So, I’m in the process of releasing some of my “Resort Portfolio” real estate holdings in order to shore up my cash flow and prepare to capitalize on some emerging market opportunities.
Well OK . . . I’m unloading two out of state lots I probably paid way too much for in the first place because I really need the money to knock out this one nagging debt — and if there’s any left, I plan to put it toward growing our business here at Dreamland.
Enter “Joe Real Estate” (not his real name) from an exotic corner of the great state of Tennessee where the most valuable (I hope) of these lots is situated.
I had to reach out to him through one of these ridiculous Contact Forms, as neither his phone number or e-mail are anywhere to be found on his very sexy, takes a 1/2 hour to load, flash bedazzled website.
Even with my well documented disdain for Contact Forms and Flash-laden websites, I was still quite willing to work with this guy until . . .
We finally had a brief phone conversation. I was underwhelmed — but hey, “Maybe things move at a little different pace on that side of Mayberry?”, I told myself. No follow-up from him after 2 days (a lifetime on my Customer Service calculator). But do I summarily dismiss him? No, I still give him the benefit of the doubt — meaning I resolve to give him another 48 hours to do what he agreed to do, tell me what he needs from me, list the property, and get busy selling it.
And then they started coming . . . the well-crafted (OK — actually in this case, not very well crafted) Auto Responder series. The guy won’t reach out to me in a timely fashion to help me solve my problem, but his computer has contacted me once a day every day for the past week . . . with messages that make no sense at all given what I’m trying to accomplish and the fact that I’ve already taken the action (reached out and contacted him directly) that all these fancy automatic notes want me to take.
I could point to 101 things this guy should be doing to fix his broken sales process (that’s much of what I do around here — help troubleshoot our clients’ Sales & Marketing processes), but the simple diagnosis is this . . .
He’s About To Sophisticate Himself Right Outta Business.
Don’t Be This Guy. And If you see someone you care about going down this path, Call Them On It. They may not immediately appreciate your attack on their 9 Layer Multi-dimensional CRM Autoresponder Teleprospector Lead Generator ipad Compatible PMI Certified ROI Calculating Inter-Galactic Sales Transponder, but Friends Don’t Let Friends Sophisticate Themselves Right Outta Business. . . and they will at some point be eternally grateful.
Be A Friend — At least to yourself and your own business.
Enough with all the window dressing already. Wanna work with me? Wanna sell me something?
I spent a full day with the top sales leaders of an large organization last week. These were the best of the best of this company. And they were amazing people. Skilled, articulate, quick on their feet, charismatic, ambitious, driven, etc. etc…
My role was to teach them a new skill that might make them better…
I will admit, it was intimidating. Is there a way I can really help these people? And the bigger question…do they think they need help?
You can make the case that the top sales leaders are the top sales leaders BECAUSE they are always seeking to learn new things, seeking new ways to get better, seeking new skills to give them an added edge…
One of the things I am going to contribute to this project is guiding this team to incorporate more of the social web into their daily sales process. Upon a quick glance at their respective LinkedIn profiles, for instance, most do not appear to be engaged with this tool, and have less than 50 connections…
Do they know something I don’t know? Have they cracked the code and don’t need it? Or are they missing out on a HUGE opportunity to give themselves added advantage?
I don’t know the answer…yet. But you can bet that I am going to find out. Because I am going to challenge their assumptions. They will do one of three things:
1. Tell me to sod off.
2. Fully embrace the idea and blindly follow my counsel.
3. Or test, explore, and examine the idea…see if it applies and can make them better.
I am betting sales leaders of this caliber will do #3. And that’s why they succeed. And that’s how I can best serve them.
“They say improve and maintain. I say destroy and re-imagine. Tom Peters
In a related, but different context, I had lunch with a lady this past week working with a startup. Her team is poised to change the world. If the idea she shared works, it will change everything. How was their idea hatched in the first place? They challenged recognized assumptions.
