Lisbeth Calandrino::

My friend Chris Clark, a Mohawk Territory Manager, sent me an email the other day about the importance of calling on end users and contractors. With business having been so good in the 90's, Chris feels that many of his dealers may be neglecting this profitable aspect of their business. At this time it's wise to think of all possible avenues and look outside your business as well as inside for new customers. In addition to picking up some new customers you are adding a stronger foundation for your business. 

Here are Chris's tips:

1. No one likes to make cold calls, so warm yours up before you go out. Before you call on anyone, go online to find out who you're calling on, their background, how long they've worked in the field and anything else that's pertinent to your call.

2. Make a list of end users, contractors and specifiers in your areas. Who do they represent? What types of products do they use and who do they presently do business with? Get yourself armed with this information so that you are focused and know the purpose of your call.  Business is tough for everyone so the more you know and the less time you waste the better.

3. Remember that with outside sales the possibility of sales is endless and you don't have to wait for the customer to come into your store. With business slow everyone needs to go out and "beat the bushes" as they say. In addition, think of how your attitude will improve everytime you find a new customer.

4. Objections? Sure, many of the people that you call on already have suppliers. This doesn't mean that they aren't looking for the future. In addition, good business takes time, business that is based more on value than price. It's up to you to have the patience and the knowledge.

5. Don't forget the annual report of a business and other subs that also call on these businesses. Hopefully you belong to a leads club or a networking group and can ask if there's anyone that might know the person you want to call. Can someone provide an introduction for you, in person or make a phone call on your behalf?

6. Want to increase your value? Know as much about your new contact's business as they know. Know their challenges and how you can supply them with solutions. This also means you've done your homework and they're not just another customer to you.

7. Plan not only the products that you want to show but your presentation. I'm amazed at how many salespeople know their products but stumble through their presentation, not anticapting objections and questions.

8. A good salesperson knows what to expect from their customers. If you do mostly retail business and you're going out on commercial calls you'll have to brush up on "what makes these people tick." One thing to remember is they're used to buying products, are aware of pricing and always are looking to save a dollar.This doesn't mean that they won't pay higher prices. It's for sure they won't pay you more money for the same product that they purchase from someone else at a cheaper price.

9. If you want to play the game "their way,"all  things being equal winning this game means having the cheapest price. The key is to change the rules of the game. Changing the rules means changing the products, providing  an additional service that they can't get that has value. When I was in the commercial floorcovering business I remember one of my installers, instead of standing around watching her husband and son install the product, she would clean the windows and the window sills. Unknown to me she couldn't stand the carpet fibers and dust that was created during the installation so she took out her glass cleaner and started to "tidy up." The word got around and she became the deciding factor on some of our jobs. Stella was our added value.

10. Don't hurry the process. Put together a plan, how can I add value, what written material would be useful to your new customer?

11. Get yourself dressed up, a jacket and a tie. Looking like you care what you look like also gives the impression you care about how your jobs look. Get yourself a good looking briefcase and hit the road.

Next time: what to do when you get there.

Sure, getting new customers and keeping the old ones is difficult, but this is no time to sit home and get depressed about it if you’re going to be in sales. Sales is all about having a plan and working your plan. Maybe this is the hard and not too exciting part, but things could be worse. It all depends on your attitude and what you want to happen in your life. And it all starts with a plan. With business up one week and down another, it’s time for you and your outside salespeople to get organized.

Make some promises to yourself and your customers. Be on time, look right and follow though. Keeping promises and being consistent makes the process work. Remember, you’re not the only one going through hard times — so is your customer. The more you understand this the better salesperson you will be. It doesn’t mean you back off because times are tough and your're afraid your customer's going to go out of business. You should be worrying about how they’re spending their money—are they buying the right products for their situation and are they buying their products from you?

Do you understand your customer’s business? As a salesperson you must understand your customer’s business and situation as well as you understand your own. This is called empathy. Having empathy is the most powerful skill you can have. It means "I understand; I really understand."

Know how much money you made last year and how much you need to earn next year. How many new accounts will you need to bring in to get this revenue? How much more do your existing accounts have to buy?

Know your closing rates; the real ones. How many customers do you actually close and how many customers will you have to call on to get that rate? How many brochures do you have to send out in order to get the appointments you need. How many emails must you send out or follow up?

