What do they say about a little knowledge?

Let me point out something that I hope is obvious: Hearing about something is different from knowing about it.

Until recently “grass roots marketing” was out there to save the day. Why pay to advertise when “grass roots” would do the trick…free. Fighting this objection wears a guy out. It becomes tedious, dull, predictable. So have fun with it. Play dumb when a client starts talking all fancy and smart about something like grass roots marketing. Ask them: “What is grass roots marketing?” This opens the door.

What reply might you hear?

Well, recently a business owner explained that a bake sale at her daughter’s school was a great form of advertising. Yes, I asked, but I am still not sure how the bake sale helps sell roofing and siding products. Presumably people at the kid’s school already know mommy sells roofing and siding products. Surely they line up after buying a cake requesting an estimate. This all works great, of course, but you wouldn’t advertise to these people anyway. They already know you, your business, and your cakes…and if they don’t like one of the three, they ain’t calling anyway. So it is best to advertise to people who don’t know about you, your daughter, and your cakes. This is called prospecting for NEW leads.

But what do you hear? The same old cheapo half-baked excuse for believing that advertising won’t work and isn’t necessary. The Number One grass roots “success story” is the value of repeat and referral business.

“Ninety-nine per cent of our business is repeat and referral business!” You hear that all the time. Then ask, “Do you advertise?”

“Nope, don’t need to…all of our business is referral and repeat, like I said.”

“Well, Mr. Customer, how could it be otherwise? You don’t advertise so seems obvious that you would not get any business from advertising, right? Could you use more business?”

“Sure…but you’re not listening, all of our business is repeat and referral. We have a great grass roots program going in this community.”

A business owner like that probably is correct. I don’t get it. And frankly I really don’t have the patience to try to get it…or more accurately, I don’t have the patience to help them get it. If a client like that is particularly rude or in some other way rubs me the wrong way, however, I might hang in there to dust things up a bit. I try to be Socratic and ask questions that might lead the client in the right direction and entertain me at the same time.

“Can you tell me, Socrates, is business built by reputation alone or must one build a reputation first?”

Unfortunately Socrates’s audience of bright young men with smart names like Meno, Phaedo, and Cratylus is not matched by today’s mix of Nicks, Toms, and Daves. Intelligent dialogue, even in the vulgar sense, evades too many sales calls. You have to learn how to deal with that if you’re going to succeed in this business, but choose your battles. You can’t win by making someone see that they were wrong, you need to lead them to seeing that they were right all along, but in a way different from where they started. Not every business owner works that way. Some simply don’t hear, don’t think, and don’t care. Have fun with those – briefly – and move on.

But now there is a new freebie on the block. Suddenly the Nicks and Toms of the world have “social networks” ready as the solution to all their business-building needs. This is the latest sure-fire way to market your business cheap. Keep in mind that many of these people barely understand the internet and yet they tell you with absolute certainty that they are destined to be the next Sam Walton because everyone on the planet will be “twittering” the great value of their carpet cleaning services. Again, if you’re the salesman, playing dumb will be fun. Just ask: “Really? How does that work?”

“Well, all these people use computers to twitter. They send short messages to each other and it is free. So we will use that to tell people about our carpet specials.”

“How will people know to find you?”

“They don’t find me, I twitter and they get the note.”

“They don’t have to sign up or anything?”

“They do, but it is free so everyone does it.” (Brace yourself for a smug threat here.) “This will certainly be bad for your business!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know much about it. So people just twitter about carpets and stuff, huh?”

“No, I do and people will see it and that’s how we advertise.”

It certainly could be true that a business owner could use Twitter or Facebook or any other social networking site to tell customers about specials and events and things. Bars and restaurants do this all the time. But do you really think a huge demand for “chemical neutral” carpet cleaning facts exists out there on social networks? If I am at a bar with my girlfriend trying to look cool ignoring her, the last thing I want to read about is carpet cleaning. How cool can you look reading about zero residue carpet sucking equipment? Give me some dirt on one of those drug addled pop stars that Los Angeles County has locked up. That works. Cleaning carpets? Flushing my radiator? Filling a cavity? I don’t know that I’m convinced.

So let’s talk about the weather. If nothing else today’s weather shined brightly on picture-perfect day. Just a few happy little clouds scattered here and there, nothing threatening or dark at all. The beauty of calling on clients miles away is the time spent getting to and fro. I like that part of the job. The rest…well, these people are wearing on me.

