Episode 97: NOW is the Time for Growth! Creating a Stronger Sales Focus in a Good Economy

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

One of the dangers in a robust economy is settling for average market growth, just responding to the speed of business as it comes to you. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. And in today's episode, Mark Graham, Common Skew's co-founder and Chief Platform Officer, and I sit down and discuss why a good economy can blind us to bigger opportunities We also chat about the unique shift you should take with your sales focus when business is good and why it's more important than ever to step back and reflect on your sales strategy. Plus, we discuss CommensQ Sessions, the one-day sales conferences coming to LA, Chicago, Dallas, and New York, and a lot more. Today's episode is brought to you by CommensQ, the effortless business management platform that powers you to process more orders and grow your sales. For more information or to start your free trial, visit commensq.com. And now my conversation with Mark Graham.

Why is a sales focus important right now?

I think it's really interesting. I mean, we just came back from Expo. The economy is doing well. The industry is doing well. I think that the latest reports from PPAI have reported a 5% growth, which is great for a mature industry like ours. People are making money. There's optimism everywhere. And that's great on one hand. And what I think is so interesting from a sales perspective is how How does the salesperson of 2019 deal with a robust economy and how do they get even more sales and even more growth, like even more than they would expect in this sort of economy? And so I think that's interesting from an intellectual level and how we can be better as sales professionals in this industry when the going is good. But how do we get our outsized share of that? So I think that's why, I think that's why sales education and sales conferences particularly relevant and why it's unique in 2019.

Very tactically speaking, I mean, the economy is roaring like when it's robust and everybody seems to be going through some good growth right now. Then what we tend to forget is that we're still leaving a lot of money on the table because we're so busy and typically we're strapped. We're just strapped for time. We've maximized all of our resources and we don't realize not only is there more opportunity than ever before, or in recent years there's more opportunity, but there's also more opportunity for market share and growth. Than before. And so the reason why you have to step back and really focus on sales is because it's the last thing that's requiring focus, because business for the most people is coming in steadily. I worry sometimes that we settle for a percentage of growth that's just dependent on the average market growth versus exponential growth that can really, really build a robust business.

Well, Bobby, so you may remember back to the time when you were managing your sales team at Robin. I remember years ago you and I had this conversation where you would talk about when the times were good, your sales team largely was just responding to orders that came in, a more reactive approach. And I don't know that you were necessarily saying that negatively. I think you were just saying that was the reality of the sales team at that time because the phone's ringing off the hook or emails was going crazy and they were just jamming orders into the system. And while that was great, it also meant that they were, A, not realizing their true potential in terms of getting that outsized growth, but more alarmingly, there was a very limited sales pipeline because the sales team didn't have a chance to really go and dig in and invest in future growth.

Yeah, a healthy economy in a sense blinds us to more opportunity because we end up settling, I think, for an average growth. I'm repeating myself, but I really do think it's a little blinding and The whole idea of a stretch goal that Catherine talks about a lot. It's also easy to just fall into a pattern of taking business without focusing on the right kind of business. So not only are we dealing with making sure we're not leaving a lot more money on the table than we are, but we're also making sure we're not settling for just average growth. And when I say that, I mean, like, the whole idea behind launching Common Skew Sessions at this time was to interject into our minds a very hyper sales -focused conference so that we could sharpen ourselves and grab a hold of this tremendous opportunity to grow beyond our imaginations. And I think that's one of the things— I'm chasing my words to say— is that we, we are growing to an acceptable rate, but are we growing beyond our wildest imaginations, which is possible when there's a robust economy, right?

Right. And I think also when we look around the community, or when we look at our very talented peers that are within this industry, and we, and we see creativity, we see the depth of clients, we see the depth of experience. You look at those assets and you think to yourself, 5% growth, hey, I'm fine with that. But I think that we can go well beyond that, particularly aided by this great economy. But why settle for average, right? Why settle for average? And I think that that was the— I think that's the question that you and I and Catherine and certainly many of us on the Commonsku team as well as in the community We're asking ourselves, like, what does 2019 look like? And I think that's why we came up with this. I was actually laughing a little bit as you were talking. I was thinking to myself, like, leave it to guys like us to come across as pessimistic and negative at this time. And I was thinking to myself, like, poor listeners are going, we're kicking butt with our sales, and now Mark and Bobby are saying it's not enough.

