Vera, Princess Di and a successful marketing story

This edition

• Introduction
• Article - Princess Di, Vera and a successful marketing story
• Big Announcement
• Next issue - coming up

Introduction

Something different this issue. As (I hope) you know I normally write about "Selling at 'C' Level". But today I'm writing about marketing a small retail business.

Why? Because a) it's a great story (I think) and b) it demonstrates at least two key principles that also apply to Selling at 'C' level.

It's tells how my wife used her imagination to come up with a simple solution to a very common business problem, one that applies particularly to prospecting.

The key principles she used, which I always recommend, are a) to use what you've got and b) make it as easy and/or fun as possible.

Here's the story.

Article - Princess Di, Vera and a successful marketing story

It's not beyond the bounds of possibility - in fact it's very likely - that I was rather drunk in 2006 when I called Susan, who was in Sydney, at 12.30am Stockholm time. Actually, I was very 'rather drunk' after a huge and extremely herring-heavy meal and far too much vodka for my own good. I don't even like vodka but it's what everyone else was drinking & it was free.

"Hello darling" I said "Guess where I am?"

"It sounds like you're in a toilet".

"Well yes, I am in a toilet. But it's a toilet in Stockholm City Hall, where the Nobel Prizes are presented."

"Good for you" she said lovingly "and you're drunk aren't you?"

"Me? Maybe a little."

"Well I'm very happy for you but I can't talk, I've got Brenda Blethem arriving in a few minutes."

It all started in 2005 with a common business problem....

The beginning

In 2005 my wife & I bought a run-down skin care salon in North Sydney. It was one of my many business mistakes - I didn't do sufficient due diligence for reasons I won't bore you with - and we hadn't realised just how run down it was.

We paid far too much for the business and then spent an arm and a leg refurbishing the premises. Once we'd finished we had a lovely looking salon - but no customers. And the so-called "customer mailing list" was absolutely useless; years out of date & full of inaccuracies and garbage (as in my experience most lists are).

We were bleeding cash so we needed to get customers quickly.

One advantage we did have was a treatment called CACI non-surgical facelift, a treatment that was (and still is) amazingly popular in the UK, where it was used & recommended by celebrities including Princess Di, Madonna & Jennifer Lopez.

CACI had never really taken off in Australia, partly because of the way it had been promoted and partly due to the fact CACI machines cost $25,000 each. But I'd managed to import two from South Africa for $6,000 each - and apart from the therapist's time, providing a CACI treatment incurred no additional cost to the salon.

We had also forked out $20,000 for an Omnilux machine, a brand new (then) red and blue light treatment which few salons had. Again there was zero product cost needed for an Omnilux treatment so the only cost to us was time.

The situation

So on the positive side we had two excellent, state of the art treatments that were sold at a premium price - around $140 an hour, quite a bit in 2005 - and that cost us nothing more than the therapist's wage, about $20 an hour.

We had a beautiful, spotless salon and we knew that once clients had tried these treatments they were likely to become long-term clients who came two or more times a month. So a new CACI and/or Omnilux client was worth at least $3,000 a year, often a lot more.

On the negative side we had no customers, we had no mailing list worth a pinch of poop (as Susan put it) and we'd invested a lot of money.

A potential advantage was that the salon was in North Sydney, a business area with a lot of very well paid people working in the area. If we could some of them to come into the salon the combination of the lovely decor, Susan's brilliant customer service and the state of the art treatments would be a winning combination.

But the problem was, how to get them through the door?

The initial solution

We decided to create marketing campaigns based around specific events; Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, the Melbourne Cup, the release of a new product from Payot (the products Susan used and sold) and various other events. Then we developed relevant specials including "hard to refuse" offers.

My philosophy in retail is that if you're going to do a special, make it gobsmackingly special.

My philosophy in retail is that if you're going to do a special, make it gobsmackingly special. Everyone knows that "Up to 50% off" really means all the naff stuff is 50% off and the stuff you really want is still full price.

We wanted to do specials that were so amazing that people would think "I HAVE to take advantage of this, it's so good" - because we knew we'd get a lot of them as regular customers once we got them through the door.

But we didn't want to lose money on the specials, which is where CACI & Omnilux came in. We'd already paid for the machines, we were already paying our therapists, so the incremental cost to do an extra CACI or Omnilux treatment was essentially zero.

