Tattoos...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Jul 27, 2012

Sales and BrandsYou gotta love my newly adopted state of New Hampshire.  Where else can one cross the state border, and the first exit from any direction has a state liquor store which also sells 50 plus different types of lottery tickets.  The second exit has a store that sells fireworks right next to a line of tattoo shops, and between the two exits are 8 lanes of toll booths, two of which require you to speed through at 65 miles an hour while your EZ Pass clicks away.  Add to all of this that NH is the only state without a mandatory seat belt law, and even though it has the highest percentage of motorcycle owners to total population in the US, we do not require helmets.   And of course, our state motto, “Live Free or Die”, is the subject of many a tattooed body.  I always say, “We don’t call NH-The Granite State-for nothing”.

With a too rapidly ebbing summer skipping by, I’m now trying to max out my beach time for a couple of reasons.  One, it’s right outside the door, and two, it’s a real long time between Labor and Memorial days.  As a result, my summer days are spent working in the mornings and heading to the beach most afternoons with a beachbag full of an iPad, a Kindle, 5 pounds of downloaded must-read new articles, copies of my MIT and Tufts syllabuses, a notepad and various other work weaponry all mixed in with towels and sunscreen.

NH tattoo resized 600Maybe NH beaches are like most, but my guess is that we have way more tattoos per body part than anywhere else short of Revere Beach.  Big tattoos, little tattoos, full body tattoos, tattoos for tweens and teens, college students and grandmothers and everyone in between.  All of which got me to thinking about the fact that most of us use our own tattoos in our expressions of our sales personalities.  Maybe we do or don’t own body ink, but clearly the way that I sell is going to be different than the way you sell.  My personal brand and my individual personality of selling is my own, and although I’m hardwired into a very specific sales process for our company (and hopefully you are too), what is going to come across in those first three minutes of a first time introduction call to a new prospect or in a planned call to an existing long term customer is clearly my own tattoo, my own brand.

I am not a full-body tattoo kind of salesguy.  My brand is less direct, more consultative and more focused on high level discovery and solution selling followed by an assumptive close rather than a hard sell, so I guess, if I had ink, it would be a small tattoo in some non-visible location and not a yellow lightning bolt tattooed on my neck.  But...then there is the question of the long hair and ponytail which-good or bad-has clearly become some part of my brand, my tattoo.

sales and personal brandSo, as we all get ready for the post-Labor Day sales rush, this concept of permanently inking in one’s personal sales brand is an interesting idea to think about formalizing as part of your selling toolbox.  One reason you want to do this, I would suggest, is that if you do not formally take charge of your personal brand, then clearly, your customers will informally brand you with their own tattoo. 

   

As a salesperson, three things…

1.  What is it that you want to be remembered for by your prospects and customers?

2.  What is your personal brand, your personal tattoo?  Try writing it down and share it with one of your coworkers and ask for a sanity check?

3.  What’s your company’s tattoo and why do your employees work for you?  Are you a Dell or an Apple?  Both make similar computers that do similar things, but both have very different tattoos.  One is an overtly displayed badge that shows everyone else that they belong to a special club of interconnectivity, and the other is… I’m just not sure

So with that as an example, what’s your company tattoo that you want to show to your employees, and that you want your employees to brand themselves with?

Love to hear your ideas on this on what may be a bit of a rainy and less-than-wonderful beach weekend.

Jack
Head Coach
Linked In and Sales

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