|
Be Your Future
by Marc Saxe
You want to move toward the future, where that future is fun and profitable. That's why
you're in this business, and why you're marketing and selling vacations. The lifestyle is fun, and unique. You're
doing well and there's nothing like it.
You don't want to be in the insurance business, selling cars, single family homes or any of the myriad of other
ways to profit from moving a relatively high ticket product. And you like the process.
What's not to like? If you're selling, all of the hard part is done for you. If you're marketing, all of the hard
part is done for you.
Adam Smith, in a Wealth of Nations - the bible of capitalism, was all for dividing up the labor. We've turned it
into an art and a science. Set up an industry, a production line, divide the work, and have everyone specialize
in their craft to deliver more goods and services than any of us could produce individually. With the development,
construction and operations teams in their world actually producing the product, those of us in sales and marketing
produce the "contracts" that are the "production" in sales centers that are the "production
lines".
I'm sure that no matter which seat you're in, you objected to my statement that "someone else is doing the
hard part". There isn't one OPC, or outbound telemarketer that I would switch places with today. I did my
time. Been there… done that. It's hard to take that much rejection and keep at it, stay with it, roll with the
punches and come out on top. Amazing job team.
There isn't one salesperson on their third tour of the day, or fourth, that's got it easy either. Three shows a
day is a grind. The fourth drives you over the wall. It a real challenge to take the fourth, no matter how much
they walked in with An Open Mind, and put them
on paper. Getting into their hearts, while keeping your game plan and executing it against a 90 minute clock, hitting
all the bases and writing the deal is an incredible feat of concentration and will power.
So I can hear you cringe when I suggest that it's the other player in this that has the harder part…
But I know they have the harder part. How do I know? It's obvious.
If taking a guest from front to back, for a relatively good "ka-ching" on the back end was easy, then
all of our marketers would be lined up at the real estate commissions scrambling for a license. They're not. They
would be begging to get a shot at selling. A few are, but most aren't. They like to keep it light and lively, sell
the gift, sell the event. But they usually don't want to sell the deal. They watch. They're tempted, but they know
it's tough. Sales is a hard job.
If prospecting was so much easier than selling, you know all the salespeople would be on the phones between tours
and after the line's cut. They're not. Even when there are some good "self-generation" bonuses for bringing
in tours, they don't want to do it. I think I understand why.
It's a whole other occupation. It takes a lot more rejection than the rate against sales team. Sales can live with
selling only one out of five, six or seven. It isn't that much rejection. Marketing is tough. Those people have
too many more "no's" to get to a "yes". And they have to be organized over time to take advantage
of the "maybe's" that become tomorrow's tours. Marketing's hard. Salespeople don't think in the world
of "maybe".
It's too bad they don't get enough exposure to each other to really appreciate that their own seat is the easier
one.
I'm not sure that pointing fingers during this little dance moves any of us toward that fun and profitable future
that teased you at the beginning of this piece. Like a lot of things, it's really easy to pick the other side apart
if things aren't perfect in the "flow" than to step back for a minute and see whole picture.
The "Big Picture" is that we all have to expand our skill sets. Part of it has to do with expanding and
redefining the roles. Please don't think that this is any type of a crusade to get companies to change what they're
doing. It's not. But, it is the 21st century. Time is going to do that for us. The basic model of split marketing
and sales is under attack by technological advance and changes in the marketplace without me saying a word about
it.
If it wasn't true, some the tour flow dinosaurs of last year would still be with us. Where did they go? Why are
they gone? Don't think it's as simple as the obvious answers.
Managing tour flow to an efficient sales outcome is more difficult now than during the growth spurts of the mid
1990's. Other industries are figuring this out faster than we are. Travel is being delivered to consumers in much
more efficient ways than it was then. People's options for low cost travel are expanding, as instantaneous booking
and the dwindling importance of the travel agent have become the norm.
In the middle of what are very radical changes in the travel marketplace, we are clingling to the life raft of
tour flow (otherwise known as separate marketing and sales), rent vs. owns, one call closes, and all of the other
things that make up our industry's "production line".
It's hard to have an open mind to the future. Salespeople don't want to be marketers. But survivors will survive
and thrive no matter what is called. Salespeople can't be expected to just jump in with nothing more than an added
financial incentive, and all of a sudden become adept at putting together their own "self-generation"
programs. If you think of the incredible amount of training time it takes continually to maintain a sales edge,
you get an idea of the training it takes to convert a line salesperson into a "profit center". That's
part of the challenge. It's a skill set. An added commission isn't the only answer. People need effective game
plans, management commitment to doing what it takes to execute the game plan, training and day to day supervision.
