Locating Success

Founded in 1989, International Locator began as a two-man operation. Today it has ballooned into an 1,800-person organization with representatives in 50 states and 43 countries worldwide. Its mission: finding lost people. The cost: from $125 to $1,200.

Because International Locator is already the world’s largest and most successful people-finding organization, PSP asked its 25-year-old president, Troy Dunn, to share the secrets of his sales and management success.

“I learned a lot about selling from my dad,” Dunn told PSP. “He was a career salesman who passed on priceless selling advice to me when I was young. When we were kids, my brother and I sold lemonade in front of our house. We thought it would be easy to water down the lemonade and make more money. Dad taught us that although we were cutting costs, our customers weren’t coming back for seconds. That was my first lesson in offering a quality product and providing great service.

“He actually explained it to us in terms of Superman. Superman had X-ray eyes, he told us, which, like any great power, he could use or abuse. He told us that although Superman could have used his X-ray vision to see under girls’ dresses, instead he used it to catch bad guys. ‘It’s the same thing with you, Troy,’ he told me. ‘You have the ability to talk and persuade people. You can use that for good or you can abuse it. If you abuse it, you can be sure you won’t wind up where you want to be.’ And I’ve always used that advice as a barometer.”

Both Dunn and his partner at International Locator, Virgil Klunder, come from families of adoption. When Dunn heard Klunder’s idea for a company to locate the biological parents and relatives of adopted children, Dunn was enthusiastic. “Because I come from a family with three generations of adoption, this idea immediately got me very excited,” he said. “That was an important sign for me, because your personal interest should always lead the decision in selecting a sales opportunity. That’s when I decided to get involved in the business of locating people.”

Since beginning the company, Dunn has promoted the business by arranging for live reunions on such national TV talk shows as Hard Copy, Unsolved Mysteries and Joan Rivers. In return for doing the program, the shows agree to flash the company’s 800 number on the screen.

After being in business for a scant ten months, Dunn arranged for a live reunion on the Maury Povich show. In the seven hours following the program, International Locator’s headquarters- two bedrooms in Klunder’s house-received an unbelievable 12,350 inquiry calls.

International Locator’s virtual overnight success forced the two entrepreneurs to broaden their horizons as fast as possible, but without losing control of the company.

“Most salespeople don’t envision tremendous growth for themselves because they’re too busy trying to clear that weekly check,” he said. “Someone who thinks an extra $150 a week is hog heaven can’t visualize making an extra $5,000 two weeks from Friday. That’s because they’ve locked themselves into a stagnant mindset that won’t allow them to achieve success immediately. I always tell our salespeople that their income will grow as their vision grows. The night after the Maury Povich show we understood that to help all those people, we had to gear up-literally overnight-to be a bigger company.”

“Growing the company has been my most challenging management task,” Dunn explained. “Because you’ve worked so hard to build the organization, you want to look over your employees’ shoulders and say, ‘OK, I want you to dial these 20 numbers in the next hour.’ For the organization’s sake, it is absolutely essential that you allow the people you’ve hired to do the job and prove to you that you’ve made a good decision.”

This lesson gave Dunn greater perspective on his days as a salesman in the trenches. “I used to feel like my boss had no idea how hard I worked,” he explained, “out on the road with no air conditioning in the middle of August, making those extra calls every day. But now as the boss I go out of my way to watch my salespeople from a distance. I don’t sit on top of them because I know they feel uncomfortable with the boss around. But I am constantly taking note of the ones who put out the extra effort, or who take calls for salespeople who are out sick but still make sure those people get the credit. I say to myself, ‘Hey, this person has real leadership skills.’ They are the diamonds in the rough who deserve to be polished.”

Dunn also attributes a portion of his success to what he terms the “different theory of sales” at International Locator. “I think customers have had enough of the hard-nosed closers who live and breathe to slam people into deals. Today’s customers have their shields up and bolted in place even against the people who are genuinely trying to help them. Before you can sell to them you have to pull out your rivet gun. Our most significant task as salespeople is to let people know that we’re here to help and if they want our help we can be of service.

“I don’t believe in teaching my people the term ‘customer service,'” Dunn continued. “I think that’s backwards. Salespeople have always been told to earn the prospect as a customer and then to provide the service. But I’ve found that if we provide the service first, more often that’s when they will become our customers.

“If someone calls us about locating a person, we’ll walk them through all the different channels available to help find that person. Perhaps in some instances we tell them too much and the individual decides to try to find the person without our help. But that’s rare. In most cases the people are so impressed with our openness and knowledge that they feel completely comfortable to go with our organization. We provide the service first, then we earn the customer.

“Customers need to feel like you love them even if you don’t make the sale. Those sales managers who still subscribe to the gorilla sales management method have no place in my company. They’re the ones who still water down the lemonade.