Dale’s Sign Sales 101

WELL, IT’S BEEN a looong time since I’ve done a column on sales. And that’s a crime because sales are the lifeblood of any company, right? Can’t fabricate, install or wrap anything until you have a customer to do it for. A customer you have convinced to give you dollars in exchange for a product you will provide.

It can be a guy with a white 2020 Dodge Challenger RT who wants his hood wrapped in black carbon fiber, or it can be the NFL looking for $2 million worth of signs to decorate Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, CA this coming February.

That’s all business is. I provide a service or product. You give me money. Period. It has zero bearing on the kind of business you are in.

Because, I hate to say it, the exchange of money is all that perpetuates this world. It’s how this plane of existence works. It’s how you send your kid to college, it’s how you buy the house in the Hamptons… Every soul on this planet needs dollar bills to survive. And if you are driven, you can create extraordinary results in that regard. Results that outlast your lifetime even.
But how, exactly, do you make that happen?

Well, let me give you my take on it… People wanna do business with people they like … huh?

Let me break this down.

In our industry, we deal with a lot of corporate businesses. (Or in the Challenger case above, we deal with a guy who wants to look cool.) But either way, they wanna feel good when they buy from us. It does not matter how “big” the client is. Know why?

Because hey are people. They go home to their spouse, pet or whatever, every night, just like you do. (Might be a way better house than yours, but they still have to deal with their crazy in-laws, car payments, broken sprinklers, etc.)

For 40 years, I have had this attitude, and that’s why Rick and I speak to a Fortune 500 CEO just like we speak to that dude with the Challenger.

We are all trying to make our way in this world. And I firmly believe, if I help a good human (regardless of how rich they are), they will recognize that in me and want to work with me more.

If that customer had a great experience with our company, if they got an amazing product from us, they are “closed.” At least for the next job. And when you finish that next job, and the next, the client begins to trust you. And at that point, you “got ’em.” But “got ’em” is not the goal.

The goal is to know that customer will call you every single time they need something, or one of their friends needs something. “Sales” are SO much more than closing the deal. SO much more than getting that deposit check. It goes way beyond that.

Here are the first two things:

#1 You give them a great product. (Period, end of discussion.)
#2 You brainstorm with them. (They want to be involved as well.)

Know why? ’Cause the customer either works for a company that they want to look good for, (plying their connections for a job well done…)

OR they own the company, and you just made it easy for them to look good to their client. They’re done. They ain’t never calling someone else. You “got ’em”…

… as long as you make sure you do the same exact thing the next time they call. Feel me? Damn. I ain’t done yet.

Looks like Sales 102 is coming next month… #LetsGO!