After graduating from college in 2003, I ran the St. John Knits department at Neiman Marcus in Troy (suburb of Detroit), Michigan. It was unusual for Neiman Marcus to hire a new grad into a sales management position, but I couldn’t make things much worse. We were the 33rd worst performing store out of 35 nationwide. When I left Neiman Marcus, our store ranked 3rd in the country.
Neiman Marcus might seem like an odd training ground for tech sales, and that is exactly why it was so helpful. In fashion, I learned that how you sell is more important than what you sell.
At the St. John Knits department, the jackets alone could run you $3,000 to $5,000. The bragging points of a $3,000 coat are not unlike the bragging points of a software platform. But unlike most tech companies, which tout features and benefits, we focused on the experience.
It started with the environment. Early in my two years at Neiman Marcus, I decided to change our manikins and product displays every few days, at a minimum. Every week, we would rearrange the entire department, a rate that was considered excessive. Our best customers were regulars, and I wanted them to feel like St. John Knits always had a fresh selection of clothing. Just by pairing the same shirt with a different coat, we could sell to a customer who previously ignored both items.
Subtly, we changed our ‘message’ every week, and today I use the same technique on EVENTup.com. Each time someone refreshes a search, EVENTup changes the order in which the venues are presented. We also rotate our home page images more often than your average tech company. We keep our environment new and intriguing, even when nothing is changing. Google does the same on its homepage with “doodles,” the spontaneous changes to the Google logo that celebrate events and famous people. In November alone, Google created 33 doodles for its homepages around the world.
If you can bring customers into your environment more often, you can build more intimate relationships. In fashion, ‘knowing’ your customer was not merely about understanding their tastes and preferences – or in tech, their current solution, problems and challenges. Any half-decent salesperson can figure that stuff out. At Neiman Marcus, we learned about customers’ families, hobbies, passions and relationships. When regular shoppers arrived, I could ask about their children and pets by name; I knew where they just went on vacation. We did this because we genuinely cared about customers. Selling coats was just a side effect.
In tech, some salespeople devalue intimacy because it isn’t “scalable.” I disagree – intimacy is scalable, but not necessarily convenient. As an example, for one of St. John Knits’ product launches, we typed an invitation letter, printed over 1,000 copies and hand-signed each one with a personal message. We wanted customers to feel like our honored guests rather than recipients of a mass mailing. The product launch had stellar attendance, and many guests mentioned the notes. Today at EVENTup, we actually send hand-written thank you notes to venue partners when they sign up. With a little imagination, any business can make customers feel like valued individuals.
Some people find intimacy to be disingenuous. In the cynic’s view, the personal conversations, hand-written letters, etc. are just part of a cold, calculated process that leads to sales. I think one of the reasons why sellers gain this reputation is that they don’t shoot down their own products from time to time.
At Neiman Marcus, when a customer tried on a coat and asked for my opinion, I’d be honest, even if that meant shooting down the coat. Maybe I sold less items that day, but I proved that my recommendations were sincere. As a result, customers referred their friends to us and trusted my opinion. That said, I still had to balance honesty with an understanding that everyone has different tastes. If the customer tried on a ‘meh’ coat and was beaming, I went with the flow, realizing that our sense of style was different. Why kill the vibe?
Fashion taught me to care more about how I sell than what I sell. It’s all about the environment you create, the intimacy you build and the trust you earn. In that sense, tech sales are no different from fashion once you hit a minimum level of quality. Fancy features don’t win sales.
Whether you sell online, over the phone or in person, figure out what would make the experience better. Figure out how to show that you genuinely care about your customers. In short, crush sales by being a person first and a salesperson second.
