A Good Old-Fashioned Sales Trip

In the age of Skype, Email, Smart Phones and Social Media, it is easy to forget the importance of face to face meetings. With that in mind I threw on my “Tommy Boy” clip-on tie and pine scented cologne and hit the road. I covered over 2,000 miles and seven states while visiting current clients and new prospects in their own environment.

Long Island, New York was my first stop and where better to start than The Hamptons. Up at 5am and off to get some of the best bagels around for my breakfast meeting in Southampton with one of the most knowledgeable, honest and straightforward real estate brokers on the East End. With a 2 hour face-to-face meeting, one freshly warm bagel, and a few cups of coffee under my belt, I had compiled more ideas of how we can help real estate clients in The Hamptons than I knew what to do with. One of the biggest pains that Town & Country has is that they just recently spent a significant amount of money to design and develop a great website, but did not do anything to market the site. A good website with no marketing is just a website that is never seen. We discussed how Blue Tent can use our expertise to drive qualified traffic to their website using email marketing, pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization, helping them to create a real presence on the web. Being able to brain storm in person enabled us to really let our ideas fly. We discussed how we could work together on new internet marketing strategies, but the learning didn’t end there. Since I was in the area, I was able to drive around and see the product that we would be marketing first-hand and also get an idea of the target market.

After a quick drive out to Montauk (quick being completely relative on Long Island in the summer). I made my way back to meet with ADCHEM, an engineering and manufacturing company. We spent most of the afternoon discussing marketing strategies, timelines and goals of how to work together to increase brand awareness and more importantly sales conversions. Since they manage and create their website internally we discussed how we can leverage email marketing to announce the launch of their new website. After that we would work with our SEM team to increase brand awareness through PPC and SEO marketing in order to drive new leads. Being there onsite allowed me to take a tour of the plant, hard hat and all, and really get an understanding of who ADCHEM is. Even though ADCHEM is not a typical Blue Tent client, our services are versatile and can be implemented across any industry.

Next, a visit with the crew at The Winemaker Studio gave me a chance to see the new shop and try some of the best wines coming out of New York. It was then on to Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard to visit with some of the strongest Blue Tent supporters on the shores of the North East.

Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard

A quick 2-hour meeting with the staff at Martha’s Vineyard Vacation Rentals was a great way to learn more about the company - how they have grown and changed over nearly 30 years in business and how Blue Tent has been an integral part of that business for almost six years. With a short ferry ride back to Cape Cod, I made it just in time for a dinner meeting with one of Blue Tent's newest devotees. The dinner with Martha Murray Vacation Rentals gave us both a chance to learn who it is that's on the other end of the phone. It also gave this mountain dweller an opportunity to enjoy their locally farmed, 69 cent oysters. The team at MMVR has been significantly impressed with BTM because we came in on short notice to build them a new website before their old site was shut down. This quick turnaround allowed MMVR to enter the busy summer season with little delay in bookings. This informal setting was the perfect venue to spitfire ideas about how we can work with them to implement better internet marketing initiatives and make the strong Martha Murray brand even stronger. We are discussing how BTM can use our email, PPC, SEO and social media marketing teams to grow Martha Murray for next summer.

With Long Island, Cape Cod, and the islands behind me I headed up the coast, stopping along the way to visit customers and see some of the nicest places in the North East - places along the North Shore of Massachusetts, the shores of NH like Seabrook Beach, and places in Southern Maine like Kennebunkport and Ogunquit. Driving east, I covered all of New Hampshire from the lakes to the mountains.

The road to Killington, VT after Hurricane Irene

The Green Mountain State was the final stop along the Blue Tent Marketing highway. Here I visited ski towns from Stowe in the North to Okemo in the south. Along the way I made it a point to visit our long time clients at Wise Vacations in Killington, VT. Meeting with the owner of Wise gave me a great understanding of the business, what has happened over their 30 years and what is going on as the company moves forward. Since I was in the area, I was also able to check out Highridge Condominiums which we recently launched a new VRWeb for. The face-to-face meetings showed their true colors after Hurricane Irene devastated Vermont. The flooding had a truly horrific effect on the small New England towns. I contacted our friends at Wise to make sure that everyone was unharmed. Since I had just been there, and they knew I remembered the area, they shared a picture illustrating why they could not make it to the office. All roads in and out of Killington were impassable!

The trip to the North East was both beautiful and worthwhile in gaining new clients and solidifying existing relationships. Most important was the impact a face to face meeting has in an electronic world. Do not take for granted any one-on-one time you get with a prospect or current client. Since there are so many electronic tools to make our work day more productive, there is something to be said for the face-to-face meeting and what it can accomplish.