Nickel and DIE–me–ing

Whatever happened to a little something called salesmanship? Why can’t a company (stone, pizza, video – whatever) actually sell a customer on the reason why they’re better, instead of sliding down to the tactics of hiding extra charges? I don’t mind paying more if I am getting better value.

I was about to resort to this slimy method myself (well, not really, but I was tempted) when I brought it up in a Great Northern Stone board meeting. (Actually, it was Greg and myself in my truck – informal but, hey, this is Canada). I was in a sarcastic mood when I suggested to Greg that we start – boy, I get a cold chill even remembering this – advertising like carpet cleaners.

Let’s tell people that we can polish all the marble in your home for $300. Then, we proceed to nickel-and-dime them for everything: $600 delivery charge (to get our techs and equipment to your home – more if beyond a certain distance); $200 if they want us to put the job on the books and have our insurance active; $1 ft² for protective tape (customer can opt out if they wish to clean up walls and other areas afterwards); $0.75 ft² for sealing; and on and on………….

Greg just looked at me with a stunned face and asked if I was joking or not. Of course I was joshing him, but I was getting frustrated with the way the sales world is going (and I’d been through the pizza routine the night before).

He then reminded me that we really aren’t losing jobs to the competition, and we both credit our sales department for that. If anything, he reiterated, we’re doing better this year than last.

And, he didn’t forget to add that we really don’t want to resort to sideshow-type tricks to make a living.

So in the long run, we continue to sell our customers on why we’re better than our competition. We give everyone a fair price, and explain why it is fair. And, we deliver exactly what we say we can … and we sleep well at night because of it.

We also feel that, as professionals working in the stone industry, we should stand out by being professional. Why would we want to compete with the carpet and other guys in their slash-and-burn-type selling; I don’t like to be compared to them, nor do I care to be paid like them or treated like them.

We’re providing and working on the material that pharaohs, caesars and kings found to their liking for millennia. We’re usually dealing with people who are in a position to be able to afford stone, and they’re not fooled easily. Just because every Tom, Dick and Harriet can walk into your local big box and buy stone doesn’t mean that material is equal to the product being sold to the high-end customer.

And, hey, if you’re incorporating that new upcharge sales technique in your business and it’s working, more power to you. But I think it’ll be a long while before we ever consider it.

Until next month, keep your stick on the ice.

Tom McNall is founder and owner of Great Northern Stone Care, a Huron Park, Ontario-based stone-cleaning and -restoration company servicing all of southern Ontario. Tom offers corporate and private consultations, serves as a trainer for the Marble Institute of America, and will present “Walking the Fine Line Between Maintenance and Restoration” with David Bonasera on Jan. 26 at StonExpo/Marmomacc Americas. McNall can be reached at stone_rx@earthlink.net.

This article appeared in the October 2010 print edition of Stone Business magazine. ©2010 Western Business Media Inc.

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