This week, have you said or posted this on Facebook somewhere? “This industry is so slow right now!”
Maybe not those exact words, but a variation. People in the decorated apparel industry, especially shop owners, constantly complain about the lack of sales. I have this exact conversation with people all the time, as they want to know the secret sauce of change.
Here’s my answer. The industry isn’t slow. YOUR sales are slow.
Right now, as you read this, there are shops in this industry that are busier than ever. They are killing it. And you are not. That is the pain you are experiencing.
So, what’s the difference between those guys and you? The difference is that they have redefined how they approach sales activities and are doing things you are not.
First, Let’s Talk About Selling
If you want to get good at cooking fancy French food, you spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing dishes. To get the results you want, you have to spend quality time doing the thing.
One of the questions I constantly ask people who complain about their lack of sales is to walk me through all of the sales activities they did yesterday. It’s no secret, folks. If you want more sales, you have to spend more time doing sales activities.
It isn’t luck. It’s not the market. It’s figuring out your ideal customer, determining their biggest problem, understanding how they buy, and showing up with an answer. Then, it’s the time spent doing sales activities that makes all the difference.
Answer this honestly. How much actual time did you spend on sales yesterday as a percentage of your day?
Keep that idea in the back of your mind for a minute, and let’s explore some other points that could make a difference for you.
Why The Old Sales Methods Stopped Working
I talked to a shop owner this week about their sales. He wasn’t happy with the results. He explained that he had recently pulled his client list, going back six months. It was listed out by production method. Screenprinting and embroidery.
He wrote a few email templates, tweaked them to feel personal, and sent them out. The results? A couple of responses. Nothing that moved the needle for him other than a few small orders.
By the way, this isn’t a lazy person. He’s hard-working, and frankly used to get better results with an email campaign.
Let’s break it down. Right now, as I write this, I have 47 unread emails in my inbox. If I don’t do anything about it and start going through them, I’ll have around 150ish by mid-afternoon. Most of them are not relevant at all. Do a quick check. What does your inbox look like?
When you send an email out, that carefully crafted subject line is sitting in a pile of unread emails that your recipient has to dig through. Not to mention, if you didn’t build the email correctly, it could end up in the spam folder or promotions tab, where the likelihood that it will be read dramatically decreases with each passing minute.
Social media posts aren’t much better. Five minutes after your scheduled post appears, it is more or less gone. Buried in the feed with all the other noise. The algorithm probably moved on with the three or four people who might have seen it.
This is why sending drip campaigns or social media posts feels like hitting a beach ball over a fence and praying someone will hit it back to you. If nobody is standing there at that exact moment, it just falls to the grass, the result of wasted effort. Any number that depends on an algorithm or an inbox filter is a number you are renting, not one you own.
So, let’s reframe this.
Why Do Bands Go On Tour?
I’m sure you have a favorite band. I do. It’s Rush. I saw them in 1982 when I was a senior in high school.
Let’s get back to the question. Why do bands go on tour? Because when they are playing in your hometown, they are suddenly relevant again. People talk about them. Share memories. Buy tickets and merch. They drag their friends and kids along to the show to introduce them and, hopefully, generate a new legion of fans.
In other words, they show up.
Expanding this metaphor for the folks in the back row, your shop is the band. If you never leave your building, you are the music group that stopped touring. Your customers don’t hate you; they just forgot you exist.
You don’t have to be like REM, the Talking Heads, The White Stripes, The Smiths, Fugazi, or Outkast. (or name your favorite group that you’ve forgotten about) Do you want to be relevant to your customers again? Go on tour.
So, What’s the Number?
Here’s the KPI I want you to start tracking. Actual conversations. Why? Because this is the only sales metric that you fully control.
And when I say “conversations,” I mean a full, in-depth, meaningful conversation. Not thirty seconds of, “Hey, here is your tracking number” or some other sort of follow-up.
Conversations can be on the phone, on video using a tool like Zoom or Google Meet, or in person. They can be the first time you have ever spoken to the person, or the 90th. You want a real conversation between two humans.
