9
YOU CAN’T SELL ALONE
Years ago, we had a retired police officer named Harvey who worked security for us at our store in Westport. He was a true ambassador, and he adored kids. My recollection is that he didn’t have any children of his own, but he sure had hundreds that remember him when they came into the store. One reason they loved him so much was that he would always give them a dime. We didn’t even know he was doing it until long after he had started his money distribution.
While he had one eye protecting us from shoplifters, clearly he most enjoyed his passion for kids shopping with their parents.
Sure, the dimes he gave out were a modest gesture, but they were also a simple way of making customers feel happy. Dad and Bill used to say Harvey really reflected our mission, making customers . . . in this case children of course . . . feel happy—for it helped put their parents in a comfortable place to bring the whole family, and it seemed they always wanted to come back to Ed Mitchells, as we called the store in the early years.
Harvey was our “Officer Friendly.”
So what’s the point?
Everyone in an organization has to sell. No matter how well you follow my selling process, salespeople can’t do it alone, not if they want to achieve the success warranted by their abilities. Sales happen in an environment, in our case the hugging culture. And that culture must support them. Sellers may be the ones on the front lines, but everyone around them needs to pitch in. Buyers, tailors, cashiers, marketing people, credit managers, accountants, shipping and receiving folks, administrators, even security. If the security officer at the door smiles and says hello and thanks you when you leave, that’s selling too. Everyone sells. That mentality is the very essence of our selling process.
And all these other associates, whatever their job descriptions, are your teammates, and they need to be embraced as teammates. Knowing and respecting and trusting them is absolutely vital to selling.
Successful selling is no longer, as Arthur Miller put it, a solitary person “riding on a smile and a shoeshine,” though that smile and shoeshine certainly help.
There’s an old African expression that says it all: “If you want to go quietly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
I’m a fervent believer in the power of the team. In high school and college, we played the old single-wing formation, sort of like today’s shotgun. I played both ways on the football team. On offense in high school, I was the fullback, but I called plays and passed as often as I ran. In college at Wesleyan, I was a more conventional fullback in the backfield using the T formation.
After three games my sophomore year, all the quarterbacks were hurt. The coach called the team together and said, “Can anyone play quarterback?” I gingerly raised my hand and told him my background and how I thought I could handle the job. “All right then,” he said. And then I stood up and said to the team, “Now if I’m going to play quarterback, you linemen better really block.”
Everyone laughed. But I meant it. I couldn’t complete passes underneath a defensive lineman.
SELLING IS INTERDEPENDENT
If you’re a relentlessly independent person, you’re not going to make very many sales, not in the long run. Independent sellers refuse to allow others to assist during any stage of the selling process. They even want to ring up their sales.
On the other hand, when you solicit help and are able to work well with your team members, you become interdependent. That’s a far more effective way to sell.
It’s much more than the linemen blocking for the quarterback. There are the receivers and the running backs and the coach and the general manager and the owners. And do you think a player succeeds without the water boy or the team doctor and trainers? Not to mention a supportive crowd cheering you on.
The same, of course, happens in selling. After all, where does the first impression actually start? At our stores, it begins when the customer has found a clean and safe parking place in one of our parking lots. Where does it end? When the customer gets a friendly goodbye from our attendant or from someone near the door. It’s not just the seller who delivers these impressions.
Same thing at a brokerage house. At a car dealer. At an an airline. Anyplace you go to buy something or receive a service.
The playing field has to be set up just right by a visual team that puts the right products on the mannequins and dresses the windows in an exciting, dynamic way. Of course, many months earlier, the buyers have to buy the right product.
The owner too is terribly important—I’m an unbending believer in the power of number one—and the owner or owners set an example by being there in the store on the floor during busy times.
The same with the sales managers and the buyers, who also pitch in. During busy periods like Saturdays, which I call “Game Day,” we have buyers who are on the selling floor, and they can help a seller by going into a song and dance on the uniqueness of a fabric or how it’s made. It’s the way specialists in an investment house or insurance agency can jump in to assist with related products that they know best.
