Strategy & Tactics: Getting to “Yes”

WORDS BY ANDY WEHMEYER

It’s 1995 and I’m sitting in my “Installation Manager” office in the retail store where I used to work. I notice a couple of the salespeople standing by the door waiting for the next customer as a guy gets out of his late model BMW and fiddles with his alarm remote as he walks to the front door. He keeps pressing the button to activate the alarm. Nothing happens. He presses again. Nothing happens.

Just as he makes it to the front door, Carl, the newbie sales guy, says to Rich, the senior sales guy, “Hey, I have to use the restroom. This guy is yours.” Carl heads to the toilet, leaving Rich with what appears to be a worthless “up.”

“Hi,” Rich says to the customer. “Looks like you’re having some trouble with your remote.”

“Yeah, it isn’t working. The red light doesn’t come on and nothing happens.” The customer hands the remote and the keys to Rich.

“Oh, a Clifford Avant Guard! Nice alarm. I think we installed this for you.

Let me check.” Rich heads to the computer behind the sales counter.

[For those of you who don’t remember an Avant Guard, this was the most advanced and expensive alarm at the time. We sold them for about $1,400 installed].

At the computer, Rich says, “Sir, what’s your name?” “Jesse [Something-or-other].” “I found you. Yes, we installed this about a year ago. It’s probably just the battery. We can take care of this for you right away.”

Just then, Carl emerges from the restroom wearing a smirk.

“Hey, Carl, do me a favor and put a battery in this remote.” Rich shoves the remote and keys into Carl’s chest. Sensing he’s been bested, Carl catches the keys and slithers away to find a screwdriver and a battery. “While Carl is replacing your battery, can I show you something really cool?” Rich asks the customer. “Sure!” “We just finished this system in my car.

It’s so great. I can’t wait for you to hear it.” Rich disappears into the parking lot with the customer. Ten minutes pass. Rich and the customer come back in and head to the sales counter where Rich grabs a work order. Carl hands Rich the remote and the keys. “It’s working now.”

Rich scribbles on the work order while he says, “Hey, Carl, find Robert and let him know Jesse needs a ride to work.”

Rich and Jesse shake hands. Robert comes to the counter, grabs the keys to the shop van and summons the customer. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift. Where are we going?”

With Robert and the customer on the way out, Rich hops and skips into my office laughing and slaps the work order and the keys on my desk. There are no details. No description of anything—just a number at the bottom: $12,000.

“Hey! What the hell is this?” I ask indignantly.

“Do whatever you want. The customer doesn’t care. He just wants it to sound like my car. You can use half the trunk. I told him you were the expert. Figure it out. If you need more money, I can probably get it.”

We Don’t Have Customers Asking for That

I hear this all the time. Every day. Everywhere. When I hear this, my brain rearranges it into, “We don’t have salespeople.” Jesse didn’t even ask for a battery. He certainly didn’t ask for an audio system.

If you’re in business to sell people what they ask for, you’re a grocery store. There’s no margin in handing someone a run-of-the-mill cucumber. If you’re Kroger’s Car Audio, your customer isn’t likely to fight you for a better and more expensive cucumber. If your salespeople say, “Cucumbers are in aisle 12,” they aren’t salespeople, they’re clerks. Carl was a clerk. If you don’t step up, Alexa is going to bury you. She has everything in stock. A great salesperson like Rich knows his opportunity is to help a customer discover something he doesn’t even know he wants or needs. A great salesperson’s job is getting a customer to “Yes” for something he’s going to love. Every great salesperson has a process for getting to “Yes” for a system that can be installed predictably and profitably, but the gift that makes the process work is empathy. A great salesperson puts himself in a customer’s shoes to help the customer discover something he can’t live without. A gifted salesperson does this without thinking about it.

Did Rich know Jesse might want a cool system for his car? Jesse had a nice, new expensive car. Jesse bought the most expensive alarm and remote start available to protect it and to make driving it more pleasurable. Rich had a story. Rich had a prop to help him tell his story. Rich and Jesse had ten minutes to kill and Rich had a gift.

You Gotta Educate the Customer Every day I read this in some Facebook post about lost opportunity. Someone complains that the customer didn’t buy. Someone else suggests the salesperson’s job is to provide an explanation, and the explanation provided wasn’t sufficient. “You didn’t give them enough information. You gotta educate the customer!”

