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Eight Expensive Lessons Learned
DoIt Marketing
With all the buzz about “Social Media Marketing,” you can understand why I was intrigued when a fellow speaker, David Newman who promotes himself as a marketing coach, called with a pitch for his new venture, DoIt Marketing. He had assembled a crack team of experts who, as I understood their promise, could improve my SEO and make my phone ring.
No stranger to social media, I’ve been teaching “Social Media as a Guerrilla Marketing Weapon” for years. I just lack the bandwidth to manage it for myself. So I made a few calls, and his references were for-the-most-part, positive. After meeting for lunch, I was skeptical.
Then, one afternoon David called in a panic; “Can you cover a keynote for a group of financial planners, in Denver, at noon? Tomorrow?” The speaker he had booked for this event was grounded in D.C. by thunderstorms. The fee was less than rack, but I agreed to help him out, delivered the speech, and the client was thrilled.
But then David didn’t want to pay the speaking fee. Instead, he insisted we put it in my “bank” and use it (after deducting a 25% “bureau commission”) to fund his proposed social media campaign. And lucky for me, they had one slot open.
Instead of a check, I got a 10-page questionnaire, asking all about my books, my business, my clients, and the passwords to all of my social media accounts, website, and blog.
As instructed, I sent DoIt Marketing everything they asked for: market analysis, book manuscripts, articles, audios, videos, top-performing keywords, and passwords for my blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and other accounts. I should have known better.
My understanding was that the DoIt Marketing team would take clips from my books and other material, and systematically post them all over the web: multiple daily Twitter tweets, multiple daily Facebook updates, article submissions, new LinkedIn groups, two blogs a week, and more.
I thought it was expensive: $1,500 just to “set it up” (never mind that all these profiles were already set up and optimized, with thousands of fans and followers.) Add another $1,800/month to launch, with a minimum commitment of three months. Just enough in my “bank” to cover the setup and two months in advance.
Maybe my expectations were unsually high, given my background as a Guerrilla Marketing author, but I felt disappointed right away. Like when they couldn’t spell my NAME correctly, let alone, “Guerrilla”. The first (and only) blog they put up was a duplicate of one that had already been published. They signed me up for five article hubs, two of which I was already writing for. I believe I could get this level of work from a college intern! The only results I noticed was a dramatic increase in SPAM.
I sent David an e-mail with detailed feedback and branding standards, and agreed to give his team a chance to prove themselves once the campaign rolled out. I should have known better.
I felt that the work was not only sloppy, but in some cases, downright inappropriate. Most of the Facebook postings were dead-ends with no breadcrumbs. One tweet that I felt was very inappropriate simply read, “24 Reasons Why Sales is Better than Sex.” And the last straw, a book review I hadn’t written, of a book by ANOTHER speaker, with a link back to HIS bookstore. Sorry, but I thought I was paying DoIt Marketing to review MY books and drive traffic to MY website and MY bookstore, thank you.
So, I complained directly to the young woman assigned to my account, pointing out examples from specific posts that I felt were wanting. Within minutes, I got a call from David Newman, not to apologize, but scolding me for being “abusive” and “impossible to please.” Deaf to my complaints, he threatened to just drop the whole project, in effect, chopping down the tree before it could bare fruit.
My response was, “In that case, I want a full refund.”
“That’s not even on the table.” Instead he sent a check for the unspent balance of $1,800. He did NOT, however, keep his scheduled appointment for a reporting call, send the promised written reports, or do any of the setup work for which I had already paid so dearly. When I repeated my demand for a full refund via e-mail, and threatened to take my story public, I got a letter from his lawyer threatening to sue for libel. That’s certainly ONE way to discourage customer complaints.
The Lessons:
- Check references thoroughly. Anything less than glowing isn’t good enough.
- Never agree to trade out. Collect fees for your services, then pay as you go.
- Never pay in advance. You’ll want to cut your losses quickly if they bugger it.
- Understand what social media can, and can’t do for your business. Don’t expect miracles.
- Exhaust more affordable resources like Craig’s List or elance.com before engaging a boutique firm. Smart people are out there, and they’re hungry.
- Vet everything before it goes live. It’s your good name at stake.
- Insist on visible, measure results, reported weekly, in writing; not double-talk.
- File reports on Ripoffreport.com, ScamBook.com, and the Consumerist.com if you’ve been the victim of one of these scams. I did.
Throwing $3,300 bucks away on useless marketing really hurt! And I had to change all my passwords. Social Media, managed correctly, can certainly boost your business. But there are FAR too many vendors making wild claims that they can’t fulfill.