160 Miles Today

This was a day when being behind the wheel was a good thing. Logged over 160 miles today, more than three hours in motion. Just me, the road, my thoughts. A gorgeous day for driving, but driving doesn’t earn much money. I’m paid commissions on sales, not miles. The people meeting me today didn’t pan out for much anyway. It was a day when I heard many sad stories about business being down – and I can understand business being down, believe me – but I sell advertising and it seems odd to me that if sales are down someone would choose to “save” money by cutting advertising.

Think about this for a minute. If a business cuts an advertising budget when times are tough, by what logic do they invest in advertising when times are good? If times are tough and advertising does what it is supposed to do, you would buy more, not less, right? The logic of cutting advertising when times are tough suggests that business owners have money to throw away in good times. “Hey, we’re making money! Let’s waste some on advertising!” That makes no sense.

Likewise a business would not stop providing a valuable service or discontinue a profitable line of products just to save money on the initial investment of providing the service or product. So when someone tells you they are cutting advertising to save money, you know they don’t understand or perhaps don’t appreciate the value of the advertising they buy from you.

And showing value is no easy task! It involves subjects business owners know nothing about, like return on investment and simple arithmetic. Seriously, there are a lot of stubbornly clueless people out there and many of them run businesses. It makes a guy wonder…what if? How did I end up on outside looking in? Perhaps conceptualizing and reasoning are counterproductive to successful business management, however I have my doubts.

Nonetheless, one business owner today insisted that while his calls are up this year, the value of those calls are down, meaning he isn’t closing as many sales. Fine. I won’t argue that point, but I only need to be profitable and comparing a typical year with this year he is clearly profitable with me. An advertising program that generates dozens of leads a month for only a couple hundred dollars is pretty good for a business with average sales worth many thousands of dollars. One sale might be worth tens of thousands of dollars for this business.

We reviewed his call reports; long quality calls dominated the month. Unfazed, he insisted that these calls were not nearly as valuable as calls he gets from freebies like bulletin boards and Craig’s List. Paid advertising hasn’t generated a sale in months, he says. As he speaks I’m convinced he is trying to convince himself as much as he is me that this is true. Little eye contact and an unwillingness to listen to an explanation exposes a man who does not want to be challenged. That’s obvious, right? So you try to lead him to a better conclusion that he finds on his own. You give him the facts and simple examples that he can project to his own situation. It should be simple, but those basic arithmetic and reasoning skills come in handy here. Unfortunately, if a person doesn’t have those, you’ve got problems, and today we had a lot of problems.

I did maintain a few accounts today and made a little money. Unfortunately a lot of money will cover gas and a probably dental bill to cover the teeth grinding that occurred while attempting to meet with my clients. I’m not sure what will cover eye rolling and aneurysms. My medical insurance, perhaps? Nothing to joke about. Frustrating clients do bring a person to the abyss more often than not and it is only a matter of time before I fall over the edge and require serious rehabilitative care at little hospital called something like Sylvan Dells…they still have those, right?

Until that day comes, I will retreat to my place behind the wheel and enjoy the countryside. Impossible clients on the one hand and an especially inviting day for a soothing drive on the other…sometimes things fit together quite nicely.

At The Lake

Sorry to disappoint my readers. But I am at the annual summer vacation and family reunion. Not entirely safe from the sales world. New communications technology – you know…that Internets? – has me tethered to work, even if only loosely. There have been the expected calls and emails from clients who are tech-savvy enough to know that you can be reached in all but the remotest parts of the globe these days and figure they will get your undivided attention when you are on vacation. Well…they are incorrect. They have to stand in line with the other clients pursuing the same strategy. There has also been the snarky email reply from some director or other in our corporate customer service department. And the automated updates and memos sent en masse to all of us on the sales team never end. It is troubling, but I have an easier job ignoring the phone than email.

So I will write more about the lake this week, and being a true Minnesotan, talking about the lake will be comprised mostly of thoughts on the weather, fishing, and the weather.

The weather has been fine. Day One started off with a bang! Wild storms. Amazing clouds all twisted and torn up in a fantastic spectrum of blue-black, purple, and white-grey. If I already wrote about this, forgive me…I haven’t been reading my blog. Don’t fret. Acknowledging these storms again is justified. In my experience, they rank easily among the best storms ever experienced. At one point the rain and clouds and wind came on so heavily the highway blacked out. Nothing to see. And the wind strongly whipped the rain and other things through the air so fiercely I wasn’t sure if I should worry more about being flipped over or ripped through. Here is a picture of the storm in that “Calm Before the Storm” phase.

