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Sales Made Easy 2

Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss the four-word rules for sales success.  My goal is simple: I want to provide you with easy-to-implement tools, tactics, and techniques to improve your business.

Each rule is only four words long because that’s all it takes to make a huge difference in building your brand and your business. And because four words are about all my short attention span can handle!

Last week, we discussed Rule #1, “Shut the @#$%!! up.” If you missed it and want to start from the beginning, just point your browser HERE.

While I’m convinced that Rule #1 is the most important thing you can do in most sales situations, it’s not lost on me that you need to get yourself into those situations in the first place. And that’s why you need Rule #2.

Sales Made Easy 2

Whether you’re trying to get a face-to-face new business presentation or your goal is to reach out to reporters and bloggers to get them to write about you, you need a strategy. The one I’ve found to be most successful is a lot easier –  and often a lot more fun – than you think.

But first, a story:

My little advertising agency had just landed a whale of a client. We turned a small marketing assignment we did for the Sawgrass Mills shopping center into a full AOR (agency of record) relationship for three of the parent company’s four properties: Sawgrass Mills in Ft. Lauderdale, Gurnee Mills in Chicago, and Franklin Mills in Philadelphia.  It was a real coup!

But even with that great David and Goliath story, I couldn’t get the advertising press to write about us and our huge success.

At the same time, one of the big New York agencies won the account for Mills Corp.’s fourth property, Potomac Mills, in Washington, D.C. That win was plastered on the front of both AdWeek and AdAge Magazines, even though that huge agency had won only one of the Mills accounts—AND WE HAD THREE!!

What? How come they got the article, and we got the shaft?

Sales Made Easy 2

Not knowing how to fix this situation, I called a good friend of my father’s, who was the president of Miami‘s most important public relations firm. She agreed to have lunch with me and give me some advice.

We chit-chatted about business and family through lunch. I was getting impatient waiting for the answer, but she kept talking about everything except what I wanted to know.

Finally, the check came, and she was ready to go. But before she got up to leave, she scribbled a few words on a napkin and slid it across the table to me.

“Here are the four magic words to getting PR and business,” she said. “Don’t look at them until I leave, and don’t you dare tell anyone I let you in on the key secret to public relations. My entire business is based on these four words.”

Of course, I couldn’t wait for her to leave so I could uncover the truth. The minute she was out of sight, I uncrumpled the paper and read the four words that changed my life:

“Take Them To Lunch.”

Here’s the truth that no one tells you: regardless of whether your business is B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer), your business is P2P (people to people). And the best way to get to know them and have them know you is F2F (face-to-face).

Sales Made Easy 2

If you want to build your business, your number one job is to generate as much interest in you and your activities as possible to build relationships. And while there are no direct metrics to extrapolate how many lunches it takes to generate additional income, a good rule of thumb is this: the more, the merrier.

It all starts when you take them to lunch.