Type and hit ENTER

  • Home
  • Articles
  • About
  • The Book
  • Media
  • Speaking
  • Subscribe Free
  • Advisory
  • Contact
GET CONNECTED

 

"Witty, clever and extremely relevant in these godforsaken Zoom times." Zoë Foster Blake

Book on sale now from Penguin Random House.

  • Home
  • Articles
  • About
  • The Book
  • Media
  • Speaking
  • Subscribe Free
  • Advisory
  • Contact
Marketers: Listen To Frontline Sales People
Share
Articles

Marketers: Listen To Frontline Sales People

September 3, 2018
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

By Ian Whitworth

https://ianwhitworth.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Biggie.mp3

Audio Version 5″30″


 

Biggie … Or Smalls?

 

Hello, marketers. What do your front-line people think about your brand?

Brands won’t work unless the whole business is on board. And the acid test is how your staff feel about saying your brand messages out loud.

I was reminded of this when I was sent this savage review of a “hip-hop” themed Poke restaurant (do not read if you’re troubled by industrial-strength swearing).

There are dishes named after Eminem, Jay-Z and Kendrick, or you can be your own “Mixmaster” by choosing different “flayvas”. Then comes the size. Do you want “Biggie” or “Smalls”?

Biggie or Smalls.

That is an actual question they make their staff ask customers.

No employee in a civilized society should be made to look customers in the eye and ask that. Particularly not someone on a junior restaurant pay grade.

In reality they don’t make eye contact. They look down in a embarrassed way, and mumble it out. The customer gets the clear message that Something Is Not Quite Right Here.

If marketing is just seen as a department in your business, you don’t have a brand. You only have a handful of your staff believing the thrilling brand vision: the people who wrote it. Everyone else is just “yeah whatever”.

 

Marketers’ Major Mistake

 

It’s partly because marketers tend to regard sales and frontline service people with mild contempt for their lack of a degree, their embroidered shirts and their vulgar urge to design their own email footers in Comic Sans.

Underestimating sales people is a major mistake. Because people who sell things all day soak up a lot of instinctive knowledge about people and what makes them buy. It goes way beyond the ‘Female 25-39 AB Family-Oriented Lifestyle Seeker’ stereotypes that infest office-bound thinking. Good sales people have near-psychic skills.

When I was writing ads, I liked to spent a lot of time lurking in stores with salespeople, watching them sell the product.

The experienced reps would watch and predict exactly what the customer would be looking for, what they would say, and whether they would buy or not.

All before the customer had said a single word. They were usually dead right. The experienced ones just read the non-verbal signals, tuned in by years of winning and losing sales.

 

Their Experience Beats Your Data

 

Sales people don’t need to do customer research surveys on your products, because irate customers have complained that information directly to their face.

Reps get to see products stress-tested in ways you can’t imagine, by the sort of customers who have trouble with shoelaces. And they keep smiling.

Good front-line people are the essence of all that’s positive about a brand. In most businesses, customers get more involved with your sales and service people than they do with any of your brand campaigns. And those sales and service people, on average, think the marketing people are out-of-touch showponies.

I’ve sat at the back of a lot of sales conferences watching the marketing department do their song and dance act while the sales people nodded off, waiting for the new products bit. The “key brand drivers” and “engaging content” were seen as empty blather that would change when the inevitable new marketing team arrived in a few months.

They’re Accountable

 

Sales people know about accountability. Marketing people can get away with projects that deliver a zero measurable return, because it created an intangible boost in “brand equity”. That may be true, and a legit step on the pathway to profits, but see how a rep would go justifying a month without sales as “building relationship equity”.

Getting everyone singing from the same page on your brand is a minor miracle. But it’s so worth doing. When I was developing brands we would spend half our time working with sales reps, techs, project managers and so forth, trying to find something they’d feel comfortable saying at work.

If it’s not comfortable, they won’t say it. Ever.

 

The Ultimate Test Of Words

 

Saying words aloud is a great test of whether they’re up to the job.

I write stuff that feels like solid gold genius at the time, then read it out the next day and wonder: did chimps break into my laptop and tap out this shameful drivel?