Well, can I provide some context for that, though? Part of the reason we feel that way is because you and I have been through a few recessions already. So we've been through recessions. We've been through this major spike. I mean, before— people forget, before the huge recession, before this one, people were making great money. And there was, there's like these seasons in your business where you have an opportunity to invest and grow. And then there are seasons where you just shift your focus and pivot based on how the economy is doing. For example, when the economy tanks, you're going to be focusing on new business development. You're going to be focused on getting closer to making sure that what you're selling is driving ROI for the customer, all those kinds of things. In a robust economy, there's a slight shift in the selling focus. There might be, for example, just one is getting more revenue from other media, like getting spend, shifting the customer's mind from spend that's not working in media to shifting it to promotional products. So my point being, you and I have been doing this long enough to know there's a fluidity to sales and there's a focus to sales depending on the season of which you're in. So we're not necessarily pessimistic. What we're saying is we're actually, it's incredibly optimistic to say, guys, We need to actually strive for more because there's more awaiting us right now.

Absolutely. And I loved how you touched on the point just a moment ago about growing promotional product sales by taking budget away from other budgets or other media. I think that's such an interesting opportunity for our industry. I mean, we're in this large $20+ billion industry. Big space. If you think about the overall marketing spend and the promotional products industry is sizable but is nothing compared to the overall spend. And, you know, if you're selling to a marketing buyer, you think about all the other investments they make to drive marketing results. I think the truly best salespeople among us in this industry are the ones that are able to not only take that promotional product spend and maximize it by, offering great promotional product solutions, but they're also able to think in this omnichannel way. They're able to understand how their marketer sees their world, how they see results by looking at all these other investments they make in things like PR, in television advertising, in print advertising, maybe direct mail, so on and so forth. And I think by having that conversation with the buyer about how promotional products can drive even more results if more budget is brought to the table, And I think that's really interesting and I think represents this Wild West, this like new frontier for this modern salesperson to be able to go in and potentially grow their promotional product sales with that one buyer by stealing budget from other media.

Right. One of the reasons, this is just one of many reasons we launched this conference or focused on sales training at this time or sales, the sales conversation is because these studies have circulated for years from PPAI and ASI about how promotional products are less expensive, more effective per impression. But what have you done with this information? That's why we are focusing on this sales conference, because we want folks to actually do something with this. We don't want to just talk about it in generalities. Often that's what happens with us and our customers. We might mention it to them, at best we might mention them, but we don't actually have a solid plan to go in and take that spend and help them spend it smarter.

There's such an interesting direct line between how the salesperson of today or even yesterday will typically not challenge or ask their customer tough questions about their marketing investments when they've got an order that is right on the table. Right. And I don't know if I necessarily, because of course I've got many years of selling promotional products under my belt, I'm not sure that I'm pointing fingers because if I'm sitting in front of a customer who's got a nice $50,000 order for me, slides the purchase order across the table and says, Mark, we need this delivered in a month. And I'm looking at this going fat margin, easy to produce. Why would I talk myself out of this sale by asking the buyer additional questions or confusing things? Why not just take the order and run? So, so I think that we'll talk about that dynamic as well because we're obviously not talking about doing something stupid and sacrificing the sale of today. Yeah. I think in all of us, in any great salesperson, there's always an order-taking reality. Yes. I think it's a matter of how we can embrace that order-taking reality, take the easy business, but then also rise above it and look to the future to get more.

Right. Because it's not an either-or proposition, it's an and. We'll take the easy order and we want to challenge our customers. Let's be really clear about something. We talk about order-taking a lot as is the greatest negative in the world. Here's the reality. The reality is Because of your incredible ingenuity, your white glove service, you have earned the right to take orders. So we'll use the words take orders as a negative, but understand in context what we mean is that we're just leaving a lot more money on the table by not investing in proactive sales. And I'll give you an example. Another nuance in this economy right now and why sales focus is very important is that the respectability of swag has never been higher. But are we merchandising for our clients in ways that are going to command and drive those sales. If respectability for swag has never been higher, are you doing enough proactive creative merchandising for your customers to cash in on that respectability? And I would say that many people are doing it some, but most are not doing enough because they're just too busy taking what's given to them as opposed to going and earning more.

