Built to Sell

Firing Tony Martino was an easy decision—Tony was a bad writer to begin with and Alex didn’t need a copywriter to administer the Five-Step Logo Design Process. He could always use freelancers for the odd copywriting job the bank handed down. The conversation was quick. Tony was expecting it and Alex treated him fairly.

The conversation with Dean was a little more difficult. Alex tried to soften the blow by describing the strategic projects Dean could work on at a larger agency and how many of his talents would go unused at the new Stapleton Agency. Dean left in a huff.

Shedding Tony and Dean saved the Stapleton Agency $125,000 a year. Alex decided not to immediately replace Sarah, which saved the firm another $70,000 per year. He’d found enough cuts to hire two intermediate salespeople without increasing his overall cost base.

Blake Worthington had returned from two weeks at his family’s summer house. He wore a blue suit over his six-foot-two-inch frame. His crisp white shirt was held together at the sleeves by gold cufflinks, which clinked against a Rolex his father had given him upon graduation from the Cheshire Preparatory Academy. White teeth created the perfect contrast to the golden tan he had cultivated over the fortnight away. His Windsor knot was carefully assembled and his full head of blond hair had been molded into place.

Alex scanned Blake’s résumé. After Cheshire, Blake had attended Cornell. After graduation, there was a six-month trip to Southeast Asia, where he had learned to kite surf, after which he returned to the United States and took his current job. For the past two years he had served as a junior member of the business development team at one of the big advertising agency conglomerates.

“A big agency is a great placed to be trained, but I want to start seeing the direct results of my work.” Blake was obviously telling Alex what he thought he wanted to hear.

“I love the power of a brand. I like understanding the core attributes of a brand and finding a way to express those creatively through a variety of different media. I’m a huge believer in integration. They say TV is dead, but if you want to build a brand you can’t beat the reach of TV.”

The interview unfolded predictably, with Alex lobbing softball questions and Blake hitting them out of the park with impressivesounding responses he had probably read in some career advice book but nevertheless delivered convincingly. It ended with Alex promising to be in touch the following week.

Alex was impressed with Blake’s polish, pedigree, and big agency experience and thought he would represent the Stapleton Agency well. He put a large check mark on Blake’s résumé and filed it with the other candidates still in the running.

Back at his desk, the usual fires were smoldering in his inbox. John Stevens wanted to meet with him tomorrow to go over a Spanish version of the brochure. Olga wanted to know if she could renew the lease on the photocopier. Sarah wanted a reconciliation of the vacation pay she was owed. Then Alex saw Ziggy’s name with the subject header Thanks. He opened the note and read it:

Alex:

I want to let you know how happy we are with the logo your team created for Natural Treats. I just met with Rhina this morning and she took me through the color versions of Chris’s design. It looks good and I have already distributed your brand standard guidebook to all of our staff. Rhina was very efficient and moved the project along well. Chris is a creative guy and a pleasure to work with. I’ll know who to call for our next product launch. Thanks again,

Ziggy Epstein

Alex was ecstatic. It always felt good to get a thank-you letter from a client, but typically the letters praised Alex personally for his creativity and thoughtfulness. Ziggy’s letter was special because it recognized his team. For the first time, Alex felt like he was building a business that was more than just Alex Stapleton.

Based on Rhina and Chris’s work on the Natural Treats logo, Alex put them in charge of the Five-Step Logo Design Process. Rhina would conduct step one, the visioning exercise, and step two, the personification interviews. Chris would be responsible for step three, the sketch, and the computer-generated renditions of steps four and five. Rhina would write and present the brand standard guidebook and manage the client throughout the process. Alex had a system and people to oversee its delivery. Now all he needed was a sales team.

Alex reviewed her résumé. After college at a state school, Angie had landed a job selling mobile phones at a local wireless retailer. She’d been the top salesperson at the store, and after two years selling phones, she had taken a job selling yellow pages advertising for one of the big phone companies. She had quickly risen to be among the top 10 percent of sales reps nationally.

“The key to my success in sales has always been working my numbers. I know how many meetings I need to close a sale. I know how many sales I need to hit my quota for the week and how that rolls up to help me make my month, my quarter, and my year. It all starts with knowing how many meetings I need to schedule each week and it flows from there.”

