New Month, New Ideas...

March - the month that's supposed to come in like a lion and out like a lamb... well, maybe except for here in the great Pacific Northwest. Up here, we're enjoying the latest beautiful day in the mildest winter many of us can remember in a long time. Thanks to El Nino, it's been smooth sailing here. But everyone else out there? The lion's roaring.

But slowly, the calendar continues to turn. Soon, we'll all be defrosting and doing what we do well - helping our customers tell their stories. Here at PI, I've been busy as well, working with some suppliers to find out new ways to help you do that. Here's my first one today - and I'll be introducing more in the coming weeks.

One way to make yourself memorable when you visit a client or prospect is to appeal to more than one of their senses. While an in-house meeting may be good for appealing to the sense of hearing and sight, the most memorable sense memories are generated by your nose and your tongue. Here's an experiment to try. Close your eyes and think of chocolate chip cookies. Remember that smell, the taste of a warm choclate chip cookie in your mouth. I'm guessing when you thought of that, you immediately remembered the time you had that cookie - what the kitchen looked like, what you were doing, etc.

As a sales professional, this knowledge is power - and you can harness this knowledge make it work for you. You can even use chocolate chip cookies to do so! I work with a company named Thanks-a-Dozen. They specialize in custom printed food boxes - boxes you can carry donuts and cookies in and that you can deliver to your clients. The exteriors of the boxes are printed in brilliant full color, to show your message - to tell your clients and prospects your story!

Bring these with you on multiple sales calls, and you'll find yourself not only welcome, but anticipated (one salesperson we know uses these to make a sales call once a month to one of his clients; when he was late to that meeting due to a last minute out-of-town trip, he found a voice-mail from the office manager, saying they had missed him that morning, and checking to make sure that he was OK)!

I'd love to show you these in person. Interested? Give me a call and I'll deliver you one of the boxes and a half-dozen gourmet donuts, and show you how effective a sales tool they can be.

Time for me to deliver one of these donut boxes to a client. I'll write more later. Until then, stay safe, and remember - it's your story, I'm just here to help you tell it.