Why Pamela Jabbour made 26,000 cold calls to start her business, Total Image Group

Would you have the resilience to make 100 cold calls a day, for an entire year, to make your first sale?

I think many people could do it for a week, maybe two, but most would have stopped before the 1000th (mostly) polite no.

For Pamela Jabbour, the founder of uniform designer, manufacturer, and supplier Total Image Group, it took 26,000 calls. That was 100 calls, every Monday to Friday for 12 months, just to break through.

But since that first sale in 2006, Jabbour has built Total Image Group into a successful business with yearly revenues of $15 million before COVID-19. In its first year of trading through the pandemic, that number was closer to $12 million.

Total Image Group offers custom design and fitting, including from a van that travels across Australia, ethical manufacturing, marketing for the new uniforms, and regular surveying of staff to measure satisfaction with their new uniforms.

The company has designed uniforms for the Winter Olympics, Dan Murphy’s, Ford Australia, and Lion Co., among others, ranging from hi-vis to tailored suits.

(l-r) Tony Boutros, production manager; Pamela Jabbour; Heather Da Fonte, sales manager. Source: supplied

It all started with the first sale. And the path to that sale winds back to 2005.

Jabbour was fresh out of university, and adamant she wanted to be an entrepreneur, having lived vicariously through her father’s business stories at the dinner table. 

At the time, her only work experience was telemarketing for the MS Society, the only job she could get while studying. She had spent a year selling raffle tickets in the evenings, dealing with people who had just come home from work, having dinner, or bathing kids.

Not the easiest sales gig.

So when she started Total Image Group, Jabbour leveraged the experience she had. Drawing up a list of different verticals, she set her targets and quickly worked towards achieving them. 

Instead of pushing a hard sale, the calls were part market research. Each call was aimed at getting an email for the database, along with answers to key questions: how many staff do you have, what are you currently paying for your uniform, where are you getting it from, and what are you missing?

In that year, she says she systematically called every single nursing club, RSL club, and retail team in NSW.

After 12 months, Total Image Group had 15,000 contacts in its database.

“I learnt so much from that, and built my business around that knowledge,” says Jabbour.

If Jabbour had tried for the hard sell with each of the 100 customers she called per day, she might have sold a few more items in the first year. But she could have missed out on the much more valuable prize: 15,000 pieces of data spread across her whole customer base.

In this wide-ranging interview with SmartCompany Plus, Jabbour discusses the challenges of selling sustainability, how her business weathered the pandemic, her evolving strategies with hiring and firing, and how she’s learnt to trust her gut.

What are the best/worst pieces of business advice you’ve ever received?

Best:

The warning that it can be kind of lonely at the top. I guess that really was true in the first few years of my business, then I actively made an effort to seek communities, networks and relationships to not feel lonely. Fellow entrepreneurs, women in business, family business owners. There is a kind of community and I feel a lot less lonely.

That warning served me because I didn’t believe it. I remember when I hit a really dark point in the business where I felt alone and misunderstood, and didn’t have the community to back me. That was one of the hardest points in my career.

Worst:

The worst advice I’ve received is: if you’re a CEO or an owner, you can’t have friendships with your team. You can’t make it personal. It’s all business. Don’t cross that line.

That was the worst piece of advice because it doesn’t resonate with who I am as a person. And what makes me passionate is a connection with other human beings, particularly those that I have to work with, regardless of their role in my business. And whilst I’m not the best of friends with everyone, I do really care.

What’s the most counterintuitive thing you’ve learnt by running a business?

To trust your intuition, the importance of your gut and that feel, and working with your instincts. 

Over the years, I’ve gotten much better at that. When you first start, you’re not as confident and you’re really nervous, and you can shut down that voice in your head saying this doesn’t feel right.

Every single time I’ve ignored that voice or that feeling in my gut, it hasn’t been the right outcome.

What’s one thing you have changed in your business in the past year that has led to measurable improvement?

Making people more accountable and letting go from a management standpoint, and trusting the results.

I think it’s really hard when you are going through a difficult time. You want to micromanage and be across every detail. And sometimes you need to, that’s important. 

