“April showers bring May flowers.” I heard that quote while watching the Masters this past Sunday and it made me think of one of the pearls of wisdom Billy Harris taught me back in my exam glove selling days. Billy always believed in the art of pre-selling everything, whether it was a new pay plan to the sales team or a new nitrile glove to a client. About three to six months before we would be asking for orders on something new, Billy would say “Time to start pre-selling.” We would come up with a game plan to casually get a ‘yes’ from whoever the target audience was.
Why did we do that? Because when it came time to ask for an actual order we could say, “Remember when we talked about ‘X’ and you mentioned you’d be interested in it? Well, it’s here and we are ready to rock and roll.” This approach also allowed us to temperature check ideas before we launched them. For example, by pre-selling a pay plan change we would get feedback from the team and we could tweak the new program accordingly.
There are countless benefits to pre-selling your ideas, products and services. Think of it like “April showers bring May flowers.” The next time you know something new is coming, try pre-selling it with you clients. It’s such a casual way to get an early ‘yes.’
We’ve recently been placing QR codes with end-user videos in our advertiser’s ads. This issue has one in the Symmetry Surgical ad on page 39. If you scan the QR code it will auto populate an e-mail for you, so you don’t even have to write it yourself. All you have to do is add in a client e-mail and BOOM – you’re pre-selling the Bovie® Smoke Shark® III. My challenge for you this month is to scan that code and send the video to 5 potential clients. Who knows, maybe you will sell some equipment you never planned to sell this month. Good luck, and always be closing!
Dedicated to the industry,
R. Scott Adams