Category: Sales

When People Walk Into Your Store

I spent part of this afternoon at an auto dealership. One of my radio stations had an appearance there (station van, tent, prizes).

I arrived about 15 minutes before the appearance was scheduled to start. Couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be, so I parked the car and walked, slowly, all the way around the building, looking for someone to ask.

As near as anyone there could tell, I was a potential customer. But nobody approached me.

Finally I walked inside. Nobody even looked at me. So I  stuck my head in an office, and the person there came out and sent me in the right direction.

About an hour later I was at the station tent when a man walked up and asked what we were doing there. We explained that it was an appearance to try to draw some more customers to the store, and he told us that he’d come by to take a test drive.

“I can’t find anyone to help me”, he said, “so I’m going home.”

Our Marketing Director, Melissa Ives, told him to wait. She then marched up to the building, fetched a salesman, brought him to the station tent, and introduced him to the customer. If that customer bought anything today, Melissa will not receive a commission — but she should.

I write this in the middle of an unprecedented downturn in the auto business. The  dealers we work with have been moaning for months about a lack of traffic and low sales.

Meanwhile, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, a group of auto dealership employees paid no attention to at least two potential customers who walked onto their lot. I’m guessing that we weren’t the only ones who were ignored.

On Monday, the General Manager will look at his weekend sales figures and complain that the advertising isn’t working.

What happens when customers walk into your store? Are you sure?

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Selling On Your Voice Mail

This morning I made a phone call to J.R. Langlois, owner of The Safer Floor Store.  I got this voice mail greeting (I’m paraphrasing from memory):

Hi, this is J.R. at the Safer Floor Store. I can’t come to the phone because I’m helping my customers prevent injuries and avoid lawsuits. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.

There are two great lessons here:

1. J.R. knows that he’s not in the floor supply business — he’s in the injury-and-lawsuit-prevention business.

2. He recognizes that voice mail represents an opportunity — even when he’s away from the phone, he can deliver his sales message to anyone who calls.

I’ve had the same outgoing voice mail message on my phone for more than a decade. I changed  it this afternoon.

What’s the most effective voice mail message you’ve run into? Leave a comment below.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

The Weirdest Objection I’ve Received

After doing the sales thing for a couple of decades, I’d like to believe I can think on my feet. But every now and then someone throws an objection that locks me up like a 1985 Doc Gooden curve ball.

Tonight brought me one of those. The scene:

I’m on the phone with a recruiter who’s planning a hiring event.  Because of the kind of people he wants to hire, I’ve recommended that he use my big news/talk station, 1190 KEX.

The early objections are easy ones. We deal with them, but we’re not really making progress. I’m trying to figure out what the REAL objection is when he drops the bomb.

Him: Everybody who listens to talk radio is boring.

Me: Boring?

Him: Yes.

Me: Everyone?

Him:  Do you have any popular stations?

What’s the weirdest objection you’ve ever received? Leave a comment below.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

FedEx Wins Some Christmas Day Word-of-Mouth

In my office, our main overnight delivery service until recently was DHL. It was cheaper than FedEx, and reasonably reliable. But the word around the office was always that if you were serious about getting a package to someone overnight, you should spring for FedEx.

DHL is gone now.  On Christmas Day FedEx took a big step in reinforcing its reputation in the consumer’s mind as the most reliable choice overnight delivery. While UPS gave all of its employees the day off, FedEx announced that it would keep all 665 of its Express Centers open on Christmas morning.

A huge portion of the country has experienced really rough weather in the week before Christmas. Heavy snow and ice created havoc in air, rail, and ground transportation. Here in the Pacific Northwest, many roads are still iced over. Some packages — including many holiday presents — just couldn’t be delivered on time.

FedEx understood the disappointment that would cause, and decided to give parents one more chance to put the presents under the tree. This undoubtedly cost them a considerable amount of money, and created inconvenience and hardship for some of their employees. They did it anyway.

So if you were expecting a Christmas present via FedEx, you may be able to get it today. If it’s coming UPS? Sorry, you’ll have to wait until they get back on Friday.

Customers of both companies will remember what happened, and how each company responded to the challenge. So will all the people they talk to, and millions more who hear about it in media reports.

Which company will they choose when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight?

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Seth Godin Helps Me Get Over Myself

I took a “no” yesterday from a client who should have said “yes.”

Spent a good part of my Saturday fuming about the considerable effort I’d put in, the difficulty of communicating with the decision-maker through a third party, and my firm belief that if he’d gone ahead with what I’d proposed, it would have been a profitable investment for him.

The income I lost when he turned me down may have also entered my thinking.

So Seth Godin’s post on “Two Ways to Deal With No” was both timely and beneficial. Shortened, fair-use versions of the options he presented are:

You could contact the organization that turned you down and explain that they had made a terrible mistake, the wrong choice and a grave error…

or

You could be more gracious than if you’d won the work. You could send a thank you note for the time invested, you could sing the praises of the vendor chosen in your stead and you could congratulate the buyer, “based on the criteria you set out, it’s clear that you made exactly the right choice for your organization right now.”

Seth expands significantly in his post, which you can read in its entirety here. I’ll add one other thought — advice I’ve given many times to newer salespeople, and which I’d forgotten in my own frustration yesterday:

Never blame the customer for not buying. Most of the time you’re wrong — in the course of the sales process, you have choices in how you present your proposal.

There’s always a way you could have done it differently. If the choices you made didn’t result in a sale, your mental energy is much better invested in thinking about what adjustments you’ll make in your presentation the next time you get a chance.

Seth’s second option will go a long way toward ensuring that the chance will come again.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.