By Emma Green, NATSPEC Communications
This is a story about Sam. He’s a sales representative – a rather successful one, in fact – and he likes his job. Loves it, even, especially on a good day when everything goes exactly as planned. Because that’s the thing about his job: Sam knows what works, he knows what to say, he knows his company’s brilliant products.
But today is a cold, grey Monday morning. Neither good nor bad – not yet anyway. It’s 7.32am and Sam sits in the back corner of a tiny café called Otto’s. It’s a popular place, full of that pleasant sort of background noise. There’s the whir and hiss of the coffee machine over customers chatting and the barista calling out names and orders. The café is loud and busy, but for Sam, staring at the sizeable stack of papers on the table in front of him, the morning simply feels dull.
He has a meeting at 8.00am with a prospective client called Katrina. Her architecture firm is just around the corner. Sam is positively pessimistic about it all. The weekend felt too short, and this meeting has taken too many weeks and far too many phone calls to arrange. He woke up with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the day ahead. After all, an 8.00am meeting on a Monday is not his favourite thing in the world.
Sam crosses his arms, frowns, and then sighs at the case studies and project reports set out in front of him. Today he almost feels like he’ll have to work doubly hard to convince himself as well as Katrina.
The barista comes over with Sam’s flat white.
“You’ve dropped something there, mate,” he says, pointing to the floor where a stapled document has slipped off the little café table. Sam reads the title upside down: Branded Worksection.
“Thanks,” he says indifferently, leaning down to pick it up. He sips his coffee and turns the Branded Worksection the right way around to give it a half-hearted read.
It takes him a second to remember where he got it from. A stack of these Branded Worksections arrived in the office last Thursday just before the weekly team meeting. Jennifer, the head of sales, was very eager to show them off but Sam had left hurriedly for an appointment with a long-standing client called Theo. He and Theo then spent more than half the time swapping pictures of their toddlers and any thoughts related to the Branded Worksection vanished from Sam’s head – until now.
He skims the first few pages, pauses, reads more deeply. Remembering what Jennifer said, he notices the product-specific information, the links back to the company website, the prompts for the specifier to edit the document. He turns another page. There are references to Standards and legislation – even references to other related worksections. The precision and detail, he thinks, makes this a fantastic addition to his sales material.
Sam sips his coffee. It tastes even better than usual. The early morning noise of Otto’s fades into the background as he envisions precisely how this 8.00am meeting with Katrina will unfold...
It is 8.36am when Sam says goodbye to Katrina at the door to her office and heads back out onto the street. The sun is peaking through the clouds a little now, pale yellow, and a few orange leaves rustle about his ankles. He goes back over the meeting in his mind.
“Tell me,” Katrina said at the beginning, getting straight to the point. “Why should I use your product?”
“Because this will make your work easier.” Sam slid the Branded Worksection across the table towards the architect. “You’ll notice it has the same format as a generic NATSPEC worksection but Section Two and Section Four are what really makes this Branded Worksection stand out. Section Two showcases our product, so you get a clear understanding of the product’s characteristics and features, as well as how it’s intended to be used. It’s a high-quality, fit-for-purpose product, as you can see from the references to Australian Standards.”
“Is there a certificate of conformity?” Katrina asked.
“Yes, just here,” Sam indicated on the page, “with its date of expiry, so you can see everything is professionally up to date. As the specifier, you will use Section Two to inform your decision about which product to use and then document your choices in Section Four. Then this Branded Worksection is good to go.”
“Hmm,” said Katrina, “Not bad at all.”
Sam smiles to himself as he crosses the road. They shook hands at the end of the meeting to confirm the deal. Katrina is no longer a prospective client but a new client. An unequivocally great start to the week.
He has some time up his sleeve before he has to get on with the rest of the day. He swings back around to Otto’s.
Keep a look out for the next instalment in the series Tales of a Sales Representative to be continued in the June 2022 Product Partner newsletter.
