If bigger is better, why is it the dinosaurs are no longer around, but the small rodents, insects and microbes they shared the world with are?
We live in an age where big government bails out big businesses and banks that are “too big to fail”. Any idiot can tell you these bailouts just postpone the inevitable—that these businesses will go back to their failed way of doing things, will keep making mistakes and they will fail again, but who will be there to bail them out? Big government can change laws and pass bills that temporarily prolong the vital signs of these dinosaurs but they can’t change the laws of mathematics. They can’t spend money they don’t have or can’t get without thoroughly antagonizing the electorate…and they can’t print more money without suffering even more disastrous consequences in the form of inflation.
“B-b-but what are we supposed to do?” Let ‘em fail, I suggest. Let the cream rise to the top and let’s grow in a positive manner. General Motors would have been better off to fail, sell off divisions that they could (are you telling me Corvette couldn’t stand on it’s own alone as a brand when Ferrari can?) and let people who feel they can make things work right in a downsized world do what they must. Smaller, leaner, more efficient and able to turn a profit.
There’s ample evidence that the bigger a company gets, the more it chums up with the government. And there’s ample evidence the government is lousy at running most of what they attempt to run. Listening to members of Congress and other bureaucrats (most of whom have never balanced a budget or run a business profitably) grill executives from Wall Street and Toyota is laughable when you think about it deep and hard.
So what does this have to do with independent sales reps?
Let’s take vendor relationships for starters. An indie rep will try to add as many lines as he/she can, but with the realization the top 20% or so will account for about 80% of their income. So while it might seem that the rep is trying to be “bigger is better”, they know full well they can’t fully represent each and every line in their portfolio.
Vendors and reps should discuss things beforehand to get an idea as to how much business they can do together. The line a rep is taking on may be a huge potential source of commissions, or it may be a line the rep feels can only go into a few targeted accounts. It’s important to think about this on both sides. It’s important too that the small vendor realize that his line may be on a “reserve” status…but that the possibility may come someday when they have a product the rep can really cut loose with. Relationships may be forged that will pan out later. So long as the vendor can keep expenses low in the rep relationship (which is easy nowadays with websites and high quality images available online), the wait for the relationship to strike gold is worth it.
No matter how many lines a rep has, there will always be a select few that are, what the rep will feel, are the strongest. These may have popular trendy items, good perennial sellers, or the vendor may just provide a decent commission structure and have a great reputation for service. Ideally, these favored vendors will combine all of these attributes: “current hits”, great day-to-day bestsellers, timely and fair commissions and service that a rep doesn’t have to sweat over later on. It should be understood too that such a vendor would be morally well grounded and not have a reputation for backstabbing or otherwise ruining the relationship with the rep. If the vendor feels the need to end the relationship it will be done in a professional and open manner.
Here’s where the lure of “bigger is better” starts to threaten the rep—and any business. What if the rep has many lines, but tends to pay attention to a favored few that he or she thinks are great just because they are “big”? They have a lot of trendy product to sell, but they just so happen to be lousy at aspects like paying commissions and service.
In this case, the rep is writing orders mostly for those lines, yet waiting longer to get paid (if at all) and since the service is terrible, may only be getting paid for 40% of his work, since that is the fill-rate potential on these supposed “bigger is better” vendors. This happens quite a lot in many businesses.
Jonathan Knee, in his book Curse Of The Mogul discusses many of the mergers that have happened in the last several decades with media related companies. While many of these mergers looked great in theory and their CEOs (or “moguls”) promised the moon, very rarely did these new mega mergers make money for their shareholders, or provide better products or service to customers. The moguls and their close friends and colleagues (who you just know happen to hover around our nation’s capitol) are the only ones who make money in these deals because, in forming the merger, they specifically structure pay for executives with huge bonuses whether the company is profitable or not. A great example of such a failed venture was AOL/Time-Warner.
Remember the popular book The Peter Principle (Lawrence Peter & Raymond Hull, 1969)? This was the theory that in most businesses individuals would advance through the ranks but eventually hit their “level of incompetence”—in other words, they’d reach a point at which their limitations would become evident. From there they’d either get demoted or they’d remain in that position and cause everyone around them to work harder to compensate for the individual’s incompetence. Sound kind of like what we have today, on a grand scale, from President Obama on down…doesn’t it?
But not down all the way. There are many small businesses and sales reps out there that know their limitations and live within their means. A rep can take on many lines, but the beauty of being an independent sales rep is that he or she can use the weapons (vendor relationships) at their disposal and apply them in order to maximize their business at any particular time.
A rep that focuses too much on being “bigger is better”, by focusing in on dominating one particular product type, or on vendors who outwardly appear superior but are lacking in certain areas, will almost assuredly fail over the long haul. Focusing in on “small” or (as a better way to put it), lean and fit, means the rep can change course quickly. He can react to positive trends or little disasters that would otherwise go unnoticed or cripple a big lumbering dinosaur who would either take too long to react, or won’t be able to react at all because they are so entrenched.
In one of the Dirty Harry films, Clint Eastwood, after outwitting one of his foes and watching as that foe gets blasted to Kingdom Come, mumbles “A man’s got to know his limitations”. This is advice we as a society better start heeding…and it’s great advice for reps and the vendors they work with.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Trade Show Do’s And Don’ts—How To Max Your Potential At Conventions
In a past blog we discussed how to find new leads. We didn’t touch upon trade shows, so we’ll do that here. Trade Shows, Conventions, Confabs, whatever you want to call them, can be a good way to find new leads/prospects/customers. They can also help an independent sales rep find more vendors to sell for….as well as other business opportunities.
You may attend a trade show that has a number of your vendors exhibiting. If you can offer your help by working their booth/booths for a shift or two, this may allow you to write some business during the show, perhaps find new customers. But anyone who thinks the value of a trade show is just in the business one can write-- there and then at that show-- is missing the point and not maximizing the potential a show can present.
The main purpose of a trade show is to make contacts and establish relationships and reputations. Better industry trade shows make a point of making that happen. Lousy trade shows make that difficult, or a hassle.
Let’s say you’re attending a show and have five lines that are exhibiting. You have booth duty at all five of them. During that time you can write orders…but be sure you are clear as to how much commission you make on show orders. If orders written are for customers in your usual territory, the vendor may give you all the commission. If not, they may split it to cover cost of the booth. If you write orders for customers outside your normal territory, you may have to split commission with the rep that handles that region. Whatever new leads you can keep (via follow-up work) after the show is over and beyond, try to get them. Remember the bold print in the beginning of the last paragraph.