That’s what I will do with this sales team. And we will see if it impacts. And that’s what I am asking you to do. Every day. Challenge assumptions. Question everything. Experiment. It is those kinds of people who are at the top of their field. And change the world…
Every now and then, I witness a truly masterful demonstration of the art of sales and sales leadership. In fact this time, it took almost four full days for the whole scenario to sink in. It’s exactly the sort of thing we Dreamland characters are working like crazy to embed in an E-Rep.
The setting was a Sales Excellence Council or “SEC” meeting. A bit of explanation is in order. The objective of an SEC is to drive continuous, never-ending improvement of a company’s sales process. This particular SEC is comprised of the VP Business Development, the two Regional Sales Directors and the six highest performing sales reps. Typically one or two first line sales managers will also participate in each meeting. The topic was differentiation. Bill, the VP, waxed eloquent for about five minutes and combined five core elements of effective selling in doing so:
Storytelling
Humor (actually downright hilarious)
Two serious lessons
Leadership
A pithy tag line
Let’s dissect a bit. The gist of the story was Bill’s customer yanking him into a hospital’s supply closet. So a highly skilled, highly educated medical professional, an M.D., feels compelled to hide in a closet. The hook for the story is set. (They’re hiding, by the way, from a competitor’s rep.) You’d have to be brain dead to not see the potential for humor here. Hugging the walls, lurking… Ssshhhhsshing each other with index finger over the lips… Stealthily peeking through the widow… Pleased that nurses are providing cover… Waiting till the coast is clear…
Now, wiping the tears of laughter from our eyes, come the two serious lessons. First, the competitor rep is perceived by the doctor and the staff as a product-pushing jerk. He’s all feature, feature, feature; benefit, benefit, benefit; talk, talk, talk; me, me, me. Bill meanwhile, has invested multiple days quietly shadowing the doc, watching the routine, asking questions, learning deeply about a day-in-the-life of this physician.
“Want me to go with you some day to shadow a doc? It’s fascinating.”
That was the question he threw out to the assembled SEC team. That, ladies and gentlemen is sales leadership. Not only did he do it, he’s anxious to do it again and pass along the “secrets.”
Then the coup de grace; the punch-in-the-nose-memorable line to make the lessons stick. Be ethically valuable. Establish your ethical right to suggest therapeutic tools for the physician by humbly learning first. Invest time. Invest effort. Ask questions. Only then is it ethical and appropriate to talk about your products and servies and how they could be useful.
I hope I’ve been able to convey just how well this sales lesson was sold. Dreamland’s challenge is to embed it in an E-rep. Hey, Bill! I think we can do it. We’ll need to shoot some video… Got a musty closet at your office we could use?
Technology tools are both a blessing and a curse. Some are clearly essential (accounting software, cell phones…); some are nice to have (iPads, portable Wi-Fi access points…); some are obsolete (remember pay phones and floppy disks?); some are big question marks. And that’s where the trouble starts.
For example, ten years ago, CRM systems for sales were a question mark. Terrific productivity booster or useless time-burner? Today, I can’t live without one and don’t think you can either. Another example; five years ago an e-Rep was impossible. Today, I can’t live without one and don’t think you can either. A little over a year ago Twitter Search was not available to use as a listening post. Today, I can’t live without it and don’t think you can either.
I can almost feel the disagreements and questions forming in your brain.
…and that’s the point of this post. How does a business person figure out which tools are essential, nice-to-have, not-worth-the-effort or obsolete? Here’s a 5-step approach:
Learn – Set aside an hour (maybe two) every week to learn about some chunk of technology that’s hit your personal radar screen. Take a walk on the wild side. Look at all kinds of crazy stuff.
Pilot – Pick one of every ten and give it a try for 1-4 weeks.
Adopt – For 2 or 3 per year, go for it!
