Happy Friday, everyone!
Here is this week's poll question:
What sales call or presentation has made you the most nervous? How did you handle your nervousness? What was the client's response?
Looking forward to reading your stories!
This is an easy memory for me.
I had just started at the station. I was to go and renew a client that had been on an annual contract. So, I went to pitch the renewal. He said, "NO." OMG, now I have to go back and tell the boss that just hired me that I had just lost an annual. Big gulp.
That was five years ago.
I did go back a few times a few days after he said, "NO" and did finally get him signed up again. (Whew. Wipes brow.)
5 years later, he is still on an annual, I've upped the account some, sold him on new stations etc.
But the first NO was a killer and I'll never, ever forget it.
Mike, thanks for starting off the conversation . . . that would have been a painful call - glad it turned into a yes.
This one is easy for me, though long answer.
In June of 1994 I was in Iasi, Romania. Rick Murphy, my partner was tasked by the Citizen's Democracy Corps., ( http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=18478 ) to help jump start one of the first Commercial Radio Stations in Romania. Rick called me to join him to do sales training for their team. There are stories about me in customs that I will only tell over cocktails!
Following a few days of training ( where I learned you do NOT drink Turkish Coffee down to the bottom of the cup, and that American Slang does not translate well into Romanian ) it was time to hit the streets. I had asked what the biggest advertisers in in Romania were and they told me Marlboro and Coke. Marlboro could not be reached before I had to come back to the US so we went for Coke. The bottler agreed to see me so I had my appointment set.
On the day of the meeting... the ENTIRE sales force decided to come along with my interpreter, the station manager and the production director. Talk about having an audience to perform for. On the Coke side one man came out. He was maybe 40 years old. As it turns out he was educated in Boston and we had a LOT in common including old drinking haunts and shenanigans (It's a Boston Thing). During the get to know you time I asked my interpreter to make up stuff that we were saying but not tell the troops what was actually being said.
At this time in 1994 Coca Cola US was doing a HUGE giveaway of custom Coke stuff including (I'll never forget this) Coke Boxer shorts. This guy was not getting any of this stuff. (Later that day I made a call to Coke's advertising agency in Salt Lake City, spoke to the top guy there and asked for a favor... a shipment of the free stuff to Romania... there was no email back then and it usually took the better part of a day to get an international call out ).
The long and short of the entire thing is I sold Coke and made the sales people feel like they could sell to anyone since we started by knocking off the unattainable account. It gave them confidence. For me? I was scared to death that I would get nowhere with this call and look like a failure to the people I was training. I was not sure I could break through the cultural barrier. As it turned out it was not an issue but only by dumb luck.
PostScript: There was an older man on the sales force. He bristled every time I used the word "aggression". It had only been five years since Nicolae Ceausescu had been dragged from his palace and gunned down during the revolution which saw the end of Communism in Romania. The old man had lived his entire adult life under communist rule and the "Secret Police". After our sale to Coke his comment was "Well they probably won't pay". :-)
What an adventure, Chris! Sounds like you could write a book if you wanted. Thanks for posting this!
I have been writing that book for nearly ten years. Some day when I retire I am going to write a book about radio that makes WKRP look like DRAMA!!!