And when they ask you to give them “The Keys to the Kingdom,” just don’t.
If you would like to share your experience with David Newman or DoIt Marketing, I encourage you to comment on this post. You may call me directly at 800-247-9145 with any questions.
This article is not intended to disparage or defame David Newman or DoIt Marketing in any way, but solely to warn readers about the potential pitfalls of working with vendors in general, and Social Media Marketing vendors in particular. The contents of this article merely express my personal opinion and point of view on this topic. Use the links to his website to make your own assessment.
You’ve done it. You buy a can of Coke® from a vending machine for a buck. Order that same Coke in a restaurant and it comes in a glass, with ice, and a straw, and it’s $3.75. Are the glass and the ice and the straw really worth $2.75? Apparently. People do it all the time, and never whine about the price.
Here’s a list of ten ways you can bring more value to your offering. Find three that you can apply right now.
1. Quality
People will pay more for quality. The Maytag repairman isn’t just lonely. He’s old and lonely. Show your prospect that the lifetime value of your offering is far superior to your competitors’.
2. Service
People will pay more for superior service. Why do you think people pay twice as much for a suit at Nordstrom’s then they would at Men’s Wearhouse? They value the service – expert tailoring, multiple fittings, free monogramming – and all this makes up for the additional money they will spend.
3. Authenticity
Authenticity means the real deal – the genuine article. At the Louvre Museum in Paris, you can gaze upon what is perhaps the most famous work of art in the world: Leonardo Da Vinci’s portrait of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, commonly known as the Mona Lisa.
For all the hype, it was quite a disappointment. The painting hangs alone in a large hall in dim light, cloistered behind thick plates of bullet-proof Lexan. And it’s small; only 21 x 39 inches. Mrs.Gherardini has not aged well over the past 500 years. The paint is cracked and the colors are smoky and faded.
However, scientists have analyzed the pigments and digitally recreated this masterpiece just as it would have looked standing wet on Da Vinci’s easel in 1506. The reproduction is ascetically superior in every way, and you can buy the poster-sized print in the museum gift shop for only twenty Euros, while the original, of course, is considered priceless.
4. Stability
Company stability means a company that’s been in business since the landing at Plymouth Rock. Do you tell the story about how your Grandfather came from the Olde Country and started the business with his brother and cousin in the back of their barn? You share that history because people put a high value on stability and longevity in business. No one wants to be a beta test.
5. Reliability
People are busy and when they find a vendor they can count on, they buy from them again and again. How do you demonstrate to your customer that you’re reliable? Does someone answer the phone on a second ring? Do you show up for appointments exactly on time? Everything you do (or don’t do) sends a message about your reliability.
6. Social or Ecological Values
Do you recycle? Do you use recycled paper in all your packaging and correspondence? Are you running alternative fuels in your fleet? These issues have become more and more important in recent years. Seventy-eight percent of consumers said they would pay $2,000 more for a car that gets 35 miles per gallon, even though that only makes economic sense if gasoline is in the range of $4.00 a gallon (that’s more than I pay for wine!). Meanwhile, the Prius was voted Number One Most Ecologically Sensitive Product of the last decade.
People routinely pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a knick-knack at a silent auction raising money for a scout troop, church group, or political cause. At this year’s Cigar PEG celebrity auction, the three-day elite speaker coaching package I donated raised $22,500.00 for the National Speakers Association Foundation.
7. Delivery
This is why you pay fifteen dollars for FedEx instead of 52 cents for first-class mail. People want the product in their hands immediately. Whether it’s delivering a customized pen in less than the time promised, or completing their project a week ahead of schedule, people don’t just want what they paid for when it’s expected, but BEFORE it’s due.
8. Financing
Even Time Magazine, offers “Three easy payments of $9.95.” So, when you have a good customer who’s shopping for terms, you can say, “Well, we can give you 2% net 30, or 90-days net. Take your pick.” This also proves to the customer that you value them enough to be flexible on terms.
9. Local Sourcing
Eighty-two percent of people surveyed have consciously supported local or neighborhood businesses. People like to be a part of a community, and will pay higher prices to support local vendors. Need proof? Compare prices at your local farmer’s market with those at a big-box store.
There’s a two-pump garage and gas station in the tiny Colorado mountain town where we live called Carl’s Corner. I’ve been buying gas from Carl for more than 20 years, and my wife is always giving me a hard time about it. She says, “Why buy gas at Carl’s when we can get it cheaper at the Conoco in Boulder?”
