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Marketing Outrageously
How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts!

Left on the Editor's Floor... continued.

"Our suppliers hate us," an executive of the Nets told me right after I had become the president of the team.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, we negotiate really hard and then we don't pay for at least ninety days. And, then we try to negotiate a payment for less."

"Why do we do that?" I asked, "We've got the money."

"We make a lot of money from interest by paying our bills in a ninety to 120 days cycle."

I asked our controller to do a little math. I wanted him to figure out how much money indeed did we get from using our vendors as a bank. Ray Schaetzle, our controller, said it would be difficult to extract that number because it was lumped in with the advance payments for season ticket packages. You see, about 80% of the revenue from tickets came in before the season started. That money was collecting interest along with the vendor money. That afternoon, Ray had the figures. It was peanuts. About $5,000.

So, for $5,000 we achieved the following:

1. Got the worst suppliers. The better suppliers wouldn't do business with us because of our slow pay.
2. Got the worst service from those worst suppliers. We were never a top priority with these suppliers. But, we didn't really care. We were getting it at a cheap price and we didn't pay until they chased us down.
3. We got the worst quality from the worst suppliers.
4. We got more phone calls about paying our bills than servicing our account.

We started to pay in thirty days. By paying in a timely fashion, we got a larger choice of suppliers. We got the best service from those suppliers. Instead of nasty phone calls for unpaid bills, we got calls about going out to lunch. In other words, for paying less than $5,000, we got stellar service from all of our vendors. Sort of outrageous, wouldn't you agree?

IT DOESN'T WORK FOR EVERYBODY?

This Fast Pay Makes Fast Friends doesn't appear to work for everybody. The bigger companies will say, almost reflexively, that they make too much money to fast pay. The mega-corporations might make a lot of money off of slow pay to their vendors, but not as much as they think. And, if the money they do make is too important to their bottom line, they should take some of the principles of marketing outrageously and apply them to negotiating outrageously.

NEGOTIATING OUTRAGEOUSLY

Larry Weinberg, the former owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, gave me my first lesson in negotiating outrageously. It was during the early days of putting together Blazer Cable (see Chapter 10, Levels of Cream.) We had just come out of a meeting with the general manager of a local cable company.

As we drove away, Larry said to me, "Did you see where we could have really taken advantage of that general manager?"

I nodded my head.

"But, we didn't," Larry said. "Our deal with that cable company is all marketing, and he was uncomfortable with marketing. But we educated him a bit about marketing and helped him structure a fair deal." In the early days of cable, most of the general managers were hardware guys. You know, they knew how to string the cable and plug in the right wires in their plant. The general manager we had met with was clearly a technical guy.

"There's some really good reasons that we didn't take advantage of that guy—even though we clearly could have."

As best as I can recall, here are the reasons that Larry gave:

"1. Sooner or later, the cable guy would have got smarter. The cable agreement that we had worked out was for seven years. Maybe it would have taken that cable general manager a year or two, or even three, to become more sophisticated about marketing. Then he would realize that we had taken advantage of him. He'd be angry. He'd want to re-negotiate. It would be very difficult working with him. And, since we were sharing revenue, we want him to be enthusiastic about our project. So, if we would have taken advantage of him in negotiating, we would have benefited for a year or two. Then we would have had a bad relationship for the duration."

"2. The cable guy's successor would be smarter. A new cable general manager might come in. This person might be much more sophisticated about marketing. This person would know that we had taken advantage of the previous GM. So, now we would have a general manager that is very wary of working with us. The new GM would want to re-negotiate. We'd have a bad working relationship."

SO WHERE DOES NEGOTIATING OUTRAGEOUSLY FIT?

Whenever I've wanted to use the principles of marketing outrageously, I've had to bring in a supplier or vendor. Many of the transactions are pretty boring—you buy at the price that you negotiate. Other times, you need the vendor to buy into the crazy ideas of marketing outrageously. That's where it gets a little tricky.

It's tricky in that the deal has to be perceived as a fair deal to both. In other words, if the deal turns out to be a hardball negotiation where one side wins, then it has to be considered a loss for both parties. In the case of hardball negotiations that produce a winner, then one of the parties would clearly be a hostage; the other party would clearly not get the cooperation necessary for marketing outrageously to work wonders.

RE-NEGOTIATING AN UNFAIR DEAL

I'll go to great lengths to make a deal fair. However, after a passage of time, sometimes things change. What was once a fair deal, has become a bit unfair. There are many who would say, "You gotta live with the deal, pal. Suck it up."

I don't subscribe to that. I'll re-negotiate the deal to make it fair. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm too altruistic. I'm not. It's just that to make marketing outrageously to ramp up revenues in staggering amounts, you need all the players to be pulling with passion.

1. (True or False.) When you can clearly take advantage of somebody in negotiations, you do it.

2. (Multiple choice.) If your goal was to get the worst suppliers giving you the worst service, how would you do it?

a. Comb the yellow pages for companies that say they are the worst.

b. Slow pay everybody.

1. False. I know there are volumes written on negotiating. There are thousands of tricks and maneuvers. I use just one. Is it a fair deal to both sides? If it's not, I walk away from the deal. I know that if it's an unfair deal that eventually it's going to be a bad relationship. I think business is challenging enough without having a slew of bad relationships.

2. b. Slow pay everybody. I'm a big believer in Fast Pay Makes Fast Friends. I even have that phrase printed on invoices that I send out.

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