Boosting their sluggish sales

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Having wasted time with a string of small-time insurance companies, I finally landed an interview with a major marketer of financial products.   

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He scanned my resume: “editor… proofreader…life insurance and securities license…outside sales.” That should have impressed him, but he didn’t crack a smile. 

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“Here’s the good, bad and the ugly with this job: we have the contract with the teacher’s union.” He hesitated. “We need a sales rep at the university at San Bernardino.” 

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His tone shifted to exasperation. Even with the union endorsement, the school had just a handful of clients and a poor reputation. Only six sales in the last four months. So the pressure was on to find a self-starter—no handholding.  

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My mind pored over the scenario. “Who do the employees consider to be a financial authority? I blurted out: “Personnel Manager.”

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Gracie had been in Human Resources for 14 years. I admired the wine posters on her walls. We were soon chatting about Chardonnays versus reds about tax-sheltered annuities, alumni and campus VIPs. 

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Turns out, we both spent our early years in San Diego County. Addicted to avocados. Got four leads from her and a promise to send more my way.

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That first one was Rick, a biology professor: long, grey beard and easy going. My first-appointment jitters didn’t show through my standard script. He reached for the pen. 

 

So I pulled out the boilerplate contract—oops! No signature page!  Without blinking, I drew a line at the bottom of the third page and handed him the pen. He signed, it sailed through payroll. 

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Next was Frank Shea. His fellow groundskeepers turned to him for financial advice. My father was a landscaper so mowing lawns was the icebreaker.

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Once a client, he lined up the other groundskeepers. And if Frank says it’s okay…  Guilt by association. 

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But seminars were a favorite. The second round was typical: a company-sanctioned script filled with reasons to invest, municipal bonds, return rates and more. 

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Questions punctuated the presentation. I tossed in a joke to lighten them up: “borrow money from pessimists; they don’t expect it back.” Even the hard-nosed deans and tenured professors cracked a smile.

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Then came the one-on-ones. The dry data gathering—tax rates, portfolios and such—was woven with their goals, purposes, attitudes. That gave a more accurate retirement picture when it was translated into graphs and income projections.  

  

Rick the biologist had no surprises; he just wanted a worry-free retirement. Ironically, Dr. Shahad, an economics professor, was still working on balancing his checkbook, so we cracked open his ledger over coffee and cleaned it up. 

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Given the gravity of the situation, Dennis wanted every detail of my every move in my weekly reports; contacts, referrals, conversations. He was anxious to know what worked. He was always nervous. 

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So 10 am every Monday he got my weekly report in a different style of writing; whimsical, or academic, newspaper headline after that.  

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Six months and several managers later, my company had 83 new clients and tripled their monthly income.