“Because we need more than just gas,” I remind her. “We need Carl. We need him when we have a flat. We need him when we have a dead battery. We need him when we slide off the snowy road and get stuck in a drift. We even need him when we run out of gas for the grill. And if we don’t keep his garage open, then we won’t have a mechanic in the canyon at all.”
10. Fun
Regardless of what someone is buying, or how much they pay, they want to have FUN and feel good about their purchase. How can you add a fun factor so your buyers enjoy the experience and keep coming back?
You’ve seen this guerrilla tactic in action if you’ve ever bought fish at Seattle’s Pike Street Market.
What can you use from this list to justify your higher price? Many of these are things that you’re ALREADY doing, but not taking the proper credit. Make certain that you explain ALL the aspects of your product or service that makes you more valuable to your customer. Focus on your uniqueness and what you bring to the table that your competitors are ignoring.
This is only part of a list of 31 Reasons Customers Will Pay More. Watch the new seven-part video, “Guerrilla Tactics to Sell at Higher Prices,” at: http://vimeo.com/user6769112/videos
In any business, people are your most important asset. A great location, great name, great merchandise, a great display and great promotion can all be undone by less-than-great people. Your staff is the most expensive item in your budget and the most important business investment you’ll make, so take time to choose them wisely.
The most universal complaint I hear from business owners is, “We just can’t find good people.” Well, let me encourage you. They’re out there, and your mission is to track them down and then persuade them to join your team.
Guerrillas know that their team is the glue that holds their business together – from their sales associates to their cashiers, bookkeepers and delivery drivers. So you have to put the same effort into recruiting a stock clerk as you would when hiring a merchandising manager. Although the specific example we’ll illustrate here refers to sales guerrillas, these techniques will work to help you hire the cream of the crop for any position.
Because the best predictor of future sales behavior is current sales behavior, guerrillas are always on the hunt for good people. You’ll find them serving you in restaurants, shops, hotels, spas, museums and cafes. Whenever someone really impresses you with their sales or customer service skills, ask for their name and number. Let them know that, while you may not have an opening right now, you’re always looking for good people, and you’d like to have permission to call them if something opens up. This way, you’ll always have a backlog of qualified candidates.
This is also a good reason to regularly shop your competitors. We know it sounds a bit mercenary, but you would be appalled at how poorly some companies treat their best people! And when you hire away one of their best, you win twice – you gain a skilled employee at your competitor’s expense.
When screening sales applicants you need to give them an opportunity to showcase their sales skills before putting them in front of customers. By seeing how well they sell themselves to you, you can predict with remarkable accuracy how effective they will be at selling others.
Here’s a simple system that can streamline the screening and ensure that you are getting the best of the best. Set up a voicemail box on a DDE (direct-dial extension that only goes to voice mail; ask your phone company). Then run your classified ad outlining the basic qualifications for the job, but do not mention the name of your business. Instead, in the last sentence of the ad use the phrase, “To schedule an interview call (the DDE phone number).”
The outbound recording should say, “Because of the overwhelming response to or ad, we’ve had to automate our screening process. At the tone, please leave your name, a number where you can be reached, and a brief summary of your qualifications. If your background matches our requirements, we may invite you for an interview.” BEEEEP. Let it run for a day or two to accumulate messages.
When playing the messages back, be prepared with a pad and pen. You’ll want to take notes. Start by really listening to the voice. Is it warm, friendly and intelligent? Is this the voice of someone who you would feel comfortable representing your firm? If not, delete it and move on.
Then listen to the message a second time, and check:
• Did the candidate follow directions?
• Did they in fact leave their name, an after-hours number (or better still, several)
• Did they leave a summary of their qualifications, and in that order?
This will predict how easy (or difficult) they will be to manage. Did they just rattle off their resume, or did they couch their experience in terms of skills? “I’m very good with computers,” or “I’d do a great job because I love working with customers.”
And finally, did this candidate close with some sort of call to action, “asking for the order” (or in this case the interview). If they pass all four of these tests, then call back and interview them initially by phone. You don’t want their physical appearance to bias your choice prematurely.
This process will give you a better idea of each candidate’s strengths before you waste time brining in people who are not a good fit. Implementing some sort of system to streamline the screening will help weed out the lazy and unqualified. This strategy will help you build the best possible retail team that will only improve your team morale and your business as a whole.
Orvel Ray presenting diplomas in Nairobi, Kenya
In September, speaker and consultant Scott “Q” Marcus did a program and workshop for NSA Colorado on an advanced audience-interaction technique called “Sculpting,” in which participants collaborate to build a living model of a problem or situation, then work to solve it. It was outstanding in every respect, and we all left the day eager to give it a try.