You should reserve some time at such a show for you to be free to wander around and make connections with other potential vendors. Be sure to bring updated résumés with you. Many vendors openly advertise if they need reps. Unless you are sure as to their reputation, be wary of jumping into any relationship right there and then at the trade show. You want to check them out just as they would check you. Tell them you’ll talk after you all get back home.
You may find an opportunity to exhibit a variety of lines by renting a booth yourself at a show, or perhaps sharing a booth with a line that doesn’t mind splitting space with some of your other lines. This may present you with maximum potential in obtaining leads and prospective customers. It may limit your ability to wander the show to find new vendors…so tell your booth mates you will need a break or two each day to check out the rest of the show. Before you take such a break, see if you can study a printed show guide or online directory to scope out vendors whose product lines look interesting.
If you are renting your own booth, take advantage with any advertising or press release potential that you can. Prospective vendors, customers, other potential business relationships may come about because of this. That opportunity may be something you as a rep never even imagined, but the other party reading your press release or ad may think: “This is just the guy we need”, and give you a call with a proposal.
Be sure to bring plenty of business cards, brochures, handouts, whatever you can that can give a short synopsis of what you do. Hand these out to all passers-by and booth visitors…but do so at a price. The price for your handout? Their business card. And be sure their card has their phone, email, all applicable current contact info. You’d hate to get home and find out you can’t do any follow-up with this person.
Make your booth layout inviting, allowing customers to come in and look at the samples you have on display. In other words, tables or other furnishings should not block the front of the booth,. Once a prospect is in your booth, you may find they are easier to talk to; it allows you both to open up. From such beginnings, relationships develop. Remember that bold type in paragraph #3!
At many large trade shows, the industry’s heavy hitters will have enormous booths that may be completely enclosed, with a gatekeeper or guard-type person at the entrance. If you don’t have an appointment here, tough luck. What purpose does all that serve? If they are only at the show to meet with previous engagements, why attend the show? Those booths cost a lot of money—tens of thousands. They could do just as well sending reps, either in-house or independent, out on the road with a bunch of sherpas to lug their new product samples along, and visit those accounts’ home offices.
You may find shows that have a preponderance of such exhibitors may show a lot of foot traffic, but how much of this foot traffic are true potential customers? Are they retailers looking to grow their business? Or are they other industry types who want to do joint ventures or other “inside deals”? Nothing against the latter, but those kinds of relationships may be very limited and they may not include you as a rep.
There are vendors and reps that attend a trade show to write a bunch of orders, then ship them sometime after they get home, then gear up for the next show where the process is repeated. Sometimes those orders take months to ship, and you may find a lot of the samples exhibited at the show were not produced as part of the regular line at all, they were there only to gauge customer interest. If they did not get enough interest, they were not manufactured. This doesn’t sit well with customers that did order those items.
This bait and switch type practice is like a diet of doughnuts. They fill you up, give you a rush…but in the long run end up clogging arteries and killing you.
A trade show doesn’t end at the close of the last day. That moment is a beginning; to go back home and start establishing a steady relationship with as many of the contacts you made as you can. You are adding to your customer base—serve them well after the show and they will look forward to seeing you again the next show. Who knows? They may recommend you to people they know, those people attend the next show, and the process will repeat. This is the kind of repetition process you want, because it will eventually generate business all year long—between shows as well as during shows.
You may attend a trade show that has a number of your vendors exhibiting. If you can offer your help by working their booth/booths for a shift or two, this may allow you to write some business during the show, perhaps find new customers. But anyone who thinks the value of a trade show is just in the business one can write-- there and then at that show-- is missing the point and not maximizing the potential a show can present.
The main purpose of a trade show is to make contacts and establish relationships and reputations. Better industry trade shows make a point of making that happen. Lousy trade shows make that difficult, or a hassle.
Let’s say you’re attending a show and have five lines that are exhibiting. You have booth duty at all five of them. During that time you can write orders…but be sure you are clear as to how much commission you make on show orders. If orders written are for customers in your usual territory, the vendor may give you all the commission. If not, they may split it to cover cost of the booth. If you write orders for customers outside your normal territory, you may have to split commission with the rep that handles that region. Whatever new leads you can keep (via follow-up work) after the show is over and beyond, try to get them. Remember the bold print in the beginning of the last paragraph.
You should reserve some time at such a show for you to be free to wander around and make connections with other potential vendors. Be sure to bring updated résumés with you. Many vendors openly advertise if they need reps. Unless you are sure as to their reputation, be wary of jumping into any relationship right there and then at the trade show. You want to check them out just as they would check you. Tell them you’ll talk after you all get back home.
You may find an opportunity to exhibit a variety of lines by renting a booth yourself at a show, or perhaps sharing a booth with a line that doesn’t mind splitting space with some of your other lines. This may present you with maximum potential in obtaining leads and prospective customers. It may limit your ability to wander the show to find new vendors…so tell your booth mates you will need a break or two each day to check out the rest of the show. Before you take such a break, see if you can study a printed show guide or online directory to scope out vendors whose product lines look interesting.
If you are renting your own booth, take advantage with any advertising or press release potential that you can. Prospective vendors, customers, other potential business relationships may come about because of this. That opportunity may be something you as a rep never even imagined, but the other party reading your press release or ad may think: “This is just the guy we need”, and give you a call with a proposal.
Be sure to bring plenty of business cards, brochures, handouts, whatever you can that can give a short synopsis of what you do. Hand these out to all passers-by and booth visitors…but do so at a price. The price for your handout? Their business card. And be sure their card has their phone, email, all applicable current contact info. You’d hate to get home and find out you can’t do any follow-up with this person.
Make your booth layout inviting, allowing customers to come in and look at the samples you have on display. In other words, tables or other furnishings should not block the front of the booth,. Once a prospect is in your booth, you may find they are easier to talk to; it allows you both to open up. From such beginnings, relationships develop. Remember that bold type in paragraph #3!
At many large trade shows, the industry’s heavy hitters will have enormous booths that may be completely enclosed, with a gatekeeper or guard-type person at the entrance. If you don’t have an appointment here, tough luck. What purpose does all that serve? If they are only at the show to meet with previous engagements, why attend the show? Those booths cost a lot of money—tens of thousands. They could do just as well sending reps, either in-house or independent, out on the road with a bunch of sherpas to lug their new product samples along, and visit those accounts’ home offices.
You may find shows that have a preponderance of such exhibitors may show a lot of foot traffic, but how much of this foot traffic are true potential customers? Are they retailers looking to grow their business? Or are they other industry types who want to do joint ventures or other “inside deals”? Nothing against the latter, but those kinds of relationships may be very limited and they may not include you as a rep.
