The Prospecting Professor

Happy Arbor Day!

Arbor Day was the brainchild of J. Sterling Morton, a native of Detroit who moved to the Nebraska Territory in 1854. Disturbed by the treeless plain that he had immigrated to, he became an enthusiastic advocate of planting trees, shrubs and flowers. As the editor of Nebraska's first newspaper, he had the forum to spread his agricultural evangelism.

Over the years, Morton's infectious enthusiasm for tree-planting was adopted by his fellow Nebraskans. In 1885, Arbor Day was declared a legal holiday for the state. Today, Arbor Day is celebrated by states and countries throughout the world...and the most common date for the state observances in the last Friday in April.

As a resident of Minnesota, The Prospecting Professor has a special affinity for trees. It is not widely known that, at one time, white pine forests covered 70% of the state. The white pine of the Upper Mississippi was a magnificent tree. Sometimes it stood in the forest 200 feet high with a diameter of 5 feet. The largest, and most famous, white pine in the state was the 'Cass Lake Pine', which was 425 years old, and yielded 6300 board feet of timber.

No other soft wood had as many desirable qualities as the white pine. It was strong, slow to decay, light in weight, odorless, and easy to cut. It seasoned well and had strong resistance to weather, and time.

In the 1850s, the lumber interests moved into Minnesota...after they had their way with Wisconsin and Michigan. Going to work, the timber interests became devastatingly effective in the de-nuding of the white pine forests. Within 60 years, most of the white pines were gone. Today, just 3% of the original white pine forests are still standing.

Networking Ideas That Celebrate Arbor Day

1. Proclaim Arbor Day. Does your town or community celebrate Arbor Day? Find out if they do. If not, get involved and organize your own Arbor Day. Here's the template for the official Arbor Day proclamation.
2. Plant a Tree in Memory or Celebration. One acre of forest generates 4 tons of oxygen, and absorbs 6 tons of carbon dioxide, annually. Over the course of 50 years, a single tree can generate $31,250 of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycle $37,500 worth of water, and control $31,500 worth of soil erosion. Plant a tree to celebrate: a wedding, a Bar Mitzvah, a graduation..or to celebrate the memory of a Special Person.
3. Volunteer Tree Planting. Join an organization that is re-planting trees in your state.

Drip Marketing

Hank Paulson is the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Although he has never, ever used e-mail, he is an inveterate user of the phone...on average he has many hundreds of phone conversations daily. In a recent interview in Fortune, he revealed some of his work methods and successes.

"When I got back to the office in January, I called 60 CEOs in the first week to wish them happy New Year. I had never done that before, but it was great. I asked them about their business and their relationship with Goldman."

Goldman Sachs is one of the world's most prominent investment banks, with $43 billion in revenues and 22,000+ employees. Although it is shocking that he has never used e-mail, it is heartening to see that simple, "staying-in-touch" phone calls are used by CEOs who make $30.1 million annually (his 2005 income).

Getting Referrals

Miriam Lawrence, of Automatic Referrals, has a good post on how to get "back-door" referrals. In the same vein, here is a note that can be used...whereby your client can contact a potential referred prospect.

This note can be especially effective using email. Here is how it might work. The client sends an email to the referred prospect...and copies you on the email. You wait a few days, no longer than a week, and contact the referred person by email directly, asking them if you might call them on the phone. In this conversation, you will make initial introductions and set up a face-to-face meeting.

Here's the body of the note:

Dear Prospect:

This is just a note to introduce Miriam Lawrence who will be getting in touch with you soon.

Miriam has done some work for me in the investment and insurance areas.

Certainly, neither Miriam nor I are assuming that you would be in the market for her services; however, I felt very positive about my experience with her, so I  would like to introduce the two of you.

Probably, like  me, you are not eager to talk to another person in this business, but in this case it might be well worth your time to make an exception.

Best regards,

Of course, this doesn't always work. Emails are very easy to ignore...especially when the referred prospect is a busy-type who might be getting 100+ emails daily already. In that case, a handwritten note may be more memorable and effective.

How many handwritten letters did you get today?

StoryTelling...the Whole Foods Way

In Robert McKee's brilliant book, "Story," he describes the desire for story:

"The world now consumes films, novels, theater, and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story art's have become humanity's prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight to life. Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience."

John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, tells good stories. He got his start in 1978. He was 25 years old, and was a college dropout...three different times. He had an idea to begin a health-food-store-restaurant, and borrowed $45,000 from friends and family to begin his innovative concept.

He's been successful. Over the past five years, Whole Foods stock (WFMI) has increased by 539%...and recently Wal-Mart announced their own push into organic foods.

