When I was a little “repette” selling for Xerox back in the early 80’s, we were taught to ask any prospect: “Who makes the decision?”

Once you have identified that the prospect has a strategic need that your company could fill, you need to know if they are in a position to change what they are currently doing and what process they will use to evaluate making a change from what they are doing today.  With these questions the sales rep learns the priority, the players, the process and the buying criteria.

We are in the market for a phone system. We have had multiple vendors in to discuss this situation. They are not meeting with me, the owner. I’m too busy. They are meeting with the person I entrust to do the research and make a recommendation to me. Thus far not a single salesman has asked him who makes the final decision. Not one. There have been multiple meetings with several of these vendors to iron out details and answer questions, but no one has asked who will make the decision. Without this knowledge not a single vendor has requested a meeting with me or to include me in the proposal presentations. 

If they had done any research they would have seen me blog about this in the past because it’s on our website. But now they just keep coming back, and I’m told that yesterday one offered a discount. Interesting, I haven’t even seen the proposals, but they are dropping their price. I’m sure they will tell their managers that prospects only care about price. But they don’t know what I care about, they haven’t asked.

This one is on me. The snow has kicked my butt this week. Between the kids being out of school altogether or having two hour delays and the roadway chaos generated by infrequent snow drivers, I’ve been discombobulated.

As a result, it seems I went to a meeting unprepared. The prospect came as a referral...

Today we got a Season’s Greeting card and a December version of a company’s newsletter. Both are printers trying to develop non-print revenue by positioning themselves as value-added providers of marketing services like direct mail, personalized landing pages and multi-channel marketing.

So what’s the problem? What marketing professional wants to entrust their strategic initiatives to a firm who can’t even define and execute a strategy to get their holiday greeting to their constituency before the holiday? Maybe a few days late and we could blame it on the USPS, but 3 weeks is starting to push even that envelope. Even if this is due to the USPS, their timeliness is notorious and everybody knows it. Why not plan to get your holiday card in the mail December 1st so even if the USPS takes their sweet time, you’re still good?

Marketing… good. Shooting yourself in the foot… very bad.