Dump – Oh my gosh is this one difficult. (I still carry my iPod around with me even though my phone can do double duty for the podcasts I’m addicted to while travelling. I’m simply still in love with my iPod!)
Recycle – The ideas, that is. It was at least 5 years ago that I became aware of blogs. “Useless geek stuff,” said I. Today, my blog is my #1 sales and marketing tool. I learned about Twitter at least 3 years ago. “Useless kid stuff,” said I. Today, it drives 14% of my web site traffic.
This approach is working quite well for me. Does it make sense to you? How do you go about deciding what tech tools to use?
By that, I meant there were some businesses that probably shouldn’t blog. But I no longer see it that way. I think ALL businesses (large and small) should engage their publics this way.
I spend a considerable amount of time talking with customers and prospects about blogging…”I don’t have enough time to blog, what would I ever write about, people don’t care what I have to say, I will run out of meaningful things to say in a week,” and on and on and on…
Helping people brainstorm on creative ways to utilize a blog is a big part of what I do…
Let me just share with you one idea that I think can prove to be a cool source of content for your blog, whether it is a business or a personal blog…
Use it as a journal. Record events. Chronicle an opportunity. Tell an ongoing story about a project, a client acquisition… There is no doubt that your audience would rather follow a story – than be lectured on how to do this, how to do that…
Here are some ideas about what I am talking about:
1. Tell an ongoing story about how you sat down with a customers, came to understand a problem, and journal about how you approached the problem, and how you ultimately fared in attempting to deal with it.
2. Tell an ongoing story about how you acquired a new customers. What prompted you to initially decide they were a prospect, all the way to how you ultimately won (or lost) the business. Share lessons learned along the way.
3. Tell an ongoing story about how you (and/or your business) are involved in doing charitable work. Have you picked one cause to support? Journal about your experiences there.
4. Tell an ongoing story about how you raised capital/funding for your organization. What challenges did you face? What obstacles did you overcome (or not overcome)?
5. Tell an ongoing story about a new product launch. How did the new product get started. How did testing go? What strategies were put in place to go-to-market? How did the launch itself go? What lessons were learned?
6. Tell an ongoing story about a new marketing campaign. How was the idea conceived? What was impetus behind the strategy decided? How did the rollout go? Did it work? What lessons were learned?
7. Tell an ongoing story about how you made efforts to change the culture of your organization. Why did it need to change? Who were the principals behind the effort? How did you get organization buy-in? Did it work? Did it have the impact you wanted?
8. Tell an ongoing story about ways you tried to make your team and organization more innovative. Why was this necessary? What steps were put in place to foster this change? What reward systems were implemented to incent people to propose and try new things? In the end, was your organization more innovative?
These are just a few examples of some things you can “journal” about on your personal/company blog. Critical to understand the key point here: Telling an ongoing story…
Stories are memorable, they educate, they are sharable, and they are interesting.
There are just a ton of practical, powerful Business Applications for video — and surely at least a thousand ways to use these little hand-held pocket video cameras to educate your market and promote your business.
I’ve been having these conversations all week, and my head is spinning from all the ideas we’ve been batting around — the most recent of which is: The Video Thank You Note.
What are some other ways you are (or you could be) using video — especially video captured on one of these little hand-held pocket cameras — to drive your business strategies more effectively?
As some of you may know, the vision for Dreamland Interactive was cooked up at a barbecue joint in Birmingham, AL. Good food and drink has inspired many a great idea, and in that spirit we’ll periodically blog about remarkable dining places and experiences.
Not barbecue, but still amazing stuff for a carnivore… Recently did a 2-day stint with a client in north Jersy which provided an opportunity to have dinner with my daughter and son-in-law who live in New York City. Jillian has maintained a list of “restaurants I can’t afford” since she was a freshman at NYU. Places get checked off this list when daddy comes to town.
