I enjoy hearing a good sales person in action.  You can learn from this approach.

Note the psychology of his presentation ………. he worked very hard to make the potential clients like him and laugh at his jokes.  In the end, they were buying the salesperson, not the cleaner.  (Door to door sales is all about avoiding the closing of the door.) Catholic Schools encouraged sales expertise. I sold “The Catholic Exponent” newspaper door to door at $0.25 per subscription.  Jewelry at Christmas time and also wrapping paper.  Thank you Sister Joseph.  You taught me to love literature; and, to use the gift of language to convince people of the value of a product.

Most CEO’s come from the sales side of the business. ( More than accounting and management combined. )  This means that these people appreciate being sold!  They want to hear how records management can make their company succeed in a big way.  Or; how it can prevent catastrophic expenses!

If you pay attention, you will find that the Records Managers who dominate in their profession are great communicators.  Great communicators incorporate humor in their presentations.  Not the Kenny Brooks type; as that is too over the top. 

How many of you have ever asked C-Level officers what they expect from records management?  I bet the description they give would sound very much like Information Governance.  But if you continue the discussion, you will find that records management is not perceived as the entity that can provide this capability.  This is odd because they don’t really have an alternative source for the service. That is why records management has so many consultants.  These are the sales people who can convince the C-Levels that they can provide Governance.

Why does management not believe you can govern the records?  Ask yourself this…….”Does your offsite storage contract have an onerous Hostage Fee?”  If the answer is yes……… then you really have little control over your records.  You cannot change vendors if your service is terrible! You don’t even have control over how many boxes you can pull out in a day or a week.  Your vendor wrote limitations into your contract.

Suppose your vendor sells out to Satan……..can you stop the move of the boxes to Satan?  Or do you not have any control in a merger and acquisition scenario? Do you have a clause that says “In any change of ownership of the offsite storage company, the vendor will return the boxes to our company immediately upon request and the sale of the storage business voids any removal charge other than the day to day delivery charges on a box or unit of storage.”

If a records manager could show management that they have defended the company against these  ‘restraint of trade’ practices, they would be worthy of being the Information Governance Manager for the organization. But in reality, records manager have been complicit in allowing the single largest line item on the balance sheet of offsite storage companies to be the line item for “Permanent Removal Fees”.  

E-Discovery costs are another exploding cost for corporations.  Yet records management has the ability to dramatically control this expense. 80% of the cost of E-Discovery is from review costs and a great records management program could dramatically reduce this cost.

So two rather amazing cost centers could be dramatically reduced by a smart records manager.  If I wrote the criteria for a CRM, it would focus on these two areas.   Eliminating Hostage Fees and controlling the management of the records and Preparing for E-Discovery.  Until those topics are a big part of the CRM program, C-Levels will not see the benefit in CRM status.  

If you viewed records management from a sales perspective, you would have resolved those issues.  You would stop records management from being viewed as purely a cost center and view it the same way the organization views legal expenses. Records management is a pro-active investment to avoid future expenses.  A “Reaper Curve” of “Probability of Occurrence Over Time” in comparison with "Financial Exposure" would demonstrate that records management’s value is a function of time. In addition, a Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs in Records Management would show that accessibility and trust are at the top of the list of needs of the organization.

If you cannot demonstrate these facts in a compelling way, it may be time for a course in Salesmanship.  Then you learn how the phrase “Nem di Gelt” drives every business decision.

[Ironically, I spent the weekend in a Food Stand at the Kutztown Folk Festival teaching high school kids how to be effective sales people. I bet the kids I could sell more soft drinks with my clients than they could.  So as each person would buy a hot dog or a hamburger or a pork bar-b-que, I would tell them “You know what tastes great with that?  Our hometown brewed Birch Beer!  It is great.”  The client would do one of two things “Okay that sounds good.” or they would respond “No, just let me have a Pepsi or Mountain Dew and so on.”  The kids would say at the end of the day “You didn’t sell a Birch Beer to everyone!”  But I responded “No, but my goal was to sell more soda than them, not just sell Birch Beer!”  And then they saw the power of suggestion.  Even the clients who would not accept my offer of the Birch Beer still bought a drink of some type. As Henny Youngman always advised “Nem di gelt!” and that is why The Optimist Stand always sells more soda than any other booth.  ;~)  



Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
[log in to unmask]
(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]