Thursday, May 21, 2009

Sales Should Be Your Focus

I just closed another deal today on a fleet of several Isuzu Cabovers. It was a nice sized fleet of seven belonging to a medium sized company. I have been lazy the last couple months so I decided to start pushing sales a little bit more before the summer comes. If I was on top of my game I would be out passing put at least fifty business cards daily. I am under the assumption that you should drop as many "seeds" as you can throughout the day because you never know where one may find itself.

I remember talking to a guy about my business while I was at a pizza buffet for lunch and that guy ended up being the superintendent for a nice sized construction company several months down the road and we did all their equipment. The moral of that story is that you, and I need to remind myself of this all the time, to talk to everyone you can. You have no idea who is in what position.

Sales is just all about talking to people. Find something in common with someone. Open up a conversation about anything if the situation presents itself. I started a conversation with that guy over sports. Everyone loves sports. Then we got to talking about what we did and he told me and I told him.

You see a fleet you like go up and start talking with one of the employees who works there. Find out about the company. How many trucks do they have? Who is the boss? Is the boss a cool guy? Is he cheap? What is the company's reputation.

The object is to be talking with the manager or boss with as much information as you possibly can.

"Oh, I saw that one of the tires of your trucks looked kind of low, the license plate is FDR 306." That's the kind of stuff that will make it impossible for him to hang up the phone on you.

Write down everything. I remember the most insignificant details about everything I see. "I see you guy changed the paint on your store sign." Stuff like that.

A mobile oil change service is one of the easiest things to sale once you master how to do it. Everyone needs to get an oil change. It is not one of those items that people have an option of getting or not. The question is are they going to get it from you. There is no doubt they need it. Its all about how you are going to present it.

So this is how I picked up this fleet. I will go step by step exactly how I did it.

  1. I drove into the warehouse area and saw a guy getting off the forklift. I stopped him briefly and asked him who was in charge of the fleet maintiance. He told me. I asked him if he was in there and he told him yes but he was about to leave for lunch. I left.
  2. I then called the next day at around 10Am and spoke with the fleet manager. I told him that I was passing by going to a job and noticed he had several fleet vehicles. I told him what I did and then asked said in these words "and I wanted to call to see if you could use a service like this since you have several fleet vehicles." He said yes and I told him I would drop some information off around two in the afternoon since I have several oil changes to do in the area at around that time.
  3. I made a packet consisting of ) our $1,000,000 insurance policy information b)current customer list c)sample pricing of oil change service.
  4. I went their at 1:30 PM and gave him the information. I then proceeded to show him that van and all the equipment. I emphasized that we are a "Jiffy Lube for fleets" that comes "on-site." He liked it and told me he wanted all the vehicles done every three months on a Monday because that's when they are not moving.
Its that easy. Put in a little effort and you can make it happen. It was not always this easy. You have the luxury of me telling you exactly what you have to do. I had to learn all this the hard way. I made life so much harder on myself for the first two years. How am I was able to stay in business I have no idea.