The opportunity arose in the opening hour of a two-day Advanced Guerrilla Selling Seminar that I was teaching last week in Nairobi, Kenya. After the opening story and overview, the room was just flat. At first I just chalked it up to my America accent; after all, their first language was Swahili. Or maybe it was a bit of a cultural thing (here’s another White man telling us what to do) but it just wasn’t connecting. Here were 90 Sales VPs and Managers, from three countries, representing the biggest companies in East Africa, sitting quietly and looking skeptical. I was in trouble and I knew it.
So I did a sculpt, based on the “Get through the Day” theme that Scott had demonstrated. I called for a volunteer to represent the role of the Salesman. Mark, who sells big transformers to electrical utilities, stepped forward, and we positioned him far stage left, and gave him the goal of getting across to the far end of the 20-foot stage, which would represent his goal of making the sale.
Then I asked the audience to shout out possible obstacles that could get in the way.
“Competition!”
“Traffic” (Nairobi is notoriously gridlocked)
“Infrastructure” (temperamental at best, or lacking altogether)
“Technology”
“Dead mobile”
“Corruption”
“Time”
“Price”
and so on.
As each participant spoke up, we brought them in turn up onto the stage, asked them to pose in a way that would show us what their obstacle might “look like,” and “where in the day” it should go. After arranging themselves across the stage, we set the sculpt in motion. “OK, Mark, time to go to work.”
It looked like a Rugby scrum as Mark struggled to push his way over, around, under and through one challenger after another. It was hysterical. When he finally made it to far stage right, the room exploded into applause and cheers.
“So, is this what it feels like to do business in Africa?” I asked.
A resounding, “YES!”
“Ok, then. Over the next two days, this seminar is going to teach you strategies and tactics to help overcome all of these obstacles, and more.”
It was as if someone had waved a magic wand. What they got from the sculpt was that, first of all, this was going to be a fun, collaborative, participative environment, rather than a formal stuffy lecture. (Kenya was a British Protectorate, and that culture still lingers. It’s subtle, but Kenyans are resentful of white authority figures). It also set their expectations that the content would be practical and street-wise. They could see that, “this guy gets it.” I think it gave them permission to relax, speak out and play along. And it humanized me in a way that bonded me to the group. From that moment on, they were fully engaged, relaxed, chatty and eager to speak out and participate.
Imagine my shock and surprise when this same group gave the program a standing ovation at the end of the second day. Absolutely unheard of for a long seminar; certainly a first in my career.
The sculpt set the stage for a successful learning experience that transcended language, race and culture. Scott, I can’t thank you enough for teaching us this very powerful technique, and I look forward to using it again in my next seminar.
We were just about to board the dive boat when I noticed the sign: “NIKONUS 35mm w/strobes, $75/day.” You mean I can rent a pro-grade underwater camera for only $75 bucks? Sign me up! While we motored out to the reef, the dive master gave me a crash course in underwater photography, and when we returned from Nassau and developed the film, I was in for a shock.
Earl Nightingale had it right when he wrote The Strangest Secret. “You become what you think about.” A friend gave me this cassette when I was a sophomore in college, and it changed my life. It made me aware of the internal chatter in my head, and all of the negative, discouraging things I had been saying to myself. That’s because I grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional family where I was told I’d never amount to nuthin’. My mother mocked me for wanting to go to college, and she was shocked when I won a scholarship.
My dorm roommate thought I was nuts. I started reading affirmations from a deck of 3×5 cards. Out loud. After nearly flunking out my freshman year, The Power of Positive Thinking turned me into a deans-list scholar. Then one day the psychology professor was lecturing about a study that suggested that most of our thinking takes the form of pictures, and that memories are stored and retrieved as pictures. That got me thinking.
A speed reading course had already taught a technique for remembering lists by turning them into pictures. For example, let’s say I needed to go to the store and buy toothpaste, beans, rice, coffee, sugar, bread, cereal, and bananas, I could conjure up a picture of a chimp with bad teeth, wearing a baker’s hat and eating a banana, while holding a mug full of corn flakes heaped with sugar, sitting on two burlap bags stenciled “RICE” and “BEANS.” You get the picture.
Our debate coach taught a variation of this technique, called the “loci method,” to organize important facts by visualizing a walk through the rooms of a house. This trick was popular in ancient Greece for memorizing long speeches and texts. It worked for Aristotle.