Think of the marketing department and how important its members are by sending out direct mail pieces to entice customers into the store. Or the simple but sophisticated computer system we have that shows each sales associate when a customer should be ready to buy a particular product. And gives them the information they need to do the follow-up personalized notes and wish them happy birthday or happy anniversary.
Obviously the merchandise has to be received by the receiving department with the correct bar codes and tickets on the products so that they can be properly identified during the selling process on the floor. Just think of the simple advantage of having the right data on the tickets—the product size, style, color, and so forth. And of course, there are people behind the scenes who examine all this data and use it to make sure we have the right product at the right time at the right price for every customer that walks through the door and is greeted with a friendly “Hello, great to see you again.”
We actually have customers who request certain fitters and tailors by name. And we have customers who only like a certain customer service person to ring them up, because they’re connected with the person. They will wait, even though someone else is free, just to be handled by that person. It’s amazing.
The credit people sell, too, and are integral to the team. Yes, they’re collecting money, but when they do it the hugging way, they help build relationships. Just take Iren Vass, one of our credit associates. I call her Iren “I love my job” Vass, since she always comes to me and says, “You know, Jack, I love my job!”
Every month, Iren makes calls to some of our customers reminding them of their payment due dates. And she does it in a warm, collegial fashion. She gets to know the customer, and the customer gets to know her. One gentleman was going through a very rough time, and Iren decided not to bother him with the “call” one month. Believe it or not, he actually called her and said, “Did you forget about me? I miss our calls!” And they chatted for 30 minutes.
THE SPIRIT OF SUPPORT
When you realize that everyone sells, you show respect to your colleagues. Clearly, sellers should never criticize their teammates, but rather praise them and be supportive of them, helping them when they need it so they will return the favor. You have to think of a store or business as a village and a community.
I call this the spirit of support.
At our stores, I notice these little touches that truly matter. When a seller passes a fellow sales associate engaged with a customer, he or she always smiles or gives a closed-fist hello or says, “Hi Judy” to the associate and gives a nod to Judy’s customer.
Of course, if the passing seller knows the customer, the seller would greet the customer, too, “Hi Barry,” and perhaps make some small talk. Unless the seller felt like he or she was interrupting the positive flow of the sale; then the passing seller would stay with a quick hello and keep moving.
Seems like a minor thing, but when you envision 30 or 40 sellers all doing this, it generates considerable positive energy.
When you open up to your teammates, this produces loyalty, appreciation, and support, plus that special bonding that comes from a hugging culture that blends with the selling culture. It’s not just about dresses and suits. It’s about selling yourself.
If the garment has to be altered, we introduce Phuong, Sylvia, Simone, Elena—the fitter-tailors—to the customer. The communication between the fitter and the seller is very important. Perhaps the seller has learned that a new customer has had challenges at other stores with the fit of his collar. So the seller tells the fitter beforehand to pay special attention to the collar. Or perhaps the woman needs the dress for a special occasion like a wedding, or sadly a funeral, and alterations have to be done the same day or the next day. Again, the seller should fill in the fitter. It’s all part of mutual trust.
As Marilyn Wallach said to me one day, “I couldn’t do it with one of those links missing. I could not do my sale without the team.” Especially the Shipping Department. Cathy Pagliuso and her team always ship garments well packaged and on time.
One thing that’s very important: you don’t beat up on teammates if they make a mistake. No one goes to jail over a mistake. A lot of stores lead by intimidation and intimidate people on a daily basis. Not us. You correct mistakes and learn from them, but you don’t get gang-tackled.
It’s worth noting that being part of a team doesn’t mean you shrug off responsibilities because there’s someone else to shoulder them. Many of us have heard the expression “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” meaning of course that there is no room in a team for someone who has a super-big ego—someone who thinks and acts like he or she is the entire team!
Yet I believe there is a “me” in “team.” By that I mean that every player has to ask himself or herself, “How can I practice and perform my best every time I’m on the field.”
Here’s the meaning of “team”—together everyone achieves more. And it’s really true!