There are vendors and reps that attend a trade show to write a bunch of orders, then ship them sometime after they get home, then gear up for the next show where the process is repeated. Sometimes those orders take months to ship, and you may find a lot of the samples exhibited at the show were not produced as part of the regular line at all, they were there only to gauge customer interest. If they did not get enough interest, they were not manufactured. This doesn’t sit well with customers that did order those items.
This bait and switch type practice is like a diet of doughnuts. They fill you up, give you a rush…but in the long run end up clogging arteries and killing you.
A trade show doesn’t end at the close of the last day. That moment is a beginning; to go back home and start establishing a steady relationship with as many of the contacts you made as you can. You are adding to your customer base—serve them well after the show and they will look forward to seeing you again the next show. Who knows? They may recommend you to people they know, those people attend the next show, and the process will repeat. This is the kind of repetition process you want, because it will eventually generate business all year long—between shows as well as during shows.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
“Buyer” & “Sales Rep” = Loaded Terms
Time was, a buyer was a person who was an expert at the product he or she purchased for their company, website or store…and the salesman or saleswoman (sales rep) was someone who offered what was available from their company, possibly whittling down the selections to the best fit for the sale, and using persuasive tactics to drive the sale home.
Is that still the case? Not necessarily….
These attributes are still important for buyers and sellers to possess, but in today’s world it goes beyond that. In some cases the roles have reversed a little so that the buyer must also know how to “sell” the rest of his or her company on the way to move the product to their accounts, or consumers on the street. The sales rep has to know how to select the products the buyer is eventually going to cut a purchase order for…in other words, the rep becomes the buyer.
But with more large corporations adapting sophisticated systems that integrate purchasing, warehousing, distributing, re-stocking, and eventual sales on the floor or on a website, the buyer has to be an expert on all that. Therefore, the buyer delegates the “purchasing” part to the sales rep.
The buyer has to be familiar with
· Warehousing—should the items purchased be stocked in a distribution center or are they better candidates to be drop shipped to the point of sale? If warehoused, they should be packaged in a way that makes it cost effective for their order pullers to process.
· Distribution—one distribution center or more?
· Re-stocking—what are the minimums for reorders, and what’s the turn time they can expect in order to avoid empty shelves anywhere in the pipeline.
· How is the product packaged for sale? Does it conform to the buyer’s retail planogram or merchandising layout? If it is an online web-based sale, can the sales rep get his or her vendor to drop ship it directly to the customer who bought the item on the buyer’s company’s website?
Things like UPC codes and EDI (electronic data interchange) could tie all this together. This is where the computer systems from the buyer’s company and the rep’s company “talk” to each other and coordinate purchasing, distribution, re-orders, shipping notification, invoicing and payment.
You might notice how some companies will shift purchasing professionals within their company from one department to another. Some buyer who specializes in young men’s apparel may be transferred over to purchasing stationery and gift items for a few years, and then from there to purchasing shoes. Reason? Training for eventual upper management within the company is a likely explanation. Preventing too much of an “old boy network” may be another, albeit cynical, reason.
The purchasing professional, if they are smart, may take advantage this variety of experience and education and use it if they ever have to find work with another company…or perhaps leaving their job to do be a sales rep him- or herself!
One unfortunate outcome of this “rep becomes buyer” trend is that it is harder to enable a new innovative product to be offered first time to a large account’s buyer. The buyers don’t want to take chances unless the sale can be guaranteed somehow…and even that presents logistical challenges if the rep suggests the account send all the unsold items back to the vendor. Try coordinating that with multitudes of store personnel!
However, more progressive buyers (and companies they work for) may suggest a certain innovation to a company that can carry it off. But, these companies are few and far between on both sides of the equation.
Smaller independent accounts may be the ones willing to take risks on untried products…but don’t be surprised if they start adapting a more cautious stance like their bigger counterparts going into the future.
So if you, as a sales rep, think that the buyer will easily sort through information and pick winning items like a pro, think again. That could very well be your job. If you have enough smaller accounts, or even other big ones, that have given you a good picture of what items sell for your line, that is important knowledge that the buyer may not have. He or she, as a buyer, wants you to be the buyer so he or she can do all the other stuff they are expected to do.
Is that still the case? Not necessarily….
These attributes are still important for buyers and sellers to possess, but in today’s world it goes beyond that. In some cases the roles have reversed a little so that the buyer must also know how to “sell” the rest of his or her company on the way to move the product to their accounts, or consumers on the street. The sales rep has to know how to select the products the buyer is eventually going to cut a purchase order for…in other words, the rep becomes the buyer.
But with more large corporations adapting sophisticated systems that integrate purchasing, warehousing, distributing, re-stocking, and eventual sales on the floor or on a website, the buyer has to be an expert on all that. Therefore, the buyer delegates the “purchasing” part to the sales rep.
The buyer has to be familiar with
· Warehousing—should the items purchased be stocked in a distribution center or are they better candidates to be drop shipped to the point of sale? If warehoused, they should be packaged in a way that makes it cost effective for their order pullers to process.
· Distribution—one distribution center or more?
· Re-stocking—what are the minimums for reorders, and what’s the turn time they can expect in order to avoid empty shelves anywhere in the pipeline.
· How is the product packaged for sale? Does it conform to the buyer’s retail planogram or merchandising layout? If it is an online web-based sale, can the sales rep get his or her vendor to drop ship it directly to the customer who bought the item on the buyer’s company’s website?
Things like UPC codes and EDI (electronic data interchange) could tie all this together. This is where the computer systems from the buyer’s company and the rep’s company “talk” to each other and coordinate purchasing, distribution, re-orders, shipping notification, invoicing and payment.
You might notice how some companies will shift purchasing professionals within their company from one department to another. Some buyer who specializes in young men’s apparel may be transferred over to purchasing stationery and gift items for a few years, and then from there to purchasing shoes. Reason? Training for eventual upper management within the company is a likely explanation. Preventing too much of an “old boy network” may be another, albeit cynical, reason.
The purchasing professional, if they are smart, may take advantage this variety of experience and education and use it if they ever have to find work with another company…or perhaps leaving their job to do be a sales rep him- or herself!
One unfortunate outcome of this “rep becomes buyer” trend is that it is harder to enable a new innovative product to be offered first time to a large account’s buyer. The buyers don’t want to take chances unless the sale can be guaranteed somehow…and even that presents logistical challenges if the rep suggests the account send all the unsold items back to the vendor. Try coordinating that with multitudes of store personnel!