The growth of Whole Foods has been imbued with the power of story. As one walks around the perimeter of the store, you will see the many story examples of the organic suppliers and farmers who have partnered with Whole Foods over the years.

The story of Rosie the organic, free-range chicken is one such story example. Displayed on a bed of ice, at more than twice the cost of a regular non-organic bird, Rosie's life story is told in an accompanying brochure. Spending her life in a custom ranch house in California's wine country, exercising in an airy, sunlit building on an earthen floor, Rosie has been raised on a diet of golden corn...without the benefit of antibiotics or growth hormones.

The reality of Rosie's life is not the same as presented in this wistful tale. As UC-Berkeley journalism professor, Michael Pollan, describes in his new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma,"...Rosie's concept of "free-range" is most likely to be different than the image shared by many consumers.

Rosie was raised in a barracks the size of a football field, along with 20,000 or so of her fellow chickens. For the first five weeks of here life, Rosie is not "free-range"...her movement is restricted to within her compound. At 5 weeks, two smaller doors are opened at either ends of the building...that allow egress to the outside. If Rosie and her feathery friends choose to venture outside, they would find 15-foot strips of grass on either side of the building...where they could cavort and cluck, and do the other things that chickens do.

In real-life, Rosie never dares to go outside, nor do any of  her friends. Outside is a completely foreign concept to her...besides all of her food and water is inside anyway. Her masters are equally fearful of the outside and glad that Rosie shares their mindset. Without antibiotics, Rosie is very susceptible to disease, as well as all pathogens that the outside would expose her to. As Michael Pollan describes it, the last weeks of Rosie's life is not so much "free-range" as it is "vacation option."

At 7 weeks, Rosie is "processed."

The End!

Cold Walking Tips

One of the best-ever "cold-walking" salespersons was the late, great Ben Feldman...who worked for New York Life for 50+ years.

He never used the phone. Surprisingly, he was very self-conscious of rejection...on the phone, that is. However, he was relentless when it came to meeting prospects through "cold-walking."

He didn't call it "cold-walking." He referred to the process as simply "making calls." He targeted business owners within the radius of his sales geography, Youngstown, OH. He would make 30-40 calls weekly. Although he was very successful at making it through the gate-keeper the first time, he was often turned away. The prospect of this sort of rejection never bothered him. In fact, he would always return to the businesses that rejected him. He would count on the sympathy of the screener, who would begin to feel pity towards Ben...when the business owner refused to see him on the first, second, or even third attempt.

Ben always did his research before he made his calls. He never called on a business without knowing who the business owner, or the key personnel, were. To gather this information,  he used Dun & Bradstreet...which gave him this information, as well as data on the size, and financial health, of the company.

For salespersons who are cold-walking these days, another good reference source is Reference USA. Reference USA is available at many public libraries, and has a comprehensive database that lists all businesses, public and private, in North America.

If you are cold-walking,  a useful feature of Reference USA is the ability to identify all businesses within a certain radius. For example, if you are calling on Acme Tool in Keokuk, Iowa (Actually there is no Acme Tool in Keokuk...but there is one in Denver, CO.) But, hypothetically, if there was an Acme Tool in Keokuk, and you were calling on it...you could use Reference USA to find all other businesses within a certain radius. I believe you are allowed to find all businesses up to a 20-mile radius...and as low as 1/10th of a mile.

Armed with this information, the enterprising salesperson could drop in on businesses within the area (without calling beforehand), or alternatively, call one of the business-owners close to Acme Tool and say, "I was going to be in your area tomorrow visiting John Dough at Acme Tool. If you had 5 minutes, I'd love the chance to stop by and introduce myself."

Of course, if you were Ben Feldman, you wouldn't even bother calling ahead...but we are not all Ben Feldman.

Hope this helps. Ciao!

Words to Live By

Today, April 17th, is the birth anniversary of Isak Dinesen (who became known as Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke)...and author of the personal memoir, "Out of Africa."

Two of her more trenchant observations are:

    "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea."

     "When you have a great and difficult task,
      something perhaps almost impossible,
      if you only work a little at a time, every day a little,
      suddenly the work will finish itself."

Late in her life, the Baroness was visiting the United States, and met Marilyn Monroe at a dinner party. Of Marilyn she said, "I have met the same in a lion cub that my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her."

Black Sunday

As an American living in a bountiful land, it is easy to take things for granted. However, sometimes, images of past events can jar one's thinking...and expose our lack of  historical context and perspective.

Today is the anniversary of Black Sunday, the day in 1935 when a windstorm hit a part of the Great Plains known as the Dust Bowl. That area of farmland, which included parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, was considered some of the most fertile land in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers flocked to the area and the wide use of mechanical tractors had plowed up millions of acres of land. When a drought hit the area in the 1930s, and all that plowed-up earth turned to dust.

