Boss Life (27 page)

Having described the problem, Bob starts to talk about solutions. First: make sure you know with whom you are dealing. The tactics in this situation are determined by where your customer stands in the organization. Are you dealing directly with a decision maker? A pure “D” on the DiSC profile? If so, give her the information she asks for. If you are dealing with a person in the middle of a large organization, you have a much tougher task. The trick is to tease him, showing just enough to demonstrate that you are the best company for the job without giving away valuable information. You can say anything to a client, you can show all kinds of examples of how you have solved your other clients' problems, and you can demonstrate your sterling reputation by trotting out a list of the important companies that have been your customers—but you must never, ever hand over a written proposal full of specific solutions to their problems. Never give the mid-level buyer anything he can pass on to others. Once he has that, you're toast.

Bob tells us that we should provide specific solutions only after a commitment. A real, solid, irrevocable decision to proceed. A purchase order or a deposit. Get them hooked, and then give them everything they ask for and more. Over-deliver. Bathe them with your love. Show them that choosing your company was the best decision they ever made, and make sure that this is true. Then you can ask for a letter of recommendation and referrals. These are what will get you past the next mid-level buyer.

The next day, Dan and Nick and I ruefully review all the times we've been chumps in this situation; then we start to plan our next moves. Dan has sent a proposal to a large computer company in Maryland, and now his contact is asking for a revision. He's about to send it off, but we decide that, instead of giving her the package, we're going to show only her highlights, using Glance. We'll tell her anything she wants to know, but not give her anything in hand until she tells us that we're the preferred vendor. This client has a deadline coming up—construction on the new buildings has started, and a move-in date is scheduled. She's told us she likes our work and intends to go with us. Now we'll see if she has been blowing smoke, or not.

Friday brings one more order, for around $10,000. This is Dan's job. The buyer called us in March and asked for a twelve-foot table. Dan sent a proposal, priced at $10,940. And heard nothing. Now the guy is back with a counteroffer: ten grand and he'll place the order today. Dan asks if this is acceptable, and I say, “Absolutely! We need every job we can get.” Never mind that we're giving up the profit margin. Total sales this month: $103,823. Terrible. We're three weeks in, and just passed half of my monthly target. The only consolation is that it's better than last month. Inquiries were OK this week. Sixteen calls and e-mails, just like last week. And seventeen in the first week of July. We're matching January's average and doing a lot better than the second quarter. From April 1 to July 1, we averaged fewer than twelve inquiries a week. Did restructuring the AdWords campaigns make a difference? Maybe. Probably. No, just maybe. A lot of those inquiries were referrals and repeats, not from AdWords. It's likely that the increase is just random variation.

There's no payroll this week and all the other big bills for the month have been paid. I spent only $4,148. Shop operations continued to rack up costs, nearly $7,000 a day, but the bills will be due later. And even though incoming cash was weak, just $19,748, I ended up ahead. I'll have $79,021 in my account on Monday, enough for more than two weeks.

The weekend passes quickly. It's the last one before Henry returns, next Wednesday. He'll be with us for all of August and the first two days of September. He'll be in a day camp for the first three weeks, then nothing. My mind keeps returning to the Middle East. It's almost two months since I promised to send printed catalogues. I've done nothing. Every time I think about it, my will to invest in those relationships vanishes. My confidence that I can manage a long-term, expensive project has disappeared. And if I devote a lot of hours to designing and printing a catalogue, I'll be ignoring other, more promising work. I don't want to waste money on brochures that won't produce income until some point far in the future. And with what I've learned from Bob Waks, I have even more reason to give up. I can't see how we could interact with Middle Eastern clients in the manner that Bob suggests. It's going to be very difficult to avoid sending complete proposals, and it will be almost impossible to do Glance sessions. The time difference is too much.

I decide to drop the whole thing. I talk myself into this by arguing that I don't think anyone in Kuwait or Dubai will be terribly upset. They weren't pining for my presence, and they won't miss me. In the back of my mind, though, I have nagging doubts. It's hard for me to walk away from the potential for business, no matter how unpromising.

On Monday, I report that our position is slightly better than it has been. More cash. Stronger inquiries. Some sales. Backlog at three weeks. Nobody has quit. Then, for the rest of the day, the phone rings and e-mails appear. Suddenly, customers. By four p.m., I've spoken to four potential buyers and assigned them to Dan and Nick. And we hear from three clients who are ready to place orders. The first owns an electronics store in Queens, and I've subjected him to the new sales methods for a couple of weeks. He places an order worth $11,650, for a keystone table. The second client, Nick's, is an interior designer from Mississippi, trying to get a large university to commit to a table. He sent her a detailed proposal back in March. Since then, she's made multiple requests: samples, drawings, more samples, better drawings. All spring, we meekly complied. Last week, she asked for a complete set of engineering drawings, assuring us that the client had started construction and would place the order soon. But they needed to know where to drill holes in the floor. No more Unpaid Consulting! Nick politely told her that we couldn't provide those drawings without an order. We were nervous about doing this. It's so provocative. But here's the purchase order, for a twenty-eight-foot-long table. Another $27,620 on our books. Then we take three more promising calls from mid-level buyers in a hurry to get a table delivered. We deploy the new sales methods. No one resists. They have no idea that we've completely changed the way we respond to potential buyers.

