Your Best Sales Tool
People can get caught up trying to sell, sell, sell. Companies spend a lot of money on marketing, lead generation and sales teams, all looking for ways to bring in more business. But I’ve found one of the best ways to get more business is pretty simple: do an incredible job with the opportunities you already have.
Early on at Footers, we learned this lesson the hard way. We went through a rough patch where it felt like every Monday I was coming into the office having to call an upset client and refund money because we had screwed something up.
We could have hired more salespeople and spent more money on marketing, but what good would that have done if we weren't consistently delivering once we got the business? We realized that if we wanted to create a strong foundation to grow from, we needed to focus on execution first.
And in order to deliver outstanding experiences for our customers, we knew we had to create outstanding experiences for our team. We invested in our people, our systems, our training and our culture. Over time, those investments helped us become more consistent and gave us the foundation to grow.
When you invest in your culture, outstanding customer experiences naturally follow. Our team is our best marketing tool.
Saturday night was one of our busiest nights of the year. In the middle of it, I received a text from a client who happened to be attending one of the events we were catering.
He wrote, "Footers is killing it tonight! I always love it when you guys are catering an event I'm attending."
That text made my night!
Of course, I love hearing that someone had a great experience with our team. But it also reminded me of something we've believed for a long time: every event we cater is a sales opportunity, even when no one is selling.
Hundreds of people get to experience our food, interact with our team and see how we execute. Some of them are planning their own events. Others will be asked for a recommendation someday. We have no idea which interaction might lead to our next opportunity. And I think the same is true in almost every business.
The work you're doing today is creating (or limiting) the opportunities you'll have tomorrow. Every customer you serve has the potential to become a repeat customer, an advocate, a referral or simply someone who says, "I love it when those guys are here."
As leaders, we certainly need to think about growth. But sometimes the best growth strategy is making sure we're taking exceptional care of what's already right in front of us.
