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Marketers often assume they're the only one on the street wearing the polka dot tie and plaid jacket. After all, no other salesman would DARE infiltrate your territory, right?
I sat there in the living room with my feet propped on the coffee table sipping a cola and holding my sleeping granddaughter. Her mommy, who could sell snow to Eskimos in the winter, was telling me about her busy day at work and shooting pool with some stranger on yahoo at the computer. The new player offered to play her for dinner, if she'd consider meeting a stranger. She shrugged and told him, okay, then took the first shot.
She drew back the pool stick with the mouse and let the first shot fly. The balls broke into a loose circle in the middle of the board and she typed darn into the board.
She talked about the new rookie in the store that thought he could outsell her, while she waited to take the next shot. They alternated customers as they walked in the door. The rookie made a mark on the graph as to how much each customer would buy, before they greeted them.
She drew back the stick and took another shot. Direct drop into the corner pocket, and the next shot deflected off the back bar and re broke the circle of balls in the middle.
He typed onto the screen, "You don't play this much do you?"
She told me how the new rookie was letting her have customers he didn't think would buy product and waiting for a better customer to enter the store next. Customers were purchasing equipment, some inexpensive, others more valuable, but all of her customers were buying something.
She took another shot and dropped the first ball. She dropped the second ball. She dropped a third ball and the forth ball knocked the 8 ball across the table out of her way.
He typed into the screen, "Oh, that was close..."
She told me about the rookie's disappointment when his high dollar customers weren't buying anything by midday. She hadn't told him she was making sales, or not, just listening to his comments. When he noticed she'd sold a set of ear phones, he seemed exhilarated by his last sale of a headset. She shrugged it off and kept cleaning counters.
She drew back the pool stick and took another shot, then typed her intentions onto the screen, "8-ball, lower right pocket."
How did you do that? Her pool opponent asked as she typed a comment into the board. She answered that she played pro-pool for money in the college dorms, it's all geometry. He seemed perturbed that she'd beaten him and hadn't acknowledged her expertise.
She left him with the table and turned to tell me what happened at work.
The rookie finished the day out with less than a hundred dollars in sales on his own tickets. Her tickets totaled more than $2,800.00 and she had three buyer contracts on new equipment purchased online through customers who'd been in the store. The rookie wanted to know how she'd accomplished that and she answered, with the most important lesson of my marketing career, "I never pre-judge my opponent or sell from my own pocket!"
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