Category: Sales

Sarah Palin — Premature Product Launch?

Years ago I was involved in the Portland launch of a mobile phone company called VoiceStream Wireless (now T-Mobile). The company was determined to make a huge splash.

They opened a bunch of stores… spent an enormous amount of money on radio, TV, print, and transit advertising… rented Pioneer Square in downtown Portland for a launch party. It was beautifully orchestrated. Thousands of people bought their phones and signed up for service during the first week.

Only problem was, they didn’t have any near enough towers in place, so the phones didn’t work very well. A huge percentage of their early customers returned their phones and cancelled the service.

It took VoiceStream a long time to recover.

I’m reminded of this as more details emerge about Sarah Palin. Daughter’s pregnancy, husband’s (22 year old) drunk driving conviction, and other stories that are moving the discussion away from whether the McCain-Palin ticket is better than Obama-Biden.

Whether any of these details affect her ability to perform as VP or President is irrelevant now. What’s relevant is that the McCain camp appears unprepared to deal with their emergence.

The Republicans appear to have rushed the product launch without having all of their cell towers in place. The damage to their brand may take four years to repair.

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Sarah Palin as Marketing Strategy

A reader of yesterday’s post about Sarah Palin criticized the choice as “a slimy, deliberate attempt to pander to Hillary supporters.” It’s a thought that deserves its own discussion — so here goes.

I’m inclined to set aside “slimy” — this is politics, and unless money changed hands or sexual favors were granted, this doesn’t show up on the slime-o-meter. “Deliberate” isn’t a bad thing: “inadvertent” would be a much bigger problem. So let’s focus on “pander to Hillary supporters.”

A presidential campaign is one big pander festival (pandermonium?) — an extended sales call on millions of prospects. So does this choice move McCain closer to a sale or farther away?

A good salesperson needs to skip over the prospects who would never buy, and focus on the ones who might. Hardcore Obama supporters won’t vote for McCain no matter who he chooses, so they can be safely ignored.

In this election, there are two big group of folks who can still be persuaded:

1. Many Hillary supporters are available for pandering, and now have some serious thinking to do. Palin may oppose everything Hillary stands for, but she’s a working mother; for those who have long dreamed of a female president, she represents perhaps the quickest path to the goal. If Obama wins, it may be eight years before a Democratic woman next has a legitimate shot at the office. By contrast, the McCain will be 72 on Inauguration Day.

2. Hardcore right-wingers who don’t like McCain, and might have stayed home in November. Palin’s an anti-abortion, NRA member who supports oil drilling. Yesterday, Portland conservative talk show host Lars Larson announced that because of Palin’s selection, he’s climbing aboard the McCain bandwagon. He’s not alone.

There’s also some evidence that the Democrats haven’t figured out how to deal with Palin yet — after some Obama aides blasted the selection, Obama himself made a point of praising her. So the choice may have the added benefit of tying the opposition up for a little while.

So does Palin’s selection move McCain closer to a sale? In other words, will this particular pandering attempt accomplish its goal?

On the basis of early evidence, I’m going to say yes. It hasn’t scared away anyone who was already in the McCain camp, and it’s given two big groups of undecideds a new reason to consider him.

Speaking strictly as a fellow professional in the persuasion industry, I applaud.

An Interesting Side Note

Yesterday, my original post about Sarah Palin brought a quick spike of traffic, which pleased me until a reader pointed out that I’d misspelled her name. When I fixed the error, my traffic started to drop. A look at my stats revealed that the most popular search terms for those who found this blog were…

Sarah Pailin and Sara Pailin

So for those of you who found me with those spellings — or Sarah Pallin or Sara Pallin — welcome.

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An Interesting Way to Beat Call Reluctance

Those of us who use cold calling as part of our marketing arsenal sometimes run into call reluctance — we just can’t bring ourselves to pick up the phone and call a complete stranger. Afterwards, when we’ve gotten the meeting, fear of rejection stops us from asking for the order.

