101 Best Sales and Marketing Ideas
IDEA 67:
ADMIN RULES OK
Selling to people is a personal business, often one to one; it is dependent to some extent on personalities and relationships. It is influenced by how the sales person approach matters, the techniques they use, and such things as the perceived degree of pushiness. But alongside all that there is a thread of more physical and mundane matters: appointment times are set, literature is sent, arrangements are confirmed, and all this creates – or should do aura of efficiency. This is not simply important in itself: the level of predictor of service to come. So short-falls in your admin can act to dilute the effectiveness of what you do in selling
Idea
From the pharmaceutical industry…
Consider a cautionary tale. A pharmaceutical company was holding a sales meeting for doctors. It had chosen a suitable venue, and everything was well arranged: documentation, catering, and so on. The company executives were well practiced in their presentations. The PowerPoint slides contained only a manageable amount of text, and not single one was projected upside down.
At one point the doctors were introduced to a topic that was to be dealt with by showing a 20- minute video film. An executive introduced it, the lights were dimmed, and the film was started. Most of the staff present slipped out of the room (they had seen the film a dozen times), and only one person was left with the group. When the film ended, the room was plunged into total darkness (there were no windows), and the only remaining staff member had no idea where the lights were, since someone else, not now in the room, had dimmed them at the start. He groped fruitlessly around the walls for more than five minutes. Finally a colleague returned, located the light switched in the light from the open door, and the meeting resumed. It went well, but this was enough for participants to refer to the “meeting in the dark” for many months.
It is so simple to miss something. I rather feel for whoever wrote the computer manual beside my desk, which has a boxed paragraph on the title page reading.
This manual has been for any errors.
In practice
- Remember that all the administrative details linked to selling matter. Any one of them, if neglected, can reduce the effective of matters that have been given more thought and are considered more important.
- The lesson is simple: check, check, and check again.