On this day in 1935, the weather was sunny and calm. People were on their way home from church, or out visiting friends for lunch, when they saw huge flocks of birds flying south, away from a dark black cloud on the northern horizon. As the cloud approached, people realized that it wasn't a storm cloud, but a cloud of dirt, blown up by the wind.

Witnesses said it was like a black tidal wave came down from the sky. It became as dark as night as soon as the cloud descended. Static electricity stalled cars and shorted out telephone lines. People standing a few yards away from their homes got lost in the darkness.

The Sweet Success Story of Fairytale Brownies

Yesterday, April 12, 2006, the Small Business Administration announced the 116 different award-winners for National Small Business Week 2006.

Among the winners were Eileen Spitalny and David Kravetz, of Fairytale Brownies in Chandler, Arizona.

Theirs is an archetypal, entrepreneurial story. They met on the kindergarten playground in Phoenix and stayed friends throughout grade school and high school. In 1992, without baking, manufacturing, or direct-marketing experience, they began Fairytale Brownies. Moonlighting out of a friend's catering kitchen during the first year, they sold mostly through catalogs...using David's mother's 49-year-old secret family brownie recipe.. In 1993, they moved into their own bakery and went online with www.brownies.com.

They got a big break in the summer of 1994. They got a great write-up in The New York Times...that came as a result of sending out their brownies...with their press releases. (This is a time-tested trick. In getting attention, food works...especially anything sweet, or chocolate!)

Today, David and Eileen oversee a growing direct-mail gourmet brownie business that ships over 2.5 million brownies annually.

The most popular item with their customer base is the Fairytale Dozen ($32), a sampler of one of each flavor in the three-inch square size. Kravetz describes 60% of the customer base as business gift giving, although not just for the holiday season. The typical consumer customer is female, between 35 and 50 years old. Not surprisingly, more than 50% of their business falls between Thanksgiving and the the December holiday season.

They are also SBA Small Business Persons of the Year. Kudos and congratulations to Eileen and David!

Independence: Financial and Otherwise

On .this day, April 12, 1776, North Carolina's Provincial Congress authorized its delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote for independence. This declaration, the "Halifax Resolves" was the first official action by a colony calling for American sovereignty and independence.

The Halifax Resolves were important not only because they were the first official action calling for independence, but also because they were not unilateral recommendations. They were instead recommendations directed to all the colonies and their delegates assembled at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Virginia followed with her own recommendations soon after the adoption of the Halifax Resolution, and eventually on July 4, the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Last fall, the Lincoln Financial Group released the results from their "Lincoln Long Life Survey," which covers various retirement issues and includes a look at the priorities of successful people in their 60s.

Overwhelmingly, the survey participants indicated that financial independence was of great importance to them.

• 95% ranked being able to maintain financial independence as extremely or very important.
• 94% indicated that living independently was of extreme importance.
• 92% said that having a secure stream of income for the rest of their live was their #1 financial priority.

Sales Idea #268: Resolve to contact your clients today with your own "call to arms"...and lead them towards their own financial independence

The Power of First Impressions

Bill Brooks is the CEO of The Brooks Group. In the April issue of The American Salesman he discusses a salesperson's need to favorably impress prospects on the first meeting in an article entitled, "The Power of First Impressions."

Here are 8 tips that he provides that, in his view, can make or break a sale. First impressions, although not indelible, are pretty long-lasting. Prospects pay attention to those whom they perceive as having something important to say to them. This can be communicated within the first 30 seconds of interaction.

1. Portray a confident, but not superior, manner.
2. A clean, neat appearance is essential.
3. Smile.
4. Use the prospect's name...and pronounce it correctly.
5. Set a tone of  importance.
6. Never apologize for 'taking the prospect's time.'
7. Be comfortable and relaxed.
8. Position yourself through everything you say or do.

Let's think of it another way. When you meet a prospect in a sales dialogue, what is the main objective of the call? In other words...best-case scenario...what is the desired outcome when you meet a prospect for the first time?

Make a sale? Not likely, the sales cycle will entail many interactions between salesperson and prospect. Closing the prospect on the first contact is a fantasy.

Build rapport? Yes...but so what? What does this 'rapport' lead to?

Get a second meeting? Yes! The goal for their first meeting...is to get 'permission' to have a second meeting or contact.

Importantly, knowing that the goal of a first meeting is NOT to close a sale...but to simply get to the next meeting, the pressure is off. However, since the prospect may have made a judgment about you...the salesperson...within the first 30 seconds of contact...the pressure is back on!

Sorry!