Not that it's always obvious how to do that. Without thinking, managers usually reach for one of two solutions: they add services -- "Tell you what, we'll include 24-hour turnaround for the same price" -- that only erode margins further; or they decide to shrink the business, as Kosowski and Patrevito did. But as they fleshed out their plans to cut to the bone, the pair found that "being downsizers really isn't our nature. We'd rather take the company higher," says Patrevito.
To consistently win profitable business, Booklet Binding would have to surround its commoditized service with enough value to make it seem to be worth more. How might it do that? By, as Landiak puts it, "uncomplicating the world for its customers, by showing them how to increase revenue or decrease cost or how to retain their own customer base." In an economy in which euphemistic concepts like downsizing and reengineering had all led to one ailment -- corporate anorexia -- there had to be added value in giving customers the help they no longer had in-house. Hence the chopstick maker offers marketing tips to its restaurant customers; the cellular-phone distributor teaches customers to use the gadget more effectively as a business tool. "If customers perceive that you have a high level of expertise, and it can help them, you're worth more to them," says Landiak.
Yes, said Patrevito. Right, said Kosowski. Then Landiak laid out his plan for how they might make Booklet Binding that kind of company. No, they didn't expect it to be cheap. Or quick. But what they heard struck Patrevito as "totally overwhelming," he says. "I wasn't sure I wanted to commit myself to that kind of sweeping culture change." Kosowski's reaction: there's got to be another way.
Worst of all, perhaps, was this: what Landiak was proposing was something they had already tried.
* * *
Make no mistake: Patrevito and Kosowski believed in sales training. Hadn't they routinely dispatched their employees to Dale Carnegie seminars? "It kind of boosted my confidence level," reports salesperson Tom Bromann.
And they were only too familiar with the "canned programs," as Patrevito calls them, that successfully motivated employees -- briefly, anyway. It was the sort of step that most companies took, grateful that a Zig Ziglar or a Tom Hopkins had swaggered into town just as fourth-quarter numbers were looking soft. People heard funny stories, and they came back pumped up. So what did you learn? came the question. "I am . . . a selling machine!" an employee would roar back.
Landiak argued, however, that managers like Kosowski and Patrevito too often confused short-term motivation with serious training, which would be key in making the kind of transformation Booklet Binding needed to accomplish. Landiak was even willing to base part of his fee on results. "We knew deep down in our hearts that it was the right thing," Patrevito says. "We just needed to be pushed off the edge."
Specifically, Landiak and Patrevito decided on a series of topics that Landiak would cover in 20 weekly sessions attended by the 12 inside and outside salespeople. The goal of that program, which began in June 1993, was "to take them out of the price mind-set to one of selling based on what the customer feels is an added value," Landiak says. For each session, Landiak drew up an outline, to which each salesperson added notes and individualized "action steps," all of it stuffed inside what the trainer dubbed a Success Strategies Binder. Topics included precall planning, preparing a presentation, following up, selling value, and coping with objections to price.
There were plenty of objections to the new program -- even before it started.
After Patrevito and Kosowski introduced Landiak to the company's administrative personnel at a dinner at the nearby La Perla restaurant that June, "nobody was looking forward to it at all," says salesperson Phil Moreno. Adds salesperson Tom Ashcraft, one of the program's loudest early opponents, "We felt that we were doing fine without it." Antitraining sentiment only grew when Landiak began to study the existing sales process by having his own employees trail Booklet Binding salesfolk. Pam Prendivoj, an estimator and inside salesperson, was dismayed when one of Landiak's assistants eavesdropped on her phone calls with customers. "I was wondering what they were really evaluating," she says.
Patrevito could feel the negativism at weekly Monday morning sales meetings. Look, he told employees, we're making an investment in you that you could not afford yourself. "I expect -- no, I demand -- your cooperation," he added. He also held individual sessions. "Do you realize what a gold mine this could be for you?" he'd implore.
Nobody did, at first. A couple of months passed before a few of Landiak's techniques began yielding results. "The illustration of what kind of real income you could put into your pocket helped," says Larry Bralich, a salesperson who also serves as vice-president of imaging and mailing. Salesperson Scott McParland used a simple Landiak suggestion -- faxing an agenda to a customer before a meeting -- and "it went far better than it would have otherwise," he contends. "I was in charge." That was exactly the point. "Nothing can teach you how to be motivated or have instincts or go after orders," says Ashcraft, "but training can give you a lot of tools."
First among those tools was an account profile, a document that would enable the company to analyze what "share of customer" it was getting, as Landiak termed it. The goal was not only to get a snapshot of the business the customer did with Booklet Binding but also to learn more about the customers' overall business so that the salesperson could offer more insight. To get answers to their questions -- What are your gross sales? How much did we do for you this year and last year? Which other binderies do you use? -- the salespeople probably would have to talk to someone higher in the company than their usual purchasing-agent contact. But not every customer was receptive to providing information. McParland, who sells to small printing shops, asked one of his $10,000-a-year accounts to help him fill out the profile. "Scott," the printer said dismissively, "you know me. You fill it out." "After that, I learned to ask a little bit at a time," McParland says.