We created two specials for every marketing campaign - a higher price offer for people with money who wanted an amazing bargain and a lower priced one for those who couldn't afford several hundred dollars. The more expensive offer was based on bundling items including CACI and/or Omnilux plus other things that were relevant to the specific event.

For example when Payot - a French company based in Paris - released a new product we offered a course of 10 CACI treatments (normally $1,250), the new Payot product (RRP $150) and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot (another French connection), total value $1,450, for $750. A damned good deal, yes?

The cost to us - CACI treatments zero (as mentioned above we'd already paid for the machine and the girls got paid whether they were busy or not), the product $100 and the Veuve Cliquot $40 (we bought a case of 12 and drank whatever was left over so that was a win-win). So even at $750 we made $600 profit - and the customer was very likely to become a long term regular.

Then we printed fliers with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, a picture of a bottle of Veuve and details of the offer and we got our therapists to hand them out on the street.

Or in B2B terms, we got them to prospect. Which created a problem....

The problem

Have you ever seen people handing fliers out on the street? Of course you have. What do you normally do?

Scurry past and hope they don't see you? Snap "no thank you" and walk on? Ignore them as they desperately try to catch your eye? Take one and scrunch it up without reading it?

Most people don't like having fliers thrust at them as they walk to work or around shops. So it's usually a relatively ineffective way to advertise a business.

And our girls HATED doing it. Prospecting is unpleasant, draining, it can be soul-destroying. IF you do it the way most people do it. That applies to cold calling as much as it does to handing fliers out on the street.

Many sales managers & sales gurus say "that's part of the job, suck it up. You have to learn how to handle rejection". I disagree. It's counterproductive. I look for ways to make it fun or easy, or both.

What do a lot of people sent on the streets to hand out fliers do? They thrust them at anyone who will take one, even if they're clearly not a potential customer. I'm sure, before we came up with an elegant solution to the problem, that many of our fliers ended up with kids or old men who would never use a beauty salon in a million years. Or the fliers end up shoved in a convenient garbage bin.

Similarly, some SDRs with call volume targets will call the talking clock (or would if it still existed) to make their call targets. If they're measured on dials they'll focus on dials - not the best of measures.

There's a better way.

The solution

So if the problem is "I hate handing out fliers" or "I hate prospecting" what's the solution?

No, it isn't "suck it up" or "watch them like a hawk and sack them if the don't buckle down".

The answer is to ask yourself "how can I make this easier and ideally fun?" Which is what Susan did (I'd like to take credit but it was entirely her idea).

We went to our local supermarket and bought packets of those tiny chocolate bars - you know, mini Snickers, Bounties, small packets of M&Ms - and stapled each one to a flier. They cost us about $0.25 each.

The next time the girls went to hand out - not fliers but chocolates - they were back smiling and empty handed after 10 minutes. People flocked around them and eagerly grabbed the chocolate and the flier. The girls went from hating it to loving it.

And some of the people who grabbed the chocolate came in to the salon after reading the flier. Not hundreds, or even dozens at first. But more than enough to justify the expense. One guy came in and said he was the MD of a local company, it was a brilliant marketing idea and he would recommend us to his entire company.

Over a year those fliers brought us dozens of new, regular clients and tens of thousands of dollars.

The result

The first month the salon opened we took around $800 for four weeks. After a year the salon was turning over $6,000 a week. In mid-2007 we sold it when we moved to Paris for five times as much as we paid it for. It was on the market for three days.

That wasn't the only marketing initiative Susan came up with. (For example, once we had a mailing list of clients we'd mail them a newsletter with the various marketing campaigns. But letters with printed labels tend to be ignored - so Susan paid her 14 year old Godson to hand-address every letter, resulting in a much higher open rate) which is why the business boomed.

Then one day she was at home when the phone rang. "I've been trying for ages to get on to you" the voice said. "we have a famous actress who's in Sydney and who's desperate to get a CACI treatment. We were given your number - why haven't you answered?"

Susan explained this was our home number and she organised an appointment for the "famous actress" - news of our salon had spread to the UK. Brenda Blethem - best known now for her role as Vera - became a regular client when she was filming in Sydney. I never met her but Susan says she's an absolutely delightful, down to earth person. Pet.

(Funnily enough Vera is set in North-East England and a number of scenes are filmed from a house overlooking the Heugh breakwater in Hartlepool, 500 metres from where I was born and the scene of pictures I use as part of my "How to Sell at 'C' Level" program.)

