Hooked – How to Get Remembered

Popular interview question: “How do you want to be remembered?”

Songs. If Only I Could Remember My Name – David Crosby. Remember Me – Lightnin’ Hopkins. I Will Remember You – Sarah McLachlan. Please Remember Me – Tim McGraw. I Remember You Homie – MC Blvd. Remember Who I Am – Girlyman. Remember Who You Are – Sly & the Family Stone. Say, Don’t You Remember Me – Al Bowlly. I Remember You – Jo Stafford.

Alaska State Flower: Forget-me-not.

Books. Remembering People – Harry Lorayne. Remember Who You Are – Daisy Wademan. Always Remember Me – Marisabina Russo. How to Remember What You’re Starting to Forget – Janet Fogler. Elephants Can Remember – Agatha Christie. Something to Remember Me By – Susan Bosak. She Who Remembers – Linda Lay Shuler. A Knight to Remember – Christina Dodd. How to Remember Names and Faces – A.G. Raab.

History. Remember the Alamo.

Everyone wants to be remembered.

The money question for salespeople is “What are you doing to get remembered?”

And in this corner weighing…

People have memory problems, especially when it comes to remembering names. How many times have you been introduced to someone and five minutes later you’re embarrassed because you can’t call him by name? Remember the dental hygienist who worked on your teeth the last time? The barista at your favorite stop in the morning? Your UPS driver? (Had to give you an easy one. Easy to remember since you see the driver almost every day. Hmm…are they on to something? Brown? Bearing gifts? Every day? Hmm.)

In sales, when customers and prospects don’t remember you by name, it’s costing you money. Maybe thousands of dollars each year. It’s not enough for them to remember your company name. That doesn’t make you money. When they call to re-order, they’ll be screened “Do you remember your salesperson’s name?” No? By default the sale goes to the next available salesperson. Is that your commission going into someone else’s pocket?

I’ve seen too many sales managers have to referee disputes between salespeople fighting over accounts where one salesperson thinks the account is his because he sold it last year, while the other salesperson says it’s his because he just closed a deal there yesterday. The way most sales managers rule? “Well, you (the first salesperson) never gave your customer a reason to remember you, otherwise she would have asked for you by name. Since she didn’t, and since you have no records of your contacts with her to show you’re actively working the account, you lose the sale, you lose the commission, and you lose the account.” The account too? The account too. TKO. How much would those add-on sales be worth to you this year?

Why you lose sales

Salespeople have the misconception that once they make the sale the customer is theirs for life. Au contraire. Things change, memories fade, and competitors are relentless. Because you don’t keep in touch, a new decision-maker may come in that you’ve never met, doesn’t know who to call, and buys from the next cold caller on the phone. Perhaps the buyer is on vacation and her assistant doesn’t know who to buy from so she calls your competitor. Maybe the company is so large that the right hand in Building 2 doesn’t know who the left hand in Building 14 is buying from. Maybe the buyer feels slighted because she’s never heard back from you since the product was delivered, so she decides to buy elsewhere. (Sales and Marketing Magazine found that of your customers who leave your company this year, 24% leave simply because the salesperson lost contact.)

Plus, your customers see your competitors five times as much as they see you. Ever called back on a customer months after the sale only to find she bought another one of your products from your competitor? “Why didn’t you call me?” you ask. “I didn’t even think of you,” she replies. “I’ve been so busy, I just don’t have the time to think.” That’s your money they’re taking.

How many proposals did you give last year? How many hours did you spend in those interviews collecting information? How many presentations did you give to the various groups? How many hours did you, your managers, and your service people spend refining your proposals to get the best price? And then how often, at the last minute, did they tell you “Well, we’ve decided not to do anything for a while. It’s a little more than we budgeted for. Why don’t you call me back in six months?”

Time passes. You stop by. But you find they purchased your product from your competitor last month. “Why didn’t you call me?” They look at you like you’re from Mars or Venus. They shrug their shoulders, “I guess I forgot about you.” Count the number of times this happened last year and multiply that by the commissions you would have made on each sale. Isn’t it worth doing something to get remembered?

RM3

How much time did you spend with looky-loos this year? They’ll buy when they get “roundtuit”. Weeks or months pass. You decide to give them a call because the end of the month is nigh, your quota is short. “How’s your research coming along?” you want to know. “Oh great,” he replies, “we found what we wanted and bought it last week. In fact, it’s the same product you sell. We really love it.” Why didn’t they call you? Because they didn’t remember you.

Why don’t people remember you? You never give them a reason, a “hook”, to remember you by.

If the real estate mantra is Location Location Location, the sales mantra should be RememberMe RememberMe RememberMe.

How do you get people to remember you? Persistence. Time. And a hook.

(This concludes Part 1 of “Hooked”. In Part 2 we’ll look at specific hooks that you can use to get customers to remember you.)