SMART MARKETING: There’s No Growth Without Sales

Platitude #1 — Nothing happens until somebody sells something. I think this is attributable to W. Clement Stone, the insurance company "producer" and motivational guru.

Platitude #2 — There are only three currencies in life — time, money and people. Credit me with this one.

In our company we have something we refer to as the "five functions" of running a business. We imbue these five functions into our service center managers’ thoughts and action plans and incentive them on performance in each and all of them. First, grow your business. This means sell! Second, service your customers. This means hold onto the customers you already have. Third, collect your money. You have to get paid so you can make payroll and meet your expenses. Fourth, control those expenses. This is where profit comes from. Fifth, recruit, hire, develop and promote people. This is how expansion of your business happens.

This column focuses on numbers one and two. Get out and sell, but remember to take care of the customers you have.

SELLING SOMETHING. As Mr. Stone opined, you won’t have customers to service if you don’t "sell something." Many businesses in our industry have people dedicated to the selling process. These are not service technicians working on selling new business in addition to servicing customers, but people whose sole function is to sell new business. This is the best model for growing your business, but I often encounter operators, even some with sizeable businesses, who choose to run a passive selling function. By passive I mean they throw an ad in the Yellow Pages, or they even invest in some advertising beyond Yellow Page directory placement, but they rely on their service technicians to run leads and complete sales.

If your technicians have selling skills, or at the very least have a "sales personality," this can work — to a degree. But when your technician gets his or her route maximized out in terms of productivity, what’s the plan? Who does the selling then? From personal management experience I can tell you that the best service people are often not great sales folks, and great sales people don’t necessarily make even good service technicians. The personality types of both are distinct and often incompatible.

MAKING CALLS. Let’s go to platitude number two. Time, money, people. How do you allocate these "currencies" so you can generate new business and provide great service to your existing customers? At some point, you’re going to have to make an investment in growth, and I think the best investment is to put on a dedicated sales person, leaving your service technicians free to do what they do best…servicing your existing customers.

Running leads, knocking on doors, calling customers for referrals and/or to cross sell additional services is a full-time job worthy of a full-time, dedicated person. For a couple of months, you’re going to have to carry this person until he or she learns the business and gets into a rhythm of making calls, making presentations and making sales. But if the person you select is mature, stable and has a good, sound work ethic, and if you have a history of providing great service to your existing customers, this person should be productive in relatively short order, generating more than enough sales to cover the investment you’ve made.

The good news is that virtually everyone who owns or operates a single or multi-family residence, or who owns or runs a business in real estate for which they have operational responsibility, is a potential customer for one or more of the services we provide. Friends, relatives, neighbors or acquaintances of existing satisfied customers are potential customers. Even customers who have at one time cancelled service are possibly reinstatements, when the offer is made correctly.

To be sure, allocate your "currencies" appropriately. Time doesn’t ever slow or stop, and you can’t bank it or save it. People have only so much to give to their work, and many give only what is asked of them, not all that they’re capable of giving. And money is the fuel and lubricant that enables utilization of the other two.

All that having been said, get out and sell something!

The author is senior vice president of Massey-Persons-Brinati Communications, a subsidiary of Massey Services Inc., Maitland, Fla. He can be reached via e-mail at bbrewer@pctonline.com.