The lesson and the principles

I mentioned a couple of key principles Susan used. They apply as much to Selling at 'C' Level as they do to marketing a beauty salon.

• Use what you've got. (Which means you need to know what you've got)
• Make it as easy/fun as possible

There are several other principles, of course.

If you think of selling (or anything else) as a hard slog then you'll struggle to keep it up. In the longer term you'll fail, burn out or start to hate it. So ask yourself - "how can I do what I have to do as easily as possible. And how can I make it fun?"

That's what Susan did in the salon & that's what Fred Copestake and I are doing in developing our "How to Sell at 'C' Level" program, which leads me to....

Big announcement

They say you should tell your prospects and customers WHY you're doing what you do. Tell them your back story. And as you can see I'm big on stories.

Well, Fred Copestake and I are in the process of developing a "How to Sell at 'C' Level" program. It will be released early in 2023 and it will help subscribers to - yes, you guessed it - sell a lot more, and a lot more effectively, to senior executives.

It will cover targeting, identifying which companies to sell to, finding out which people in those companies you should target, understanding what they care about, learning how to get more meetings with them, knowing how to prepare for and conduct those meetings and a whole heap more.

So, WHY are we doing it? Simple.

We're doing it to make money. We're not stupid.

We aren't greedy either and the fact we're doing it to make money is good - for you.

The thing is, if we're going to ask you to pay a reasonably decent amount of money - not tens of thousands of dollars but a fair whack - then there has to be something in it for you. A whole lot in fact.

We have to make sure that you get back a hundred times more than you pay us or you a) you won't buy it and/or b) you will buy it then you'll ask for your money back. (We offer a no questions asked, 100% money back guarantee with no time limits).

So we're busting our balls (if you pardon the expression) to put as much great stuff into it as we can, based on our combined 70+ years of sales & business experience. Stuff you can actually use (I'd say that it's full of actionable insights but I don't use boring language like that) to sell more.

Our offer is pretty simple - give us money and we'll help you make a heap more money. Oh, and you'll have fun doing it.

When Fred and I got together we agreed that we'd make it as valuable as possible and that we would only do things we enjoy - and that we think you'll enjoy.

I have a firm belief that you learn a lot more when you enjoy the process. So we're having fun making it and we think you'll have fun being a part of it.

We also have a very firm "no bullshit" and also "no discounts" policy. I absolutely detest those "last chance, final offer, only 24 hours to go, limited places, book now before it's too late" so-called offers. (See the next section) Everyone knows they're fake and dishonest.

So we won't be doing any of that and we won't be offering any ongoing discounts or special offers with one exception (below). In fact as we add more content the price will go up.

The one EXCEPTION - we are offering a one-off, great value, special lifetime access offer for the first 100 subscribers.

What is the special, one-off, great value lifetime access offer? I don't know yet, we haven't finalised it. But it will be at least as amazing as Susan's CACI offer.

If you want to be notified when the program is ready so you can be one of those first 100, comment on this article or drop me a line and I'll put you on the list.

We have five people on the list so far (which isn't bad from one LinkedIn post) so there's plenty of room - at the moment.

Next issue - coming up

As part of researching our program we came across an email sequence that's designed to nudge you, like a sheep nipped at the heels by an electronic sheepdog, towards buying a course.

It's full of those fancy "last chance, only 24 hours to go" messages that you know are phoney and that I hate. But it gave me an idea.

So next issue I'm going to deconstruct it - share each of the 12 (twelve??!!) emails in the sequence and tell you why I hate them and why they won't work very well.

AND I'm going to write my own five (or so) email sequence which we may (or may not) send to people who want information about the program. It will be real, honest, and fun. It will use plain colloquial English (it certainly won't talk about actionable insights or optimising resources & other buzz terms). And hopefully it will also be informative and effective - but you can let me know if that is or isn't the case.

Until then, take care and Happy New Year.

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As always, I'd like to ask you a favour (or favor if you're in the USA). The way LinkedIn works, the more people engage with this article the more LinkedIn will share it - that pesky algorithm.

So if you enjoyed this and/or found it useful please "like" it. Which means, of course, going into LinkedIn to do this, which I know is a bit of a nuisance. So if you do, thank you in advance.

If you have any questions or comments, positive or critical, please share them below the article. I promise to do my very best to answer every one.

If you're on LinkedIn and we aren't yet connected, send me a connection request and mention you saw this and I'll be happy to accept.

Unless you're an axe murderer. If you're an axe murderer please let me know in the invitation.