But what served me more was letting go, talking from my heart and letting the team and business know where we were at quite openly, keeping the communication transparent and regular. Then you hold people accountable to their KPIs.

Total Image Group. Source: supplied

What are some of the unique challenges to the textiles industry in Australia?

Generically, the textile industry in Australia is a little behind. They’ve had it so tough. When the global financial crisis hit, fashion and retail were the most affected.

With the internet, and international competition from online shopping, we were slow to catch up.

One of the most important challenges right now is how we can be more sustainable in our practice, when clients don’t want to pay extra for it.

My biggest challenge in the uniform space is that I would love to be able to offer sustainable fabrics and end-of-life options, but whenever I put them forward the client isn’t happy to pay the price of doing things better.

That’s challenging, because we need to win business and tenders from corporates.

From a fashion standpoint, we all have a huge pressure to do things better, and we all want to, but we have come off some tough years. We’ve seen how many homegrown brands have closed over the years because they’re not profitable, and they’ve been operating at a loss for a very long time. 

So, how can they be innovative and use the resources they’ve got, and how can we all do better? 

Because I think we all can.

How did diversification leave Total Image Group less exposed during the pandemic?

We’ve never wanted to operate as a silo in one industry, I always saw that as risky. We’ve strategically diversified across hospitality, healthcare, retail, construction and the corporate sector.

During COVID-19, hospitality completely shut down, as did travel agents, which haven’t really reopened. In retail, even the stores that stayed open couldn’t justify uniforms as an expense.

There was also work from home, and a lot of our contracts were for office-based staff. All the people who used to wear suits and shirts have now for the last 12 months been working from home.

But our healthcare clients needed us more than ever throughout COVID, as did construction companies, and aged care facilities.

We’re lucky in that we do work across a number of industries. I feel like not many businesses have that choice, or only target one space. If that space isn’t doing well, then their business doesn’t do well.

How do you know when it’s time to fire an employee?

It is the minute they cross the line where they no longer have the best interests of their team or the business in mind. It’s very obvious that they don’t want to be here, and I see it as my job to move them on, otherwise I’m doing them a disservice as well as the people that do want to be here.

It’s something I’ve been bad at. It’s difficult.

It’s when they’re impacting the greater good, or the greater vibe. It took a long time for me to get, and work out our culture, and it’s something we’re continuously working on. 

And to be honest, the exit process has gotten a lot better.

Now, people tend to opt out because we have open conversations. We ask: are you happy? Are you not happy? We really want you to be happy, but you have to perform, and you’re not. Therefore we think you’re not happy and you’re here [at work] more than you’re anywhere else. And perhaps it would serve you to really think if you do want to be here. 

Those honest conversations either snap someone back into saying, “Actually I don’t want to lose this. I do want to stay and I’ve been in this funk and I need to work out what else is going on and come back to performing at what I’m known for”, or “No, they’re right, I actually don’t want to be here, I’m not enjoying it anymore.” 

And that’s okay. Those conversations have made such a difference. If someone moves on now, they keep in touch and sometimes pop in to visit.

It’s been a learning experience for me in how to communicate, because employees can be your greatest ambassadors, particularly if they’ve come from a great company culture. They may become a client, or recommend you to family and friends.

How about your hiring strategies?

When I first started the business, it was very much about hiring on a budget because I was a startup, so there was only a certain level of pay I could afford. That meant I probably wasn’t getting the best people. We’ve really changed that, you get what you pay for with people

We also used to hire for skills, as opposed to attitude and energy. 

Now it’s more about that connection, and what someone’s values are, and that’s worked really well for us.

What do you remember most: the wins or the losses?

The losses. I am really competitive. Because of imposter syndrome, I don’t remember enough of the good. 

I used to make a practice of sitting down each quarter and making a list of things I did achieve. 

It comes more naturally to me to remember when we lost, I want to get better and ensure we don’t lose again. The wins can be taken for granted sometimes.

What advice would you give to other companies making cold calls?

Know your database, know your target market, know who the decision makers are and talk their language.