I met a cousin at bar on the lake. We had a beer, maybe two, and talked about the weather and fishing with other people at the resort. We didn’t have long for this…we had to get back to our own resort and start dinner for our group. Steaks, chicken, and burgers with all the fixings, loads of picnic side dishes, and a commercial grade bar (which has needed restocking since)…it was all on the menu. The storm would linger a bit, so unfortunately the grilling and dining was a little damper than we would prefer, but it came together nonetheless.

Incidentally, food is a good lake time topic to mix in with weather and fishing…

(A chipmunk just popped up onto the deck. I’ll guess his name is Rick. He looked like a Rick.)

Let’s jump ahead a little here. Fishing has been miserable, but the kids don’t seem to mind. Some kids even opt to fish without bait or lures and I admire that. Many of us older fishermen would be better off if we could adopt the same carefree attitude. While we are throwing out expensive lures and bait (and risk getting hooked) they are tossing nothing into the water but a weight on the end of a line. Very worry-free. Very smart. too, especially considering the lack of success we have getting anything in the water to even consider a thoughtfully prepared and presented summertime snack.

And now let’s jump back a little. The weather has been fine. Other than that great storm, there haven’t been many thrills, but the weather has been nice nonetheless. Sunny, warm and not hot, and very little rain. That might change a little later this week. Storms are always nice at the lake. For my money, a good steady rain isn’t bad either. I like weather, both good and bad. Monotonous weather is a drag, but until recent years that was much of an issue in Minnesota. So far this summer – and this week – are panning out nicely.

I’ll check back. My coffee is getting cold.

Habit Forming…

No, not the blog…This is no where near a habit yet. I used a lot more stick than carrot to get myself this far tonight. As it is I have taken a good five minutes to write what I have down so far. Nothing very promising about that, now is there? And there wasn’t anything all that promising about my sales career today either. The problem with that, it seems, is my willingness recently to be very generous with undeserved carrots. I allowed myself more wandering…I am more flaneur than salesman these days, and that is what might be habit forming. Cannot allow that to get too deep, but tomorrow is the start of a week long holiday and who’s going to grump if you kick it in a day or two early?

Besides…things need to get done. I had to get my shoes shined, for example. It had been quite a number of weeks since I stopped to have my shoes done for me. The shine master commented on my absence. That made me feel good; it is good to be noticed and missed. Anyway, tomorrow marks the start of a weeklong vacation and I decide it is a good time to get my shoes shined. (They look outstanding.)

I also checked out some of my moonflowers and morning glories. Let me explain this. I like to get a few packs of flower seeds every spring and plant them hither and yon while I am out and about. This year I estimate that I likely planted a few dozen seeds in parks and places around town. Only two have any life in them now. Perhaps there is one or two forgotten seeds that are now flourishing, but I have no reason to believe that this is true. This was a terrible year for moonflowers and morning glories.

A little park called Gervais Pond or Gervais Mill in Little Canada is the place I checked today. I planted several seeds there late this spring. I hoped to find something and I found nothing. The park looks great in the full bloom of summer, however, but my flowers are not part of it. Nothing to worry about, though; the day was gorgeous; cloudless bright skies and perfect temperatures. Much like Phoenix in March.

Regrettably walk in the park was interrupted by a call from a client. Often this is just a temporary annoyance, but today it was a day wrecker. The account is small and cancelled many months ago. They are merely running out the end of their last contract. I really don’t give them much thought anymore so in most cases this call would be essentially meaningless. However, this is not like most cases.

The client is one of those that has a loop of questions to hurl at me, dozens of questions, and eventually they repeat, hence the loop, and often the questions are not even relevant to my business with the client. An endless confusing maze of random hypothetical problems as in “If I hadn’t cancelled my order, what would you guys be charging me because I don’t want to be charged, but what would it be?” Which inevitably brings a follow up of complaints about the cost and value of the hypothetical contract which is then reinforced by long rambling examples – hypothetical, for course – about why such a contract would not be a good idea in this day and age. Annoying.

