Culture

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Sometimes it can be something very simple that makes someone think you’re a member of one culture or another. I like to wear construction boots and jeans when the weather gets a little wet and rainy. If it is cold out as well as wet, I’ll wear my Carhartt jacket and my favorite yellow baseball cap that has a Caterpillar logo on it. I have been taken for a construction worker many times. Now I suppose I am in the construction business from a certain point of view. I construct businesses, sales and marketing processes and I construct books. But I am not sure I could last a full day on a house framing crew without taking a nap break from 2 to 4 PM.

People are quick to categorize you how they see you. You my not like that people don’t see you for who you are, but for what they think you are. You may not like to be pigeon-holed for the way you might appear or sound. But you can make this work to your benefit. Why do so many professions have a uniform? Because it tells the world clearly who is a firefighter or nurse, so the firefighter or nurse can do their jobs quickly and efficiently.

I did a simple test when I ran a Culligan Bottled Water dealership. I believed that the route drivers were invisible to people and could go where they wanted, when they wanted, without restrictions. One day I went cold-calling for new customers in a business area wearing the water delivery driver’s uniform. The very next day, I called on the same businesses in a suit and tie. No one recognized me as being the same person. Only a few said that another guy had been through the day before, but no one knew it was me.

I tested my theory further. I walked into a bank that was not our customer with a five gallon bottle on my shoulder and strolled back behind the teller’s counter and back into the break room where I was not supposed to be. No one stopped me. No one asked who I was or where I was going. I had to ask someone in the break room who I would talk to about setting them up with water service before anyone even acknowledged me.

They thought I was a member of the service culture and that I was doing something I was supposed to be doing. I was invisible. So we used this to our advantage and dressed all of our sales people in route driver uniforms and built one of the top bottled water dealerships in the entire Culligan dealership network.

How do you want your people pigeon-holed? Don’t you want your customers thinking your people are members of the selling culture? Because don’t people love to be sold to? If you go to a store and you’re looking to buy something, doesn’t it drive you crazy if the people ignore you and don’t help you and don’t help you figure out what to buy? This drives me crazy. Let’s not do that to our customers. Let’s make sure our prospective customers and our current customers see us as members of a selling culture, who are there to help them make their purchases.

What are some of the stories and myths and pieces of language we can use to build a selling culture? Well, let’s talk the language of sales. If you talk about suspects and prospects and clients and closing ratios and things of that nature, your staff starts thinking like salespeople. If you start talking like salespeople, you start thinking like salespeople.

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.