One afternoon, Denise, my wife-to-be, was working on a collage for an art class, and it occurred to me that I could put pictures together to represent my affirmations, and this might even be more effective than just words. So we each started building a scrapbook of things we’d like to have, places we’d like to go, and things we wanted to achieve in our lives. The format was simple: a cheep ring binder filled with plastic sleeves where you can slide in the pages. We cut photos from magazines and pasted them together into pages that represented our dreams and goals. We were too poor to afford a television, so we jokingly called our project “TomorrowVision.” We kept these books on the night table, and we’d review them together just before going to sleep when our subconscious mind would be most impressionable.
Years passed, and after a time we fell out of the picture-book-on-the-night-table habit. So much for applied psychology. We both had busy professional lives, then a son, and then another. We still followed the discipline of writing down our goals each month, and keeping a To-Do list in a DayTimer. But I completely forgot about TomorrowVision until I developed the film from Nassau.
One of those early life goals was to learn to scuba dive. This was represented in my scrapbook by a half-page underwater shot, torn from a magazine, of a diver with a big colorful fish on a reef.
When a client asked me to teach a series of seminars in Hawaii, we seized the opportunity and registered for pool classes, and finished our open-water certification in Kona. It was many trips, and many, many dives later that I rented that underwater camera on a whim.
As I was flipping through the dive pictures, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was the fish, the SAME fish (which I now recognized as Holocanthus ciliarus, the Queen Angel). I called out to Denise, “Darling, do you know whatever happened to those old visualization notebooks we used to have?”
“Look in the pile of books under the bed.”
There it was. The picture in the TomorrowVision book looked as if it had been shot on the same roll of film.
Shock and surprise faded into deep satisfaction as I flipped through these pages. These images that had once represented life-long goals had already been realized: our home in the mountains in Colorado; writing a book; sailing the tropics; skiing with our boys; kayaking in Alaska; teaching at the University; cycling around Ireland; speaking in Mexico, Europe and Australia. I held in my hands a virtual scrapbook of the past ten years of our lives. The music from “Twilight Zone” started playing in my head.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz taught us that, “Your subconscious mind can not tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined.” By looking into our future through our TomorrowVision, we were programming our brains to seek out and recognize opportunities, large and small, that would bring us closer to those goals. Looking back, it seems as if those events were inevitable, because even our most incidental daily decisions were informed by deep, subconscious intent.
Over the past 30 years, leading experts like Louise Hay, Anthony Robbins and Depak Chopra have spoken passionately about the power of creative visualization. It’s no longer viewed as a mystical phenomenon. Today you can even buy an affirmation app for your iPhone. Psychologists and neuroscientists are looking deep into the brain, and can explain in scientific terms exactly how this seemingly magical process works.
I recently read how competitors in the World Memory Championships use variations on these same visual imagery tricks to perform mind-boggling feats, recanting long strings of numbers, like the mathematical constant pi (the record now stands at more than 80,000 digits) or memorizing the sequence of a shuffled deck of playing cards in less than a minute (30 seconds is the new Four-Minute-Mile). MRI scans of the brains of these mental heavyweights shows them lighting up areas normally used for visual recall and spatial navigation. The evolutionary explanation is simple. Presumably our ancestors found it particularly useful to recall where they found their last meal, or the way back to the cave.
The same mechanism allows us to remember our future, and then automatically steer around life’s obstacles until we arrive. The life we’ve lead has been extraordinary beyond my wildest dreams. I have only one regret; what if I had kept up the discipline by changing out my TomorrowVision pages as each goal was realized, replacing them with new images and loftier goals? What more might I have done?
Today that old ring binder is sitting on my desk, awaiting a new set of pages, and I’ve included these two extraordinary photographs for your review. This simple technique can help you achieve your goals and live your dreams as well. Here’s proof that when we give our lives a roadmap, our deep intellect will eventually navigate a course to it, even if it’s hidden away on a reef, deep beneath some distant sea.
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How to Lose a Loyal Customer in 12 Seconds
This weekend I traveled with Denise to New Orleans to speak at the City & Regional Magazine Association conference. I was doing break-out sessions on Guerrilla Selling and Guerrilla Marketing with Social Media.
We were nearly next in line to check our bag when a burly ticket agent turned on the crowd and barked, “WHO’S BAG IS THIS?!”
“Mine,” I said, sheepishly raising my hand. I had scooted it under the queuing strap so as not have to carry it an extra 20 feet, and was standing less than 6 feet away.
“YOU HAVE TO ATTEND YOUR BAGGAGE AT ALL TIMES!” he shouted. I was like, SO busted.