However, more progressive buyers (and companies they work for) may suggest a certain innovation to a company that can carry it off. But, these companies are few and far between on both sides of the equation.
Smaller independent accounts may be the ones willing to take risks on untried products…but don’t be surprised if they start adapting a more cautious stance like their bigger counterparts going into the future.
So if you, as a sales rep, think that the buyer will easily sort through information and pick winning items like a pro, think again. That could very well be your job. If you have enough smaller accounts, or even other big ones, that have given you a good picture of what items sell for your line, that is important knowledge that the buyer may not have. He or she, as a buyer, wants you to be the buyer so he or she can do all the other stuff they are expected to do.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Looking For New Markets To Sell? Go Shopping!
Economies change and a rep might find entire customer bases disappearing. The last 20 years have seen more changes in retail, buying traditions and markets than anything that had been seen in the previous 100 years.
Home computing and the internet is the reason, of course—consumers able to buy stuff at home via their desktop…but also because technology so radically changed the way things are consumed. Listening to music and taking snapshots are two examples where retailers set up to handle those activities—CD/Record stores and Film Processing centers, are no longer needed.
It’s important for a rep to constantly be adding lines, making relationships with new vendors. Even if the product a new vendor carries is not especially attractive to the rep right now, it may very well be in a year or so. This will enable the rep to morph into similar industries to those that he or she has now, but that are a bit more stable and will last longer than the markets threatened by change.
Make a point of shopping around…look at other retailers and think how they may use products you sell. Look online too—can that website add to their product offerings with any of your lines?
Shop beyond your immediate industry, or learn from other industries you sell to, to prepare yourself for the pitfalls you may encounter with that new category of wholesale customer you may be trying to win over. An example of this follows…
The licensed products industry, particularly in music related licenses, has lost a tremendous amount of account base in the last decade due to the decline in sales of CDs and other forms of recorded music. Listeners download or rely upon Amazon.com for their needs. So, where to turn?
Musical Instrument retail seems to be a good choice. The community constantly cries out they are in need of better margins, which licensed apparel, printed goods, accessories, collectibles provide. The problem is this: most of these retailers are not well-schooled in boutique-type merchandising techniques. So the challenge to the rep is not just to sell them some line or a few lines, that will sit there wasting away among a mass of guitars, amps, keyboards, cables and effects boxes…the challenge is to educate them as well on techniques in setting up a boutique area in their stores.
There is no better way to do this than the rep to share success stories with these musical instrument retailers. Look at some of your other retail accounts—the good ones. What do they do right? What have they tried that turned out to be wrong? What fixtures were most effective? What kind of employee are they looking for who can take care of that department? How labor intensive is it, and what are some ways to make it as little labor intensive as possible?
Luckily most of us in the licensing industry will come across a product sporting a tried and true brand or logo, and in my own case, this would be Harley Davidson. This is the perfect role model for musical instrument stores to follow; indeed I had one particular musical instrument retailer even tell me as much.
Thirty or forty years ago, the typical Harley Dealer sold motorcycles, did repairs, had a shop with some custom parts like exhaust pipes, gas caps, mirrors. Their motorclothes offerings may have just been a few leather jackets. In other words, the customer base was limited to riders and owners of Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Now, look at the typical HD Dealer today. The motorclothes department is a huge boutique that appeals to many beyond that biker customer base. It’s also, by the way, where the dealership makes the best margins of any product sold under its roof. There are apparel items and gifts for men, women and kids who may never ride a Harley their entire lives. What started out as leather jackets, then tee shirts, developed into an entire new variety of industries just to supply these motorclothes departments.
Many musical instrument retail stores today resemble the Harley dealer from 1970…there is little product in the store that will appeal to anyone beyond the musician. And the product that is there is low-margin by their own admission! The rep should share with the musical instrument dealer the things that a good Harley dealership does.
This musical instrument retailer is losing, and will continue to lose, customers in several ways if they continue just doing what they always have done by only courting musicians. Even if "musicians" is a category that grows among the population, that does not ensure this retailer's sales will grow along with it, and besides, he's leaving it to chance if or if not that category grows.
First of all, the starter musician—that 12 year old kid buying his first guitar—is likely to buy at Wal-Mart or Best Buy now. His mom is going to do the shopping and odds are she'll go the least expensive route. Or mom may buy it online, but point is, there are a lot more places to buy than there was years ago.
Another customer the dealer is losing or seeing less of is the collector. Time was that local musical instrument retailer could take in used guitars for trade and resale, and his local store was the place to look for vintage instruments. Ebay has outperformed that task. Not only that, but there may be other retailers thousands of miles away with kickass websites that compete for the same customer.
So to re-grow his customer base it makes sense for the musical instrument dealer to boutique his store with apparel, gifts, accessories and so on…to become a music related overall destination instead of just an instrument store for musicians. That girl who comes in with her rocker boyfriend and sits on a speaker cabinet filing her nails while her weekend warrior tests some new axe should be made into a customer. Offer her some cute shirts, jewelry items, whatever, but quit being a lounge for her!
Who knows? The new boutique customer just may decide to take up an instrument due to their experience in the store boutique…but they may never have visited the store to begin with had the new boutique area not been there. Or they may've come away with a negative impression like "Oh yeah the place I file my nails while Johnny Rockstar ignores me".
So get out and shop, and encourage your customers and prospects to do same. You’ll learn a lot as an independent sales rep…and you’ll be able to teach others. Ask anyone who their favorite teachers were and you’re likely to get a long list….ask anyone who their favorite salesman was and it will be a short list….
Home computing and the internet is the reason, of course—consumers able to buy stuff at home via their desktop…but also because technology so radically changed the way things are consumed. Listening to music and taking snapshots are two examples where retailers set up to handle those activities—CD/Record stores and Film Processing centers, are no longer needed.
It’s important for a rep to constantly be adding lines, making relationships with new vendors. Even if the product a new vendor carries is not especially attractive to the rep right now, it may very well be in a year or so. This will enable the rep to morph into similar industries to those that he or she has now, but that are a bit more stable and will last longer than the markets threatened by change.
Make a point of shopping around…look at other retailers and think how they may use products you sell. Look online too—can that website add to their product offerings with any of your lines?
Shop beyond your immediate industry, or learn from other industries you sell to, to prepare yourself for the pitfalls you may encounter with that new category of wholesale customer you may be trying to win over. An example of this follows…
The licensed products industry, particularly in music related licenses, has lost a tremendous amount of account base in the last decade due to the decline in sales of CDs and other forms of recorded music. Listeners download or rely upon Amazon.com for their needs. So, where to turn?
