Selling an Experience

An experience is an unknown quantity before you have it; therefore, the salesperson’s job is to paint a vivid picture that the prospect can step into. Selling an intangible takes a special blend of skill, product knowledge and the ability to plant an attractive image in the prospect’s mind. Ray Benton’s successful formula for selling an intangible has worked like a charm in the past. Now he’s hoping to build on his existing corporate customer base to lure executives and managers to a very special kind of leisure time experience.

The surest route to a new sale is to do the best possible job of servicing an existing account. That nugget of sales wisdom has proven golden for Ray Benton, who recently stepped down as president and chief executive officer of ProServ, one of the largest sports marketing firms worldwide, to form Travent Ltd., a spanking new company that markets bicycle tours of Europe and America. So far, Benton’s best new customers are also his best former customers. Such corporate giants as Paine-Weber and Chase Manhattan Bank are willing to listen to his new sales pitch because what he’s offered in the past has worked out for them and worked out well.

Because they can rely on him as a professional, they’re also willing to get on the horn and recommend him to other firms. My advice to salespeople is: You have got to build up relationships, because those relationships will pay off in spades down the road when you need a favor. The guy who trusts you will give you the benefit of the doubt, Benton counsels. His approach is to contact the top marketing people in the firms he’s worked with over the past 10 to 20 years. The goal is to sell them package bicycle tours to use as incentives for their top people or perks for corporate clients.

I say to them, `This is a neat concept and it would be something new that I think would work.’ If I get their interest and they agree with me conceptually, then they will work with me to figure out how to make it work, Benton explains.

Sometimes his initial advantage works against him once he starts describing what his new company, Travent Ltd., has to offer. They remember him as the man who arranged for Jimmy Connors to represent Paine-Weber and got Chase Manhattan Bank to be the presenting sponsor for the Colgate Masters Tournament. When he says bicycle tours, they automatically assume competitive cycling. Travent Ltd., however, specializes in leisurely bicycle trips for people who want to see more of the countryside than they would from a bus or car. Days spent peddling through France’s Loire Valley or the Vermont backwoods, stopping along the way to tour the sites, sip wine and dine at fine restaurants replace the frantic pace of life in the fast lane. Evenings spent at comfortable, elegant inns say, We’ve arrived and we’re fit!

They can’t visualize it, Benton says. They don’t even know what I’m talking about to start with. Second of all, when I explain it, they are concerned that it is just for superjocks and, third, I have to overcome the obstacle of making sure that there are plenty of other activities available for other members of the family.

Benton never gave much thought to bicycle touring trips either, until he took a spur of the moment one through France with some buddies last year. The experience turned him into a convert, and his enthusiasm for bicycle trips has now blossomed into a contagious bicycling blitz. After listening to him describe a Travent tour, it’s easy to see how he’s able to dispel a potential customer’s initial doubts and turn him into a convert.

The whole experience is analogous to skiing, says Benton, because people are going for the lifestyle, the good food, the camaraderie, the wine and the glamorous environment. An avid athlete, Benton has combined his love of sports and sales since his college days. He worked his way through school by giving professional level tennis lessons. Among other things, he learned how to persuade clients to buy more lessons, more gear from the pro shop and, eventually, trips to see the national tennis championships in Chicago. By the time he entered law school at the University of Iowa, he was in charge of the school’s football program sales.

That is basically how I got started, says Benton, who also has an MBA in marketing.

In the late 60’s, he and David Dell, captain of the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team, helped found ProServ. The company was formed to negotiate promotional contracts for sports figures. Its first clients were winning Davis Cup team members Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith.

Benton’s most memorable sales during those days include the time he got Paine-Weber to use Jimmy Connors in its advertising. I was very pleased because I thought it was absolutely right for both parties. I thought it would be terrific for Jimmy’s image and stature, and I thought it would really separate Paine-Weber from the other tend-to-look-alike brokerage houses,” Benton says. Another high was when he sold Chase Manhattan Bank on being the presenting sponsor for the Colgate Masters in 1977. The idea was a new one since no other company had ever been a presenting sponsor for an event that important. Colgate not only liked the idea, they stayed on as a sponsor for the next seven years.

Benton has had his share of disappointments as well. His biggest was when the United Bank of Denver decided 13 years of sponsoring the United Bank Tennis Classic was enough. They wanted to move on to new things and Benton had to move on to another sponsor. Ever the optimist, Benton says, “It turned out to be a blessing because I moved the tournament out of Denver, sold it to Paine-Weber and developed a very important relationship.”

One key to his success has been his aggressive style. Benton’s favorite rule of thumb, which he passes on to all the salespeople he trains, is that if they aren’t taking a reasonable chance of offending at least 20 percent of their clients, they’re not being aggressive enough. If they’re offending more than 20 percent, they’d better tone down. When you’re selling intangibles, which is what we are selling, he says, you have to be very aggressive and assertive. According to Benton, one of the most effective ways to sell aggressively is to disarm the prospect by telling him not to buy something, and explain why. Then, sell him something else. But, Benton warns, “Be sincere when you say it. It breaks down all sorts of barriers of me against you.” You convince the prospect that you have his or her interests in mind, that you are looking for a solution that works for both of you and not just for you.

When the time came to strike out on his own, Benton surveyed his options. “I had looked at a lot of different opportunities and I went on a bicycle trip to France last summer and felt it would be a very good product. I was curious about it and I think instinctively I felt, since I didn’t know much about it, that maybe there was a real marketing opportunity there,” he reminisces.

On the subject of marketing versus selling, Benton claims both hats. “I have a keen appreciation of both the marketing and the sales process. However, I think that the marketing process is a bit overrated and the sales process is a bit underrated. It is almost the difference between conceptualizing and implementation. I think the success of any business will depend on the implementation and the direct delivery of the product. I think too little effort goes into that. I think it is all clouded by a kind of status thing; sophisticated people don’t sell, they create marketing environments. That is totally naive, he explains.

Based in Washington D.C., Benton’s company Travent Ltd., oversees the marketing and operations of Bicycle France, Vermont Country Cyclers and Chesapeake and Shenandoah Bicycle Touring. Vermont Country Cyclers is currently the most successful bicycle touring company in the United States. Travent, according to Benton, spends most of its advertising dollar on classified ads in major metropolitan travel sections, bicycling magazines, food magazines and travel magazines. The ads encourage people to send for a brochure, then call the company for further information.

“We really train our salespeople to convert calls into sales,” Benton says. We have knowledgeable people on the phone who explain how wonderful it is and they talk about the inns and they really understand the little nuances. A person says, `I’m interested in your breakaway three Vermont tour.’ The salespeople will know all the little attractions along the way, the ins and outs of each inn, how many private baths there are at each inn, what they generally serve for dinner, which ones will have cookies and ice cream ready for you when you get there.

Benton’s incoming telemarketing army, while relying heavily on scripts, is also trained to respond to cues from the prospect. Someone who asks about wines in France’s Loire valley has to be sold on the chateaus of France, while a prospect who says he or she rides a bike 60 miles a week will be sold on the rigors of mountainous terrain in Vermont. What has kept Benton hooked on sales all these years? The challenge, the competitiveness of the work, he says. And starting a new company is one more challenge. In sales, you win some, you lose some, he muses philosophically of the disappointments along the way. You can’t mope about it, just like on the tennis court, you can’t let the loss of one point cause the loss of the next point. Selling is the same way. You just have to pick yourself up off the ground and go find a victory.