Know your products cold. Spend time each day working on your products and understand what makes your products better, more useful and sweeter than your competitors. With customers having limited budgets they will have to spend their dough wisely.

Know your lines. Spend as much time or more on how you do what you do. Salespeople spend all kinds of time on what they sell but not how they do it. Hey, if the sale is worth $10,000 ask yourself if you’re putting in $10,000 worth of time.

Try not to get distracted by the gloom and doom or the fact your customers just want to talk. Sales people often want people to like them so they spend more time than necessary building rapport. Remind yourself to stay on schedule.

Stick to your plans. Prospecting for new accounts takes times and sometimes the pay off is slow. The biggest pay off comes from people who went to a competitor but then come back to you for another try. Maybe now they’ll tell you the new reason they left you.

Fluff isn’t going to work anymore. There just aren’t as many customers out there and there are probably twice as many competitors after your customers. Determine what is your added value and can you deliver it?

Stop making excuses. Sure times are tough but someone’s making money and it might as well be you. But it will only happen if you’re out there. So get out there! Improve you presentation skills, have your manager ride with you, watch you sell and give you feedback. You’ve heard that feedback is the breakfast of champions—if you want to get better maybe now's the time to start eating some!

Remember old cowboy wisdom: Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of the rain dance.

As businesspeople, we spend so much time hyping up the details of a product when in the end, women don’t really buy products — they buy the outcome.  They're thinking "this is where I'll put it," "this is how I'll use it," "this is what it will look like" and "this is how it will feel."  In other words, women buy the "look” of a completed interior.

It’s sort of like this: Send a man out for a pair of pants and what does he come back with? A pair of pants.

Send that same man out with a woman to buy that same pair of pants and he’s lucky if he comes back with his wallet. Hey, it’s the beauty of it – a woman wants her man to look great for her so she's going to get him the whole outfit: shoes, shirt, tie, cologne—the works. Why? Because that's just how we do it.

Salespeople tell me they don’t understand why women take so much time, why they can’t make up their minds and when they do, why they suddenly change their minds.

What’s there to get? Women buy differently than men, period. If you’re waiting on a man, he buys differently than a women. Younger customers have different needs than older customers. Is this any different? It's important to understand that if you want to sell to women you need to be more like a woman than a man. Yep, that’s it in a nutshell. Some tips for you:

• Don’t ask a women what she’s looking for. Why? Because what they’re looking for is in your showroom and may not yet be determined. Men know what they want, come for it and go home. Women use the showroom to determine what’s available and how to create “the look.” If you want to get her in your corner, have a great looking showroom and plenty of photos and magazines with “the looks.” Here's a great story from the owner of a flooring store in Florida. Tony tells me about the male customer who came in and said, "I need a floor for my bathroom." Since Tony is used to female customers, he says "let me come out and look at your bathroom." The customer reluctantly agrees and Tony heads out armed with samples, photos, paint swatches and the like. Tony starts in with his ideas for the bathroom, the customer’s eyes gloss over and never calls Tony again. Yep, as Tony says, "I forgot the customer just came in for a pair of pants!" You’ve probably read "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus". Also try "Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps: How We’re Different and What To Do About It," by Barbara and Allan Pease.
• Ask questions. "Have you seen what’s new?" "Let me show you what’s in." "What look are you trying to achieve in your house?" "Do you have any photos of the room?" Did you bring any fabrics or wallpaper samples with you?" "Do you have a digital photo of the room(s) that I can download?" "By the way, great earrings!"  Sure you can say it. Why not if they’re great? This sort of alludes to the fact that you have good taste. 
• Start with fashion, not price. Sure price is important to everyone, but if you don’t show fashion, how will the customer know she’s in the right store? Not all women want to be “trend setters” but no one wants to be “out of date.” Women know all about fashion. We’ve been breathing fashion since before we could read. That’s why there are literally hundreds of books on fashion for us and about three for men. I believe that Men’s Vogue is really written for women too. High fashion usually means higher prices. Be more frightened that you don’t have fasionable items rather than price items. Leave the price stuff to the box stores. Show your style and good taste; that’s what she wants from you.
• Give her space and let her lead you to what she wants. Your job is to provide the right questions to keep her focused on the decision-making process – not to tell her what she wants. She’ll tell you when she’s ready.

That’ll get you started.