Yeah, I want to just tell this quick sidebar story because I was listening to a podcast that I know you and I love, as do many listeners, um, How I Built This hosted by Guy Raz. Guy Raz, I should say. He was interviewing Julie Rice who is one of the co-founders of SoulCycle. She's since sold the business and has moved on to now work at WeWork. But, there was this fascinating part of the interview. Actually, there were several parts of the interview which was really cool where she specifically talked about promotional products and branded merchandise as A, being one of the very first things that she invested in to get the word out about a fledgling SoulCycle when it was in those early days and things were looking really scary in terms of whether they were going to be able to actually get customers in the door. And then subsequent stories as SoulCycle really started to grow and they moved and grew into multiple locations, Julie took a few moments to really articulate her branded merchandise strategy as to how much time and energy they spent in investing in this specific channel so they could get people to, A, buy these products and then walk around advertising advertising the SoulCycle brand for them free of charge, where they were actually paying SoulCycle for the benefit or for the privilege of doing that. And I only raise that as, A, it was a great conversation. Anyone listening to this podcast, I encourage you to check it out. But, Bobby, you spent time talking about the respectability of our medium and how it's enjoying this real glow today. And that was such a wonderful example when you heard that from an end client themselves, as opposed to industry people like you and me just talking about it, the The reality is that end clients are singing the praises when it works. That's the key, when it works. And making it work is easy, is child's play for these modern salespeople that know their craft so well.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you just hit upon something else too, and that is that sales-focused training right now, regardless of whether it's Common Skew sessions or not, sales-focused training right now is imperative because there's been a shift that has occurred, the salesperson's role has changed. There's a different salesperson today than there was 20 years ago. There are many things that are the same, but many things have changed as well. Not only the, the way customers transact, but also just in the way we go to market. Just like, for example, the respectability swag. One other example of the way things have changed and why sales focus is important right now is because if you are busy taking care— if you're so busy just taking care of your existing customers, then here's an example of how a sales focus needs to shift in terms of what we concentrate on. Catherine has a great session at CommsQ Sessions called How to Double Sales Without Adding a Single New Customer. The reason why I love that session is because if you're doing everything you can to take care of your existing customer and you can't focus on new business, guess what? The good news is you've got a goldmine of an opportunity right there at your fingertips with your existing customer. You can literally double your business. I think this is, Mark, you probably— you know, we can validate this because we both had enough experience. We've been through enough successful evolutions in our business to see these burgeoning opportunities right before us and the inability to extract ourselves enough, step outside, and go after that business in order to increase it more. I'm kind of repeating myself, but I just love that topic in particular because I've been one who has always been new business focused and passionate about it. But I'm also willing to acquiesce in seasons like this and say, okay, we're thinking about the wrong thing. It's much faster to grow with existing business?

Well, I think that there's this badge of honor that salespeople have when they go out and get new business, when they get that new client. And there's no question that's critically important for all salespeople. But I think what's also interesting to me, and I'm going to butcher this stat, but someone has said that it's 100 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Okay. So the 100 times more expensive, I've literally just made that up. But, but I think that people will listen or will at least understand that it is way more costly to go out and earn a meeting with a new customer. It's way more costly to earn their trust. They're going to place a crappy order with you at first. You're probably going to have to be skinny on the margin if you want to get in the door. All these things that just represent it's so much time and energy, whereas going back to that existing customer, and you and I are certainly not the only ones who have said this, this has been said by many smart people prior to us, going to that existing customer and mining it for additional opportunities, whether that's even just asking for other promotional products budgets or of course having those higher-level conversations about how you can steal from other media. And I think if you're going after, I mean, obviously the name of the game is that if your customer you know they're a mid or a large size corporation, they've got a growth story, there's going to be budget there. We're not talking about that micro tiny business that only needs 50 t-shirts a year. I mean, I'm not disrespecting that spend, but I think we're talking about the kind of client that is growing, is investing in advertising, has got a brand that is interesting, and there's opportunities to tell that story through promotional products.

We talked about why it's important to have a hyper-sales focus right now. Why is Common Skew Sessions itself important now?

