The owner of one of the largest carpet cleaning companies in the country came to me for help. Here's a guy with 30,000 clients who was finding that his efforts to get new clients were becoming less and less effective over the years. Any business owner reading this has probably noticed this same problem. Although this client came to me looking to gain more clients, my first reaction was to find out whether he had maximized the clients he already had. I asked him how often his current clients buy. He answered, "They buy about once every three years. We send coupons and discounts frequently, but the numbers don't change." I asked, "How would you like it if we could get your clients buying twice a year instead of once every three years?" Like nearly every company in the world that sells carpet cleaning, this company was using product data in their sales process. Product data is straightforward and has very little strategic value. This is product data: "We clean X-square feet of carpeting for Y dollars." But adding market data can make the product data much more powerful. Here's what we found for this carpet cleaning company:
"FACT: Your carpets act like a giant health filter, capturing dust, dirt, bacteria, pollen, dust mites, their waste and the bacteria that feed on it. Government studies have shown that when you remove carpets from buildings, people get sick four times more often. But, like any filter, your carpets become saturated and ineffective over time--creating a need for much more regularly scheduled cleaning. And even vacuuming every day does not kill bacteria embedded in the carpet. The EPA found that professional carpet cleaning actually gets carpets 1500% cleaner than even vacuuming every day. The steaming hot water used by professionals kills germs and bacteria that build up in your home." This is an example of how market data can motivate purchasing when a person might not even think they need the product. Product data like "We sell carpet cleaning" only appeals to a person who thinks they need their carpets cleaned right now. The goal of most people when they get their carpets cleaned is to get them to look better. Little do people realize that it makes their home healthier. This puts cleaning your carpets on the same level of importance as taking the kids for their yearly check-up.
Here's a company that has actually gone beyond product data to study every aspect of carpet cleaning, right down to the government studies about the cleanliness of your air quality within the home. From the EPA's research, we created a concept called the "Gold Service." The goal was to get customers on a schedule to have their carpets cleaned every six months. The company owner was very excited about this concept. So was I. We could both do the math and understand how much this would mean for him if it worked. Here I was hired to find the big breakthrough and I felt I had delivered! Victory was mine. Using the market data, I created a script for their top producer to test for a week. The following week I met with the entire staff over the telephone with the CEO listening and the dialogue went as follows:
Chet: So how did it go?
Sales rep: It didn't work.
Chet: It didn't work?
Sales rep: No. It didn't work.
Chet: Well, how many people did you offer it to?
Sales rep: I offered it to ten people.
Chet: And nobody bought it?
Sales rep: No, two people bought it.
To the sales rep, the perception was that eight out of 10 "no"s made the concept a failure. But do the math: If you have 30,000 clients buying once every three years, that's about 10,000 sales per year. Now imagine an extra 6000 of them (a mere 20%) buying twice per year. What does that do for this business? It's an enormous and profound increase in business. But if it were up to that sales rep, the idea would have died right then and there.
Just one hour a week changed this CEO's life. He made a commitment to spend this hour every week improving and integrating the Gold Service concept. It wasn't easy and it did take six months to integrate this into the fabric and fiber of the business. But, remember, it was six months of only one hour per week. Every Monday night at five o'clock without fail the whole company would gather and talk about how this concept could be made more effective, how we could make it easier for the salespeople to use, what ideas the salespeople had to make this more effective, etc. The whole focus of that hour was to integrate this one concept fully and completely into every aspect of the business
Not only did the implementation of the "Gold Service" improve sales but it also stabilized the business. Where he used to hope every month that customers would respond to his fliers, he now knows going into each month how many people are signed up for their Gold Service cleaning. It made the business more stable in every way and it transformed sales performance.
Copyright: Copyright © 2007-2008 Chet Holmes
About the Author:| Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies as America's top marketing executive, trainer, and strategic consultant. Chet is the author of the best selling book, The Ultimate Sales Machine (#1 business book on Amazon, #1 Sales and Marketing book on Amazon, and also on NY Times best seller list). Chet has identified and developed the 12 core competencies that are proven to provide the main structure of truly great companies and he has developed more than fifty proprietary methods to implement them. To learn more about how to double the sales of your company, go to http://www.howtodoublesales.com
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