RELATIONSHIPS TRUMP CHAOS
the odyssey chronicles
Imagine being inside a large corporate office building. Twenty five plus people chugging around in all directions with mountains of things to do. Now, imagine it is the week before Christmas and the last thing anyone is thinking about is fielding a salesman. This corporate office I’m talking about belongs to a power company in a small town in Kentucky. This company is hurting due to some short sighted decisions that year. They are dealing with a PR nightmare as well as blowback from the city. Everyone is just trying to get in and get out. Upset customers, vendors and city officials are a daily occurrence. No salesman in their right mind would pick this company. It is a sure fire way to get your eyebrows taken off.
Now, probably due to the fact that when someone tells me “it can’t be done” I take it as a personal attack on my abilities and I try and prove them wrong. My team and I saw it as a prime time to get in and make some connections. We were running two locations of a community bank in the area and were based out of state. This made us outsiders and were last in the pecking order of banks to use. We tried to always kept up with the local news and watched at the local news, papers and social media beat the hell out of them. Despite our head office consistently letting us know what a waste of time chasing them was, we saw it as a challenge.
Bagels and cream cheese for the win! A box of bagels and a gallon of sweet tea is what we walked in with the first day. The building was an old Sears, and they never replaced the lobby area. They had some new tile, basically just to cover up the Sears logo in the middle, everything else was the same. No matter how quiet you tried to be, everything you said echoed to all the surrounding offices. It was like talking with a megaphone, even when you whispered.
We walked up to the front desk, which was massive and said “Hello!” After staring at a blank face, we continued “We want to drop these off for you, we know things might be rough right now but it will get better.” The lady we talked to didn’t move at all, she just kept staring at us, so we smiled turned around and left. We left no business cards, no flyers, no call back number, nothing other than the bagels and sweet tea. I waited a week and went back. As I was walking in, a customer was screaming “I can't afford that! It’s outrageous I won’t pay that!”. This was laced with a lot more colorful words and phrases than I felt comfortable putting in here. I walked up to the cashier next to this guy, leaned in and introduced myself. No title, just my name. I said, “Hi, Sarah, noticing the name tag, what is your favorite item from Kirchhoff's?” Kirchoff’s is a small bakery in the town we were in. It was well known for their pastries. She looked at me like I was crazy, smiled slightly and said “Well I like the donuts, the ones with cinnamon”. I said “Awesome! I love that one too. Can you tell me 11 other favorites?” (This was the total number of people I counted on the floor at that time) She just stared at me for a few seconds and then pulled a section of receipt paper off and jotted down eleven different pastry items. I smiled, said thanks and left.
I made it to Kirchoff’s and enjoyed an Americano while I waited. It took about five minutes for them to get it all put together. The total was just under thirty dollars. I took these back to the power company, brought them straight up to Sarah and placed them on her desk. She had a huge smile on her face, I smiled back and we talked for a few minutes about her job, her kiddos and how long she had been there. I told her I was grateful for the conversation and said I would be back in a few weeks. Two weeks later I came back with the same pastries and a business card. I explained that I worked for the local bank and that I wanted to see how I could help. I let them know I knew what was going on, the stress they must be under and that I had some ideas that could alleviate the stress. I talked with Sarah, her two co-workers and her immediate manager that day. I made no sales pitches, just asked questions. I got to know each of them a little more and heard the horror stories from the last few weeks. I thanked them for their time and told them I would be back in a week or so.
A week later I came back with one of my team members and nothing but some information on our ideas to help. We talked with the floor manager and after about ten minutes she said “Ya know, our marketing manager and CEO are in a meeting right now, would you want to just talk with them?” We smiled and said “Well yea, that would be great.” Two weeks later my team and I were in a meeting with their board VP and President, head of accounting and head of marketing discussing finalized deals to move their accounts over to us. This was a 48 million dollar deposit account. 48 million dollars was won by five weeks of intentional conversation, about $50 in pastries and one impromptu sales pitch.
The most important takeaway from this was that it was accomplished with little to no stress. No hard sales, no pitch packets, no business card swaps or zoom meetings with managers. We didn't have to convince anyone of anything. They were ready for some help, they were being blasted by the media and the local populus. We knew we could cut down on some of their banking expenses and we knew that would help alleviate some of the pain. We didn’t spend hours talking about their “pain points” or pressing on things that made them emotional. We focused on how we could help them. Not sell them, not trick them, help them.
the most beneficial part of being in sales is getting to help someone live a better life because of your product.
Yes, we are looking for bottom line growth. We need to make money to live and we all have families to support. The drive to push the sale or “hard sales” is real. However, there is no way we would have had a shot at even talking to that CEO without establishing some sort of relationship with the people that work for him. We would have been just another person to deal with if we wouldn't have focused on helping fixing the obvious problem. My team and I had no idea how long it would take to get in the doors. We assumed it would take six months for us to make an ask. Five weeks later we were rock stars. People buy from those they like, people invest in those they trust. Sales is all about relationships. You have to know your shit, backwards and forwards but you must know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how it can help people. Focus on building relationships people invest in, not just buy from.
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