The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [42]
I recall one meeting where I was presenting to this CEO and his team of regional presidents—the presidents who ran newspaper “groups” so that the CEO could get greater control. So here I am presenting some of the concepts and the CEO turns to one of the presidents and says, “What did you think of the training?”
PRESIDENT: I didn’t attend any of the training. I didn’t want to intimidate the staff by being there.
CEO: Well, how are you going to reinforce something that you didn’t learn yourself?
The executive was speechless. No comeback. He just squirmed. And so did the other presidents in the room who had also not attended the training.
So learn the lesson yourself. Change—real change, dramatic improvement—in any company starts at the top and works its way down.
Souping Up the Strategy
Today, the Internet makes it possible to do programs in almost every type of situation and circumstance you can imagine. I have a client, American Art Resources, that’s the number 1 provider of artwork to hospitals. One would think that art is subjective. Pick the kind of art you like, right? Wrong. Art has an emotional impact. It’s been clinically proven that some art actually helps patients recover faster. Plus, art has an impact on your staff, who see it every day. So this company sponsors Web seminars on “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing Hospitals.” This program has been presented to more than 400 hospital executives. All of this has happened over the Web. No one has had to travel.
The information the company provides is stunning, well constructed, and highly educational. Hospitals have serious challenges, and this lays them out. It then goes on to offer suggestions on how to solve these problems, showing that there is great research available to make hospitals more effective. The key point the program is making is that every thing matters, especially the design of the hospital, and even the artwork. It uses artwork as an example of how every detail counts. As a result, my client has educated the market about why it’s the most knowledgeable provider of artwork to hospitals.
You can go on its Web site and select from thousands of pieces of art (www.americanartresources.com). Its consultants are highly educated. Where it previously could not get in front of hospital CEOs and top executives, it now has “top-of-mind awareness” among the biggest hospitals in the world.
I worked with a very large chain of shoe stores where I got the owner to do a study on feet, fashion, and footwear. There are 214,000 nerve endings in your feet, for example, that connect to every organ in the body. Your feet sweat about a cup of moisture per day. The quality of the shoe makes a huge difference in whether your shoes will allow this moisture to properly escape or build up bacteria—which is tracked into your home. This chain of shoe stores trains every single salesperson with a massive amount of information on feet, fashion, and footwear. In addition, in every store it puts a handy binder with all this information so salespeople can take any customer through any section. This helps them accomplish the following strategic objectives:
Sell more shoes.
Sell better shoes.
Build brand loyalty.
Establish expertise.
Build a relationship where the buyer only wants to come to their store.
And so on.
Why I Also Call a Stadium Pitch a Core Story
I refer to the stadium pitch as your core story because, if it’s done properly, this core story will provide data that will make all your marketing work harder. The data becomes the core of all your marketing. The data sets the buying criteria in your favor.
For example, I’m