DBGB sounded a bit downscale at first; burgers??? Back up… First the martinis. Yes, they know how to make a great one. Then the appetizers. For the most part it was a question of what type of sausage you wanted. We opted for the Espagnole (chorizo sausage with piperade and basil oil), the Beaujolaise (pork, mushrooms, onion, bacon & red wine link) and for a touch of class, Foie Gras Torchon (cherries, almonds, mizuna, toasted brioche with lentils du puy.) I think those lentils were the closest thing to a vegetable in the place.
You gotta’ love the question our waiter asked next. He needed to know which burgers we were thinking about so he could make an appropriate wine recommendation. Can’t say I ever actually needed to consider that issue before, so I delegated the decision to Zach who was then too preoccupied to notice that I finished off the chorizo.
Then, The Piggy. All three of us went for it; a beef patty topped with daisy may’s bbq pulled pork, jalapeno mayonnaise & boston lettuce on a cheddar bun with mustard-vinegar slaw and fries. Did you catch that “daisy may’s bbq pulled pork” part? A touch of bbq to remain ever true to the Dreamland tradition! Amazing stuff.
And now the business portion of our blog post…
Several E-Rep fundamentals are used here:
Now and then share a light-hearted, personal glimpse into another aspect of what you’re all about
Link to other sites (You never know how or when Dreamland BBQ or DBGB might help)
Show an example of how what you sell can be applied (This post IS part of the E-Rep for Dreamland Interactive and for the two restaurants.)
So I’ve spent two of the last three weeks sitting in a hospital room. Not for me, but because a member of my family has been very sick…
Needless to say, that’s quite disruptive to the daily process, routine, and flow of running your own business. And despite this very frustrating and maddening experience…
I had two entrepreneurs visit and spend time on my website while I was attending to family matters. They learned a little about me, my philosophy, and my services, and made the decision to reach out to me for assistance.
It was most satisfying. I mean, closing a sale is always gratifying. Closing a sale that you didn’t have to expend too much energy on is even more so.
But this didn’t just happen. This is NOT a “build it and they will come” scenario. There is some groundwork that goes into this process, and seeds that need to be sown, and land that needs to be tended…consistently over time.
Here are four key principles to think about when building an e-rep designed to sell 24/7/365:
1. You do have to regularly publish solid content, at least a couple of times a week. Most likely this is on your blog, but can also be done by contributing guest posts elsewhere, submitting articles to other aggregate sites, and/or distributing content via your e-newsletter. Generating good content is critical. If your work is poor, people won’t be inspired by it, and more importantly, won’t be motivated to share it with others. But writing good content – and just waiting for people to find it – doesn’t work either.
2. The content, particularly on your blog, should also be optimized for the search engines. Be sure you strategically place the right keywords and phrases in the title, the body of work, and in the SEO tools used by your blogging platform (see your webmaster if you are not clear on these tools). A great body of work is most important, but you are missing opportunities to expand your reach and draw in new prospects if people can’t find your content using search engines…
3. You do have to network with people. You do have to engage with people. This is where spending time conversing with the right people on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn begins to make a difference. The two guys that I mentioned above who bought from me, first learned about me from Twitter. I never sold them services on Twitter. We just talked. About non-business stuff. This is how to begin to establish relationships with people. This is where you begin to learn a little more about your prospects. What happens, inevitably, is your new friends on the social web begin to check out your blogs and websites, and once you capture their attention there, they begin to consider ways to do business with you.
4. You have to help other people. This won’t work if you are only in a me, me, me position. You need to share the good works of others. You need to comment on the work of others. You need spotlight the works of others on your own website and blog. Why is this important? Because this is – bar none – the best way to drive traffic back to your site. And the best way to stir up referrals back to your site. This is the key piece to building awareness to your blog, and that’s how the 24/7/365 sales process begins…
Then, this morning I get a one sentence e-mail from a Joint Venture Biz colleague that one of his clients is enamored with XYZ company — an outfit that provides a similar service to one of our services.