Plus this is a woman who can speak for ten minutes and never complete one sentence. She doesn’t really speak in run-ons, she simply interrupts herself…

“You really have to have another option for clients like…because you know there are times when…and then I want…you know? You know what I mean? You do? And another option would have well maybe would have made a difference…you know, you know what I mean? Uh huh. And I was telling my secretary about it…do you have another option because sometimes people like me, you know, sometimes we have different options in mind and even my secretary said she did too… do you know what I mean, it is not just me and oh and that reminds me, I was called the other day by a marketing guy and I thought it was you and I told him just that, that options at a time like this would be nice and he was listening, you know, so I thought it was you, I still thought it was you…do you know what I mean…”

Wait a minute…it is almost therapeutic to write it out, bad as it is. Much different than listening to it (which I largely don’t) and probably also much more pleasant to write than it is to read so I will stop. Let’s move on. I’m not sure how I got here…

In review…a seemingly habit forming day of low productivity and much wandering. Kind of like yesterday but better or worse depending on your goal for the day and how you see your goal met. (It is all in the assessment. That’s all it is.) No pinwheeling purple martins today, thank god. Not much wildlife at all. Just some diving duck I couldn’t identify on Gervais Mill Pond. I was going to go back and look at that duck again, but my client’s day-busting phone call threw me off my wandering course. I went wine shopping instead.

First Post…Delayed

I haven’t yet decided on some important design issues yet…what will be my visual theme…colors, fonts, and such. But let’s dive in anyway, a couple days late.

The day started with a drive through the beautiful fields and horse pastures just beyond the western suburbs of Minneapolis. Even early in the morning the skies already looked stormy and threatening and beautiful in that way. I love the drive through the countryside; in fact my route adds a few miles and quite a bit of time to the commute to see my clients in the Buffalo area, but it is time well-spent.

Along one rolling stretch of road I saw a group of purple martins gathered on the pavement ahead of me. They looked odd to me because I can’t recall ever seeing a martin at rest, especially on a road. As I quickly came up to them they shot up into the air like a burst of confetti, beautiful sharp-pointed wings and tails, like little fighter jets shooting off in a coordinated chaos…all but one. One of the martins wasn’t as quick to scramble.  I instinctively tightened my grip on the steering wheel and clenched my teeth and then sure enough…in the rear view mirror I saw a star of purple feathers pinwheeling down the pavement.

That little death brought me down.  It really did.   With something like a prayer I apologized to the bird and looked for a reason to think of something else, but my light spirit was a bit overshadowed by that accident. Silly, perhaps, but only a moment earlier that bird and his mates where an unexpected happiness on the road, everything seemed easy and peaceful and then one dies. I suppose it is one of those things you just have to feel to understand. An event doesn’t have to be big to have feeling.

So I drove on and thought I better pay attention to where bad luck might be taking me and I kept an eye open for bigger targets. The ditches were alive with birds and animals; a lot of gophers and crows.  I like crows, but I keep an eye open for rarer birds.  And they are there.  I saw three pheasants, in fact, flying like mechanical toys across a fence line into a field of corn. That was good to see.

Driving can be full of opportunities to spy on the world…unless you choose to take the freeway or a busy state highway. I’ll opt for the country side roads every time.

******

My first client didn’t show up today. My second didn’t either. Nor my third. A very frustrating part of my work is the disrespect people have for sales professionals. Someone may absolutely depend on what you are selling and raise hell if for some reason you don’t get an order placed for them, but because you are a salesman you are seen as burden, an intruder. You are always an inconvenience. Your time is unimportant, the client’s time is infinitely important. And they have no trouble making that clear.

There are people who are considerate and professional, but even they tend to expect all the personal compromises to come from the salesman. On this day my first three appointments were with so-called professionals, people who do their work on appointments and expect the people they work with to keep appointments. Doctors, lawyers, dentists…that sort of profession. Not today, unfortunately.

As a rule if a client tends to do business with his or her clients by appointment, I set appointments before meeting. If a client takes walk up customers, I will walk up. And businesses that go to clients to perform their work – contractors, for example – I will go to them wherever they are. That seems to work pretty well.

******

On this day, however, I am coming up empty. I make a call to a client that only insists on a second meeting (a two-call close) because it seems like the thing to do in her opinion. I let her know that I have found myself with some time on my hands and ask if I may stop over. It’s clear that I have caught her off-guard and without an excuse. I hear a couple short exasperated gasps and she concedes. “Sure, that should work. Come over.”