Musical Instrument retail seems to be a good choice. The community constantly cries out they are in need of better margins, which licensed apparel, printed goods, accessories, collectibles provide. The problem is this: most of these retailers are not well-schooled in boutique-type merchandising techniques. So the challenge to the rep is not just to sell them some line or a few lines, that will sit there wasting away among a mass of guitars, amps, keyboards, cables and effects boxes…the challenge is to educate them as well on techniques in setting up a boutique area in their stores.
There is no better way to do this than the rep to share success stories with these musical instrument retailers. Look at some of your other retail accounts—the good ones. What do they do right? What have they tried that turned out to be wrong? What fixtures were most effective? What kind of employee are they looking for who can take care of that department? How labor intensive is it, and what are some ways to make it as little labor intensive as possible?
Luckily most of us in the licensing industry will come across a product sporting a tried and true brand or logo, and in my own case, this would be Harley Davidson. This is the perfect role model for musical instrument stores to follow; indeed I had one particular musical instrument retailer even tell me as much.
Thirty or forty years ago, the typical Harley Dealer sold motorcycles, did repairs, had a shop with some custom parts like exhaust pipes, gas caps, mirrors. Their motorclothes offerings may have just been a few leather jackets. In other words, the customer base was limited to riders and owners of Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Now, look at the typical HD Dealer today. The motorclothes department is a huge boutique that appeals to many beyond that biker customer base. It’s also, by the way, where the dealership makes the best margins of any product sold under its roof. There are apparel items and gifts for men, women and kids who may never ride a Harley their entire lives. What started out as leather jackets, then tee shirts, developed into an entire new variety of industries just to supply these motorclothes departments.
Many musical instrument retail stores today resemble the Harley dealer from 1970…there is little product in the store that will appeal to anyone beyond the musician. And the product that is there is low-margin by their own admission! The rep should share with the musical instrument dealer the things that a good Harley dealership does.
This musical instrument retailer is losing, and will continue to lose, customers in several ways if they continue just doing what they always have done by only courting musicians. Even if "musicians" is a category that grows among the population, that does not ensure this retailer's sales will grow along with it, and besides, he's leaving it to chance if or if not that category grows.
First of all, the starter musician—that 12 year old kid buying his first guitar—is likely to buy at Wal-Mart or Best Buy now. His mom is going to do the shopping and odds are she'll go the least expensive route. Or mom may buy it online, but point is, there are a lot more places to buy than there was years ago.
Another customer the dealer is losing or seeing less of is the collector. Time was that local musical instrument retailer could take in used guitars for trade and resale, and his local store was the place to look for vintage instruments. Ebay has outperformed that task. Not only that, but there may be other retailers thousands of miles away with kickass websites that compete for the same customer.
So to re-grow his customer base it makes sense for the musical instrument dealer to boutique his store with apparel, gifts, accessories and so on…to become a music related overall destination instead of just an instrument store for musicians. That girl who comes in with her rocker boyfriend and sits on a speaker cabinet filing her nails while her weekend warrior tests some new axe should be made into a customer. Offer her some cute shirts, jewelry items, whatever, but quit being a lounge for her!
Who knows? The new boutique customer just may decide to take up an instrument due to their experience in the store boutique…but they may never have visited the store to begin with had the new boutique area not been there. Or they may've come away with a negative impression like "Oh yeah the place I file my nails while Johnny Rockstar ignores me".
So get out and shop, and encourage your customers and prospects to do same. You’ll learn a lot as an independent sales rep…and you’ll be able to teach others. Ask anyone who their favorite teachers were and you’re likely to get a long list….ask anyone who their favorite salesman was and it will be a short list….
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Innovating During A Tough Economy
What can a company or independent sales rep do during a tough economy to help build customer loyalty, or to stand apart from the pack to help bring in more new business via reputation or other word-of-mouth means?
When manufacturing new products can be too dicey in uncertain times, what else is there to do?
Well, it may surprise many, but what some company sells or what some rep may offer may not be as important to an account as how. This is where service comes into play.
We’re fortunate to live in an age when technology has made certain aspects of service easier to handle and to introduce innovations.
Many companies may still use the USPS mindset when it comes to invoicing their shipments. The typical scenario that’s worked for years is this:
· Purchase order comes into the company, they enter and pull/pick the order
· An invoice is generated which shows what’s on the order, how much each item costs, and what the total is including freight costs and any other fees or credits. This will be the bill of sale, so to speak. It gets mailed to the account’s bookkeeping department, where the accounts payable crew sets it up for payment.
· A non-priced version of the invoice is thrown into the box with the goods to use as a packing slip.
Notice your mailbox lately? Read about how much in the red the USPS continues to be? USPS solutions are passe. Several companies of mine have started using a more innovative, Fed-Ex or UPS inspired approach:
· Purchase order comes in as above, and invoice is generated as above, however,
· Invoice gets emailed to the account, along with tracking information, as the product leaves the dock
· If the customer still wants one, a copy of invoice is mailed as before.
· Packing slip is included, but chances are the account will find the previously emailed invoice of more use since all the pricing info can be derived from that document.
Now, which method would you prefer? If you said the first, you are worse off than the professor that gave the future founder of Fed Ex a failing grade when he presented the Fed Ex business model as a term paper in a business course. That professor was at least a product of his times--the '70s. Obviously the second choice is more forward-thinking.
And the neat thing is: this is a small investment that will reap big dividends in customer loyalty. Assuming you’d prefer the second of the two methods above, we’d have to assume everyone else (customers included) would as well! So this is innovation that is less chancy than introducing, or even testing, a new product line.
A business should always look for ways to innovate. Wasn’t it Peter Drucker that said, “Marketing and Innovation are the lifeblood of any company? Everything else is an expense?” And Lee Iacocca helped turn Chrysler around in the ‘80s with the idea that “If you’re not #1 in your business, you have to innovate”. One would add: If you are #1 and you want to stay there, you must keep innovating.
This is just one inexpensive way a company can innovate. How about others? How about those means a rep can also use to innovate?
· Conference calls are becoming far more popular than in years past and there are companies out there like freeconference.com that offer free or very reasonably- priced solutions to this activity.
· Web conferences are another solution offered by technology. Gotomeeting.com or GoToWebinar.com allow far flung parties to view presentations on the host’s computer—without traveling, spending money renting a facility, saving time and expense, but serving customer’s needs in the way these methods can inform.