Chris Sparhawk, an amateur advice-giver in Portland (he has a home-made booth on the street, a la Lucy Van Pelt, and gives free advice to anyone who stops by) offered up an interesting way to beat the fear. According to Casey Parks of the Oregonian, Sparhawk was talking with a man who had trouble asking for dates.

Sparhawk had the same problem once. His future wife worked as a florist, and for months he bought flowers just to see her. Finally, she asked him out.

Now, he puts his own experience to use: “Start asking people out, and see how many no’s you can get,” he says.

The guy smiles. “I can totally get no’s.”

Best sales tip I’ve read this month.

 

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Does This Customer Survey Have Value?

Customer surveys can be a terrific way to check on your sales and customer service efforts — not everyone will fill them out (and those who do may not tell you everything you need to know), but in some cases you’ll have the opportunity to correct problems you didn’t know you had.

This only works if you act on what you learn.

A survey we recently received in the mail has the potential to be teaching tool, or a complete waste of postage. Updates will follow. The history:

In June, we needed a new backyard fence. This post has more details. The short version is that my wife called three well-known companies. One never returned a phone message, although they did send a postcard promising that someone would call. A second company sent a salesman who took measurements, promised to return with a bid, and was never heard from again. Only the third company followed up with a quote, and that company got our business.

[Roland Young of Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking deserves credit for his follow-up, and for doing a fine job on the fence. A radio campaign would be an excellent way for Rick’s to tell the world about what they do, and I invite them to call me at 503-323-6553. But I digress.]

The company who never returned our call just sent us a survey. The cover letter is signed by the president of the company. It says, in part:

Our business is based on referrals from the clients who contact [us], and we want that experience to be positive. So that we can ensure that we’re doing a good job for clients, we ask for feedback to see how we are doing. It would help us a great deal if you would complete the questions on the back and return this form at your earliest convenience in the enclosed self-adressed envelope.

Our initial reaction upon opening the envelope was amusement. After having completely dropped the ball, how could they, with a straight face, ask us how they did? But I now think this was a smart move. They don’t what happened, because we never told them — all we did was spend our money with someone else and move on. The survey represents a system they’ve set up to make sure they find out about things like this.

So we’re going to fill it out and send it back. We will be candid about our experience. Our answers may help them plug a hole in their sales funnel, and improve the results of their advertising — but only if someone reads it and acts on what they learn.

Stay tuned for updates.

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Are You Ignoring Your Best Prospects?

From Dan Kennedy’s “No BS Marketing Newsletter”

Most salespeople haven’t worked in ages. I was comparing notes about this with a friend last week, and neither of us could remember the last time we were “prospected” by a salesperson, followed up on by a salesperson we’ve previously bought something from. There’s crying in the car business, but no salesman or dealer from whom I’ve purchased new cars in the past five years has contacted me. There’s a mass exodus in real estate agents in surrender, but none I’ve purchased a property from has contacted me to sell me another. Retail: from the clothing store in my hometown where I spent $1,800.00 in my first visit two years ago… from the clothing store in my other home city where I spent $500.00 on my first visit… from a store in Vegas where I spent $2,000.00 on cowboy boots… no salesman has attempted contact.”

Do you see yourself in that passage?

I saw me.

This afternoon I left a message for a client who’s been advertising on one of my stations, asking for an update on how his sales have been going. He left me a voice mail in return, telling me that the campaign I put together for him has brought him 18 brand-new clients in the past six weeks — monetarily, about a 5:1 return on his investment.

I was very pleased to hear this, but until I read the passage above I did not connect the dots: I have three other radio stations that are demographically appropriate for him. He is currently spending 100% of his advertising budget with me, but there’s a strong case to be made that increasing his budget would be very profitable for him. And, not incidentally, for me.

Tomorrow’s project is to make a list of all my clients, past and present, determine how many other opportunities like this there are, and pick up the phone.

How about you? Have you missed some great upselling opportunities — the kind that would benefit you and your customers? What are you going to do about it?

Tell your story in the comments field below.

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

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

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.