I confess that I am a dog lover. I have three dogs, Barlow, Spud and Kobe, each with their own odd personality. Barlow, black lab rescue, plays a role in one of my favorite videos, The Most Expensive Product Review Ever. Spud, a long-haired miniature dachshund, loves to participate in video product reviews. In this video, To Groom or Not Groom, I ask for your input on the Free Promo Tips Facebook page. Is it time for Spud to be groomed, or does his scraggly, working-class look work for him?
Barlow is easily distracted, as you can see in his video, The Most Expensive Product Review Ever. How many times have you been in a meeting and sense that you don’t have a client’s full attention? Buyers are busy, and this can happen. One way to curtail that is to be engaging and continue to draw the buyer into the conversation. We need to understand what their needs are and offer effective solutions to meet those needs. Like Barlow, buyers can easily tire of a sales presentation, so engage them!
Spud is a precocious little guy with a big personality. He’s high energy, loves to bark, letting our neighbors know he’s there and feels a sense of entitlement. Many of our clients have the same characteristics as Spud. They bark for attention and feel they own you.
Our oldest dog, Kobe is a mixed breed. My son picked her out from the pound as a puppy. She is about 13 years old and has lumps on her head. These are benign lumps and we have chosen to not remove them because of her age. She’s cute to us, but not so attractive to others. She looks intimidating and scares off some people, but once you get to know her, she is very sweet. We have clients like this, too.
When I decide to go for a walk, I need to make a choice which dog will join me. I ponder who will give me the least grief? They hover around the front door begging to be called on. Are we consistently calling on all of our clients, or do we just call on the easy clients while avoiding the barkers?
If we have good relationships, clients want to see us when we have something beneficial to share. It’s easy of course to invest more time calling on the clients we enjoy working with more than others. If our clients were like dogs, we would want to see them and they would be thrilled to hang out with us.
I have a special affection for each of our dogs personalities, making the choice of which dog to take on the walk can be difficult. Sometimes I can’t choose and just take them all. That’s a bit crazy. When I do that, it’s always a short walk.
One morning, the chosen dog, Kobe, and I were on a walk. We stopped and had a conversation. Well, I had a conversation with Kobe. With her tail wagging and a look of love in her eyes, the thought came to me, what if our clients were like dogs?
Dogs can be fun loving, sincere, good-natured, willing to learn, easy-going, respectful, gentle, sociable, carefree and most importantly loyal.
Some of our clients are like dogs. They love what we do and give us no grief. Others are barkers, constantly demanding attention. I think it t would be great if our clients were like the dogs we love in our families.
In my next commentary, I’ll cover what if our clients were like cats? Just kidding. Actually our clients may be more like cats, but I won’t go down that road.
To cap this off, I invite you to share about your dog or favorite pet. What do you love about them? What do you hate about them? How did you come up with their name? As a dog lover, I feel they bring something special into our lives. Go ahead; show your favorite pet some love! Our team will randomly choose two posts to win an iTunes card, courtesy of our friends at AIA. Winners will be announced, Friday, March 14.
Jeff Solomon, MAS, is a distributor affiliated with a Top 10 distributor company. The FreePromoTips.com website and twice a month e-newsletters he publishes are packed with beneficial information. On the website, you can opt in to receive these informative e-newsletters. Check out what’s new in the GP2: Good Products-Good Prices section of the site. Like Free Promo Tips’ page on Facebook, follow it on twitter and connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