· Here’s one that sounds contradictory as it means an out-of-pocket solution for a rep, but could save time and keep a customer happy over the long run. If there is any sort of shortage/damage/credit issue that does not get resolved for some reason between a customer and an account, the rep simply writes a personal check and sends it to the account. Incidents like this may not involve too much, and they should not for the rep’s sake! But you know the situation: two or three widgets were left out of the order or arrived broken for the fourth time in the past year. These incidents are an annoyance that gum up the works at the account’s warehouse or store. Rep asks who to send a check to in order to even out the bill…and if the account gives him/her a contact name, the rep does so. This is good PR, it solves the problem, and the rep can go back to the repeat offending vendor and tell them to send any sort of credit to the rep himself instead of the company. Believe me, incidents like this rarely happen again because of the lesson learned: justice delayed is justice denied.
When times get better these types of service issues will stand out and cement loyalty. That will mean more consistent business when it counts!
When manufacturing new products can be too dicey in uncertain times, what else is there to do?
Well, it may surprise many, but what some company sells or what some rep may offer may not be as important to an account as how. This is where service comes into play.
We’re fortunate to live in an age when technology has made certain aspects of service easier to handle and to introduce innovations.
Many companies may still use the USPS mindset when it comes to invoicing their shipments. The typical scenario that’s worked for years is this:
· Purchase order comes into the company, they enter and pull/pick the order
· An invoice is generated which shows what’s on the order, how much each item costs, and what the total is including freight costs and any other fees or credits. This will be the bill of sale, so to speak. It gets mailed to the account’s bookkeeping department, where the accounts payable crew sets it up for payment.
· A non-priced version of the invoice is thrown into the box with the goods to use as a packing slip.
Notice your mailbox lately? Read about how much in the red the USPS continues to be? USPS solutions are passe. Several companies of mine have started using a more innovative, Fed-Ex or UPS inspired approach:
· Purchase order comes in as above, and invoice is generated as above, however,
· Invoice gets emailed to the account, along with tracking information, as the product leaves the dock
· If the customer still wants one, a copy of invoice is mailed as before.
· Packing slip is included, but chances are the account will find the previously emailed invoice of more use since all the pricing info can be derived from that document.
Now, which method would you prefer? If you said the first, you are worse off than the professor that gave the future founder of Fed Ex a failing grade when he presented the Fed Ex business model as a term paper in a business course. That professor was at least a product of his times--the '70s. Obviously the second choice is more forward-thinking.
And the neat thing is: this is a small investment that will reap big dividends in customer loyalty. Assuming you’d prefer the second of the two methods above, we’d have to assume everyone else (customers included) would as well! So this is innovation that is less chancy than introducing, or even testing, a new product line.
A business should always look for ways to innovate. Wasn’t it Peter Drucker that said, “Marketing and Innovation are the lifeblood of any company? Everything else is an expense?” And Lee Iacocca helped turn Chrysler around in the ‘80s with the idea that “If you’re not #1 in your business, you have to innovate”. One would add: If you are #1 and you want to stay there, you must keep innovating.
This is just one inexpensive way a company can innovate. How about others? How about those means a rep can also use to innovate?
· Conference calls are becoming far more popular than in years past and there are companies out there like freeconference.com that offer free or very reasonably- priced solutions to this activity.
· Web conferences are another solution offered by technology. Gotomeeting.com or GoToWebinar.com allow far flung parties to view presentations on the host’s computer—without traveling, spending money renting a facility, saving time and expense, but serving customer’s needs in the way these methods can inform.
· Here’s one that sounds contradictory as it means an out-of-pocket solution for a rep, but could save time and keep a customer happy over the long run. If there is any sort of shortage/damage/credit issue that does not get resolved for some reason between a customer and an account, the rep simply writes a personal check and sends it to the account. Incidents like this may not involve too much, and they should not for the rep’s sake! But you know the situation: two or three widgets were left out of the order or arrived broken for the fourth time in the past year. These incidents are an annoyance that gum up the works at the account’s warehouse or store. Rep asks who to send a check to in order to even out the bill…and if the account gives him/her a contact name, the rep does so. This is good PR, it solves the problem, and the rep can go back to the repeat offending vendor and tell them to send any sort of credit to the rep himself instead of the company. Believe me, incidents like this rarely happen again because of the lesson learned: justice delayed is justice denied.
When times get better these types of service issues will stand out and cement loyalty. That will mean more consistent business when it counts!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Your Leads--Where (And How) To Find Customers
One criticism of my book says it should have covered more on how and where to find customers. Good point. Let’s explore that a bit more here.
The book may be slightly biased toward a supplier-to-retailer point of view, but finding and acting upon leads (discussed in Chapter 7 under the subheading “Leads”) should be similar in any business. Whether you are repping from a raw materials source to a manufacturer, from manufacturer to distributor, or distributor to retailer, or even in a direct to consumer situation, finding new customers is something that should almost be second nature.
Whatever industry you choose to be a rep in, you should be familiar and experienced in that industry to begin with mainly so you will be credible to your customers and targeted accounts. Increasingly, the way to scope out new leads in whatever field you are in is: online—the web, internet, whatever you want to call it. It used to be Yellow Pages or industry guides. Even if you can still utilize these kinds of print materials, you can easily find out what they are and where to obtain them online. (Note: one of the books appearing on Amazon alongside mine is The National Register of Independent Reps, a long-popular guide for the apparel industry).
I mention leads lists in the book; from my experience these can be OK at best and a thorough rip-off at worst. Twenty years ago it was not unusual to buy such industry-specific lists from a company that had developed some program that basically searched out leads from the worldwide web, phone directories (that were uploaded to a data base), and other similar sources. Why bother buying such a list now, when with a bit of detective work on your own computer, you may have access to the same list for free?
Travel can yield new leads—just getting in another town and looking around, or chatting up locals can help you discover possible candidates for you to sell to. Zoning laws usually lump similar businesses in the same areas, or types of areas--ever notice that? This is particularly useful if some new business has popped up since you last visited that area. But again, you can also find such info online via Yellow Pages or new phone listings under that specific classification.
If you are selling to non-retail, in other words to manufacturers or distributors, your target listing will not be quite as large as if you are focusing in on the retailers of your industry. The commissions might be just as good, if not better, since the order size may be typically bigger. In Pharmaceuticals, for example, you might sell for several companies dealing in raw materials used to make drugs, and you sell to about two dozen drug manufacturers. This is the same industry where you might take a different route and sell for a few drug manufacturers to more than 100 doctors and a handful of pharmacies.
