Sales Leads for $12

People shouldn’t burn bridges. Sales People should always be building them. J. Scott

I got a car wash the other day. I view it as a luxury item, and if my vehicle hadn’t been bombarded by a flock of diuretic birds, I wouldn’t have been there.
I was having trouble getting the automated machine to accept my five dollar bill, and the digitized female voice kept telling me to make sure the corners were flat, (they were). So I tried the other stall, and a different machine with the same results. My 10 year old daughter suggested that I just ‘use the $20’ in my wallet. Good idea. I put the $20 in, and got credit for my $8 wash, and a receipt that said something like “we’re sorry for the inconvenience, call this number, we owe you $12”.

I could tell by the number that it was from someone that lived in the Clarksville area, which is about an hour away from my home in Hendersonville. Steve (the owner) answered the phone and apologized profusely. He told me that the software in his automated machine doesn’t accept the new $5 bills yet, and the machine had apparently run out of smaller bills that day.

He said he would be in town the next day and would call me around noon to give me my money back. I thanked him and hung up. A week and a half had gone by (and I thought “so did my $12”) I hadn’t heard from Steve.

Two days ago he called me and apologized again. He told me he works full time at a company in Clarksville, and the carwash is his ‘small business on the side.’ He has been having some unexpected problems with his machines, and if it was alright with me, he would load up a car wash card for me (worth far more than the $12) and drop it in the mail. I told him I understood the challenges that many small business owners face, thanked him and gave Steve my address. We then talked about gas prices, the economy and what I did for a living (help small business promote themselves by selling them websites, search engine optimization, e-mail newsletter programs and blogs.)

He told me his wife worked for a company that just set up a new website, but when they typed the name of the company into Google, the site wasn’t coming up. I gave him some suggestions, and he asked me to call his wife and give her the same info. Our conversation turned into a proposal and may become a sale.

What could have been a frustrating situation ended up with a positive outcome because I wasn’t a demanding jerk to this guy. He’s a small business owner working in my town so there’s always a potential for business, but even more important than that, he’s a human being.

This is an example of how I develop business relationships. I want to help people, engage with them, have conversations not sales pitches. I want people to have a good experience with me, and not dread the thought of calling me if they need something else.

You never know where your next lead will come from. It may arrive through a neighbor, a friend, or a complete stranger… Perhaps, it will come from a busy, hard working entrepreneur, that owes you $12.

Jason