn, and it was time.

I knew the drill — the laundry form is always in the hotel room closet. Fill it out, bring the laundry to the front desk, and it’ll be back the next day.

I glanced at the form — $4.50 per shirt, two shirts, $9.00 total. I stuffed the shirts in a bag and brought them to the front desk.

They came back the next day, and I didn’t think of them again until I looked over the statement at the end of my stay.

The hotel had charged me $20.

Photo by Andy Dean
Photo by Andy Dean

I sent an email to Michelle Baldwin, the manager of the Hampton Inn London North, asking her to credit me $11.00 for what was —  obviously —  an overcharge.

She wrote back quickly, and as I began to read her response, I felt myself entering my Outraged Consumer state:

“The dry cleaners that we use decide the charge and bill us for that amount, then we bill the guest on their stay. There is a minimum charge of $20.00 that is highlighted on the laundry request sheet. That minimum charge is due to the delivery and pick up.”

This was outrageous, I thought. The dry cleaner, in cahoots with the hotel, had pulled a fast one on me. I was 2000 miles away, with no way to look at what I’d signed.

In my mind, I started writing an angry retort. Until I read further.

“I will go ahead and adjust account to reflect only the $9.00 because I know you weren’t aware of the policy. I will also send you a new receipt reflecting the change. Thank you for staying with us and I hope you enjoyed your stay.”

A couple of weeks later I was back in the Hampton Inn London North. After I checked in, I opened the room closet and took a peek at the laundry request slip.

The $20 minimum was right there on the ticket, in letters plenty big enough for me to see.

I’d missed it.

The hotel had been right the whole time. I was 100% in the wrong.

Photo by closertoinfinity
Photo by closertoinfinity

I thought of Bob Farrell and the pickle.

The Pickle Principle

Farrell, who ran the very successful Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor chain, used to tell the story of a letter he received from a customer. The customer complained that had asked for an extra pickle to go with his hamburger… and the waitress tried to sell it to him.

The letter launched what he called The Pickle Principle:

I had a chance meeting with [the letter writer]  years later and I thanked him in person for his letter because it became the “war cry” of our young company, “Give ’em the Pickle.” When something happens with a customer and you’re not sure what to do? “Give ’em the Pickle!” Do what it takes to make things right!

Michelle Baldwin at the Hampton Inn could have just pointed out that the mistake was mine, and that she’d had to pay the dry cleaner in full. She could have told me to bug off.

Instead, she took the hit to make a customer happy.

The $11 refund was a small gesture… a pickle. I could’ve handled the loss, and so could she.

But big doors swing on little hinges. With this $11 investment, a hotel gained a raving fan.

I don’t often make it back to London, Kentucky — but when I’m there, I’ll go out of my way to stay at the Hampton Inn London North.

[reminder]What’s the most memorable small gesture you’ve made for a customer? What’s the most memorable gesture someone’s made for you?[/reminder]

Chic-fil-A Dumps Its Agency: Lessons For Sellers Like You

Last month, after 22 years and millions of sandwiches, Chic-fil-A fired its agency.

Photo by James Peragine
Photo by James Peragine

This came as a shock to many.

The Richards Group introduced the “Eat Mor Chikin” cows in 1995. As AdAge reports, Chic-fil-A has become the top chicken chain in the United States, with $6 billion in annual sales.

In spite of all that, Chic-fil-A fired their agency. Understandably, Richards Group executives seemed stunned. Again, from AdAge:

“It’s not very often that a campaign this successful results in an agency being fired. I don’t know that there’s much precedence for it,” Stan Richards, principal and founder, The Richards Group, said in an interview. “It is a little hard to understand, and in many ways it’s the saddest occurrence in my long, professional life.”

For all of us in the media sales game, there are some lessons.

1. If you are working with your station’s biggest agency, your income is at the mercy of the clients that agency represents. Your biggest biller may be one phone call away from being a much smaller part of your paycheck.

2. No matter how good your account list looks right now, stuff happens. Marketing directors get fired. Successful companies hire new people who have other ideas. Owners sell their businesses.

You have no control over any of that. You do control your activity.

  • You can build relationships with the local clients your agencies represent. Agencies get fired, and if the only person you know is the media buyer, you’re in trouble.
  • You can look for new business every day. Here are several ways to find leads.

Or you can sit on your list and assume everything’s going to be fine forever.

