You Old Son Of A Bitch

Posted by Ryan on Jun 17, 2011 in Ryan's Thoughts | 1 comment

Back in 1995 I was on the fast track to becoming the manager of a Co-op grocery store. I hadn’t officially entered the management training program, that was to start next spring, but I was being sent to WHMIS and other training programs. One of those was a sales training program.

Some might be surprised that a grocery chain would have a sales training program, but of course, the grocery business is all about sales. Perhaps not in the same way as insurance or real estate, but sales is still very important.

The course was taught by a very experienced manager, and the point he really wanted to drive home was that no matter how well you built displays, selected promotions, or how neat you kept your store, you could still make a difference in your bottom line one customer at a time. He shared a story with me that was probably my first real sales lesson, and one that I have remembered since then. It went something like this:

“Many years ago I was the Meat Department Manager at a small Co-op. I kept tight control over all of my margins, and tried my best to make personal connections with all of my customers. In a small town, this was pretty easy to do, and I got to know a lot of my customers by name. One man, however, proved to be a very difficult challenge.”

“He purchased all of his groceries from the store; by the time he got to the meat department he had a cart full of milk, produce, and dry goods. However, he never purchased any meat from me. I always talked to him about the weather, sports, and anything else that I thought he might be interested in. But still, he wouldn’t buy.”

“At that time, there was an old butcher shop in town run by an older gentleman who was part of the social fabric of the town. His prices were higher, but he had a familiarity with his customers that would be hard to ever beat. He also had that gruff, grumpy attitude that movies sometimes use to portray the stereotypical old man. It was how he dealt with his customers, too.”

“After over a year of trying to sell meat to this one customer, I gave up playing the helpful, friendly meat man. The next time I saw him in the store, I walked right up to him, slapped him on the back, and boomed out ‘George you old son of a bitch, how the hell are you doing today?’”

“Needless to say, he left the store with a cart full of meat.”

Why has this story always stuck with me? Well, I suppose there is something ‘wrong’ about it – you should never swear at your customers after all. And this was in 1995, so language rules were a little tighter (of course, the actual event happened even earlier). Meredith Brooks’ song was still years away, and people were more reserved. But the lesson served me well across a couple of different industries – you need to speak to your customers in the way that they want to be spoken to.

Who is your customer? What language do they use when they talk to their friends and colleagues? A surfer and a banker will use different terminology for the same thing. Remember also that just because your product is used by one particular type of person, it doesn’t mean that they are the person making the purchasing decision. IT department’s the world over share frustrations that many of their purchases are made by someone in the finance department.

Who do you need to reach out to? What language do they use? How do they communicate?