Door-to-door sales people. You’re annoying. Stop. Here are some valuable tips for you…
As an owner of a business, I’m consistently bombarded with door-to-door sales people walking in trying to sell me on their magazine, day planner, new college student app, coupon book, newspaper, and more. I feel like it happens every other day at this point. If you own a retail business like mine, you know exactly what I am talking about.
You try to avoid it as much as possible. You are all of a sudden, “In a meeting” or “on the phone with an important customer” and cannot be interrupted. You try to defer it to another team member... For me, it’s usually my assistant that will see if it is something I would actually be interested in. If so, she may set up an appointment. No one gets to me at this point without an appointment.
I’m writing this hoping that a lot of people that are in door-to-door sales will read it, think through their strategies, and make some adjustments. After my experience, I asked a group of business owners the following:
“Just because it came up in our vlog (see below), I’m curious… What is the worst ‘sales tactic’ you’ve seen as a business owner? I’m constantly hit with, “This is what your competition is doing, you should do it too.” approach.”
These were their responses:
- “I get these awful calls about voip phone service. Polite but annoying. The only thing wrong with my phone service is that those guys get through.”
- “You don’t want to donate to our cause? We understand that you don’t have money. Not every business is doing well and has money to donate. Maybe next year you’ll have money.” → (individual’s next comment)“I give to charities plenty I think but I did not appreciate this one trying to shame me into giving money to save face when the issue was that I was not supporting that charity.”
- “Not respecting a business owner’s “time” when getting a sales call, not admitting and owning the fact that it’s a sales call, not taking the time to assess a true pain point, using “assumed close” tactics to bully your way through a sales call, being sleazy and cliche… “am I right?!”, using the term “what if I told you I could…..”, not treating every person from the gatekeeper to the decision-maker with the utmost respect and professionalism, not listening when I’m trying to answer the sales rep’s questions. I could go ON AND ON AND ON, as you might imagine. But those are just a few I could think of off the top of my head!”
- “When sales people tell me who my competition is because they have a poor understanding of our mission, philosophy and what we do at our business.”
- “Yelp.” [This comment had a couple of people complaining about Yelp’s sales tactics. All of which we’re negative.]
- “I try to listen to as many “pitches” as I can because I would prefer people not to shut me down… you know do unto other and all… but the one I hate most is the insurance people who ask “Can I talk to your employees…one on one or in a group…?” Uh, NO!”
These are the words of other business owners. Lot’s to learn here!
Here are tips that I have come up with that would help individuals that are in these door-to-door advertising sales positions:
- Research the person you are trying to get to. Know their mission, vision, and values. Why do they do what they do? Will your ad product actually help them? If the answer is “No.” Save our time and yours and don’t even try. If you truly believe in your ad service and believe it will help in our mission, then take the steps to set up a meeting (see other points below).
- If you’ve done your research, you should know how that business owner, marketing manager, etc. communicates. For example, your chances of a sit down meeting with me are significantly higher if you reach out to me via Snapchat. I answer every Snapchat message. If you walk in my front door, you are not getting to me. If you send me a Snap, you’re at least getting a response directly from me. I handle all of my personal social media channels.
- Respect our time. We’re running businesses. Just ‘dropping in’ is annoying and (at least for me) highly reduces your chances of getting a sit down meeting with me. No… I’m not interrupting my day to talk to you.
- We know you’re on commission, so stop pretending you’re not. We’re business owners. We know how it works.
- Personal introductions help. When I have a friend reach out to me and say, “Collin, I want you to meet my friend _________ from ___________. We use his/her service and our business has grown x% and I think your business could benefit from it too.” I trust my friends and know they truly have my best interest at heart. [If you’re the friend making the recommendation, you should only do so if you really believe in the product/service, not because you are doing another friend a favor.]
- Don’t sell on the first visit. To use some of Gary Vaynerchuk’s verbiage, romance them a little bit. Don’t ‘jump in bed’ on the first date. Going back to the first bullet point, do your homework before coming in to the meeting. Then, come into the meeting just trying to learn more about the business. Ask questions. Establishing a new friendship and relationship gives you a better chance long-term (even if you REALLY need it short-term).
- Build a relationship with the business’s team. This is a great strategy. I’ve had plenty of sales people finally get a sit-down meeting with me because my team loved the person. One time, a young lady finally got a sit-down meeting with me after building relationships within the team. At our sit-down meeting, I told her, “I’m still not interested in this product, but I would like to offer you a job.” She accepted and was a rockstar on our team all the way up until she graduated and moved on to the next chapter of her life. She understood a lot of these other points mentioned and I saw value in her sales experience.
- Always follow up with a thank you card. Someone sending a personal thank you card saying, for example, “Collin, I really appreciate your time and really enjoyed getting to learn more about your business. I loved [this awesome aspect of your business]. [Fill with other awesome things that you admired about my business.]. Some friends and I are grabbing drinks after work on [Day and Date], would you like to join us?” (or something similar to this). This is leading to a friendship. I prefer to do business with people that I have a relationship with vs. the commissioned ‘cold call.’
- Provide the business owner more value by sending him/her business or a business lead. Then you can drop the business owner a note and say, for example, “Collin, I ran into my friend _________ who is looking for a scooter and passed your email on to her. I told her how beautiful your shop was and that you were THE place to buy from. Her name is ___________ and she should be dropping you a note tomorrow.” This shows me that you care more about our relationship and are helping me be successful whether I advertise with you or not. The good news for you is that I feel like I owe you one. I’m going to want to return the favor, especially if your sales lead you sent me ends up buying. You are providing value.
- Realize that the business owner knows what is best for his/her business… NOT YOU. Comparing us to our competitors, threatening to make this ‘great offer’ to our competitors instead of us, guilting us into donating to your cause, etc. are terrible tactics. You will lose all respect with us.
- Just like cold phone calls… cold emails and cold LinkedIn messages do not work. 100% failure rate (at least with me). 99% with most everyone else.
- This method sucks → Calling the business and saying “Hello. May I speak to the owner please?” gets screened by any team member and they answer, “He is unavailable right now, may I take a message?” You then say, “It’s ok, I will try back. What’s his/her name?” → You call back an hour later and say, “May I speak to Collin please?” thinking that you’re more likely to get your sales call through to me. Wrong. We’re on to you.
- No means no. I know you are taught, “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” Personally, just know that if I have to say “no” more than once, you are losing my respect. This is why you stand more of a chance if you focus on actually building a relationship with me and bringing value to my business.
Here is one last secret for those of you in advertising sales:
- “We’ve used all of our marketing budget for the year” is usually a lie. The truth is, “You just cold-called me and I don’t appreciate it.” If I actually believed that your product/service was going to help me make more money, of course I would advertise with you. The problem is, I don’t believe that it will, you’re not willing to prove it to me, and you didn’t respect my time.
I truly hope that this helps many of you that are in the door-to-door / cold-calling game. You have a tough job. You have to be willing to take a lot of rejection. I get it. It takes a special person to be in those positions, but if you follow some of these points above, I think you will achieve greater success. Focus on relationships, value, and doing what is best for the business owner even if it means it’s not going to lead to new business for you. You may be surprised at what this will actually do for you.
Good luck.
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Website: http://collinaustin.com
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