STEP 1)
Generate a Client
When I started selling at a little mulch lot after school, I read everything I could get my
hands on. One of the first books I picked up was Joe Girard’s “How To Sell Anything To
Anybody.” Boy was I excited! I was 17 and I was going to somehow magically be able to
select any object, pick out a random person and sell it to them! Well, although there were
some good philosophical points in the book, unfortunately I didn’t ever get the specific
recipe for selling anything to anybody. I did however remember Joe’s “Rule of 250.” At
the average funeral or wedding there are 250 attendees. This is how many people the
average person influences over their lifetime. It didn’t sink in for a few years but I learned
to eventually turn getting referrals into a science. Same goes for sold-customer loyalty. If
you close, say, 15% of the people you meet in your showroom or while out doing business
(dry cleaner, barber, restaurant) that means that you don’t sell five of six people you
meet. This is average. What if you got as interested (this is really all it takes) in causing
loyalty with this segment of people? What if you got referrals from all of your unsolds or
bought elsewhere’s? What if they referred half as many people per capita than your sold
customers? There are five times more of them! If you got a half of a referral out of each
unsold for every one referral from a sold customer, that’s 2.5 referrals added to the one
the sold customer gave you. Fact is I never did get less referrals from unsolds and bought
elsewhere’s. I got more. More per person! What would this little stat, if worked properly,
do for your business? Double it overnight? Don’t think so small! I see this as a marketing
job where selling something actually interrupts your work plan.
You are responsible for your traffic and opportunities. Not the store. It’s their job
to bring in enough traffic for you to make a sub-standard living. It’s your job to
build upon that and grow your pipeline of clients. Don’t be upset by this. Think
about it, if “they” provided you with enough traffic to get rich, what would be
your incentive to develop your relationship with your clients and their circle of
influence? It’s your job to get up, get going and off the floor so they can hire
another green pea to wait on the fresh-ups (that you will eventually want no part
of, trust me). Believe me, you want to grow your business with the building
blocks (the customers) each cemented properly into place, not just tossed to the
side while you look for — or worse, wait for the next to come along.