The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [60]
So we did a search of all the large companies in the area. You can do this easily online. Go to www.zapdata.com and in minutes you’ll find all the companies of a given size in any industry in your area. For this company, there were 2,000 companies in the area that were within its dream client range.
I asked this client what the criteria were for companies to buy new computer systems. “Well, if their system is old, they may be spending more on the maintenance than they would on a lease for a brand-new system that has 10 times more features than what they have now.” I marshaled the four salespeople to call every one of the 2,000 companies we had identified. They simply called each one and spoke right to the receptionist. They said: “Hi. We’re doing our annual survey and we’ve got just two questions: can you tell us what type of computer system you have and how old it is?” A full 99.9 percent of the receptionists just answered the question.
In two days flat, we found out there were 508 dream companies in the area with computer systems that were at least five years old. Many of them had computer systems whose original provider was now out of business. This meant that prospects were now buying used computer equipment in order to replace broken desktop units or to expand its current number of desktop units. Replacing the system might not be something its would consider as its might not realize the joy it could bring to their lives, or that the cost might be less on a cash flow basis.
As you learned in Chapter Four, there’s probably about 3 percent of that group who are buying right now anyway. But, just because people are buying now does not mean they are beating a path to your door. Even if you send out a direct mail piece, they still might not notice it. Remember, this company had sent out 20,000 direct mail pieces with not one response. We know some of those companies were looking to buy right then, but they didn’t respond to the direct mail piece. So one direct mail piece doesn’t do it. You need to really get their attention.
The first thing we did was send out a Rubik’s Cube to those 508 companies. In the accompanying note we said: “Puzzled about how to double or triple employee productivity? We guarantee to find you 12 ways to reduce costs or increase productivity or we’ll give you a $5,000 gift for your trouble.” This time they got only one response. It just so happened that that one response was from a company with 355 employees. This would be the biggest sale in the client’s history.
We then called behind the offer and got another 15 appointments. Within six weeks this company had more business in play than it had the previous year—all big deals. Also, before using this approach, the sales reps would struggle to get a single appointment each per week. In fact, in some weeks they did not get a single appointment. With four sales reps, they were getting maybe three appointments per week. Using this approach (with details to follow in Chapter Nine), we got them up to one week where these four salespeople set 30 appointments. That’s a tenfold increase in appointments per week.
We sent the dream companies a little gift with a clever tie-in every other week for the entire five months I worked with this client. When I left them, they had nine times more business in play than they had done in the previous year. If this client was wise, it would have continued to hammer those 508 large companies in its area. Over time, whenever any of them need a computer system, who do you think they are going to call first?
If you continue to market to someone with great vigor, they will absolutely get to know who you are. If they tell you no again and again and you keep marketing and selling to them, here is what will happen: they will go from not knowing who you are to knowing exactly who you are to maybe even being annoyed that you won’t go away to starting to respect you because no one has ever marketed