On today’s episode of A Drink with the Hurricane, Steve discusses part 2 of how to support your marketing representative.
Hi, folks! Steve The Hurricane here. Last week I talked about the mindset of the business owner who feels that they don’t have to do marketing because they have a marketing rep. We nixed that in the butt, yes, you have a marketing rep, but you still have to be involved in the marketing and properly support them.
Now, we’re gonna talk about PDI. What is PDI?
PDI stands for…
Personal
Daily
Interaction.
Personal daily interaction with your marketing rep is an essential way to help them be successful. You do not want your marketing rep to be in the office every day. First off, I’m going to tell you right now, the difference between a successful marketing rep and a not successful marketing rep is the support.
The other aspect of it is do not hire part-time, okay? I know there’s some of you reading, who are thinking, I have a part-time marketing rep, or I have a part-time rep and they’re doing fine. The vast majority, like 90%, of the people I’ve worked with who had a part-time marketing person, it did not work out. The referral numbers drop, they don’t get the referrals the way that you hope. And if you’re gonna spend the money, go all in and do it right and hire full-time. So that’s the first thing we wanna do, yes, yes! Yes, to full-time, right? Yes, we want a full-time marketer. No part-time, okay?
So, with a full-time marketer, you don’t want your marketing rep to be in your office every single day. They should be out on the road. I have marketing reps come to the office, twice a week, for a few hours in the morning, Monday and then maybe Thursday, or Monday and Wednesday, or Monday and Friday, something like that. So maybe a grand total throughout the course of a week, they’re in the office for less than eight hours.
That means a full-time marketer, the rest of the week, 32 hours, they’re on the road. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, leave your house and go straight to a networking event. Go straight to having a cup of coffee with somebody and talking business. Go straight to a consultation for services. Go straight to a tour, or something that’s pre-planned. Don’t come to the office. Be on the road marketing.
So, because of that, because they’re out on the road marketing, then how am I supposed to manage this person, except through personal daily interaction? What this is, is a quick five minute phone call in the four o’clock hour. It’s the end of the day, they’re probably driving to their last appointment, or their last consultation, or their last marketing drop-in stop and they’re reaching out to you and they’re saying,
Hey, Nick, it’s Steve giving you a shout real quick. I’m just calling in for my PDI call. And I wanna give you the rundown of today. And I did, this, this, this and this. I scheduled this for next week. Can you come with me on that? The lunch and learns, networking event, something like that. I scheduled this for the end of next month and this is the date and time. We’re gonna be meeting with the executive director from a top skilled nursing facility in the area and I think you should come with me on that so we can talk high-level stuff and maybe get a contract or some kind of commitment from them, that they’re gonna wanna refer us. I could use your support on that.
Boom, done!
You could also touch base on finding out if referrals were made. Marketing reps, you ever get told from a referral source oh, I gave out your brochure like three times this week, and you have no idea if anybody called?
So, that’s a great time to ask, hey Nick, I was at John Jones’ rehab center and I was talking to the social worker, Jennifer, and she said that she gave out our brochure twice last week, did anybody call in specifically from that referral source? And then Nick will go and ask the office staff.
Oh, yeah we did get a referral from there. Great, thank you so much. Because then tomorrow I’m gonna go back and see Jennifer and thank her for the referral. Yes, we did receive so and so, and they’re becoming a client. There’s a lot of marketing reps that don’t know what’s happening in the office, and that’s a failure for their marketing efforts. They need to know what’s going on. How can they find out? By doing PDI.
So, PDI is not a micromanaging thing, it is a managing thing.
Make sure you’re available to your reps, have them call you in the four to five o’clock hour. Expect five to ten minutes to get a run down from them, give them an update from any referrals or things that came in during the day so they can go tomorrow and follow through on it. That will lead to success and that is the second way to properly support your marketing rep.
Now, if you need help with any of the things mentioned, we are here to help!
Pick up the phone, give us a call, and let us help you BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION!
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