It’s your call. Will you do what it takes to build a sustainable sales career?

Or are you a chikin?

The First Sale You Make to a Customer: Are You Blowing It?

The first time you contact a new prospect,  that customer has a buying decision to make. The decision doesn’t involve money… it involves time.

For salespeople and customers, time is money
Photo by raduga21

Are We Delivering ROI On Our Customers’ Time?
A Sales Attempt That Failed

Not long ago I was supposed to accompany a television station salesperson to see the owner of a roofing company. The AE had met with the owner several times, had made a presentation that seemed to go well, but hadn’t been able to get a commitment.

The meeting was supposed to be Monday at 10am.

Monday morning the client called to say that something had come up, and asked to reschedule. We rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning the AE called to confirm, and the client said he couldn’t meet that day. We rescheduled for Wednesday at 11:30.

Wednesday morning the client sent an email that 11:30 wouldn’t work. The AE tried to return the call, got voice mail, and never heard back.

That’s where the story ended.

The AE and Sales Manager were both frustrated. They felt it was rude and unprofessional of the client to keep bailing out like that.

They were right. But there’s another side to the story.

The client had a finite amount of time each day — and each day he decided that he’d get a better return on his investment by doing something else.

Andy Paul, author of Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers to Make Fast, Favorable Decisions, puts it this way: “The first thing a customer ever buys from you is time.”

Before you can even sell your product, the customer must purchase your selling time, which is comprised of your own time as well as the information you can provide to help the customer move closer to making a decision.

The currency the customer will use to purchase your selling time is her time… For her investment of time, she has to receive something of value from you in return that is equal to or exceeds her perception of the value of her time. That means that in each instance a customer invests in your selling time, you have to provide value in the form of information that will help move the customer at least one step forward in her buying process…

…If you provide something of value in exchange for the time the customer invests with you, then the customer will reward you with additional time to continue to sell to her.

The roofer we attempted to meet with had met with the AE before. He had an idea in his head of how much return he had previously received on his time investment.

He decided he could get a better return somewhere else.

When you ask a client to spend time with you — for a first meeting, for a presentation, or for anything else — your customer has to decide if the return they’ll get is going to exceed the value of their time.

It starts with the very first call you make. If your opening isn’t compelling enough to separate you from all the peddlers they hear from, you’re not getting the meeting. You can read about creating a more effective call opening here.

If you’re having trouble getting appointments, or getting your calls returned, ask yourself:

If the customer buys your time, how much value will they get?

 

Don’t Hide Your Bias

If you work in media sales, the advice you give should benefit your clients. But it will also benefit your employer, and you.

A new study indicates that there’s a good reason to display your bias proudly.

Salespeople should display their bias proudly
Photo by Julien Tromeur/Adobe Stock

In my day job, television station sales departments present me to their clients as an outside advertising consultant. My business card doesn’t have the station call letters — it has the name of my consulting company.

Early in the process, some advertisers ask me how “independent” I am. They want to know if the advice I give is going to be biased in any way.

Yes, I tell them, it will definitely be biased.

I point to the station sales manager and say, “That’s the person who bought my airline ticket to come here. If the plan I recommend doesn’t involve television and digital advertising, I have to go home on Greyhound.”

The line usually gets a laugh, and the clients relax a bit. Everybody now knows the rules of the game.

I’ve always done this out of instinct — my gut feeling has been that disclosing my bias increases the level of trust.

A recent New York Times column indicates that this disclosure has real benefits. In the article Dr. Sunita Sah, a professor at Cornell University, discussed “specialty bias” found in some medical advice.

Perhaps in an attempt to be transparent, some doctors spontaneously disclose their specialty bias. That is, surgeons may inform their patients that as surgeons, they are biased toward recommending surgery.

My latest research, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that patients with localized prostate cancer (a condition that has multiple effective treatment options) who heard their surgeon disclose his or her specialty bias were nearly three times more likely to have surgery than those patients who did not hear their surgeon reveal such a bias. Rather than discounting the surgeon’s recommendation, patients reported increased trust in physicians who disclosed their specialty bias.

There are some caveats to this — elsewhere in the article, Sah discusses situations in which disclosure decreases trust, although it may paradoxically increase the chances that the advice will be followed.

The bottom line is this: if you work in sales, you are going to be biased toward the products and services you sell.

Sharing this openly is not only the right thing to do — it will increase your chances of making a sale.