The most fun I’ve ever had in my sales career was going onsite to customer locations and touring the facilities.
My win rate was over 90% when I did this.
(You might think this was due to my stunning good looks and irresistible charm, but you’d be mistaken – although I appreciate the sentiment!)
But increasing my close rate was not why I enjoyed going onsite.
This was why:
…I put on a hardhat and was lead across a dirt floor the size of a football field towards the office. As I walked up the open steel steps towards the door that said Management, I looked over to see a giant cauldron of molten steel pouring like lava into a huge mold.
…During my tour of the datacenter, I asked how he kept his cabling so neat with thousands of servers and hundreds of racks. He excitedly pulled out his Mission Impossible Device (a handle with an industrial strength suction cup on each end) and showed me how he used it to lift up any floor panel to expose 12 inches of crawl space underneath the floor where all the cables ran.
…The CEO then led me into his home nestled in the woods, which was designed to look like Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright. He had a tree growing in his living room and brook running through his office!
...”We make air curtains,” he told me. “Look up the next time you walk through a loading dock, grocery store or commercial lobby with a wide entrance and a jet of air blowing down from above. You’ll see one of our units there, sealing out the elements.”
…”We push this silly putty like goo through metal parts under pressure to remove burrs and polish surfaces to a degree otherwise unattainable. This makes turbo engines run faster. It makes artificial knees last longer because the parts don’t grind each other down. It makes aircraft engine parts conform to the strictest tolerances.”
I loved going onsite to meet with customers.
The obvious sales benefits were better communication, the ability to read the room and being able to get on the same side of the table as the customer.
These were all good reasons. But mindlessly churning out sales was never enough for me. I need something more to keep from getting bored.
So whenever I went onsite, sometime during our meeting, I’d ask for a tour of the facilities to see where the real work was done.
This often meant putting on safety glasses, walking through manufacturing floors, donning booties before entering a clean room, yelling to be heard over loud machinery, getting a bit dirty or being granted access to secure facilities.
During the tour I’d ask lots of questions. It was always fascinating. As my guide realized I was genuinely interested, he’d open up. I’d learn about manufacturing processes, company history and labor issues. He’d tell me about his career path and how he came to be in his current position. He’d show me exactly why he needed my products by pointing out where and how he would use them.
Often, after the tour, he’d want to go back to the meeting room to give me additional suggestions on how design a solution to win his business.
The tours transformed me from just another vendor pitching him to someone he trusted. They also helped me see my prospect as a real person who dealt with the same kinds of hopes, dreams and challenges that we all do.
We’d connect as human beings.
In my proposals and follow up conversations, I’d refer to the appropriate people, systems, processes and equipment he’d shown me. I doubt many other vendors did this.
Should you try to do this?
Um yeah.
It’s a no brainer when your customers and prospects are within driving distance.
When they are not, you should weigh the costs of travel against the potential value of the business. Airfare and overnight stays can suck up a lot of time and money.
Either way, the sales person going onsite should have an in depth conversation by phone with any prospect before making any onsite visit. He must do his own prequalification.
For me, going onsite meant I had to get dressed up, deal with traffic and could only meet with a few clients a day. I absolutely refused to waste time onsite for a prospecting/hunting expedition.
If I was going onsite, I fully intended to win business so I always prequalified the prospect and the opportunity.
Then follow the steps I outlined above to close over 90%.
You can and should do this too.
Good luck and good selling,
Steve