Today I was marketing snow removal to a few large prospective clients. I went to hyvee where they make the best chocolate chip cookies and bought 7 boxes.
I went and gave boxes to vendors I use and a few clients I’ve had my eye on.
The cookies got me past the gatekeeper! I watched a video @squidskc posted by a window cleaner guy and he referenced “the gate keeper” meaning receptionist that usually tells people “the person you need to talk too is in a meeting can you call them next week?”
Cookies bypassed the gatekeeper EVERY TIME! I even made my way into a brand new CVS that’s not even open yet and escorted to the manager.
Well one of the prospects is a very large apartment complex. They have mostly brick buildings that are in great shape but they all have nasty stained roofs. I mentioned to her that we can clean them and her eyes lit up! She wrote a ton of information and requests for washing down and said she needs numbers by Wednesday when she heads to coorperate.
Moral of the story is $27 worth of chocolate chip cookies probably made me tens of thousands of dollars today. Not only with washing roofs but landing long term plow contracts.
Ill keep that in mind this Jan/ Feb when I’m chasing down route work. I send all my good customers brownies and a card every Christmas. Some of them have even started sending me gifts back. The power of food is not to be underestimated… Or something like that.
I put in a bid for a few services to a restaurant opening up locally and got turned down because of our pricing, so they hired cheap labor to do it.
First week after opening they couldn’t do the janitorial themselves so they hired cheap labor, maybe a week later I show up with flowers and doughnuts, finally speak to the owner (instead of the corporate reps I dealt with previously) gave him a deal on the price and sure enough we got hired on the spot. Praise God, man, this is a huge hire-two-full-timers to handle this job type of account. With room to grow. I love giving people jobs.
“His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” Matthew 25:23 KJV
I did restaurant janitorial for 6 years…every night. It was a different chapter in my life. Nice regular income where you work inside out of the elements…but it gets old cleaning up after lazy employees. A lot of using degreasers and elbow grease.
I had a sales rep for years. Robert. Super guy, straight Long Island guido upbringing, but mid-50s and fat. Heavy NY accent which stands out like a sore thumb here in NC.
This guy - every Christmas - had his wife bake a ton of cookies. They packed them into those generic tins, and he went to all of his clients and prospective clients and passed them out.
That dude killed it. He sold more printing than he should have given his sales ability. So I’d say it’s absolutely a great idea. And it’s not the cookies. It’s anything you can do that differentiates yourself from the guy who’s bound to come calling an hour later.
Sadly, Robert passed away in the summer of 2017. Heart attack. He left behind a wife and 2 daughters, one a senior in college and the other a senior in high school. Life is short. I still do work for many of his old clients, and I still send his wife every penny of his commissions every month from those jobs.
He was loud, obnoxious, opinionated, and didn’t care. Needless to say, we were good friends. My world is a little darker place without him in it.
If you want to learn more about the ‘cookie’ approach and how it works and why it works, read ‘Selling at Mach 1’ by Steve Sullivan. It’s probably the best sales book I’ve ever read.
