Shooting For Gold | Promotional Consultant

Article Tools: Print

Shooting For Gold
By: Cassandra Johnson
Issue: March 2010

On the eve of the 2010 Olympics, I grabbed the popcorn and rounded up my family to watch Miracle, the movie version of one of the most famous moments in Olympic history when a young U.S. hockey team beat the USSR. There are so many flashes of greatness as you look back on winter Olympics—the Jamaican bobsled team’s surprising debut at the Calgary games, ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean receiving perfect scores, Nancy Kerrigan staying focused and winning silver after a surprise attack that injured her knee a few weeks earlier.

It’s the pomp and circumstance, the display of patriotism, the drama and, of course, the passion these athletes have for their sport that captivates all of us. It’s the overcome-it-all feats of passion that elevates winners to the top and earns their faces a place on a Wheaties box.

You don’t have to be an Olympic medalist to be a winner in business, but to get to the top you need to focus on key character traits as identified by some business Olympians—those in the promotional products industry and beyond who’ve achieved great success and have been recognized with top honors.

Be Driven
Winners, by nature, are driven. These people have passion for what they do, for the companies they work for and for their clients.

Ed Levy, president of Chicago, Illinois-based distributor Edventure Promotions, Inc. (UPIC: EDVENTUR), admits that even as a child he had the entrepreneurial spirit, selling everything from popcorn to greeting cards. He was recently awarded PPAI’s Pyramid Award for his successful self-promotion campaign.

“Without coming across too arrogant, I always have thought of myself as a winner. There is a quote I heard from Earl Nightengale that I’ve used as my mantra since I started my professional sales career and it goes like this: ‘As you think, so shall you become.’”

Companies often display this competitive or winning spirit as well. Evergreen, Colorado-based supplier Bright Stores, Inc. (UPIC: bsi) was the PPAI 2010 Web Award winner for visual design and creativity. “We have always had a winning drive and strong desire to be the very best,” says Dan Halama, president.

Chris Jenkin, vice president of sales and marketing for Dallas, Texas-based supplier WOW! Branded Personal Assistance (UPIC: WOWCard), says “I was born with this drive. I’ve always felt unusual and different. I’ve accomplished things when people said they couldn’t be done starting at a very early age.”

WOW! Branded Personal Assistance was recently the recipient of PPAI’s 2010 Supplier Star Award for Most Creative New Entry Designed Primarily For Business Gift Use.

Being a winner entails hard work, says Marci Zaworski, director of global sales for Fairmont Hotels, and a member of the company’s President’s Circle.

“Once you achieve a winning status, the expectation is that it’s easy for you. But it isn’t. You actually have to work harder than you ever have before,” she says.

Listen, Listen, Listen
To win customers, it takes another winning element—being a good listener.

“Winning programs are those that have been created to answer a need,” says Jennifer Strauss, vice president of business development for Alpharetta, Georgia-based distributor eCompanyStore, Inc., (UPIC: ECOM0001), awarded PPAI’s coveted Web Award for marketing and branding. “eCompanyStore only works with a few customers, which allows us to be customer-intimate. If our customers think that we are winners, we celebrate!”

Gene Park, account manager for Colleyville, Texas, distributor, The Miller Company (UPIC: MILL006) who received the PPAI Pyramid Award for an employee incentive program, says, “Ultimately, I believe it’s taking the necessary time to place yourself in the shoes of your client and the marketplace to determine if your strategy is relevant and can have an impact.”

Zaworski agrees. “When you become a good listener and you truly listen to the needs of the customer, that changes everything that you need to do for them, such as how you talk to them, how you correspond in e-mails and even how you prepare and present your proposals.”

Set Goals
We all know that winners have their eye on the prize, whether it’s a bonus, an Olympic medal or increased ROI. Sometimes these goals are monetary targets. Sometimes they are service targets. And often goals are actually the customers’ goals.

“We set our goals to exceed our customer’s expectations every day by providing tailored promotional product solutions to meet the needs of their employees, prospects and customers. If an award-winning program is a result of the effort, it’s a bonus,” says Strauss.

“We are a very goal-oriented company but must admit that when we designed our website our goal was to deliver outstanding visual design combined with easy to find and deliver content; not to win an award,” says Halama.

Winners in the promotional products industry focus on helping their teams and their clients set reasonable and measurable goals. It’s the only way to determine if the campaign was a success.

