Sales: What Works Now

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A few years ago, when Chavez first dreamed up the doll business, she and Machin couldn't have imagined how apropos their company name would be in a downturn. Both women are out doing floor demonstrations at stores like FAO Schwarz every chance they get. In fact, most of the company's seven employees are actively selling or making contact with customers. Just after Thanksgiving, four of them tag-teamed on the telephone to reach 500 independent specialty toy stores to make sure those retailers were stocked up with the Get Real Girls for the holiday rush. Machin says such outreach efforts "help the small stores want to make you a success."

"Having the best reps is most important."

Unwittingly, Get Real Girl has adopted the strategy pushed by prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Co. In a recent report titled "Selling in a Downturn," the essential message was this: you've got to work all the angles. Most successful companies are successful in more than one sales channel. The problem is, of course, if you try to be everywhere at once, you could end up just spinning your wheels.

Machin and Chavez, who worked for large toy companies in their previous lives, knew what they had to do first. "Having the best reps is most important," says Machin. "You want the ones who talk to retailers most often." Rather than building a sales force from scratch, Get Real Girl hired a sales executive and signed up 15 well-known independent-rep groups employing about 75 salespeople.

Since signing up the reps, Get Real Girl has pursued sales channels as far away as Ireland and as close as its own front door. Last fall the dolls started selling at Smyth's -- Ireland's answer to Toys "R" Us -- as part of a holiday test with Hasbro International. Now Get Real Girl is negotiating an expanded deal with Hasbro for distribution into other countries. In a more unusual twist, the company also forged a holiday deal with Avon and its network of door-to-door sales reps. But bigger isn't always better. Realizing that Get Real Girl wasn't then ready for the inventory demands of Wal-Mart stores, Machin instead sold product to Wal-Mart's online operation in San Francisco, where her company "could break in gently." In early December, Machin personally set up hundreds of dolls for a one-day sample sale that took place with other companies sharing space in an industrial building in San Francisco. She sold some 350 dolls. "It gave us some cash and lots of exposure," she says.

Q: Are my salespeople feeding me a line? How do I know? How does anyone do accurate forecasts these days?

Salespeople are known for pumping out what the CEO wants to hear. That practice -- some call it the "sunshine pump" -- could spell death for companies that depend on accurate sales forecasts in a time when making any forecast is difficult. The best way to know if salespeople are taking you for a ride is to go along for the ride. Go out on as many sales calls as you can. Be there with your reps. You'll walk away with a much better understanding of what they're up against and how to better position your company in the marketplace. You'll also have a better answer for your banker or angel investors when they ask for the new forecast (and they will).

Keith M. Eades, a Clemson business professor and president of Sales Performance International, in Charlotte, N.C., has a few golden rules for sales forecasting in difficult times. One of his most useful rules, boiled down: Separate sales goals from sales forecasting. "Sales goals should be motivational and exceeded; sales forecasts should be based on accuracy and predictability. Because sales goals and sales forecasts are so closely linked or associated, salespeople and sales managers are encouraged to play games or tell management what they want to hear. Inaccuracy is encouraged if not rewarded. Particularly in tough times, you want to get the salesperson out of the forecasting business."

But to some experts, forecasting has taken on an entirely new meaning. James Taylor, former marketing chief at Ernst & Young, who now is a consultant specializing in marketing strategies for national companies, says you can't do sales projections the old way. He even says that in a constricting economy what companies need to forecast is not new sales to new customers but how much they're willing to spend to retain valuable existing customers. Especially in bad times, Taylor says, the central question isn't "How many new customers can I catch with new products?" It's "How many customers am I willing to lose money on?" Taylor explains: "When times are tough, you've got fewer new customers coming into the market, so you have to worry more about holding the loyalty of your most valuable customers. The critical ability, then, is the prediction -- or forecast -- of loyalty. How much did it cost you to win the loyalty of your customers? And how much of that money are you willing to give back to keep them? That's the central question today."

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