“I AM attending it,” I pleaded. “I’m standing RIGHT HERE!” demonstrating that I could almost touch it.
He shouted like a marine drill sergeant, “YOU HAVE TO BE WITHIN ARM’S LENGTH OF YOUR BAG AT ALL TIMES!”
“OK, Ok, ok . . . “ I muttered as I slinked forward in line, cutting ahead of four other people to hover, humiliated, over my bag for the next 12 seconds.
Keep in mind that I have enough frequent flier miles on United Airlines to qualify for the next Space Shuttle. They have always been gracious, accommodating and helpful. That’s why they’ve been my favorite airline for two decades. And I concede that I was breaking the rule, but a little courtesy would have gone a long way. Anyway, I love this airline so much that I can over-look one rules-happy power-crazed ticket agent who’s having a bad day.
The topper came when we arrived in New Orleans. We were waiting by the baggage carousel when Denise realized she had left her purse on board. She dashed back to retrieve it, and was stopped at the concourse security desk (of course). A call was made and within minutes a friendly United representative returned with her purse. So far, they’re 1 and 1.
In the cab she discovered that her cash was gone. We called. We got transferred. We got a lecture about how, “We’re not responsible for lost items.” Of course, that wasn’t the point. We assumed SOMEONE would share our concern that one of their employees was stealing. Seems no one at United was even interested. So we shrugged it off and didn’t let it ruin our day. It was only a hundred bucks.
But it DID ruin a twenty-year relationship. United has just joined Northwest and Air France on my “Do not fly” list. How can you trust them with your life if you can’t trust them with a purse?
Guerrilla marketers spend years and years and millions of dollars building customer loyalty. Everyone in your organization can do everything exactly right in thousands of transactions spanning decades. Even so, a single moment of carelessness, impatience, or greed can destroy it all. And you know what? It didn’t surprise me that someone took the money. People are desperate. The disappointment was that we cared more about United Airlines’ security problem than they did.
Never make your customers feel wrong or stupid, even when they are. Good manners are simply good business. Make certain that your commitment to your customers is demonstrated at EVERY touchpoint, EVERY time, and that EVEY customer experience is CONSISTENT across the board. And when there is a problem, give it your undivided attention, whether you mean to fix it or not.
–Orvel Ray
Grand Hyatt Launches New Weapon in the Amenity Arms Race
Rapid Repair, a little company In Kalamazoo, Michigan, will install a 240 GB hard drive upgrade in your iPod. I can’t make this stuff up, folks. For about the price of a NEW iPod, you can expand your old iPod to 240 GIGS! For cryin’ out loud, the IBM laptop I’m using here only has 40 gigs. Two-Hundred-Forty GIGABYTES is enough disk space for 20 hours of MP3 video or 60,000 songs! What on EARTH would anyone DO with THAT much content? Whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want. That’s what.
In advance of Team Summit, I was doing Guerrilla sales training for DISH Network’s National Sales Meeting at the Grand Hyatt. A video billboard just outside the ballroom promoted the hotel’s newest room amenity. They have replaced the typical (and SO last millennium) bedside clock radio with a HI-FI iPod docking station. (And I’m old enough to remember when having a coffeemaker in the room was a big deal!) What do you do with a HI-FI iPod docking station? Well, you listen to your 60,000 songs. That’s what.
So now, you can take exactly the music you want, listen to it whenever you want, wherever you want And when you’re a guest at the Denver Grand Hyatt, you can play it right in your suite, and even wake up in the morning to your favorite (is this beginning to sound a lot like SLING?). No more annoying all-country stations to sift through. No more of those poor people at NPR of nagging you to donate a car. Hyatt has found yet another weapon to deploy in the room-amenities arms race.
Alvin Toffler predicted this kind of made-my-way-on-demand economy way back in 1970. Today’s consumers have more choices than ever, and they still demand more and more options. Ragu now offers 36 flavors of spaghetti sauce in 6 varieties. (Watch Malcom Gladwell’s short video on TED about this phenomenon!)
What this means is that guerrillas can create a competitive advantage by offering their customers hyper-customized versions of their product or service. These same customers will pay more, and they are more loyal.
Boulder CreekFest Vendors Waste a Golden Opportunity, with One Notable Exception
In Boulder, Colorado, my home town, Memorial Day Weekend means the Boulder Creek Festival. And Creekfest is your typical small-town spring fair, with two exceptions: the Boulder Creek Rubber Duck Race (a $5 donation buys a numbered rubber duckie to float from one end of downtown to the other), and the Bolder Boulder (a major foot race that draws a few serious competitive runners and 20,000 costumed crazies).