Why does this matter? Because people buy from people they know, like, and trust. The “know” is the first part of the sales cycle. They have to know you. Sure, it’s easy to sell one shirt on a social media post. Selling 100 or 1000 or 10,000? That doesn’t happen without trust, and the person has to know you first to trust you.
This is why we want to track conversations. Not email opens. Social media likes or DMs. Real, in-depth conversations.
What Counts As A Real Conversation?
Let’s be specific. A conversation is a two-way exchange between people where actual dialogue occurs. I’m not going to be there when you track this, so you need to have your own honest definition of what matters to you, or the number you are tracking is worthless.
Leaving a voicemail is not a conversation. Emailing back and forth about something is not a conversation. A text message exchange is not a conversation. If you let those count, you are simply building a friendlier version of the vanity metrics you are trying to escape.
Got it? Good. Let’s define it further. Once you are tracking “real” conversations, let’s raise the bar from “real” to “good.”
Two ideas do that.
Idea One: Asking Questions
The first step to having better conversations is to ask more questions. Let me give you an example.
When someone says, “I need 100 shirts by Friday, can you get them in lime green?” the amateur starts working up a quote.
The pro move is to pause and ask clarifying questions. “100 lime green shirts by Friday? What’s going on? Help me understand what these are for?”
The second you ask that, good things start happening. First, you instantly find the upsell. Maybe with a better garment, more decoration locations, or an extra item like an embroidered hat to match. This is the first step in proving that you are an expert, not a vending machine. Any yahoo can send a quote. Guiding someone toward something more creative, personal, and aligned with their expectations for placing the order is what creates the value that lets you charge more.
Idea Two: Always Give the Next Step
In any conversation, at any point in the sales process or customer journey, it is crucial to always give the other person the next step.
Every conversation has to end with you telling the customer what they need to do next. This is about reducing friction and making it a breeze to work with you. This means BEFORE you start the conversation, you know where you are in the process and which next-step idea you are going to close the conversation with today. This is about you being prepared for the sales call by knowing what you want.
No next step, no motion.
Let me prove it to you. As you sit here reading this article, I want you to do only one thing. I want you to mentally picture an elephant. What does it look like?
In your mind, you did absolutely what I told you to do. Before you read that sentence, you were not thinking about an elephant. After you read it, you were.
Giving your customer the idea of what they need to do next is exactly how they are going to do it. People act when you tell them the action you want them to take. This is you saying, “Approve the art by 3:00 today,” or “Click the button and subscribe,” or “I’m sending you two links; choose which shirt you want to use and get back to me by 10:30 so I can order.”
In conversations, tell them the next step every single time, or they will do nothing.
Start Tracking Conversations
Remember, this is the KPI you need to track. So, let’s dig deep into how this works.
Keep two lists. People who know you, and people who don’t. These are two completely different datasets, but vitally important.
People who know you are your current customers, former customers, or people you have a relationship with who haven’t bought from you yet. As you aren’t starting from scratch, warming these people up into active conversations is much easier because they already know you.
People who don’t know you are prospects. You are starting at zero. This is new growth, and it will always be harder, slower, and an important metric to track, as you have to keep the new customer pipeline filled.
Here’s why you split them. If all of your conversations this week are with people who know you, you aren’t building a new growth engine. You are just maintaining your list. Nothing wrong with that, but you need to introduce yourself to new people to discover new markets and new opportunities.
A phrase I learned in a leadership class in college is applicable here, “Your best friend is only a handshake away.” You can’t be scared about meeting new people. Show up and shake their hand.
How You Track Conversations
I’m going to recommend you go old school. Put this up on a whiteboard in your office so you can see it all the time. If it lives on a spreadsheet, a notepad, or a CRM tool, you have to find it and open it to add information or see progress.
If it is on the wall, bold as the day is long, and visible at all times, your progress and your development of better habits will matter more.
Draw a simple grid. On the header at the top: Conversations. Down the left-hand side, the weeks of the month. (Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5) Going across, the days of the week. (Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri) Split each day into two columns, “Know Me” and “Don’t Know Me.”
