Conrey is for Closers

I received this email a little while ago:

Hi!

We found your blog through our search for great local resources.

We wanted to let you know about Phoenix Design Week. We think you’d be someone who would be interested in both attending and helping spread the word to the community!

All information can be found on our promote page: http://phxdw.com/promote

We’d love if you could post about our event so we can reach as many people as possible. Thanks so much for your contribution to the Phoenix community!

Sincerely,

Phoenix Design Week
http://phxdw.com

Now if I didn’t know the team behind Phoenix Design Week I’d probably have just hit ‘delete’ or ‘mark as spam’ and gone about my day. However, I think that the team has done a great job and taken this event from something that I thought would be yet another failed Phoenix event to something that looks like it is going to be quite awesome. Obviously the story doesn’t end there or else there wouldn’t be a blog post.

Because of the team behind it, I sent back a strongly worded email begging them to read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin and not send out such impersonal/spammy email.
It is a monumental task to promote an event like this, doubly so when it isall through volunteers and grassroots efforts, but I really feel like the team and PhxDW could have done better.

They are among the most socially connected folks in the Phoenix community, ask on Twitter, have the volunteers each as 5 or 10 people they know personally to write a blog post, send out a press release to the traditional media outlets, etc etc.

In a stunning stroke of redemption Mark Dudlik sent back a very personal email apologizing and explaining what they were doing. Even better, they’ve stopped doing it that way and have started to ask for help in a more personal way. Please help support these guys and girls who are working to bring an awesome event to Phoenix for the community as a whole. Help out where you can and thank Mark and the others who are working to make it happen.

Anyone with a marginal amount of sales training has heard that you have to speak with the decision maker whenever you are trying to make a sale.  Identifying the decision makers though is the hard part.  Its not always the man at the top of the company or the division you’re working for.  Often its not the person you talk directly with.  Never assume that you’re dealing right away with the decision maker, but you can assume a few things:

• There is ultimately one decision maker – not two, not a committee, not anything else.   Anything with more than one head is a monster and that is ultimately true in sales as well.  No matter what, ultimately there is only one person you have to convince who makes the ultimate decision.
• The decision maker will ultimately be the one who asks the most questions – about you, your company, your process, their proejct, the weather, anything.   If they are asking questions they have something at stake with this project.
• The decision maker, once identified, is going to have to be your biggest ally – so treat him like your life depends on it.  Make sure that he’s got every answer to any question he will be asked in those committee rooms, that he’s comfortable with every step of the process
• The decision maker can change – you may think it is one person and at the end of the day they don’t have the power they told you they do to make a decision.  Be ready and able to start from scratch at any time.

I’ve now had the opportunity to travel to a few conferences as part of my sales duties and here are a few things to think about when you’re going to a large gathering of potential leads and clients:

• Cary lots of business cards – this should go without saying.   Also carry a pen, a notebook, and gum or mints.  People will be more than happy to ask you for gum or mints if you have them because they know they’ll be talking to a lot of people as well.  Share liberaly
• Be at the conference location early and late.  Show up before the conference events start and stay after.  Wander the hallways between conference rooms if there isn’t a topic that really is important to you at a given time.  At SXSWi this past year I spent lots of time talking to people outside of sessions and made more connections that way than during any of the sessions as a whole.
• Go to the related “after hours” events when you can.  If there’s some sort of after-party or happy hour event (and there almost always will be) go to it.  People will be much more relaxed and conversational at these things.  Remember to just be a person not a ‘salesperson’ while there.  Just talk, have a drink if its your thing, and be visible.  People like to work with people they like – so be likable.
• Fly your flag.  Wear your company’s logo on a shirt if you can (and it fits the norms of the dress etc).  At Rails Conf this year the entire Integrum team wore our “Rails Developers Do It With Models” shirts with the Integrum logo and colors.  We got lots of notice and comments on them, plus a great visible reminder of what you are.
• Help out any way that you can.  Have an extra phone charger, or power strip, or pen, or whatever people are looking for.  Just being a friendly, ready to help person can do nothing but help increase your karma.
• Listen – follow the twitter hashtags for the conference if they’re tweeting about it, watch the conversations around you out in the common areas, be involved in as many channels as you can reasonably be available for.

There are hundreds of other things to do at a conference that can help you make sales, but these are some easy places to start.