As managers, we fail the salespeople every time their paycheck only has commissions from line sales, and nothing
from "self-generation". For the most part, it's a creative void. Very few have any idea where to start,
even though there are tons of places.
I feel that I was very fortunate to get my grounding in this business in the early 1980's in the Hill Country of
Texas. It's a local market at best, with a hint of regional identity. Not a destination. Not Orlando. Not Las Vegas.
Not Hawaii. Not where the action was. Just the opposite.
There are many very strong industry players who came up through this arena. Traditional programs like direct mail,
telemarketing and opc either worked sporadically, or didn't function at all. Everyone I know who succeeded out
of this market learned how to use their network and the phone. Yes, the main hunk of business was from the line,
but you couldn't expect it be everything. You had to have a dinner party program here, and owner reload activity
there, keep track of your tours and your, G-D forbid, "be-backs".
There were two things I learned during that time that are as relevant today as then.
1) Your personal network is ultimately your business and responsibility. Even if you are a "salesperson"
on a line, you are marketing yourself in the world. You need to work your market, your universe, your contact pool.
2) You need efficient tools to manage your contacts and your time.
This is where it all must fit together: The tools and the skills. The skills needed for the future have to do with
building and creating networks of people. They are information skills. You need clients and customers you can call
on over and over. Please, if you can't take a re-tread… send them to me. I'll maintain a little database on them.
Whenever I have a new product, I'll let them know. If they need help making what I sold them five years ago work
today, I'll get on the phone with someone in the business to help them out. My job as a salesperson is marketing
myself. My job as a marketer is selling myself. My clients and customers are the lifeblood.
There will always be great products to sell. There will always be challenges with tour flow. It's part of the game.
They'll either be too few, too many, not qualified enough or too qualified. It's your future. Embrace it. If I'm
going to thrive, and not just survive, I need an edge. A sharp edge.
You need tools. You need to keep track and become your own CRM machine. That's "marketing-speak" for
customer relationship management, one of the latest buzzwords in the software business. Today it takes a $200 computer
or PDA and some energy and time to get organized. You need to be as organized as any other sales professional.
If you're waiting all day long for us marketing people to produce for you, you are giving away at least 25% to
40% of your annual income. How much respect can you pull out of waiting for something to happen?
Get organized, get professional, get respect. If you want to make demands of your company, demand that they train
you in the art of getting a deal on the phone. Demand that they modernize their lead management system, and let
you go to work on them. There is more consistent, controllable money communicating with your leads, than anywhere
else.
Once you get past 100% tour reliance, you're a graduate and you are ready to run a program. You know how to dial,
get attention, create interest without having a couple across the table. You'll need another skill or two. The
best one is learning how to prepare a "pro forma" or cash flow statement for a "sales and marketing"
program you are going to have to sell up the ladder at your company. If you learn to do this, you will show much
more initiative than everyone sitting in the sales lounge. You'll show you have a head about numbers, a bit of
creativity in the world of "sales and self management", and you'll be flexing your marketing muscles.
Not all of these plans will work, but if over half of them work, you'll be a success. The nicest thing is realizing
that you're not stuck on a line. These skills are "transferable". Remember, there is a thing out there
called your future. All of a sudden your closing talents, which you've honed through years of one on one on the
tables, will outshine the rest of the so-called salespeople in every other business out there. You'll have the
skill set to move into whatever product arena you like.
Those skills and tools are vision, creativity, organization, precision, determination, persistence, follow through
and adaptation. These are survival skills that are necessary in the 21st century. You'll need them sooner or later.
With technology moving at the rate it is, my bet is that you'll need them sooner.
Developers and management need to help move this along as well. How many have invested the time or resources to
CRM enable their staff? How many have invested the training efforts and dollars to bring their sales team past
a "ten step sales training", or the "yellow brick road"? Few, at best. There are tremendous
advances in technology waiting for you, where leads never die, and the conveyor belt can process your "lead
farm" to a point of higher harvest rates. Drop me a note at msaxe@resortopportunities.com
if you want to hear about the latest and the best.
One of the greatest things about selling this product is that to do it well you must be incredibly present in the
moment in order to work your guests to the point of buying. But don't let that be a trap. You will need a sense
of the future, and what you will have to become to succeed in the future. You need that sense today.
Tony Robbins, of Personal Power fame, put it this way:
You need to imagine the pain of what it will be like 5, 10 or 20 years from now, if you don't decide to take action
today to change that which you need to change within yourself to be successful. If you can feel it - really feel
it - bundled into this moment, you can get enough "leverage" to move any mountain you chose. I suggest
it is a great exercise. Try it. It'll help you envision becoming your future.
|