Creekfest draws some 350,000 visitors so it’s a guerrilla marketer’s dream. It has all the trappings you’d expect: dozens of food stalls, two beer gardens, carnival rides, inflatable bouncers, bungee-enhanced super-trampolines, five stages of live music and block-after-block of EZ-up tents selling art, jewelry, hemp clothing, solar collectors, bottled yogurt, soy milk, artificial turf, New Zealand hats, wheat-filled neck warmers, hand-made musical frogs and 1,000-thread-count-Egyptian-cotton sheets (actually 100% microfiber Made in China).
Also represented were The Libertarian Party (who were having some sort of political shouting match) Boulder County Parks and Open Space (featuring a stuffed coyote you couldn’t touch), a chiropractor (offering “Free Gentle Adjustment”), a yoga studio and a Judo school (who weren’t offering anything).
If I had been the guerrilla marketing police I would have written a whole book of tickets. While THRONGS of people strolled slowly by, most exhibitors just SAT there under their tent, with DOZENS of pieces of literature spread out on the TABLE set BETWEEN themselves and the traffic, and talking to EACH OTHER. These would-be vendors had paid $550 and up for a ten-foot tent space just so that they could waste a perfectly good Memorial Day weekend WISHING they had more business!
We did see a couple of exceptions. The guy at the Boulder Brewery beer kiosk made eye contact and simply asked, “What’s your favorite?” Never mind that a 12 oz. plastic cup was $5.00. He just ASSUMED that because I was standing in front of his stall, I MUST be thirsty. (I recommend their “Dazed and Infused” IPA.)
Remember at Team summit, I said “Have something for the kids to do.”
What stopped me in my tracks was the sound of a four-year-old boy wailing away on a snare drum and hi-hat, accompanied by a ten-year-old blond Hanna Montana wanna-be on electric guitar, and a teen age boy with greasy black hair playing electric bass. You could hear them a block away. Three adults in matching black rock-concert-roadie T-shirts were standing by, cheering them on. The banner overhead said, “Free Lessons.”
This I had to watch. Within seconds, a young woman in her early 20′s wearing black jeans and a matching black T-shirt approached and asked, “Are you a musician?”
“No,” I said, offering my stock answer. “I’m a drummer.”
She laughed, smiled ear-to-ear and said, “I’m a drummer TOO! But I’ve only been playing for about two weeks.” She offered her business card and asked what sort of music I liked to play.
“Actually, I play in a working Brazilian Jazz band.”
“OH, a professional! Well, then, you’ll have to stop by our rehearsal studio in Lafayette. It’s a nice, comfortable place to practice, and it’s already equipped with drums, amps and keyboards.”
I was impressed. Three hours of wondering through block after block of booths and she was the only vendor (besides the beer guy) who had engaged me. Not only that; she had greeted, qualified, and asked for the order in less than a minute.
Her card said, “Dog House Music” and her name was Lindsay Polak, Marketing/Communications Manager. When I asked what they were doing at CreekFest, she explained that they were promoting their Summer Rock & Roll Camp for Teens AND their Fantasy Rock & Roll Camp for Adults. An 8½ x 11 stand-up on the table said, in plain black letters on white paper, “Enroll Today Save $50.” She handed me two single-page fliers and a sticker.
“This is really COOL, what you’re doing here, but I already have a rehearsal studio.”
“Well, perhaps you’d consider being an instructor?” she said. “We’re always looking for good people.” I just about fainted!
S0 what can a Guerrilla Retailer learn from a 20 year old drummer about Event Marketing?
1. You’ve invested a lot to be there; make it pay
2. Remove all barriers between you and your traffic
3. Use simple signs and banners to make your offer clear
4. Put all your people in some sort of uniform so we know who to approach
5. Invite visitors (and especially kids) to participate in a simple, low-cost, fun activity
6. Limit your promotion to two or three offerings you can explain in seconds
7. Proactively engage the adults (they’re the tall ones with the credit cards)
8. Start a conversation and ask qualifying questions
9. Ask for the order
10. Don’t let anyone leave empty-handed
The music wasn’t ready for the main stage, but everyone at this tent was having a ball, ESPECIALLY the instructors. Lindsay and her colleagues are definitely rock stars of guerrilla retailing. Check out their web site. www.doghousemusic.com.
How to Get Above Average Performance from Everyone
by Guerrilla Selling Speaker Orvel Ray Wilson, CSP
How would you like to see a 10% sales lift on a $10 investment? Start by making individual production public.
