By Michelle Nichols
The Meat and Potatoes of Selling Learn and apply the sales lessons of fast food founders to your business. ur family often eats fast food when we’re on vacation in summer. So, looking for sales ideas, I read the autobiographies of the founders of McDonald’s and Wendy’s— Ray Kroc and Dave Thomas. I found that each man’s wisdom can be applied to selling any product or service. So you don’t need to attend McDonald’s Hamburger University. Here are a few of my favorite sales lessons drawn from both books.
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Just Do It In Dave’s Way: A New Approach to Old-Fashioned Success, Thomas says restaurants “are an execution business, pure and simple.” Both Thomas and Kroc knew the competition could copy their systems, but each man was confident no rival could exactly reproduce the results. Why? It’s the repetitive execution of that system that leads to success. The same is true in sales. It’s not your terrific selling plan that makes you a star. It’s the daily execution of that plan that helps you meet and beat your goals. In a similar vein, Ray Kroc says in Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s: “Work is the meat in the hamburger of life.” Likewise in sales, it’s cold-calling, presenting, closing, and servicing customers that lead to success. Oh sure, Michelle Nichols is a professional sales speaker, trainer, and consultant based in Reno, Nevada. Her Savvy Selling Success Pack is available through NGWA. She can be reached at (775) 303-8201 or at michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com.
28/ August 2012 Water Well Journal
Find a benefit your products or services offer that your customer wants or needs. bigger sales mean larger commissions, promotions, and trophies at awards banquets. But look beyond the glittering prizes and the fact remains successful salespeople spend most of their time in the trenches, selling and servicing customers.
Focus on the Customer For Thomas, the most important marketing lesson grew out of thinking about the people he really wanted as customers and then going after them. This is especially true for salespeople. Think about it: You can drive yourself crazy trying to please every potential customer. It’s better to target your sales efforts on those who would benefit most from what you have to offer. Customer focus also extends to sales contracts. One day, when Kroc was speaking to a lawyer about a contract, he said, “Listen, you can hog-tie these guys with all the ifs, buts, and whereases you like, but it’s not going to help the business one bit. There will be just one great motivator in developing loyalty in this operation. That is, if I’ve got a fair, square deal, and the [other guy] makes money.” Likewise, if you keep the focus on helping customers achieve success, everyone wins.
You’re Never Finished Kroc said, “Business is not like painting a picture. You can’t put a final brush stroke on it and then hang it on the wall and admire it.” The same is true in sales because the work you put into a customer is never finished, either. You have to keep working with customers if they’re to continue buying from you. Thomas adds that you never win a customer for life. You have to win their business all over again at every visit. Don’t assume just because customers bought from you once, they will do so again.
Less Choice = Less Trouble Both Kroc and Thomas recommended keeping choices to a minimum. Thomas pointed out that by offering eight condiments on a hamburger, there are 256 combinations. That means there are 255 ways for the order to be wrong. In sales, it’s the same. The more customization you offer, the more painstaking you have to be when fulfilling the order.
Keep Trying Like all good salespeople looking for new customers, Kroc and Thomas were always searching for new products. Many didn’t work out, but that didn’t stop either one of them from trying again. Kroc invented the “Hulaburger”— two slices of cheese with a piece of grilled pineapple on a toasted bun. It was a flop. One customer said, “I like the hula, but where’s the burger?” If you’re selling to a new customer, or using a new selling strategy that has waterwelljournal.com