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Marketing Salesmanship Zen
”No. I think not.” Then he slapped the folder down and stormed out, making sure he slammed the door 
hard enough to rattle the conference room windows. I watch the worried faces prairie-dogging from distant cubicles and quickly suppress the smile. Once again I’m grateful for a skill that allows me to be independent from such fears.
Inside the conference room, his C-levels are too stunned to speak, probably doing furious mental calculations about whether they still had jobs. Or not.
I try to keep it light, so they don’t start wetting themselves. “Well, that went well.”
They twitter nervously, absently — not really listening. Heh, still trying to figure out if they have jobs. Sheesh, employees.
I have just told the CEO, the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales that they have to think of themselves and everyone in the company as salespeople. That wasn’t why I was there, btw. That was just the end of a 60 minute strategy session. The CEO agreed with my previous 55 minutes.
His final words before the Big Dramatic Exit, “I don’t do . . . sales” (think Bela Lugosi’s Dracula saying, “I don’t drink . . . wine”) is still reverberating in everyone’s ears, and I’m wondering, by the expression on his face, if he just discovered the product of his wife’s Shi Tzu on the bottom of his $500 Hugo Bosses.
I look at the Sales VP, wondering if the dismayed look on his face is the sudden revelation of how his boss views not only his job, but his entire department. He probably just realized where the budget cuts were going to start next quarter.
Look, nothing happens without sales, salesmanship, salesmanship-in-print (what I do) and above all — salespeople. Okay, maybe that’s overstating the case because random things do happen without a sales process — you accidentally find $20 on the sidewalk, you win the lottery, an attractive stranger asks you out. It’s rare, but it happens.
For your business to be successful, everyone is in sales. That’s the mindset. From the C-level execs to the receptionist (and especially those front-line folks who deal with your base more than you do). Salesfolk one and all.
They’re selling the company, the widget, themselves.
The growth of your business depends on a continued, sustained process of letting people know what you have to sell, breaking through their electronic fog to tell them why they need it and then providing them an easy way to have it. And that’s what I specialize in doing and my track record is proof of that.
We’re all salespeople in the Great Sales Game of Life. One with everything.
By Walter |
Topics: Client Top Secret, From The Trenches |