The goal to start is to have 5 real conversations a day. However they land, whether they know you or not, is fine. Record each type with a different-colored marker so you can tell from a distance which shows up more. Be honest. Your goal is 25 conversations a week to start. When that feels easy, increase the amount. It’s like lifting weights. When you get into a rhythm of constantly working it, you can level up.
Pro Tip: Add one more mark, in a different color, and make it a star or a check, any time a conversation advances to the real next step. From a glance you can see whether you are having good conversations that lead somewhere, or are you just counting conversations.
Why the old school whiteboard instead of a slick software or spreadsheet report? Because it is visible, it is yours, and the numbers will climb when you can see them. You can’t hide from zeroes. A report you have to open is a report you will ignore. A whiteboard placed across from you will stare at you when you are working at your desk.
When Should I Sell? The Golden Hours
There are times during the day that are the golden hours of sales. They are roughly 8:30 am to 11:45 am in the morning, and 1:15 pm to 4:45 pm in the afternoon. This is when your buyers are usually available. Some might differ (like restaurant owners), so it is important to know your customers.
Want more sales? During these hours, all you do is sales activities. You don’t clean screens. You don’t fill out a report. You don’t order shirts from S&S or SanMar. You don’t do anything else but sales.
All other tasks have to be done around the golden hours of selling. Sales is the lifeblood of your business. The number one reason why we have a feast-and-famine problem with sales in the industry? Because when you get busy with tasks, you stop prospecting, calling people, following up, going to see customers, or any other sales activity that will fill your shop with orders three to six weeks from now.
Again, let me be clear. If you want more sales, you have to do sales activities. These have to lead to conversations. The conversations lead to quotes. The quotes lead to money in the bank. This is why the constraint to track is conversations. That is the nugget to watch like a hawk.
What If I Can’t Do The Selling Myself?
I hear this a lot. Then you hire someone to do it. No excuses. If sales aren’t happening because you don’t have the time, skill, or personality for it, that is not the reason to skip the outbound effort. It is the reason to delegate it.
Sales, 100%, does not have to come from you. It can be from a salesperson or sales team. And the good news is that these days you can augment your sales team efforts with systems, processes, AI, and even virtual assistants to help with the work. What matters more than anything is that it is done consistently and habitually. Every day.
There is a trap if you, the owner, insist on doing every bit of selling yourself. The growth of your company is chained to your availability on your calendar. When you have no time for sales, you have no sales. When you look up and can’t make payroll, suddenly you find time to hit the streets and bring in work.
This is why shops with a dedicated sales team are busier than you.
I know hiring your first salesperson might feel terrifying. Maybe you tried it before, and it didn’t work out. You are unsure how to pay them, manage them, or where to start.
Let’s lean into that. At one point, you didn’t know how to drive a car either. There is always a first time on the road to success. You just have to take that step.
How Do I Get Past My Own Head?
Two things stop people cold, and both live in your own head.
The first one is negativity. Your brain is excellent at listing every possible thing that could go wrong, or reasons why something might not work out. They will be annoyed if I call. The receptionist will block me. They already have a company handling their merch.
Here’s a question for you in rebuttal. How come your brain never lists everything that could go right? They might love you. Maybe their current provider just screwed them over. They have been thinking about calling you for a month, and now you are here!
This is the same amount of calories your brain is burning, but with different results. Train and feed the positive version. Envision things working.
The second one is awkwardness. Reaching out to people who have never heard of you feels scary. Whether you are calling them on the phone, or showing up at their office, it just feels weird. I get it. It is weird.
So don’t make it about sales. Instead, make it about information gathering. “I was next door dropping something off, had a minute, and wanted to stop in. I’ve driven past you guys for years and always wondered what you do in here.” That’s it. You are not trying to close them in the first thirty seconds. You are meeting another human being with curiosity about them. Gatekeepers don’t matter, as you are not asking for anything.
My favorite version of this is what I call the “Vampire Method.” Supposedly, according to the horror story myths, vampires can’t come into your house until you invite them in. Let’s have the same rules in sales when meeting someone for the first time.
