Why This Sales Manager's Bold Event Idea Almost Backfired: A Lesson in Pre-Qualification
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INTERVIEWER
So Oftentimes, especially in in BD and sales, right? You, you've gotta. You've got to move fast. Uh, you gotta try and accomplish things. And sometimes it's far easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. So, I, I'd love to hear about a time where you did exactly that, right? You didn't wait to kind of get the permission you needed, you just acted, uh, and, and figured you'd have to beg for forgiveness later.
CANDIDATE
So is, is it just like taking action?
INTERVIEWER
It's, you know, it's basically, yeah, it's it's taking action, but it's, it's essentially acting. Before getting explicit uh permission.
CANDIDATE
That's, I mean, that's a good question, um I'm trying to, trying to think of a time that would be. I think the closest related. Example I can give you is during my time with the American Association of Aesthetic Medicine History, so not my prior employer, but the one previous. We sold educational software and training to healthcare professionals. And Typically, you have to pre-qualify because aesthetics has to do with different licenses, different states, who can inject, who cannot. But I recall I put together a weekend event. And this weekend event was to essentially teach these folks about. Aesthetics, botulum toxins, derma fillers, chemical peels. And then the financial side of it, which is the business, the practice management, how to implement it, and how to, you know, generate revenue. And typically the pre-qualification is a very serious thing with our to attend the event. Uh, pre-qualifying who you share this information with, right? So, pre-qualifying the event plus the prospect. Because you don't wanna provide all this information to someone who's not licensed and who's not eligible and, and you know, it's just It's, it's not illegal, it's just ethically it's not as. Accepted. Um, But I did put together an event. And I went crazy on Facebook, um, in the groups, and I did LinkedIn promotion to try to drive. Prospects to come And I did put this event together and it was a pretty good, you know, turnout. 22 people.
INTERVIEWER
Was it a face to face or a virtual face
CANDIDATE
to face, yeah, this was. Pre-COVID, face to face, hotel. Weekend seminar, uh. I've done this before. They're very educational. They're very informative. They dive into so many topics and then ultimately it leads. To our educational software and consulting services. But what I didn't do was I I didn't get the direct permission from the company to put this event together. I figured I can put this event together on my own and bring in these prospects. And ultimately, it'd be a success, it'd be fine, it'd be good. Uh, but what I didn't do was I didn't pre-qualify as hard as I should have, um, and I did have a good turnout. But there were several people who We're not licensed. And we did get. The turnout was excellent on conversions. If I recall, it was something close to about 70%, so that's a high conversion rate.
INTERVIEWER
What did they convert to?
CANDIDATE
They converted to either our e-learning software or future training courses or consulting. Yeah. So, so a product essentially or a service, uh, but the folks who weren't licensed were upset. They were a little bit upset at the end because they weren't able to partake in the offering because they're not licensed. So I did take, yeah, I did take action. To get things done, but I don't think that it was the most. Appropriate way to get. Well, so, so
INTERVIEWER
let me ask you a question. So if it's 70% convert rate, but you have 22 people show up, let's say you had, you know, 70% of 22. Let's flip that around. 30% of that is like, you know, call it 6.5, 7, let's just call it 7. So you had 7 people who didn't. Convert, but 70% that did, which is 15 of the 7. Was it the 7, all 7 of those weren't licensed or some smaller portion of the 7 weren't licensed, or was it 70% of the people who could Convert converted. That's I'm just trying to understand the numbers.
CANDIDATE
No, I converted those who are able to because they were licensed. But there was a group of 5 people that were not licensed. So we had a few people who didn't sign up. And that's the follow up and, you know. They don't say yes the first time, you're gonna have to follow up. There was a group of 5 people. And those 5 people were really, you know. They had sat through the whole weekend and uh ultimately they weren't able to participate, so
INTERVIEWER
yeah. Yeah, that, that's always a bummer, um, so looking back. You know, obviously, there's, there's things you could have done differently. I get that. But looking back, do you feel like you made the right decision in putting on the weekend?
CANDIDATE
I think I did. Honestly, I, I think I did because The success we got out of it. Outweighed the complaints of those people. Uh, I was able to persuade them and talk to them and kind of diffuse them, so they didn't write a bad review, but that, if they had written bad reviews, then I think I would have really regretted it.
INTERVIEWER
Where would they have written the negative reviews?
CANDIDATE
Either on Yelp, they could have bashed on the Facebook group, LinkedIn groups. Um, they could have taken to the Better Business Bureau. Um, you know, you don't want any of that at all. Huh
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