The interview continued with Alex feeling like he was at the zoo peering at an exotic animal. Growing up in the creative business, he had always been around creative people. He’d never met anyone so disciplined or with such a linear thought process.

Tuesday morning, Ted called Alex on his mobile to see if he wanted to go for a sail and have their talk on the boat instead of Ted’s office. The forecast called for a fifteen- to twenty-knot onshore wind. They agreed to meet at Ted’s yacht club.

Although he could afford a much larger vessel, Ted loved the thrill of sailing a small boat on big water, so he had opted for a Laser 4000. Helping Ted rig the boat, Alex outlined his progress since they’d last met. He described how he had made room on his payroll for two salespeople by letting Tony and Dean go and not replacing Sarah. He also described the candidates he was interviewing for the sales roles. He spent the majority of the time contrasting Blake and Angie. Both had left a positive impression on him for different reasons, and he tried to articulate that for Ted.

“Angie is completely different. She knows nothing about the marketing industry and has spent most of her career selling tangible products that a prospect can touch and feel. Angie is all process and systems and she is extremely goal oriented.”

Alex thought for a moment. “You could put them into two categories: people like Blake who have a background selling services, and people like Angie who have sold tangible products.”

Alex was surprised at Ted’s conviction. “How can you be so sure? Blake went to Cornell, his father knows a number of the CEOs in town, and he works at one of the top agencies in the country.”

“In my experience, people like Blake, who are used to working in a service business, are good at consultative selling. They ask a lot of open-ended questions and probe for a client’s needs. The clients reveal their innermost fears and then expect people like Blake to custom-tailor a solution. Blake will try to convince you to tailor the Five-Step Logo Design Process to meet the unique needs of each client.”

“From what you’ve told me about Angie, she will be fantastic. You have one process and you have packaged it to look like a product with five steps that don’t change from one client to the next. Product salespeople are used to doing the mental gymnastics required to position their product to meet the needs of their prospect. A product salesperson doesn’t have the luxury of changing their company’s product every time they hear a need from a customer. They need to position the product they’re stuck with to meet the customer’s needs. That’s exactly the kind of person you want selling the Five-Step Logo Design Process.”

TED’S TIP # 9

Hire people who are good at selling products, not services. These people will be better able to figure out how your product can meet a client’s needs rather than agreeing to customize your offering to fit what the client wants.

Ted, not deterred by the wind speed and the increasing angle of the Laser, yelled back, “It is! Again, most service companies are not sellable other than for a long, risky, and painful earn-out. They depend on their owners to be the rainmakers. When the owner goes, there is no more business, and acquiring companies understand that. You need to stop doing the selling yourself and hand the reins to a team of people like Angie.”

They sped toward the outer bay, where the waves were picking up. After a long silence, Ted upped the ante in their work together. “Alex, the next step in the process is going to take enormous courage on your behalf. Are you ready?”

“Alex, you can’t be half pregnant. If you keep doing other work that falls outside of your logo design process, you’ll send mixed messages to all of your stakeholders.”

“I know, and your business is unsellable as a result. If you keep offering custom services, you’ll need to replace your senior designer and your copywriter and you’ll telegraph to the market that you’re not committed to your logo design process. MNY refuses to deal with anyone but you, so if you did sell, you’d be locked in for years. If a client is given the choice, they would always rather have a custom-tailored solution just for them. So if you run a custom service business in parallel to your logo design business, you won’t be giving the Five-Step Logo Design Process a chance to thrive.”

“I’m asking you to make a 180-degree turn in the way you think about your business. It’s a little bit like a jibe.” With that, Ted pulled the tiller hard toward him. The boat careened downwind and keeled over at what seemed to Alex like an impossible angle. The boom followed the boat’s turn and swung violently from one side of the boat to the other. Ted pushed Alex over to the other side of the boat while he pulled in the sail and positioned himself next to Alex. The wind filled the sail with a thwack. Ted hiked out so that his feet were on the gunnels, and the boat started speeding for shore.

“To jibe properly, you need to pull the tiller all the way to one side. There’s a moment when you feel a little out of control just before the sail flips sides and starts catching wind on the other side of the turn. You can’t half commit. If you don’t pull the tiller all the way toward you, you’ll never turn the boat and you’ll end up in the water. I’m asking you to jibe the Stapleton Agency.”