So I think like anything we do on the event front, Bobby, and you know this because you've been right along on the journey from the beginning, is that we know that a conference feels right when it's one that we're designing for ourselves. When I say ourselves, we're practitioners within the promotional products industry. I mean, both you and I have extensive experience on the distributor front prior to the growth of Commonsku. So I always think we're onto something when we know there's an itch that needs to be scratched. We know there are questions that need to be answered around how to be relevant in sales in 2019 when the economy is doing well, when there's an opportunity to grow at a faster rate than the average. And I think like any of the events that we've done, we always try to curate some interesting content where you've got practitioners, experienced practitioners that are sharing their experience on stage, but also creates an environment where you've got really smart people in the room as well. And it's not like we're doing a sermon on the mount by any means, or preaching, shall I say. All we're doing is leading the conversation and then bringing together a really smart community of people who can tear apart these ideas and lend their experiences. And then what we end up with is a truly collaborative experience-sharing kind of environment where you put 100 or so really smart people in a room and you tackle these questions together. That's really the hallmark of any event that we've ever done, whether it's SKUCon, whether it's SKU Camp. And this, this idea of sales education is just something that we've been thinking about for the better part of a year to 18 months. And we thought now is the time to do it. And we put together the curriculum and we couldn't be more excited to help lead the discussion.

So speaking of the conference, for a little detail on this session will take place on April 4th in Dallas, April 25th in Chicago, May 9th in Los Angeles, and May 16th in New York I love what you said about us just really facilitating and sparking the conversation. Some of the topics that we'll be talking about at this conference is the floodgates create a never-ending pipeline of new business, how to enchant your customers through the power of story. We mentioned, um, Catherine's session on how to double sales without adding a single new customer, appealing to the modern buyer. Mark, you and I talk about how engagement commerce ignites sales growth. Growth, David Clifton. Love having David on sessions because of his experience as the marketing executive at Dale. He was responsible for a huge volume, a huge budget with Dale, and his perspective on how to get market from other mediums will be fascinating. So that'll be good, like you said, a good conversation to lead.

What I love about these are, these are, like you said, conversation starters that can just spark, I think, I think a revolution in your business and in your Well, and what's also been interesting is that we, with all of our events, we always like to do a fair amount of market research and just to make sure that it's not just a cool idea that you and I have come up with and the Commskew team has come up with and then we launch it in a vacuum. We always reach out to people who I consider way smarter than all of us and say, hey, here's what we're thinking. Is there an opportunity to bring people together around this particular topic? So in this case, it was sales. And I was really amazed by— and always the people we speak to are never the ones who are going to blow smoke, right? We always pick people that we know are going to be probably overly critical because we want to make sure that we're getting that feedback. And the feedback was unanimous in that there was a real gap in the market as it related to modern sales education. And we like things that are modern, I suppose, here at Common Skew. Thought, imagine if we could put something together where, again, we're leading the conversation based on our experience, but you put some really smart people in the room and then it becomes a collaborative opportunity. And I've always found that to be the real hallmark of what we've done. And it's exciting to know that the market research had represented this view that this was something that was missing. And we're happy to play a role in introducing it so we can bring people together and continue that conversation for more success.

It really struck a chord with those that we reached out to. And it was just like my experience and probably yours too, Mark, with my team. When you as the sales leader in your organization can see some things that you need to fix or do in your business, you tend to talk about those a lot in your business. And because you do, those tend to get worn out. And what I love is that when you bring in perspectives of other professionals in the business who talk about either the same thing or nuance on the same thing, those that are listening here have fresh ears to hear it and maybe can apply and, and application Communication, of course, as we know, is something that is what we were passionate about. But I just love the idea of inviting my team to a hyper-sales-focused conference. Number one, because they're probably tired of listening to me talk about some of the things, but also two, to get the perspective of other professionals who are very successful in the business. And that'll fire you up and make some change happen.

I always remember in the early days in building Right Sleeve that I always had this this wary view of other people that were in my local market. And wary may not be the right word. I think it was probably just not much of a relationship with other people that were in the local market. I didn't get a chance to see them at industry events. And I also think that the time in the very early days of the business, you always viewed your competition with suspicion. You always viewed them as either more successful than you or just more experienced than you. And since your business was so new and fragile, you were just worried that any association with any competitor would crush your business. And, of course, those days are well behind me. And, what's been so interesting, and I would even say this well before Commonsku got started, is that when reorienting your perspective around competitors that are in your local market and having those friendly relationships, relationships with them. I mean, I'm not talking sharing client lists with them. We're not being silly, but having those respectful, friendly relationships, it's amazing how much you can learn from one another. There's no question there's lots of business out there, and we all say that. We just park that aside. You just think about the rich relationships and the things you can learn from each other at a respectful distance. Always inspired me, and as I look to this sessions format, I mean, it's a local event. So, we're going to be in Dallas, we're going to be in LA, we're going to be in Chicago and New York. And, there will be a lot of competitors or distributors that are in the same market. And, I think that's going to create a really rich and respectful and interesting dynamic that you don't often see at a national show where you've got people that are coming in from all over the place. I couldn't be more excited about that.

