Pete Hautem has 44 years experience selling out of home.  We asked him to tell us about a time he failed when selling out of home and what he learned.  

You learn more from failure than from success.  As recently as this year I had a couple of prospects that I thought were totally insignificant.  I thought they wouldn’t buy a thing.  They were tire kickers.  I didn’t do as well in presenting to them.  One of them ended up buying a competitor’s billboard and the other bought newspaper advertising.  Getting overconfident in reading a client is one of the biggest failures are salesperson can have.  Don’t assume you know enough.

We’re not selling billboards.  We are selling opportunities to increase business.  Using billboards is the vehicle to accomplish that.

If a client asks you some questions that you can’t answer, don’t fake it.  Say “I don’t know.”  I’ll give you an example.  Bill Condon is the manager of Lamar in Oklahoma City.  I first met Bill in Savannah Georgia.  I’d been in the printing business a week and a half.  Bill comes in and started hammering me with printing questions.  I looked at him and said “I can’t answer any of your questions but if you give me 2 weeks I will come back and give you and your entire sales staff a presentation on what we do”.   I did exactly that and got his business.  Don’t ever try to fake expertise.

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