Starting Out the Right Way: Working with a Sales Rep
By Dean Schuler
Success in the limousine industry starts from the moment you decide to operate a service. From the time you open your doors you want to be known as a purveyor of quality. When I was a small, struggling two-car operator I was able to attract the most amazing people to assist me. People love an underdog and will go out of their way to be associated with an up-and-coming provider of quality service. Many highly skilled people will work on direct trade or on a project basis. My company was tiny, yet I provided service as good as, if not better than, the big operators.
One of the best things I did in the beginning was hire a sales professional to recruit while I managed the business. My first sales representative had extensive tourism experience and a sterling reputation in the hospitality trade. We did sales calls together to the destination management companies, the consulates, and a few select corporate accounts. Each account produced substantial business. She was able to see the decision maker while I performed my end of the deal by showing the car and answering questions about the service delivery and multi-car jobs. In less than six months I was doing business with every firm we had contacted.
The sales rep gave me instant credibility with the local tourism industry and I began to receive requests to bid on large jobs. In a competitive bid situation for the Ambassador of Kuwait’s visit I was told to come to a meeting with the committee entrusted with the logistics to present my case. My sales rep got my foot in the door; now it was time to dazzle the client. I was able to do so successfully by providing documentation of the many government officials I had previously handled and by describing in depth how we handled such clients. The job went well and immediately led to more bid proposals coming my way. The larger companies were shocked because they thought I would never get the shot.
As my business grew, my sales rep remained just as important. In 1994 when I became an affiliate of Carey International, I started seeing plenty of sedan work and the focus of my company shifted toward sedans. In the spring of 1995 I performed a multi-day job of 21 Town Cars. I was hard pressed to come up with that many cars on short notice, but with the help of my staff who coordinated additional sedans, everything ran smoothly.
The sedans became a larger part of the total equation and as we promoted them, additional opportunities appeared. Our fleet grew as rapidly as our need for office staff. Conventions began to demand more sedans than were available in our market area, and my team, including my sales rep, assisted in securing additional cars. Without the relationships that my sales rep had built with other area businesses, I would have never been able to respond to lucrative jobs that came our way. The Super Bowl in 1997 was the culmination of 11 years of positioning myself with the companies that purchased transportation for these events. The yield was something that was a remote dream when I started out. The development of the relationships with our vendors made it all possible. And the jobs keep rolling in.
When you’re just starting out, you will probably cringe at additional expenses as I did. But hiring a sales rep was one of the best decisions I could have made to strategically position my company on the fast track to success, equally important as the right car and the best chauffeurs. Give some thought to hiring even a part-time sales rep before dismissing the idea as too expensive. In the long run, you may lose more money than if you had hired a hotshot to promote your service. LD
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