I'm just a Territory Grinder

When I identify a target customer, I persue until I have won him. He/she, whatever, hey, you gals have ships and cars, the customer is a he, ok? Anywho, thats the goal. To be relentless. Not a pest, cuz the same sales rules apply here too. You must be a "Natural" part of the
environment to make the sale, IE, "get them to sign on the line which is dotted". I ID'd Meeks Lumber some 20+ years ago and I wont get into that part too much, but just recently have I made any progress. Well, they have an annual Contractor Expo (sale) at Harrahs in Tahoe. As the Stanley Rep, I was invited to contribute....I mean attend. Well, here's my chance, and I'm definately going to exploit it. Mind you, my major competitor in nailers and staplers is Senco. Senco has been on the shelf at Meeks for over 20 years, and with the same rep! I cant even remember how many positions with Stanley I have had in those years. So, I put on the full court press. I arranged to have the Stanley Race Car there, in my booth, check. Got Meeks to bring in 2 Nailers and 2 new Bostitch Tape Rules for the show, check. Spend 50+ hours making flyers, building mobile displays, ordering POP (point of purchase) and literature. We paid for a 10 foot booth, but kinda stretched that out to 30 or so feet. This is a pic of the booth, note: there is a full size actual NASCAR Show Car in the booth.

Overkill maybe, huh? The pic below was taken 5 minutes before showtime. I think that the look on my good buddy Steve the Senco rep's face says it all. "Dang, this is a tuff spot"!

Well, I wont get into details, but my booth was one of the busiest in the show. Bill Meek himself thanked me for bringing in the Show Car. My main goal of the show was to impress the socks of the Meeks folks, and get 300 contractors to take a good look at the new Bostitch Hand Tools. I ordered in 300 Stanley FatMax Hammer Holders and gave them in exchange for them to fill out a simple survey, end result is I walk into the buyer at Meeks with 300 Contractors names, which Meeks they shop at and what BHT catagories they are interested in buying. Not bad. As far as Bostitch Nailers go, I made major headway today. The next 30 days will say alot. Here are a few more pics from today, oh, and by the way, every bit of this booth except the car and one 8 ft table came and went into the back of my truck with the taneau cover shut!