Bill Farquharson, Print Tec August 25, 2003 -- This has been a summer of travel for me. I have been on the road pretty much every week since early May. It was not apparent to me how much I have been away until one of my kids came down for breakfast after another of my late night returns, looked at me and said, “I recognize the face but can’t remember the name.…” Nice. No one is particularly angry with me due to the fact that my work has paid for a new pool in the backyard. Still, someone has to service it, so they’ve informed me they would like me around a bit more. On a recent trip to Minnesota, I drove by two huge buildings, apparently the home offices of Best Buy. It got me thinking about how a printing rep might approach such a company. Sadly, my guess is that most would call, ask for the print buyer, and go through the “I’d like to opportunity to discuss how we might work together” blabbering, only to be met with a rejection. The average printing sales rep might then think, “Oh, well, I tried my best,” and move on. Does your rep know how to make twenty different sales calls? If not, he or she is most likely following the aforementioned pattern and getting the aforementioned results. To remedy the situation, here is a little exercise you can run your rep through: Have the rep make a list of all of the job titles he/she can think of within any given prospect company. Here’s a quick mind dump of a few: * President * CEO * CFO * VP Marketing * Creative Director * VP Sales * Administrative Assistant * Buyer * VP Human Resources * VP Engineering * Technical Writer * Product Manager * Accounting Manager * Admissions Director * Alumni Director Now, I don’t mean to get all “Forrest Gump” on you and list every shrimp recipe known to man, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned here. Each and every title on that list has a different set of hot buttons. That means your rep ought to be capable of understanding the various buying criteria of each and crafting a sales call that touches on the individual’s unique issues. Your sales people need new skills to compete in the new world of prospecting. This simple exercise will help them to understand the need to adapt. I would bet that Best Buy has at least twenty different people a rep should be talking to. That’s more than you can say for the availability of personnel in their average store.