“Sir, you need a DSP because installing the system in your car is really difficult. It’s really complicated because the factory system includes a whole bunch of signal processing and the idiots who designed it also integrated the air conditioning controls and all the warning chimes into the radio. I don’t know why they decided to do this. I think they want to put us out of business. Anyway, it’s really hard and this DSP will make it possible to integrate the audio signals because the factory audio system is like a computer network and if you know anything about networks, you know they can be really difficult. Hell, I can’t even figure out how to get Netflix over Wi-Fi and I waited on hold with Comcast for over three hours! We finally had to run a bunch of wires all over the house. So, the DSP also gives us a bunch of tools we need to make the car sound good. It includes a crossover and a really powerful equalizer and time alignment. The better ones have time alignment. This allows us to adjust down to the millimeter so the sound from all the speakers will arrive at your ears at exactly the same time. And the equalizer is important because we have thirty-one bands for each channel and eight channels and that makes 248 controls that we can use just to fix the frequency response! The factory system also has special protection that turns it off if a speaker is disconnected so it doesn’t blow up and we have to figure out what value of resistor we need to install to fool the system into working. All this takes time and we’ll need time to make sure the job is done right. We don’t use any tapping screws, either. Everything we do includes nutserts and machine screws and welded metal brackets that are powder coated so nothing will interfere with the proper operation of critical vehicle functions.”

Yeah, I wouldn’t buy that either. Customers don’t buy when they’re confused and that explanation is confusing. Sounds risky to me. Rich didn’t explain. He sold a $12,000 system in ten minutes.

No, wait. What did Rich sell? Did he sell a system? The work order didn’t include the details of any system. No, Rich didn’t sell a system.

Okay. Uncle. I give. What did Rich sell?

Demos: It’s All About the Experience If you’ve made it this far, then you know what’s coming. Rich did a demo. He played a great sounding car for Jesse. The system in Rich’s car was pretty high-end. He had a Sony ES system. That was one of the first systems to include a DSP. The system included a 12-inch subwoofer and components in the front, with rear speakers. The sound was great. I know that because I tuned it.

Rich had several songs he used to play and some other tracks, too. One of them wasn’t a song at all. It was from an old Steve Martin comedy sketch. He used it because Steve was recorded dead center. That was how Rich demonstrated an image.

“Check this out. It’s like Steve Martin is sitting on the dashboard.” Rich didn’t explain time alignment. He made his customer experience it while the customer was laughing. No confusing explanation was necessary.

We could stop there, but that would be a mistake. The audio system wasn’t the only thing Rich demonstrated. Rich also demonstrated power and confidence. Huh? What does that mean? Remember Carl and the keys? As soon as the customer walked in, Rich took charge. He directed Carl to handle the mundane task of replacing the battery. Rich put Carl to work. Rich elevated his stature and proved that he was on the customer’s side. Rich was the most powerful person on the sales floor. He was in charge and he was focused on Jesse.

Rich also demonstrated enthusiasm. While Carl was off replacing the battery, Rich and Jesse had time to kill. Rich didn’t offer Jesse a Coke while he waited. He offered him an experience that would completely change how Jesse enjoyed his car. Why did Jesse agree to the demo? Because Rich was enthusiastic about his own car and because Rich was in charge. The fact that they had ten minutes to spare made it nearly impossible for Jesse to say “No.”

The Work Order and the Recognition of Expertise

Rich handed me a work order with no details—no risk-mitigating cover-yourass details. He didn’t tell me how to do my job. He didn’t make any assumptions about what was needed or wasn’t needed. Figuring that out was my job and he gave me room to do it.

Rich knew his job. He was great at his job. His job was to get the customer to “yes” for a system that could be installed predictably and profitably.

He was so good at his job that he only had to make one promise—the system would sound just like the one in his car. He recognized the details of how to make that happen were outside his expertise, but that someone else knew how to do it. Rich was eager to turn the rest of the job over to experts who’d also installed and tuned the system in his car. Did he have to explain it? Did I have to explain it? No. The demonstration— all of the demonstrations—made our expertise apparent.

Thinking About Your Own Store Do you have a Rich or just a bunch of Carls? What’s your plan to turn your Carls into expert salespeople? Do your salespeople have props? What’s the story?

Just last week I was in a store and the guy who owned the store introduced me to a new salesperson who had just moved over from a marketing position managing social media.

“Here, please talk to Devin. I’d like him to know more about Audiofrog.”

“Hi Devin. I’m Andy. What do you know about all this tech?”

“Nothing,” Devin said sheepishly.

“Good. I don’t want to ruin you with a bunch of tech. Let’s just listen to some speakers and work on giving a great demo.”

About an hour later, I was driving across town with the rep to see some folks at another store when the phone rang.

“Hey. Shhhhh,” the rep said. “It’s the store we just visited calling. Let’s see what’s up.”

It was Devin. “Thanks so much!” Devin said. “That guy Andy was really helpful. Let him know I’m feeling much more confident about this. Go Audiofrog!”