I'm told the selling season is underway. By December, customers will be decorating for the holidays and there'll be shoppers right up until Christmas Eve. And then it's over.

How will you maximize these 10 weeks? Especially with customers expecting a long winter and worrying about heating and electric bills? It doesn't matter. Long or short winter, you just need to get moving!

• Get on the phone. Stop procrastinating. Who have you been meaning to call?
• Get notes out to your existing customers. These are the "gold" customers. I was in a State Farm office last week and asked how business was. They said they'd recently sent a mailing to their 2,000 active customers and 200 of them had called the office. I asked what their note said and the rep, Susan, descibed it simply as "How are you? How's your life? We miss you." 50% of the 200 bought various products.
• What are you waiting for? Your customers already love you and want you to succeed. It's like calling old friends. Give them a call with a special holiday offer. How about a  gas card? Though prices are dropping, a gas card still wouldn't hurt! The bigger the purchase, the bigger the gas card.
• Turkeys for the holiday might work. Don't forget soy turkeys for your veggie customers.
• How about a bag of groceries from Whole Foods or your local co-op?  Something a little different.
• Network with everyone you know. Your dry cleaner, where you get your coffee, where you get your car fixed…
• A great game to play to think about new leads is to pretend you're in another business (for example, running a small hotel). How would you get business? Which ideas could cross over into your business? Someone mentioned having a Wii system in their hotel room and decided to put one in their store! Destination floor store!
• Are you working your personal hangouts?
• Who do you give business to? Who keeps asking for favors? Have they reciprocated?
• Who haven't you seen in a while?
• Buy locally – the little bakery, the convenience store, etc. Ask, how can we work together to do business?
• Working on a job, have you asked for more leads? Why not?
• Finishing a job? Ask if you can take photos, then ask "Who did your landscaping and your painting?" You should have a bunch of names. Go see them and tell them you saw their work and it was great and you would like to refer them. Now you have a good business connection. Don't forget to show them them photos of your work and ask if they can refer you too.
• Call up customers who are on the fence. Holidays are a great time to spruce up the house.
• Host parties featuring jewelry, Mary Kay, clothes, candles, or simply to exchange holiday recipes –anything fun to bring in women. Ask your female employees, they'll know what will work.

So what are you waiting for… start dialing!

As I watch the vice presidential and presidential debates, I wonder who'll end up winning and what will be the tipping point. Sure, I know who I like, but I’m disappointed sometimes because my candidate isn’t delivering the right message. So now I start to look at the other candidate. Now I try to like them because they have the right message. And this makes me wonder: what really makes a good closer?

Closing is a lot about timing. Have you noticed when you're serious about buying something the presentation isn’t important? The other day my friend Mary and I were in New York City. It was beastly hot and there were too many people. Mary offhandedly said, “I’ll die if I don’t get something to drink.” We were waiting in line next to a deli so it wasn’t much for her to quickly open the door and ask for an ice tea. She came out in tears of laughter—it seems she said to the clerk, “Where’s the ice tea?" The clerk said, “Right in front of you — did you want me to mix it for you too?” On any other day this would have been enough for Mary to show the clerk who’s boss—but not today while dying of thirst on stifling 43rd Street!

While in Dalton last week I wandered into Clair’s, which features jewelry, earrings and other stuff for girls. This is one of those places where the clerks are so young they don’t know what to say to you — sort of like Spencer’s Gifts. I’m just the wrong customer. So the clerk says, “Hi, nice weather,” which it was, so I couldn’t dispute that. I agreed and asked her, “What’s new?” She said tons of stuff and proceeded to show me what’s new. She asked if I was buying for me or was it a gift -–I said I didn’t know. She wasn’t “fazed” and showed me some little gadget that you hook to your cell phone and it lights up when you get a call. It lights up even when your phone is off. Cool huh? I bought five.

How do you know if the timing is right? If you don’t try you’ll never know. Some salespeople have already decided the customer doesn’t want to buy before they ask for the sale. Well that’s the end of that. Did I tell you that when I asked the salesperson in the shoe store what’s new he said nothing? I guess he had already decided or didn’t know much about timing.

If you don’t step up to the plate you’ll never get a chance to hit one over the center field wall. The more times you step up to the plate the more likely you are to get a hit.

I shudder to think that when I get to the voting both I still might not know what I want and become the impulse buyer. Well, timing is everything!