Sales Calls as Invitational Transformations, Part One

And how to think about them and other marketing experiences

I recently had a conversation with Joe Timson, the Founder of Cavea, an analytics company that works to measure experiences in the moment. Joe seeks to capture to what extent people are experiencing time well spent – the measure, in my mind, of experiences – and I wanted to learn more about how he does it, and how it applies to staged experiences.

[I wrote about time well spent as part of my Time Progression model, and about time well invested – a key measure for transformations – in the second part of the post. Let me point out that what’s in those posts goes far beyond what will be in the final book, as well as what we previously published in the Dialogue journal, “Competing for Customer Time”. This Time Progression was originally going to comprise an entire chapter but had to be edited down to its essence as a section in chapter 1. That’s one of the reasons why I say 120% of the book is here on Substack! And maybe it’s more than that. . . .]

Can sales calls be transformative?

Joe was interested in learning more about experiences & transformations, and at one point asked about how sales calls could be experiences – and if there were an opportunity for transformative sales calls. Interesting!

Invitational Transformations. . .

My first thought was, no, sales calls would be transformative except by happenstance. My second thought was better: yes! If designed intentionally, done well, and truly as a (potentially) transformative experience, sales calls could be transformations! More specifically, they can become invitational transformations.

In this post (which is mostly in the final book) I wrote about how companies can stage what Jim Gilmore and I have long called marketing experiences – experiences that do the job of marketing by generating demand for a company’s core offerings:

And that can go further to spark transformations. I love the term Bob Rogers, one-time Disney Imagineer and founder of BRC Imagination Arts, shared with me for this: invitational transformations that can generate demand by helping people become someone who uses their core offerings, or uses them more. Bob says “Invitational transformations include brand experiences, museums, cultural attractions, and other visitor experiences that share with you a subject they hope will interest you. Such experiences initially present as a pleasant way to spend an hour or more, but the best of them are designed to connect emotionally with the guest in a way that causes the guest to discover a lasting interest and fall in love.” It’s not forced, nefarious, or dirty-handed; it’s engaging you while exposing you to new possibilities and letting you discover if they are right for you.

I then used two examples of one-of-a-kind experiences, the “lofty” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, Missouri, and the “equally valid and greatly enjoyable” Johnnie Walker Princes Street experience in Edinburgh. There are of course many more that could be cited, especially such “flagship locations” as the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam, and the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta.

. . . And Sales Calls

Now think of sales calls (whether with consumers or businesses): they, too, expose customers to new possibilities and let them discover if what is on offer is right for them. Bingo! If you create a sales-call-as-transformation, you’re inviting your customers into the world of your offerings, enticing them to not only experience those offerings (of whichever of the five genres) but to discover whether they are right for them.

And if you get your customers to experience your offerings before they buy, the chances they will buy go up. If you further get your customers to transform into someone who benefits from those offerings, the chances go up even further. As I wrote in the earlier post:

Invitational Transformations prove particularly useful for small-scale changes that I call refinement (when enhancing a current aspect of identity) and cultivation (enriching a new aspect of identity). The idea is that visiting an invitational transformation can become the catalyst in and of itself by encouraging and welcoming such changes. (It would be possible to design an invitational transformation for the large-scale changes of ambition and metamorphosis, but I haven’t seen any. If you have, please let me know!)

Again, it’s not forced, nefarious, or dirty-handed; it’s an invitation that can reward customers with an enhanced or enriched identity.