After lunch, a drop-in visit from the headmaster of a local private school, looking for a table for his office. He'd like a six-foot round, but we don't have one on hand. Except, it occurs to me, for the Eurofurn prototype. I pull it out and assemble it. He's fascinated by the way it goes together. He's got only eighteen hundred dollars to spend, but keeping the table in storage produces zero dollars for me. I tell him how much it cost me, and that it's his for the money he's got. He's delighted. All the supposed flaws that sent Eurofurn into a tizzy? He didn't see them. I'm vindicated. There is nothing wrong with that table.

I meet with Bob at seven-thirty the next morning, the last day of July. His office is neat and organized: lots of sales books, pictures of his family, awards for being top salesman, inspirational posters on the walls. I'm in a good mood. Yesterday's orders brought our monthly total to $144,893. Two of those came with deposits and we also got a couple of final payments, increasing my cash supply by $28,062. I've now got $107,083 in the bank, enough to make payroll today and run for a couple more weeks. Inquiries have been steady since the beginning of the month, and we've transformed our methods for dealing with them, thanks to Glance and the training. “Thanks, Bob,” I conclude. “You've really helped us.”

He says, “Yeah, that's all fine. I'm glad that things are turning around. Not that I expected anything else. But there's a lot more work to do. We're just getting started.” And then he asks me a series of questions. How many potential clients are we working with right now? If we sold every one of those jobs, how much money would that bring in? Who are those clients? Can I quantify how many are bosses, or assistants, or low-level people? Have I scored each one for quality, so that we know which ones to concentrate on? Have I started regular sales meetings with Dan and Nick? Am I listening in on all their phone conversations? And what about after the call is done? Are they happy? Are they excited by the new methods, or just following orders?

I answer most of these with a simple no, but the last ones make me think. Nick seems happier because the new methods seem to come easier to him. He tried Glance first and he's good on the phone. Dan seems flustered by the loss of a scripted procedure for dealing with customers. We used to treat every caller the same way, but now the situation is fluid. We have to make decisions throughout the process about what to show, what not to show, what to give them, and what to hold back. I tell this to Bob and mention that I stopped paying them commissions at the end of June.

“Hold it right there,” he says. “Why did you do that?” I explain my cash situation and that the evaluation reports emphasized that I don't hold my salespeople accountable for their failures. Holding back commissions seemed like a way to put some pressure on them. “Did it work?” Not really, at least not right away. They sold very little in the weeks after the cut. But now it seems to be working, along with everything else. “How much money did you save?” At least a couple thousand dollars. “And what did it cost you in sales?” I don't have a number. We missed our quota by a hundred and forty thousand in June and we're still sixty thousand short for July. I confess that I'm not sure that the slump is their fault, that it might have been a problem with AdWords.

“Then why did you do it if it's not their fault and they didn't instantly start selling like crazy?” I tell him that I cut my own pay months ago and I was sick of being the only one to suffer. He's not impressed with this reasoning. “You're not making sense. It sounds to me like they're being punished even though they've just followed your methods. That's not going to help us over the next few months. You think that everything has been fixed and that success is assured. Wrong. Those guys are still a long way from being effective. They're going to be challenged by what comes next. You need them to buy in and reward them when they do. The money you save is nothing compared to what you'd have if they start selling. If they are using the new methods, and it's working, give them back the commissions.”

I'm embarrassed by my stupidity, but Bob isn't done. The fact that I know very little about our prospects is unacceptable. It will lead to chaos if we get busier, and I won't be able to manage the sales process without more information. He tells me that I need to implement some kind of customer relationship management system, and the sooner the better. Our hour is up. I have a lot to think about.

My first task at the office is payroll. Should I put Bob's advice into effect immediately and reinstate the commissions? We've taken in $100,862 since the last payroll. At 2 percent, the commission on that is $2,017, almost enough to pay for a month of Bob's services. It's my decision—I can pay it, or not. I decide to wait two weeks. Things could be better by then, in which case it's obvious what to do, but if they're worse, I'll need that money.

—

IN THE SHOP
, the prototype Brand Advantage table is complete. It's not complicated—we just had to cut the top out of a sheet of prelaminated flakeboard and put an edge on it. This is not fine woodworking. The client's budget doesn't allow for it. I stand in front of the two tables—a left and a right, each shaped like a J that together form a large U shape:

I placed the legs so that the top is balanced on the axis of rotation. This keeps it from crashing from horizontal to vertical when the latch is released. I try the mechanism and it works very well. But I'm a little uneasy. Each top is much heavier than the recommended maximum for this leg. It doesn't seem like a problem when the top is flat, but when it's in the vertical, folded position, the whole weight of the top is hanging on eight small bolts. It seems a little weak.