At the February luncheon meeting of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, Chamber President Ira Greenberg presented Janice Veltem, who has worked at the Sunnyside Post Office for 40 years, with a proclamation in the form of a scroll honoring her career. Photo Luke Adams At the February luncheon meeting of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, held at Dazies Restaurant, 39-41 Queens Blvd., a sizable turnout of men and women who own and operate small businesses heard a marketing consultant tell them how to better their businesses by improving their strategy for gaining sales appointments that lead to successful sales agreements. The consultant said the formula for success is mainly a matter of putting marketing and sales in coordination—which, he warned, is something many businesses rarely do, if ever. Another luncheon event was the presentation of a proclamation, honoring a woman who has been working at the nearby Sunnyside post office for the past 40 years.

Gil Effron, marketer and author of the recently published How to Give Your Business an Extreme Makeover, began his address by referring to makeover television programs such as “What Not to Wear”. That program entails self-styled clothing experts going through the closets of a lucky but hapless woman chosen for a wardrobe makeover. They recommend what should be altered or discarded, after which she is given a hefty sum of money and commanded to go out and buy clothing they think would suit her better. Effron said he likes that program because the actions taken there are comparable in their way to what he does in his line of work. As a marketing consultant, he goes through the closets, so to speak, of the companies that hire him to improve their fortunes.

He said that in companies both small and large, marketing and sales seem to run in parallel lines, never getting synchronized. His ideal is not only to get them functioning together but to reach the point where marketing activity and the sales process seem one and the same. Until then, it is often a case wherein marketing activity and advertising, no matter how earnestly applied, are answered only with scarce new business. As he does in his book, Effron related to the luncheon audience his example of a home repairs and redesigning company in the Cincinnati, Ohio area whose two owners worked tirelessly and fearlessly to build their young enterprise, only to find they couldn’t do any better than gain one project for every 20 interviews with prospects. He first examined their marketing and advertisements, sorting out those that worked and those that didn’t, such as a costly series of radio ads. He then applied to the two owners a formula he applies to all: working backwards. Instead of examining how to go from attracting clients to winning them and holding their loyalty, work from success that has been established and go back to the beginning. In the process, identify and eliminate the faults that have discouraged many prospects, even though a few might have been attracted despite them.

Effron and the owners looked at what he calls points of constraint. These were points where the sales process started to go wrong or simply stopped cold because, for instance, prospects were frightened by a high price quote, or were less decisive than they had said they were about making a commitment, preferring to comparison shop interminably, or had their doubts about a small home remodeling company with only a few years’ experience. Effron had the owners take a new slant on addressing these problems by creating a brief but cogent explanation of pricing practices in the home remodeling industry. It justified their pricing schedule by saying that it was all-inclusive, with no hidden costs to be brought up later, or indeed, no price alteration except in the event of project specification changes by the customer. By informing prospects in this manner and asking them to decide if the company’s higher price was really of better value to them than the lower but perhaps deceptive prices of competitors, the two owners found a greater number of prospects were becoming customers. Eventually–and through further business strategies, including use of a golf cart as a public relations device–the sales ratio went from one in 20 to one in 10 to one in three.

Effron told the luncheon crowd that the tactic of working backwards could prove successful in a wide range of companies, mainly by shortening the sales cycle, and it all begins when one faces the fact that one’s marketing and sales approach is “broke” and certainly does need fixing. His book elaborates what he told his audience, even featuring the further adventures of that home remodeling company.

Janice Veltem, the worker with the 40-year career at the post office at 45-15 44th St., was given a proclamation in the form of a scroll from the chamber, starting with “Whereas, a great community is only as great as those persons who give exemplary service to their community” and declaring her worthy of the accolade. The scroll was signed by Chamber President Ira Greenberg and presented to Veltem, who reportedly intends to keep working.

Judy Zangwill, head of Sunnyside Community Services, said the many volunteers at SCC, which she described as a settlement house, will be honored at the center’s annual volunteer appreciation day, Thursday, March 10. Sunnyside Community Services is located at 43-31 39th St.