Brands that your whole staff don’t get behind are like fridge magnets, a thin layer of colour and cheap amusement that doesn’t change what’s beneath.

If your brand message rings true for the majority of your staff, chances are it will resonate with clients. It probably answers a genuine issue in people’s lives, rather than some theoretical need spawned in the PowerPoint swamp.

Of the factors that will bring you long-term profits, this one’s … a Biggie.

Sorry about that, it’s Fathers Day so I’m treating myself to a single indulgent dad joke. Carry on my friends.

 


Your Future Depends On This

I write a piece like this one every Tuesday.

You should subscribe, because I’ve tested everything I write about here on our own business, with our own money. We’ve never set up a hip-hop poke restaurant, but I’ve made mistakes that have cost me six-figure amounts. Luckily the non-mistakes have pulled in seven-figure amounts so it all balances out. Read this stuff once a week and it’ll save you at least one catastrophic mistake in the next year. Deal.

It’s only one email a week, that won’t kill you.

Also if you liked this you might enjoy 5 Reasons To Always Talk To Cab Drivers.

September 3, 2018

Related News

Other posts that you should not miss.
Grant Cardone vs Parkinson's Law Smackdown
Articles

Cardone 10x vs Parkinson’s Law: which makes you more cash?

February 7, 2022
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

Business book smackdown time. This week, The 10X Rule vs Parkinson's Law. One has made me a lot of money, and the results might surprise you.

Read More
February 7, 2022
Posted by Ian Whitworth
Articles

Why we dropped a 15-year supplier relationship

June 6, 2022
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

It's one, simple, obvious thing that loses you the client. This week: what that is, and how to avoid doing it yourself.

Read More
June 6, 2022
Posted by Ian Whitworth
Smokin' Joe and the power of informal communication
Articles

Smokin’ Joe And The Power Of Informal Communication

November 9, 2020
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

Make all the grand strategies you like but your staff's informal communication habits can cancel your plans. Open management is the answer.

Read More
November 9, 2020
Posted by Ian Whitworth
← PREVIOUS POST
You Overestimate Your Relationship With Me
NEXT POST →
I Am Not Yr Fam: How Not To Talk To Millennials

1 Comment

on Marketers: Listen To Frontline Sales People.
  1. Glenn
    September 4, 2018 @ 3:41 am
    -

    Gold! 🙂

FREE E-BOOK

SUBSCRIBE
MOST POPULAR
  • Last-minute grocery businesses are a massive bag of dicks
    June 27, 2022

    It’s a business model that seems to have cherry-picked all the worst, hardest, most expensive elements of running a business.

  • Scotty Marketing
    3 post-Scotty lessons: good marketing is not like that
    May 30, 2022

    Don't be a product that people only buy once. How to make marketing a force for honesty and profitability in your business instead.

  • Undisruptable South Korea deal
    Undisruptable’s first international publishing deal
    January 31, 2022

    Undisruptable will see its first international release later this year and it's not in a country you'd expect.

  • “An Australian business classic.” Reviews of Undisruptable
    July 12, 2021

    The reviews are in and they are very good.

ABOUT IAN WHITWORTH

Ian Whitworth is a reformed advertising creative director turned entrepreneur with a successful national group of businesses that he doesn’t work in day to day. Read more

POPULAR TAGS
management
branding
Sales
Marketing
jargon
Persuasion
Covid 19
Nickelback
Pitching
Coronavirus
strategy
MBA
startup
Copywriting
Motivation
Business
CEO
Design
Graphic Design
Business Travel
Elon Musk
Frequent Flyer
David Attenborough
Advice
Lacey Filipich
Saxton Speakers
Scene Change
Penguin Random House
Gary Vaynerchuk
Sales Pitch
Tendering
Planning
Conversation Skills
Customers
Customer Service
AI
Shingy
LinkedIn
Simon Sinek
Success
Presentations
Mr Pigden
Motivators
Entrepreneur
Ian Wright
Archives
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Whitworth Communications 2020
Marketers: Listen To Frontline Sales People - Undisruptable