In either situation, finding your possible customers should be something you already know how to do. There must be publications in the medical industry that are chock full of ads that can give you a clue. Word of mouth from several doctors or pharmacies might help. Trade shows and other events within the industry will be a source. These last two are still important if you sell direct to consumer; think of “Avon Calling”, Tupperware parties, the dreaded insurance salesman who asks for referrals, or Amway distributors and other multi-level marketers.
Whatever situations you encounter, always study your industry and its players online using multiple search methods and phrases. "Pharmacies-N.Carolina" or "Doctors, OBGyn, N.Carolina", "Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, SE USA" will give you results in many forms.
You may find your business drifting back and forth into a certain sub-culture of your industry. In my case, this recently involved motorcycle-related apparel. Much of the licensed apparel industry I’ve dealt with has been in music and entertainment licenses. A few years ago several of the “Choppers”-related TV licenses yielded huge sales in various products—apparel was just one of them. As that fad died down, I kept a bit of contact with the motorcycle dealers I had sold until the next possible opportunity came along.
It did when one of my lines was awarded a Harley-Davidson® license. So in this case, I did not have to go looking for many new leads. In most cases, I was merely dusting off and refreshing a sales rep/buyer relationship. Morale here: keep those Rolodex cards because you never know when you’ll use them again. As for other motorcycle accounts I was not familiar with from a few years before, well, it’s pretty easy to hunt down a website to get a list of official Harley-Davidson dealers in whatever region you want to explore.
It’s important to realize that growing your business via new customers is just one way to do it. Other methods involve selling more products to existing customers (you being an independent rep should be able to handle multiple lines) and getting customers to come back more often to order from you (sales, incentives, promotions, seasonal opportunities, etc.). It’s also important that once you have found a new set of leads, you convert them, in other words, get them to place that first order!!! Not all leads will buy from you the first time you contact them. Keep after them, listen to them, and alter your sales pitch accordingly.
“A good rep sells solutions” is as true as it ever was, and this gives a clue to another way to see your business increase. Look for flaws in your accounts, listen to their frustrations. From there, see how you and your products, or better ways to merchandise and display your products, can help. As much as 33% of my present six-figure income is attributed to such “solution-selling”.
These other subjects will be covered in the future…for now, though, try to schedule yourself to find new sources of leads at least once monthly using any of the methods discussed above.
The book may be slightly biased toward a supplier-to-retailer point of view, but finding and acting upon leads (discussed in Chapter 7 under the subheading “Leads”) should be similar in any business. Whether you are repping from a raw materials source to a manufacturer, from manufacturer to distributor, or distributor to retailer, or even in a direct to consumer situation, finding new customers is something that should almost be second nature.
Whatever industry you choose to be a rep in, you should be familiar and experienced in that industry to begin with mainly so you will be credible to your customers and targeted accounts. Increasingly, the way to scope out new leads in whatever field you are in is: online—the web, internet, whatever you want to call it. It used to be Yellow Pages or industry guides. Even if you can still utilize these kinds of print materials, you can easily find out what they are and where to obtain them online. (Note: one of the books appearing on Amazon alongside mine is The National Register of Independent Reps, a long-popular guide for the apparel industry).
I mention leads lists in the book; from my experience these can be OK at best and a thorough rip-off at worst. Twenty years ago it was not unusual to buy such industry-specific lists from a company that had developed some program that basically searched out leads from the worldwide web, phone directories (that were uploaded to a data base), and other similar sources. Why bother buying such a list now, when with a bit of detective work on your own computer, you may have access to the same list for free?
Travel can yield new leads—just getting in another town and looking around, or chatting up locals can help you discover possible candidates for you to sell to. Zoning laws usually lump similar businesses in the same areas, or types of areas--ever notice that? This is particularly useful if some new business has popped up since you last visited that area. But again, you can also find such info online via Yellow Pages or new phone listings under that specific classification.
If you are selling to non-retail, in other words to manufacturers or distributors, your target listing will not be quite as large as if you are focusing in on the retailers of your industry. The commissions might be just as good, if not better, since the order size may be typically bigger. In Pharmaceuticals, for example, you might sell for several companies dealing in raw materials used to make drugs, and you sell to about two dozen drug manufacturers. This is the same industry where you might take a different route and sell for a few drug manufacturers to more than 100 doctors and a handful of pharmacies.
In either situation, finding your possible customers should be something you already know how to do. There must be publications in the medical industry that are chock full of ads that can give you a clue. Word of mouth from several doctors or pharmacies might help. Trade shows and other events within the industry will be a source. These last two are still important if you sell direct to consumer; think of “Avon Calling”, Tupperware parties, the dreaded insurance salesman who asks for referrals, or Amway distributors and other multi-level marketers.
Whatever situations you encounter, always study your industry and its players online using multiple search methods and phrases. "Pharmacies-N.Carolina" or "Doctors, OBGyn, N.Carolina", "Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, SE USA" will give you results in many forms.
You may find your business drifting back and forth into a certain sub-culture of your industry. In my case, this recently involved motorcycle-related apparel. Much of the licensed apparel industry I’ve dealt with has been in music and entertainment licenses. A few years ago several of the “Choppers”-related TV licenses yielded huge sales in various products—apparel was just one of them. As that fad died down, I kept a bit of contact with the motorcycle dealers I had sold until the next possible opportunity came along.
It did when one of my lines was awarded a Harley-Davidson® license. So in this case, I did not have to go looking for many new leads. In most cases, I was merely dusting off and refreshing a sales rep/buyer relationship. Morale here: keep those Rolodex cards because you never know when you’ll use them again. As for other motorcycle accounts I was not familiar with from a few years before, well, it’s pretty easy to hunt down a website to get a list of official Harley-Davidson dealers in whatever region you want to explore.
It’s important to realize that growing your business via new customers is just one way to do it. Other methods involve selling more products to existing customers (you being an independent rep should be able to handle multiple lines) and getting customers to come back more often to order from you (sales, incentives, promotions, seasonal opportunities, etc.). It’s also important that once you have found a new set of leads, you convert them, in other words, get them to place that first order!!! Not all leads will buy from you the first time you contact them. Keep after them, listen to them, and alter your sales pitch accordingly.
“A good rep sells solutions” is as true as it ever was, and this gives a clue to another way to see your business increase. Look for flaws in your accounts, listen to their frustrations. From there, see how you and your products, or better ways to merchandise and display your products, can help. As much as 33% of my present six-figure income is attributed to such “solution-selling”.
These other subjects will be covered in the future…for now, though, try to schedule yourself to find new sources of leads at least once monthly using any of the methods discussed above.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
What Time--Have We Forgotten How To Figure This Out?