You don’t get to talk about what you do until they ask. This keeps the conversation focused on them. Ask what they do, what’s going on, what are their struggles, are they busy. You keep spotlight trained on them until they finally say, “so what do you do again?” Now you are invited in, and they will be listening now because they asked the question.
Where To Start
Let’s start with your list. Who are the companies, organizations, or people that you feel would be the best customers to have for your business? Not random businesses. The ones you actually want. Start the list with your top 25, 50, or 100 potential customers. This list is your target, and will help you focus your attention on who to reach out to for new business.
Next, pick a day or two during the week. Let’s take a Tuesday morning. Look at the list, and take a few of the names and pick a route like a milk truck. In a two or three-hour period, go and see three to six of these potential customers.
Remember, on this first visit you are not selling. You are starting conversations.
Get some business cards and a leave-behind ready. Make sure your sample is something people would really want. Trust me, a koozie with “your logo here” on it gets tossed the moment you are out of sight. Instead, make something people will genuinely keep and use.
In your part of the world, try using a local landmark, the city's nickname, a state park, or a unique animal native to your area. Make the item so good, they would have bought it in a store. When you hand it to them for free, this is a conversation starter they could actually use.
Some Other Tactics To Try
Here are a few other ideas to help you get started:
- Print a roll of bright, neon-colored stickers with your logo, info, and a short phrase like “Call me!” When you pay a check at a restaurant or store you frequent, drop the sticker on the store copy. The server won’t care, but the person counting the receipts in the office will see the sticker and notice. “This guy has been in here three times this month; why aren’t we using him?”
- For a sample, create a hat with a Velcro patch on the front. Occasionally send a new patch, or bring one the next time you visit. Leather this time, embroidered the next, neon after that. It’s a running conversation, not a one-time gift.
- Keep a few sample kits in the trunk of your car. Just a normal gallon-size Ziploc bag can work, if you don’t want to do anything fancy. Inside, there is a flyer, your business card, a few samples, and everything is designed to match. Make it look like it is an on-purpose program. When you bump into someone at a networking event, the ball game, or at a store, you can say “Hey, I’ve got something for you in my car” and actually deliver.
Why Does This Matter?
In this industry, relationships are what drive sales. People buy from other people. The number one building block of creating a relationship is a conversation. The more you have them with someone, the stronger your relationship will become. That’s why we are tracking conversations.
Here’s a checklist of some ideas to get you started on this. Start at the top and work your way down.
Pull last month’s sales information from before you started tracking conversations. This is your baseline.
Create the whiteboard chart as described above. Make sure it is visible in your office. This is your scoreboard.
Start your conversation tracking by setting the goal to be 5 a day. Try to have five meaningful conversations a day. Do this for at least 4 weeks and watch your quote count climb against your baseline.
Track your progress by adding your numbers to your whiteboard grid. Use two different colored markers. One for “Know Me,” one for “Don’t Know Me.”
Keep about 10 or so bright “I was here” stickers in your wallet or purse. When you pay for something at a potential customer, add them to the store copy receipt.
On your next quote opportunity, before you jump to the price calculation, ask the person what the shirts are for. Help use that information to guide a better conversation.
Build out your Dream 100 list. Start working it.
Put together your leave-behind and get it ready for when you go and see people.
Schedule time for your first “Milk Run,” where you cold-call potential clients from your Dream 100 list. Show up and introduce yourself. Remember, you are gathering info.
Start by scheduling one “Milk Run” per week. Keep track of the results.
As you move through the month, keep your stats up to date and compare them to your baseline sales information. You’ll probably start to see that the more conversations you have, the more opportunities you’ll start to see.
If you don’t have time to do the sales effort work, start writing a job description for a salesperson and hire someone.
Move the threshold for sales conversations from 5 to 8.
Want Different Results?
One thing I know absolutely to be true is that if you are not happy with your current results, the only way to improve them is to change.
Sitting back and waiting for sales to come to you doesn’t work. Get out of your office, meet people, and have real conversations. Do it long enough and you become the go-to source they call when the stakes are high and they need some trusted advice.