Albino Kangaroo: You learn something everyday – The Art of Selling

Indaba: Day 3 – Dear diary, it feels like life before Indaba never existed. I miss the real world where people on the street DO NOT come up and talk to you constantly, the only food stand within miles DOEs NOT close for lunch, and I AM NOT shoulder to shoulder with 10,000 of my new best friends.

Seriously though, it is a unique opportunity for any company to have 1,000’s of potential customers all effectively manacled to 6 square meters of stand for 4 whole days. You don’t get pawned off to a PA or have to worry about people not returning phone calls.

So now, what do you say to all these people?

Well, from upbringing and professional training as a derivatives trader, my approach in general has been the hard honest sell. Yes, a good product sells itself, and yes, you have to adjust your style to reflect who your potential client is, but in general that has been my ‘style’.

My ‘hard’ honest sell is quite straightforward. Get a product you really believe in, make it innovative, useful, practical, efficient, and obviously profitable, not only to you but to your target market. And then relay that to the client in an effective manner. Identify the client’s needs, and deliver the best product or service at the lowest price.

There are all sorts of spins, nuances, value-adds, bundling, and so on that you can work with. It allows for flexibility and customization to the clients needs, especially if the range is ‘modular’ and can be reconfigured easily.

Today, however, I was SOLD! As a supposedly hardened businessman who has seen the angles and knows the tricks (yeah right), at the end of the session, I had to stop myself from demanding that I be given the service this instant or my world would implode into spontaneous bankruptcy!

Basically, I went to a seminar dealing with online reputation and new online tools. It was given by Rob Stokes, the MD of Quirk, who also handles all our online strategy. It was a great break to the normal routine and the format/information was excellent. At some stages, I even felt my homesickness evaporate as the slides were whizzing past me like the bullets in Joberg ;) If you have any interest in the actual content of the seminar, and you should, go check out Quirk. I only know enough to be dangerous at this early stageJ

Right, now that the commercial’s over (Quirk, please convert my brownie points into links J ) here is what I learnt, but more importantly, how I learnt it:

I was brought into a magical mystical world of ‘mention tracking’ fairies having wonderful picnics with companies who had found the hidden path, giving them the tastiest morsels of cake. On the other side of the enchanted valley, AI lords and ladies were busy receiving all sorts of ‘A-Lerts’ telling them when the people were happy and when the people were sad, allowing them to be one with the people and keep the Kingdom a happy and prosperous place

And I was very subtly told on numerous occasions that, not only was I not even close to getting close to the Kingdom, I did not even know where to apply for a tourist visa.

And just as I was coming to the brink of despair at how provincial and backward I was, I was told that a guide was there standing not 3 meters away from me.

You can imagine the relief! Looking back at this almost emotional experience, I was intrigued, as he had sold me, but had rarely actually directly sold his product. The way things worked was like this:

I was presented with a scenario and a lot of back-up data and information regarding that scenario. It was a very convincing scenario. It was explained to me that this scenario already exists in certain parts of the world, that there are currently people interacting with it, and that they are gaining HUGE benefits that I, not being part of that scenario, was not receiving. Hence, I was at a distinct competitive disadvantage, and no one likes to be in that position.

Now the basics and facts were easily understood and it was disconcerting, because how to actually become a part of that scenario was not immediately made obvious. Then when the potential client starts panicking (i.e. ME), you tell him not to worry, because you have identified the problem, but as this is your lucky day, you also have the solution.

And this was so effective, especially because the scenario was real and all the facts and information had been tied together to prove it.

I suppose that if you want to take this example to an extreme level, the plot in Mission Impossible I or II (the one with the terrible South African accent) revolved around someone creating the problem AND the solution, Romulus and Remus.

DON’T WORRY ROB, I promise to only use my new powers for good. So later in the afternoon, I decided to try and apply this technique for myself. Instead of approaching a stand holder and letting him know the wonders of our productsI did things like this:

I started off by talking about the Tourism industry in general, how travelers today were getting more sophisticated and independent, and then led into how it was virtually unacceptable today for travelers to not be given convenient information in their native languages.

I had all sorts of facts and figures showing that people from certain countries had a high resistance to non-native language products, that there were 10 times more mobile phones in SA than computers, and so on.

Eventually he actually asked me if I had found any solutions to these problems. Step one a success. For me however, the proof is in the pudding, and that is when I see my bank balance change, so I still have to close, but I will keep you posted.

I really enjoy learning new things like this and trying out new techniques. Something that has always given me encouragement in this regard is:

“ Insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”