This will not be a treatise on “time management”; even though there are many folks out there that need time management skills, and there are plenty of books and articles already on that subject. Rather, this article will be about the fundamental basics on how to tell time. Does it seem like nobody knows how to do that anymore?
It goes way beyond hassling your kids to wake up, be ready, arrange to be dropped off or picked up—at a certain specific hour, anymore. It happens in business a lot too, and it may be one of the reasons why it seems like it’s hard to get things done these days.
Here’s a typical exchange:
“Hello, this is Mr. Smith, and I’m returning Mr. Jones’ call, is he in?”
The receptionist, if a company has one (as opposed to a phone tree from Hell, but that’s another story), says
“No I’m sorry he’s not. May I ask what this is regarding?”
“Gee, I don’t know, he called me.”
“Well would you like to leave a message?”
(What does one say to this?!?!?!)
“Um, no thanks…tell you what…do you know about when he will be back?”
(Here it comes!):
“Oh, I imagine it will be later”.
“What time (emphasis added) later?”
“Probably this afternoon”.
Afternoon, as defined by just about any dictionary, covers at least a six-hour period from 12.00 noon up to closing time, so this answer is insufficient. Most of us will start to feel like we’re getting the brush-off at this point, but remember: Jones called Smith in the first place! And since hardly anyone is courteous enough to return calls anymore, why should the courteous Mr. Smith get this kind of aggravation?
Smith will continue:
“OK, what is a good time to call him back this afternoon?”
Receptionist says “How about after lunch?”
Oh, does everyone eat lunch at the same time, regardless of time zone?
“What time is that?”
Smith asked this question a few minutes ago, you’ll recall, and has now asked it three times.
Finally, the receptionist says:
“From 1.00 to 2.00 pm”.
Well, at least that gives Smith a 60-minute window of opportunity. He should now ask,
“What is a good time during that hour when you think he’ll be catching up on his calls?”
…But chances are good this will lead to more frustration.
Whether communicating or setting meetings, appointments, whatever… the ability for anyone to tell anyone else what the big hand and little hand should look like when they want to get something done—well, it seems to be a lost skill. And digital clocks should have made it easier, but they didn’t.
Is Technology the culprit to blame here? After all, cell phones have time on them now, and it’s automatically 100% correct time, no matter the time zone you’re in! It gets set and changes for you automatically—how cool is that? Your PC has the time, complete and accurate, all the time, down in the corner. These devices also have functions that notify you when an important time is coming up, or you can use the good old fashioned appointment diary found in any stationary or office supply store. So…What’s the problem?
We don’t need as many watches or clocks all over the place like we used to, our devices have kind of solved that problem. But we still need to know: WHAT TIME?
I would be real curious to see results of any study that investigated how much wasted communication and wasted time results with needless back and forth phone banter, emails, whatever-form-of-dialog by someone’s inability to simply name a specific time on the clock. Communication of this nature should involve only a few lines of dialog, or two e-mails—one to and one from. Why then, does it seem like it takes ten times that amount to answer the question “What time?”
The clock still has either a face with 1 through 12 going around it, or it is a digital clock reading out the current time in easy-to-read numerals. Has anyone invented a clock (that was not a joke) that reads “After Lunch”, “Later”, “This afternoon” or “Sometime tomorrow”? No, they haven’t. Clocks are pretty much standard all over the world.
Save everyone you do business with some time. Be aware how to schedule time, tell time as well as use time.
It goes way beyond hassling your kids to wake up, be ready, arrange to be dropped off or picked up—at a certain specific hour, anymore. It happens in business a lot too, and it may be one of the reasons why it seems like it’s hard to get things done these days.
Here’s a typical exchange:
“Hello, this is Mr. Smith, and I’m returning Mr. Jones’ call, is he in?”
The receptionist, if a company has one (as opposed to a phone tree from Hell, but that’s another story), says
“No I’m sorry he’s not. May I ask what this is regarding?”
“Gee, I don’t know, he called me.”
“Well would you like to leave a message?”
(What does one say to this?!?!?!)
“Um, no thanks…tell you what…do you know about when he will be back?”
(Here it comes!):
“Oh, I imagine it will be later”.
“What time (emphasis added) later?”
“Probably this afternoon”.
Afternoon, as defined by just about any dictionary, covers at least a six-hour period from 12.00 noon up to closing time, so this answer is insufficient. Most of us will start to feel like we’re getting the brush-off at this point, but remember: Jones called Smith in the first place! And since hardly anyone is courteous enough to return calls anymore, why should the courteous Mr. Smith get this kind of aggravation?
Smith will continue:
“OK, what is a good time to call him back this afternoon?”
Receptionist says “How about after lunch?”
Oh, does everyone eat lunch at the same time, regardless of time zone?
“What time is that?”
Smith asked this question a few minutes ago, you’ll recall, and has now asked it three times.
Finally, the receptionist says:
“From 1.00 to 2.00 pm”.
Well, at least that gives Smith a 60-minute window of opportunity. He should now ask,
“What is a good time during that hour when you think he’ll be catching up on his calls?”
…But chances are good this will lead to more frustration.
Whether communicating or setting meetings, appointments, whatever… the ability for anyone to tell anyone else what the big hand and little hand should look like when they want to get something done—well, it seems to be a lost skill. And digital clocks should have made it easier, but they didn’t.
Is Technology the culprit to blame here? After all, cell phones have time on them now, and it’s automatically 100% correct time, no matter the time zone you’re in! It gets set and changes for you automatically—how cool is that? Your PC has the time, complete and accurate, all the time, down in the corner. These devices also have functions that notify you when an important time is coming up, or you can use the good old fashioned appointment diary found in any stationary or office supply store. So…What’s the problem?
We don’t need as many watches or clocks all over the place like we used to, our devices have kind of solved that problem. But we still need to know: WHAT TIME?
I would be real curious to see results of any study that investigated how much wasted communication and wasted time results with needless back and forth phone banter, emails, whatever-form-of-dialog by someone’s inability to simply name a specific time on the clock. Communication of this nature should involve only a few lines of dialog, or two e-mails—one to and one from. Why then, does it seem like it takes ten times that amount to answer the question “What time?”
The clock still has either a face with 1 through 12 going around it, or it is a digital clock reading out the current time in easy-to-read numerals. Has anyone invented a clock (that was not a joke) that reads “After Lunch”, “Later”, “This afternoon” or “Sometime tomorrow”? No, they haven’t. Clocks are pretty much standard all over the world.
Save everyone you do business with some time. Be aware how to schedule time, tell time as well as use time.
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