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Business Rule #44:
Plan Your Work and
Work Your Plan
February 28, 2006
by Caroline Pfouts
The first task of the new season was to sign up new members or upgrade current ones for Sam’s Club. To help, each team was given was a Good Year blimp to advertise their message.
The first order of business for the Gold Rush team was to come up with a slogan to broadcast on the blimp. Since it would be their only ad, the blimp’s message was critical to the process of bringing in new business. Coming up with nothing on their own, they decided to go with the company slogan: "Sam's Club. It’s a BIG deal." Not bad—assuming that there really was some promotion going on that day at the store. Their project manager, Tarek Saab, should have known that they needed some kind of hook for their marketing.
In contrast, the Synergy team worked on their in-store promotion first. Their project manager, Allie Jablon, was smart enough to devote their budget to the customers coming in the door. She decided to offer them free massages and manicures.
Okay, it wasn’t the most brilliant promotion possible. In fact, the other members of the Synergy team rolled their eyes and protested when Brent Buckman first came up with the idea—although admittedly their poor reaction may have had more to do with his untoward desire to personally give the massages himself. Still, the offer of free personal services, like massages and manicures, was a workable plan. Most importantly, it gave Synergy something concrete to announce on their blimp, "Come to Sam’s Club for free massages and manicures."
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Over on the Gold Rush team, Summer Zervos was asked to call restaurants to tell them about their special promotion. After connecting with her first prospect on the phone, Summer decided that the Gold Rush promotion just wasn’t special enough to pitch to restaurant owners. Summer felt that all she had to offer new customers was the store’s usual low prices. That though would have been enough, if she just hung in there. But one call was all that Summer was willing to make.
Summer’s prematurely giving up made her a target for criticism. Yet notice that, although her teammates said they didn’t understand why Summer didn’t make more calls, none of her colleagues stepped in to take over. Charmaine Hunt, in fact, was right there in the room with her and easily could have grabbed the phone to make the calls herself.
Why didn’t anyone else step up to the plate to make the calls? Because cold calling is hard work. Typically the first couple of calls don’t go well. There’s a lot of rejection involved. Of course some of the people you call will say, “No.” In fact, most everyone will say, “No.” If you actually close one in ten cold calls, you’ve got an enviable hit ratio.
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If you actually close one in ten cold calls, you’ve got an enviable hit ratio.
