Doug DavidoffI remember when I first became interested in selling. My parents (who owned a travel agency) were hosting their first cruise night (a promotional event to increase the awareness of cruises). I met the representative for Carnival Cruise Lines. I thought he was great. I asked him how he sold Carnival over its competition. I'll never forget his answer.
"Doug," he replied. "I don't really sell Carnival as much as I sell cruises. You see less than 5% of the people capable of taking a cruise have ever taken one. Most don't even know what a cruise is. It's a lot easier, and a lot more effective, if I increase the number of people familiar with and likely to take a cruise. If I can increase the number of people who take a cruise, I'll get more than my fair share."
Fast forward to the early 1990s. Having just received a promotion to Regional Sales Manager with The Hertz Corporation, I am attending a sales meeting where we are discussing how to increase business within travel agencies. At the time Hertz had a market share of about 39% and was clearly the leader in the industry. At this meeting, management and salespeople alike were stuck trying to figure out how to increase our business. How can you dramatically increase your market share, when you are already number one by a meaningful margin?
In the meeting, I experienced a flashback to Cruise Night. I spoke up. "Most travel agents are great at booking an airline ticket, but fail to book a car rental with it. Our job should not be to sell Hertz over our compeitition. Our job should be to teach travel agents how to increase the number car rentals they book. If we can get a travel agency to book 100 more car rentals a year," I pondered, "wouldn't be reasonable to expect that we'd increase our business by at least 40?" Implementing that strategy I found out that we didn't increase our business by 40 rentals. We increased it by 50.
It was that experience that taught me that whether I am a new entrant or the market leader, my job and, by extension, the job of my company is to expand the market. Everything else will take care of itself.