Me too. But, not only that, honestly, the geographic argument is just on anymore. It's not the same where you and I— we say it's a flat world. Here's the other thing, is more distributors doing business outside their market than ever before. I was on my way back from the Expo in Vegas, and of course I'm going back into my city, and I was flying with what would have been former competitors. Like, half the plane was full of former competitors. We laughed about how we used to never run into each other and how that's becoming more and more the case. So the, the market and the landscape has shifted. So your local competitor doesn't mean what it used to mean because because of the growth opportunities outside of your existing market. So I actually think what you might find is more colleagues in your local market than competitors in this day and age, which to me is encouraging.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

Of course, one of the things that we love, uh, doing at events, we love to surprise folks with some of the things that are going to be going on during the event. And we've got more announcements to come. But the other thing that we love, and you spend a lot of time on this, is the venue yourself and making sure the experience is something that's fun that you would want to come to. So in Dallas, in Chicago, and Los Angeles, and New York, we each have very unique experiences for those that might come. You want to talk a little bit about where we're at?

Yeah, so I think with any event, at least in my experience, and what we've tried to do at Common Skew is have an event space that is reflective of the brand, is reflective of the kind of atmosphere that we're trying to create in terms of collaboration, in terms of creativity, funkiness, sort of a fun environment. I think that I've always tried to stay away from kind of standard, stale, boxy, somewhat depressing environments for a traditional conference. Whether that's good or bad, I think that's just something that I've always just tried to stay away from. And so, we spent a lot of time visiting venues that had this this right balance of like fun and funkiness and intimacy, but also allowed for the kind of numbers that we want for this event. So, we're going to be looking at about 80 to 100 people per event. So, it's big enough that you get a lot of that creativity and collaboration and sort of that energy, but it's not so big that you feel like you can't have a conversation. Those are the specifications that we set out in each of these markets. And so, we're really excited that we found the Hotel Lorenzo in Dallas. It's got that nice mix of like cool funky space in a cool part of Dallas. We have also teamed up with the people at WeWork to host in Los Angeles as well as in New York, beautiful space in downtown LA. And then, the space in New York is right near Bryant Park. So, nice centrally located locations in the heart of each of these cities. And then, in Chicago, we're going to be hosting it at the Ace Hotel. We've got a very strong relationship with our friends at the Ace and have hosted multiple events at their properties over the last couple of years. And, they've got a beautiful new hotel. I think it's actually their newest hotel in the Fulton Market area literally right across from a huge Google office in Chicago. And, just a funky, funky place. And, For us, the ambiance and having the right environment is really, really important. We went and visited each of these places, and I think we did the community well.

Yeah, I do too. You know, one of the things I want to encourage folks to do too is bring your teams, bring not just your sales teams. Don't just think sales in terms of your top salespeople, for example. Bring the up-and-comers, bring the folks that you want to influence. Something that some people tell us often about SKUCon, for example, and SKU Camp, it's a great place to bring new people. People, fresh folks to the business, because they get this injection of creative imagination and inspiration at an event. But also bring those folks on your team that are in the support network. The salesperson of today is different. It's not only the front leading person on the front lines, but it can be folks in your support team as well. They can move the needle on sales too. So you might even have folks in those roles that have more promise in terms of future sales, or the fact that they're just moving the needle on sales. So I really encourage folks, it could great team building time to come. Uh, of course I know I'm pitching this hard, but I really thinking like a distributor here. I'm not just like on the CommonsQ payroll, I'm thinking of what I would do with my team. I would be bringing my— obviously the salespeople that I need, but I also look for those fresh comers to the business. I would also look for folks within my business that might need a little sales injection because sales is not normally their, their focus. So we hope to see you there.

So be a great time. Absolutely. Well, thanks, Bobby. Uh, we'll see you, I suppose, in Dallas. That's our first one.

Looking forward to it.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast.

Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.