Once I asked Norberto Barroso, one of our outstanding sellers of men’s clothing, to tell me a story about an incident that really gave him satisfaction and was fun. I expected something about a big sale he had made, but that’s not what I got. He told me, “I would say the most fun I have had was having a customer come in and compliment not just me but everyone as a team, from customer service to the tailor shop to the gentleman who gives him his validation ticket in the parking lot.”
I love hearing that all day long.
EVEN THE DRIVER ENTERS THE EQUATION
Don’t believe that just your own colleagues are part of the selling team. It’s even broader than that.
For instance, drivers are sellers. You bet they are. If as a seller you find yourself needing to get a ride for a customer—to the customer’s hotel or to the airport or back to the person’s home—well then the driver can very much impact your relationship with the customer. In a positive or negative way.
Steve, a friend of mine who was once in the driving service business, was fortunate enough to have the fun of handling Paul Newman. The first time was an early-morning ride to the airport, and Steve noticed that Paul had a cup of coffee with him. Steve had read that Paul loved Budweiser beer, so when he picked up Paul on his return trip, he had a cold one for Paul. And he had a cup of coffee the next day for an early-morning pickup. Paul became a valued client of the service, because that driver knew how to sell.
We’ve had a similar gratifying experience with Eddie Tam, the gentleman we use in San Francisco for transportation to and from the airport. During my first ride with Eddie, he proceeded to tell me his story—how he was in business for himself now; charges the same as or less than cabs; won’t take a tip; sends a documented bill; can be contacted by email, text, or phone.
When I got out at the airport, he said he would send the bill by email the next day, and sure enough he refused my tip. He asked what beverage I liked if I needed him for a morning flight. (Yes, there he was setting me up for a return sale.)
“Black coffee,” I told him, adding that Linda often comes with me and likes tea. I’ve used him many times since, and he always has my black coffee and Linda’s tea. When I’ve ridden with Eddie around Christmas, he has always offered me some candy. I’ve recommended him many, many times to others.
SELL MANAGERS ON GIVING SUPPORT
A big issue in selling is that, just as sellers need specialists and buyers and security and marketing, they also need the support of their managers, leaders, and owners. It goes without saying that great leaders always support their sellers.
It’s our practice that a sales associate almost always tries to introduce a first-time customer to a team leader or one of the Mitchells. This connection is valuable from both an emotional standpoint (the power of number one) and an intellectual standpoint, since you’re introducing the customer to somebody who knows more about certain aspects of the products or services.
We like to leave control of these introductions in the hands and direction of the seller. Over time, we will have worked so often with each seller that we know what each seller normally likes us to say or do. In my case, I like to mention that we are a third-generation family business. While saying those words, I’ll watch the customer’s eyes and expressions and see if that notion connects. If it does, I continue stressing the family feeling we nourish in the store, maybe probing for what the customer’s family consists of and does.
Sellers must be empowered by management to do whatever it takes and be trusted to do the right thing at all times. At our stores, if a customer needs something, the seller is empowered and supported by the company to make the decision. It makes a big difference in building a rapport between sellers and customers.
I should point out that many business leaders are resistant to change. That’s why change often has to come from sellers promoting it, so it rises to the top. There’s a concept known as the “sunk-cost effect,” in which people tend to keep doing something that obviously isn’t working. At the New Yorker, James Surowiecki wrote an interesting column about the inclination of business leaders not to abandon a strategy because they’ve sunk so much cost into it. And they don’t want to admit that they were wrong. He brought up a study of the NBA that found that high draft picks consistently got more playing time than lower draft picks, even when their performance didn’t justify it.
It seems to me this is very applicable to what goes on in selling. Business leaders keep doing the same thing, even if evidence suggests customers are unhappy, because the leaders have invested in what they’re doing.
There’s a Golden Principle that sellers must remember. Owners and managers have the gold, and so they make the rules. Sellers should not forget that they have an interdependent relationship with their owners and managers, the people that they report to. If salespeople want to change to the philosophy I believe in and have seen work marvelously, then they have to sell that selling process to their managers and owners if they expect it to succeed. It could be one of the most important sales they ever make.