The meeting is short and simple. We sign the same order we sign every time, the very same order I proposed a week ago. And it is done.

Now there is time on my hands and I’m simply not in the mood to prospect for new clients. There is a park on a lake nearby. I go there.

The day is cloudy and stormy weather is in the forecast so the park is all but empty and the beach is empty. I can walk along the lake edge without making parents nervous. (What is up with adults today?)

The water has an easy chop on it. Not big waves and not rough little slappers either. The water is very clear on this lake and out on a fishing dock I watch bluegills and small bass swim through the milfoil and cabbage. From the corner of my eye I spot a large soft shell turtle rising up from deep weeds. These turtles are smart. I am absolutely motionless and still when the turtle breaks the surface and turns his head he must see me and quickly dives back down into the depths. His speed is very impressive. I wonder how he learned to spot something like me as a threat. I am wondering how he spotted me at all. A turtle must be able to discern a person from a motionless block of wood, which is saying a lot for a simple turtle. I know people I wouldn’t trust to be up to that task.

While the lake is beautiful and I could spend much time on the fishing dock, I decide it might be a better idea to try to close a few more sales. I did drive nearly 50 miles to work accounts in this area, best to get to it. But the day turns out to be mostly disappointing. The computer I use on the job was having trouble that took nearly two hours to fix. That was the start. And it was very difficult to ignore the weather. The clouds were building into wonderful towers of storminess and beauty. I stopped frequently to look at them.

******

One stop was on Lake Rebecca, at the boat launch there. It was getting later in the afternoon and the air was unusually hot and humid. The clouds looked more menacing, too; some blew from south to north while others higher in the sky seemed to slowly drift to the southeast. Sales just were not clicking so I allowed myself the luxury of a short walk. It had to be short…the air was soaking through my shirt and suit.

I walked out on the dock at the boat launch but there wasn’t much to see in the water. The lake was overgrown with weeds and algae here. You could even hear the weeds on the surface click in the hot sun. Not very pleasant, but a pleasant view.

I decided to salvage something from a frustrated day and went back to my car and took out a long list of follow ups to dial. This turned into the most productive part of the day. No sales, but several on the line that look good.

*******

Time to head back to the city. I have at least an hour of paper work to do and maybe another hour again for more client follow up, appointments to set, and so on. Plus it is getting terribly hot. Not a day with a good vibe for clients, but a great summer day anyway.

Final Test Post

Look forward to Monday. The wandering salesman will begin his blog then…with only one week before a vacation! We will post from vacation as well. Vacations are a part of a salesman’s life so it will be included. It could be the best part of the blog.

Other projects in the works and perhaps blog worthy is my hack job of a novel which currently amounts to a mish-mash of disjointed entries that reflect poorly on the skills of this writer. But that might be worth sharing as well.

Finally…I think I am going to learn more about Twitter. Why not? Everyone is doing it.

Hitting “Publish”. Monday…we go for real and this post will likely be gone baby gone. (I wonder if I can save unpublished posts rather than delete them.)

This Post May Get Deleted

I have no idea what I am doing at the moment. I believe I am creating a post. We’ll see. In Microsoft Word 2007 and just goofing around. Speaking of goofing around, let me try something…

 

 

If this works I will tackle posting via email next. (That looks a little more straightforward.)

Hello world!

Bear with me.  I might start rather slowly as I feel my way through this blog…I really haven’t any idea how it works or what will appear to you on the screen as I try to figure out how it all works.  I have had false starts on blogs in the past and I intend to avoid that disappointment this time.  You will literally grow with me if you stay with me.  Let’s see what will happen…

I will add some explanation to the “About” feature on this blog, but I can also share here — since this is a bit of an experiment and a trial post — that I will share a daily log of what has happened as I move about town meeting clients.  Expect to see a lot of notes about non-work related experiences, however; my career can be work and often tedious work.  Who wants to read about that?  I will share unique events and frustrating events, I suppose, and I might even share the occassional success, but I anticipate highlighting the mundane mostly…and making that interesting, I hope.

If you believe you are one of my clients, have no fear…I will do my best to confuse the identity and scenarios of the people and businesses I meet.  A butcher may very likely be a baker or a candle stick maker. 

Also expect a lot of natural history and observations of climate and phenology. 

Ok, I am eager to see what happens when I hit post!  (Where do I hit post?)