As a keen student of human nature, I’ve noticed that once (we think) we’re doing well, many of us have a tendency to conclude no one can tell us anything new.
Last week, I encountered a young lady afflicted with this problem while visiting my bank. I’d overheard her giving marketing tips to a new (female) recruit, regarding how to relate with prospective clients (towards selling personal insurance policies offered by the bank’s subsidiary).
At a point she said “Look. If you want these people to sign up for a policy, you have to chase them. Get their phone numbers, and call them all the time. Follow up with them by visiting them at work. Even try to go out to lunch with them. By the time you persistently follow up with them like this, they will have no choice but to buy from you. That’s how I started. It was not easy, but I made my sales target. Look where I am today? You can also do the same…”
After listening to their conversation for a little while longer, I could not help asking if I could make a few comments. She readily agreed.
I began by expressing the view that “chasing” prospects down in the manner she’d described is used by many conventional sales people to win buyers. I then noted that it however has a tendency to result in resentful buyers, who end up feeling they were harassed into making a purchase.
Basically, such persons would have made the purchase out of frustration, to put an end to the relentless chasing by the sales person.
This is why many such buyers rarely do repeat purchases with the sales person. Instead, they would have made the purchase to say “I hope now that I’ve bought it, s/he will leave me in peace!”
Next, I told her I believed the company needed to consider providing members of the marketing/sales team, a platform for building relationships with prospects, towards converting them to clients over time.
Specifically, I referred to the fact that their flyer indicated they had a Facebook page, and website. Adding a blog linked – via RSS feeds – to the website and social media outlets, AND would be a low cost, but potentially high impact platform to attract potential clients.
That plaform would be used to provide information and education to make such prospects willingly take action to sign up for (or make enquiries about) insurance policies on offer.
At this point, she got up impatiently shaking her head saying:
“Thanks for your suggestion. But you see, our company is not a small company. If you visit our website, you will see that we have offices all over the world. We only teamed up with the bank here in Nigeria, to access its customer network and save expenses on overheads. But we’re not begging for customers. Look if you listen to radio and TV we have adverts running daily…”
I gently countered saying:
“If I go by what you’re saying, I may be tempted to conclude you don’t even need a marketing team. Indeed, we might assume that customers are banging down your doors daily. Which makes me wonder why your talk with your new recruit involved asking her to do so much chasing…I would have expected it to be the other way round. Potential customers should be chasing you guys so hard that you won’t even have time, or need to chase ANY clients!”
She replied that she was not saying they had excess customers, but that he company had no need to go cap-in-hand (figuratively speaking) to potential customers.
To her, what I proposed in terms of the more subtle, stealth based, less direct marketing to attract customers, amounted to “begging”.
In her view, her company was too big for that.
Listening to her, I got the impression that she believed the marketers only needed to go with their “offers” to “viable prospects” they identified. Then they would tell the latter their company is the biggest player in the market, and that s/he should feel grateful they are chasing him/her!
We eventually agreed to disagree, and she left.
I could not help feeling sorry for her though. She’d let her ego deny her an opportunity to possibly harvest useful insights.
Insights that could be channeled back to her company, or even put to use by her, to achieve improved client recruitment results. If nothing else, removing the labour intensive process from winning new buyers would be worthwhile.
I say this as one who sells products and services to buyers, who over 90% of the time come to me, by themselves.
Very rarely do I have to reach out to potential buyers.
The same strategy I tried to describe to her is what I’ve used for years and continue to use today. And many individuals and businesses of all sizes, which have smart thinking decision makers at the helm of affairs use this same approach.
NB: My 3 part article series titled “Why You Need A Web Marketing System” provides useful insights into how this marketing strategy works.
Even right here in the Nigerian marketplace, companies of various sizes do it. But she was just too blinded to see!
Sometimes, all we have to do is listen. I do it a lot.
It has not always been my nature to listen, but the pain and suffering I reaped from NOT slowing down and listening, especially in my startup years, forced me to LEARN to do so!
This is why every now and then I gain new insights, even from persons younger than me, that I put to use, with great results to show.
Ego tripping rarely does anyone ANY GOOD!
My Encounter With the Above Mentioned Insurance Lady, Reminded Me of A Story I Once Read Many Years Ago
It’s about a young man who traveled a very long distance to see a wise old man in order to learn the secrets of success.
Upon arriving at the old man’s house the young man expressed his desire to learn what he needed to do in order to become successful.
The old man proceeded to share his wisdom and knowledge about the secrets of success with the young man by giving step-by-step guidelines for the latter to follow.
However each time he mentioned a step, the young man would say he had tried that and it did not work!
This went on for some time, till the old man paused and asked, “Would you like to drink some tea?”
The young man replied in the affirmative.
The old man then brought out a teacup on a saucer, placed it in front of the young man and began pouring hot tea into it.
When the cup got full, the old man kept on pouring the tea so that it began to overflow into the saucer.
The young man screamed, “Stop! Can’t you see the cup is full?”
To which the old man replied: “Yes, I know. You see, the cup is just like you – you are too full of yourself for me to add anything to you.
So I’m sorry, but I cannot help you. You need to first of all empty yourself of yourself, before I can then put any knowledge into you”.
I believe the story is self-explanatory and the message very clear.
You must never let yourself get to the point where you think no one can teach you anything new.
Even those not as successful as you can teach you plenty that you do not know!
You only need to “open your eyes and ears” to learn from them.
Never let your cup be full…or you might wind up with EMPTY POCKETS!