My first reaction (spoken only to myself) was uber-defensive . . . “Their stuff sucks. Ours is much better. They’re over-priced. What is your client smoking?, They charge how much? Have you not explained just how freakin’ wonderful we are — and how marvelous our service really is? Oh My God . . . are we really about to lose an opportunity to these other clowns?”
I think you’ll agree, not a very productive thought pattern — even if I was right . . . and I wasn’t. What I was . . . was scared, insecure, reactive — and self-centered. (Again, fortunately not out loud.)
I took a closer look. Their stuff doesn’t suck. In fact it’s quite good. They do charge a great deal more than we do. So What? How is that anything but great for us?
And then it dawned on me: How fortunate for us that another player in our general sandbox — an organization with far more resources and reach than we’re probably ever going to have is creating all this awareness and opening up the market for all of us !!!
That’s when I remembered: When I sold and delivered Peer To Peer Training, Peter Senge and his book The 5th Discipline was the best possible marketing our little company could ever hope for, and when I sold Change Leadership Methodology for a boutique consulting firm, an academic author from Harvard with a great publicist — Professor John Kotter was the best thing that ever happened to us.
So What? / Now What?
1. I’m attending XYZ’s webinar tomorrow. (It’s not really XYZ, it’s AngelVision) Which brings me to idea #2 . . .
2. I’m gonna quit running from any potential competition, and quit hiding them from my prospects and clients. I’m going to embrace them — maybe even refer them in and / or explore partnering with them . . . all of these decisions to be made with the client’s best interest in mind. And that’s the real key, I think — idea #3 . . .
3. I’m re-committing myself to putting the Client’s Best Interest ahead of mine. This is not 100% altruistic on my part — I really think my own best interests will be served as well in the long run.
Don’t Get Me Wrong: I still have every intention of getting better and better at helping our prospects and clients understand if / when / why / how our offerings will serve them Better, Faster, Cheaper than XYZ’s offering . . . but I intend to approach that pursuit much more pure of motive: Client’s Best Interest First.
What else should we be doing?
Am I off my nut here?
Should we take a more aggressive “beat the competition” posture?
All Input / Feedback Welcome, and we’ll keep you posted on how this goes . . .
Quite a few of my clients are industrial distributors. It’s a mature industry and in the best of times downward price pressure is a fact of life. You can imagine what it’s been like these last two years. Work through a series of Win/Loss Reviews with their reps and virtually every win has an element of “aggressive pricing.” Virtually every loss is due to a competitor willing to “cut profit margin to the bone and beyond.”
The focus on price, as my namesake partner would put it, makes me want to stab my eyes with pencils.
It’s not about price. It’s never about price. Price is the lowest level of detail. If price is a significant discussion point, you’ve allowed yourself and your sales effort to be slammed hard up against the wall at the “commodity” end of the scale.
It’s about the sauce. It’s always about the sauce. All of your competitors – anybody really – can metaphorically go to the grocery store and buy a few racks of ribs. What makes the meal memorable – what endows it with value above and beyond the ordinary – are the “secret” ingredients in the sauce, proportionally balanced to perfection. Only a barbecue master could pull that off. To quibble over price with a master would be well …just wrong.
So how does one make sauce? As my other partner would say, “With great difficulty!” Fundamentals first. To continue the metaphor, start with quality meat. We think, for example, that the Dreamland methodology is rock solid. We’ve invested a ton of time and effort in building and testing it. We’ll continue to invest a ton of time and effort in continuously improving it.
But we don’t talk about it much with clients.
We talk about the sauce. And since there are three of us and we’re a new company, we still have three versions of the recipe:
Three guys lookin’ to change the world…
Profoundly improve the B2B sales process.
Your dream is your business. Helping you sell it is ours.
I think we’re on the right track with the methodology. I’m confident we’re on the right track with the sauce recipe. I’m certain we’re on the right track with developing our value proposition. What do you think? How would you do it? How are you doing it?
