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Business Rule #36:
Know Your Strategy
October 28, 2005
by Caroline Pfouts
Where’s the money? After all, that’s the scoreboard in business. Lose track of the bottom line and your enterprise becomes no more than a hobby or charity. It might well be fun and personally fulfilling, but if it’s not making a profit, you’re missing the primary point of business.
The task this week was to boost sales revenues at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store by holding a special event focusing on a particular sport. The project itself was defined in terms of money.
The Capital Edge team followed Markus Garrison’s suggestion to choose golf as their sport. Although no one on Capital Edge actually plays golf, Markus suggested it because golfers are devoted to the sport. Not a bad reason. No one might have said it, but golfers generally have lots of disposable income. Country club memberships can run hundreds of thousands of dollars. To spend the kind of cash that the sport demands, golfers have to be rich or extremely dedicated—or both. What a great target market! Considering the cost of a new set of clubs, the price of a single club or golf shirt is reasonable in comparison.
The precise opposite reasoning prevailed on the Excel team. Just because James Dillon played baseball, they chose it as their sport. Usually it’s smart to go with what you know—provided your knowledge translates into a viable marketing strategy.
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Baseball is an everyman sport. Most people have played it at one time or another. Many public parks have baseball diamonds. The only special equipment needed is a ball, a bat, and a glove. Sure, there are special shoes, hats, and jerseys, but you can easily play in sneakers and jeans. If Excel had chosen baseball because it’s a sport that appeals to a broad range of people, it could have been brilliant. Instead, they chose America’s favorite pastime because James knew how to play—only smart if Excel had a strategy to exploit that special expertise. Unfortunately, they didn’t.
Jennifer Murphy bragging about how she would sell lots of radar guns was an early sign that Excel didn’t have a workable strategy on this task. Although several of Jennifer’s teammates were offended by her boastfulness, none of them challenged her approach of targeting the higher-priced items. As a group, Excel failed to define the strategy that could have won the challenge for them. Baseball isn’t about radar guns, unless you’re a pitcher who’s ready for the pros. Selling baseball equipment is about moving lots of affordable merchandise.
One woman I trained in sales was very nervous about whether she knew enough about the product to present it. To help her understand the process, I took her with me to several client meetings. As she watched me, she realized that what is true of selling is true of any kind of effective communication—make your point and keep it short. My student didn’t need to know everything about every product to make a winning presentation; she just had to explain the benefits and ask for the prospective client’s business. It’s always a good thing to have more product knowledge on hand, but share only that information that is truly relevant—that is what will help close the sale.
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What is true of selling is true of any kind of effective communication—make your point and keep it short.
