A Success Story
Dear Ross,
I attended your presentation at the CPMR seminar last January. I was very impressed with your PRAM model and use it often when making customer presentations. One thing I have learned from you is to look for what motivates people and not to be too caught up in looking for the compromise in the sales process where both parties feel they gave up something, but to look for ways to help customers without asking for a compromise, and to expect customers to do the same for me. I have found more people are willing to trade favor for favor.
One example of looking for what motivates people is one that happened to me with a customer who was owned by a very demanding, tough older man. He made it seem as if he was hard as nails and it took me a while to figure out what made him soft. I noticed, however, that he was very proud of his employees and really appreciated it when I brought in lunch for them. I decided to try a little experiment. One of my principals has a mailing list that includes the option to send individuals at a company their own Christmas card. This principal started a contest one day, in which the reps were allowed to send in Christmas art drawn by their kids, which had to include in it a mention the company’s name or a drawing of a motor, which was their main product.
I decided to add the name of this gentleman to the mailing list, even though I know he routinely threw away most of his mail because he was too busy to read everything he got. One day, while visiting him, he asked me to follow into his office so he could show me “something.” When I walked in I saw the Christmas card our principal had sent him. He then told me how he NEVER kept Christmas cards he got in the mail from vendors in his office. This was the only one he ever did keep, and the reason was that it was drawn by a child, the daughter of one of the reps in the Midwest. He said that any company that took the time to organize such an effort to make a personalized Christmas card and send it to the whole customer base, had to care a lot about its employees. This made him feel so good about our group that he only wanted to deal with us on motors.
This was his motivation: dealing with suppliers who care about their people.
Regards,
Oz
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