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Tips from the Gurus

Promotional products consultants help distributors boost sales

By LaShell Stratton

Many print distributors believe that you become better at sales through experience. You learn from making phone calls, pounding the pavement and knocking on doors. But some companies also hire consultants and lecturers to help train their new salespeople, or to show their veteran sales reps new ways to approach customers, research vendors and package products. The promotional products industry isn’t any different.

Don Sanders of Don Sanders Marketing, Grapevine, Texas, has spent more than 20 years in the promotional products industry. “I started selling promo products back in 1981 because I couldn’t get a job,” he says with a laugh. “It’s just something I did for so long because I did it so well.” He has since moved from selling to consulting. Sanders has published a book about promotional products sales with PPAI, runs a website and does a 90-minute seminar for other distributors entitled, “How I Made $1,000,000 Selling Promotional Products.”

Jeff Solomon, president of All American Marketing Group, Valencia, Calif., also conducts educational seminars, has a website and has written several columns about promotional products selling. “I usually joke that only 1 percent really get how to sell promo products but I would say that it’s probably closer to 5 percent, maybe 10,” he says. “It’s a challenge. There are thousands of products that can be used to convey an idea.”

David Blaise of Top Secrets, Wyomissing, Pa., has trained sales reps throughout the country on how to become multi-million dollar producers and has even shared how print distributors can make the transition to promotional products. “Print sales are kind of the same thing as promo product sales,” Blaise says. “The only difference I see is in the options available. Print distributors have to learn the new applications and how to translate them into good ideas and good products.”

Sanders, Blaise, and Solomon all agree that good sales skills can be adapted to any product line, whether it is print or promotional. “Everyone in every industry likes to think that their industry is different, but it really isn’t,” Blaise says. “The people who are the best are the ones who take a more consultative approach. It’s like undergoing a diagnostic test or like when doctors look at their patients they try to figure out what hurts. A good distributor figures out where the client’s pain is.”

Sanders says promo products selling requires the basics that any other sale would. “I show that I’m interested in the client, I’m reliable and I’m good at following up,” he says.

Sanders, Blaise, and Solomon offered other tidbits about promotional product selling. They are listed below:

1) Follow Your Instinct
“There is no real way to learn how to sell promotional products,” Sanders says. “There is so much information out there that you won’t know what to do with it. I tell people, follow your instincts,” he says. “First, go find people who want to buy from you and get the suppliers, rather than worry about joining the right organization or buying the right software. Don’t let people confuse you.”

2) Whom to Talk to and What to Ask
Sanders says each distributor should find all the people that buy promotional products in a company. “I had a client for several years at the Bombay Company who bought promo products from me,” Sanders says. “But now when I think about it, there was probably someone else in the company who bought other products like awards but I never found out who that person was. I’ve been in the industry for years and I made that mistake.”
Once you find those people, ask the right questions. “I usually ask the client these questions,” says Solomon. “‘What are you trying to say? What is your target audience? What is the budget? What have you done before that’s worked and what hasn’t worked?’”

3) Avoid Typical Sales Mistakes
David Blaise has written about the top 12 fatal mistakes of promo product sales but he says he has identified his top three. “A big one is that some distributors tend to empathize too much with their clients,” he says. “As a result, the prospect’s inability to make a decision becomes the distributor’s inability to make a sale.” Blaise says another pitfall is “working as an unpaid consultant. A lot of times we’re just so excited at getting an appointment, we show the prospect everything. But that’s a big mistake. Don’t tell your prospect all your ideas only to have them nod their heads, say, ‘Well, that was good,’ and then source it out to someone else.” And finally, distributors should ask for more than they expect. “A lot of times salespeople in an effort to not offend their clients end up asking for less than maybe they should or could,” Blaise says. “Ask for more than you expect to get. Rather than suggest the 99 cent mug, go for the higher end $6 mug and then let the client work their way down from that if they want.”

4) Sell Promo Marketing, Not Promotional Products
“Selling promo products isn’t rocket science, but there is a way to position yourself different than what we call the ‘trash and trinkets sellers,’” Solomon says. Distributors should emphasize packages and programs to their prospects, rather than the products themselves.

“I think when you take a product focus, you’re doomed,” Blaise says.

LaShell Stratton is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to lstratton@PSDA.org.