“We teach distributors how to set goals for their programs, and this helps us,” says Jenkin. “For example, they might think that if they buy 100 mugs and all the mugs get used that this equals great ROI. At our company we teach that it’s not how much a product is used but how much of a difference a product makes on an end user’s bottom line.”

Prepare To Win
Training is key to being a winner. To stay ahead of the competition you have to reinvent yourself and try new things on a regular basis. Olympic athletes continually try new techniques to improve speed, skill and stamina. Shouldn’t you?

“It’s truly a mindset of taking ownership of your job,” says Mark Godsey, president of Hixson, Tennessee-based supplier Gold Bond, Inc. (UPIC: GOLD0008), a recipient of the coveted PPAI Supplier Star Award. “Are you smiling on the phone? Did you enter the order the way you would want it done? These are just a few examples of questions posed during training.”

Jenkin’s company spends a great deal of time and effort to train distributors to sell their product. “Our product isn’t simple; it’s adaptable, flexible and requires training. We assign an account manager to a distributor, who provides education and coaching, and even presents alongside the distributor. We’ve had tremendous success with this training,” he says.

Never Give Up
It takes persistence to keep moving onward and upward. To create an effective campaign or a winning client relationship, it takes a lot of mistakes and owning up to those mistakes to gain that needed experience.

“In everything you do, in sports or your job or a test, you have to give your best. Even if you lose a sale, evaluate so that you can learn,” says Zaworski.

And when making a key decision, Godsey suggests asking these five important questions:
• Is it good for the customer?
• Is it good for the company?
• Is it good for the department?
• Is it good for the employee?
• Is it good for me?
Answer yes to all those and most every time you made the right decision.

“No is simply not in our vocabulary at Gold Bond,” says Godsey. “If we become relaxed with that ‘Oh, we can just do what we did last year and win it again’ paradigm, we would find ourselves not even being nominated. And we follow-up on everything, and I mean everything, because if you’re not in front of a distributor, another supplier will be.”

Stay Focused
In addition to setting the goal, it’s also important to stay focused on the goal.

“In our industry, a single phone call from an existing client or a new prospect can take you in a direction so far removed from your core expertise that you have to learn to say ‘No’ if that project is going to take you away from your goals,” says Levy.
Zaworski suggests that good sales people should envision themselves reaching that goal. “Sometimes you might not be involved in the goal-setting process, but it’s an innate process that goes on. You just have to break it down. How am I going to get there? What do I need to get there? What tools do I have available to me? You stay focused and make it happen.”

Share Your Successes
We all strive for bragging rights, whether it’s a world-record, a company sales record or adding a new client on record. And of course, the ultimate bragging right is when we see the impact to our bottom line.

“We do share our award-winning news with our clients. Does this help to grow business? It’s very hard to measure, but we think it helps because we get many referrals from clients and referrals from friendly competitors,” says Halama.

“We include our customers in award entries if applicable,” says Strauss, “so they can share in the recognition, too.”

“Letting our distributors know and share in our successes helps them share these with their clients, building credibility with our people and our service and resulting in huge sales,” explains Jenkin.

“I was very cautious getting the news of our award out there,” says Levy. “I didn’t want others, mainly competitors, to see it. But I realized that a lot of my competitors just wouldn’t do what we did. I trust my clients for validation that we are now an award-winning promotional products company. I can tell you, since the award ceremony at the PPAI Expo, I’ve already seen feedback from my network and I have not even launched my formal PR announcement. It’s very exciting to be recognized.”

So what happens when you reach the top? As Zaworski explains, once a winner, always a winner. “It doesn’t depend on my sales numbers at the end of the year whether I’m a winner or not. I’m a winner every day just like I’m always left-handed. Being a winner is who I am because I know what it takes to get there.”

Do you choose to be a winner? Are you ready to recreate yourself, be known for something, take a risk and most important, listen to your customers? Take your time, stay focused and be persistent. We’ll see you on the awards podium at the PPAI Expo 2011.

Cassandra Johnson is a winning marketing communications consultant and freelance writer. She reports on the latest trends in the promotional products industry, public relations, direct marketing, e-marketing and more. She supports clients in a variety of industries, including promotional products, hospitality, financial services and technology.

Winning Questions
Gene Park, The Miller Company, shares key questions to ask when creating an award-winning program:
• Was your client's business objective(s) met?
• Did you spend quality time developing your solution?
• How unique or creative was your solution?