Your organization is a sweet-smelling flower, one that desperately needs to be pollinated with money. Customers carry around money, visiting stores, leaving their money behind and keeping the world going, much like a bee visiting flowers. In exchange for this pollination, you’re providing them the sweet nectar of knowledge and the pollen of product. The moment you withhold the sweetness of nectar is the moment you stop being visited.
Bees are dying at an alarming rate and it could single-handedly destroy life on our planet. Whew. Take a deep breath, Joe. Let your conspiracy-theorist mind take a nap. What many don’t know is that flies, too, are able to pollinate, though not near as effective. Why? Some say it is because they’re terrible at carrying around money, er, pollen I mean, because their legs aren’t hairy. However, I say it is because flies are equally as attracted to the smell of crap as they are to the sweet smell of flowers. Want to make more money? Appeal more to the bees than the flies. They pollinate you with far more money than flies.
There is an old English proverb, “you catch more bees with honey than vinegar”. A similar statement exists, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” This translates to the idea that you are more desired if you’re sweet, rather than acidic. With that said, I submit to you that you catch more flies with crap than with honey. Flies don’t care about taste. They care about the easiest and cheapest garbage around. Bees seek a source of delicious nectar and you must supply this to them if you seek pollination.
As I analogized, information and product are pollen. The information and experience you provide them through lead management, call handling, and face to face in the showroom is what lures bees to you. Here are a few helpful hints on how to position yourself as a flower in need of a visit.
How to attract bees:
1. On your website: Give your shoppers the ability to view pricing, see incentives, read reviews, compare off-brand models with yours, calculate payments, get approved for financing, estimate their trade value, and create their deal on real inventory. Don’t withhold any online nectar or they’ll fly right past your website. (Filling your pages with keyword-focused word diarrhea for the search engines attracts only flies and Google spiders, not bees.)
2. Responding to leads: Send them something sweet in the form of education. Confirm discounted pricing, craft a positive worded reply, put together an appetizing quote, share a colorful video, and use natural language (the language of nature) in your responses. (Sending generic emails serves no purpose).
3. Handling sales calls: Be thankful and personable, answer their questions, ask more in return to guide them, invite them to your flower by delivering pollen and promising more of it. If you offer customers no information nectar, there is nothing to lure them to you. If you fill your speech with garbage word tracks, you will only catch flies, not bees. Talk sweet to them on the phone, not robotic. Being overly scripted sounds like crap. And carp only attracts flies.
4. Delivering a memorable showroom experience. All the data points to the fact that customers will pay more for better experiences. If you offer the cheapest flower, you won’t get the best bees. Once you have them in your store, how flexible are you at delivering the best pollination procedures the garden has to offer? By forcing customers to follow an antiquated road to the sale that is formulaic and serve up crappy experiences, the only ones willing to stick around will be the flies.
In the end, we must realize we need each other. Customers need dealerships (for now) the way bees and flowers are imperative to the survival of each other. Flies don’t need flowers and flowers don’t need flies. Not while we have bees still circulating the interwebs and pollinating organizations with their money. Organizations that are going to grow, bloom, blossom and spread will be those that put out the sweetest smelling communication, the most colorful content, and the most bee-centric experience possible. Think of who you serve and who you seek. If you’re not building a better flower for the best visitor, you’re going to wither away and die.