Go to the office supply and buy a white dry-erase marker board, a set of colored markers, and a couple of rolls of black border tape (that skinny, vinyl tape used for making lines on your whiteboard).
Use the border tape to divide the whiteboard into 9 columns.
The first column is NAME, then a column for each of the seven days of the week, and a column on the right for TOTAL. Now create a line for each salesperson.
Hang it on the wall in the warehouse, break-room or back office where everyone (except customers) will see it.
Each day, require each of your sales associates to write their sales figures for the day in the appropriate box before they go home. A blank indicates that they were not in the store that day. You may have to enforce the rule at first; if they skip (or just forget) fine them a dollar for the coffee kitty. But soon, everyone will be eager to play the game.
This works on several levels. First, your stars will set the pace for the rest of team, because salespeople are genetically competitive. That alone will increase their overall sales performance by the promised ten percent. Great sales trainers and coaches capitalize on that trait to help team members improve their skills.
It will also make everyone more consistent, because no one wants to post a zero for the day. And nobody wants to be consistently in last place, so they will work to improve their product knowledge and sales skills. And that one person you have on your team who you wish you hadn’t hired? After a few weeks he’ll get the message and leave on his own.
Raising the Bar
You can produce even more dramatic results by tracking all of the associates’ performance on three key performance indicators. At end of the month, calculate their total sales volume, their average ticket amount and their gross margin, then compute the overall averages for each variable across the store, and compare each associate’s performance to the average.
Post the results, or print them in a spreadsheet to hand out, for example:
| Associate |
Total Sales Volume
|
Number of Transactions
|
Gross Margin %
|
| Jeannie |
$16,550.00
|
25
|
31.1%
|
| Ted |
$20,196.00
|
26
|
30.2%
|
| Aaron |
$24,952.00
|
30
|
29.3%
|
| Chris |
$19,252.00
|
32
|
32.1%
|
| Pat |
$22,532.00
|
31
|
34.9%
|
| Michelle |
$21,036.00
|
25
|
26.0%
|
| Ryan |
$26,382.00
|
19
|
31.0%
|
| Average |
$21,557.14
|
26.9
|
30.7%
|
Table 1
Congratulate those who beat the norm, then meet individually with each associate to discuss his or her individual performance. “You’re doing a good job over all, and I noticed that last month, you were above average on (parameters) while your (parameter) was just a little bit below the average. Why do you think that was? How could we work together to help get you up to the average (on this parameter)?”
This is a highly motivating combination. Nobody wants to perform “below average,” but suggesting that you just expect them to work up to the norm will always be perceived as reasonable and achievable. It should be easy enough. After all, you’re not asking a low performer to shatter any records, just to improve in one specific area enough to make the middle ground.
In the example above, the average sales volume per associate for the month was $21,557.14. So you might take Ted aside and ask him to suggest ways that he might sell an additional $1,300 this month. After all, he only needs $1,300 to get up to the average.
You’d have the same conversation with Jeannie, Chris and Michelle, and suggest ways that they could increase their overall sales. Maybe they just need to put in more hours, or take a Sunday shift or two. Perhaps they need to pay closer attention to customers when they’re in the store, or be more proactive about suggesting companion products or accessories. Perhaps you can coach them on effectively handling more than one customer at a time.
In the same example, the average number of sales per associate was 26.9, but Jeannie, Ted, Michelle and Ryan all fell below that average. You can talk to them about qualifying customers more carefully, or help them improve their closing skills. They only need to close a few more sales next month to move into “above average” territory.
Similarly, while the average gross margin was 30.7%, Ryan, Pat, Chris and Jeannie made above-average profits, while Ted, Aaron, Linda and Ryan were below the bar. Perhaps they’re over-emphasizing sale merchandise. You might coach them on up-selling to full-feature products, or adding high-margin accessories. Or show the best first. After all, they only need to cross-sell or up-sell every now and then to be above the average.
From time to time, you can change the parameters to help associates improve in other areas such as closing ratios, total accessories sold or extended warranty penetration.
Very quickly, you’ll find that the averages start to climb, as each associate gets exactly the coaching they need from month to month to improve their most critical skills.
To learn how we can help you built a top-performing guerrilla sales team, or to order your own copy of Guerrilla Retailing, call us toll-free 800-247-9145.
Guerrilla Gets a Bad Rap
Some people, when they hear the title of our materials, think we’re advocating something manipulative or dishonest. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The truth is that Guerrilla Selling relies on Time, Energy, and Imagination to gain a competitive advantage.
On the other hand, it’s no wonder some people get confused.
Camo is back in style
–Orvel Ray
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