Month: June 2010

Perfect Games in Sales & Marketing

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In baseball there is all the rage about perfect games this year.  But it’s not whether there have been two or three perfect games (I say 3) this year that strikes me.   What occurs to me is the tremendous advantage baseball has to know what perfection looks like.

In baseball, you know what a perfect game should look and feel like when you get there.   You can envision the 3 hour battle, the tension rising, the crowds standing all throughout the 9th inning and the euphoric on field celebration as the 27th consecutive batter is retired. 

In Sales and Marketing you aren’t sure what that perfect campaign or sale looks or feels like whether you are a big company, small business   or sell for yourself.   Wouldn’t it be great if we knew what a perfect sales or marketing campaign looked like?

If you knew, you could better build the path, the processes and the tools you’ll need to get there.  And when we you see a vision of perfection you can measure better your performance in sales and marketing comparatively.

Don’t take the easy way and say a perfect game in a sale or a marketing campaign would exceed revenue results, would be done ahead of schedule and under budget.  That’s not a perfect game.  Here’s the scorecard for real perfection.

A Sales/Marketing Perfect Game

1st Inning:  You took a big risk.  You targeted a new market.  This campaign, this sale is a game changer; no tiny incremental move here; you are going for it.

2nd Inning:  Before you’ve sold anything, you’ve ‘sold” everyone on your team first.  You get the Manager on board, your colleagues, your teammates and you’ve got them all ready to play like hell for you.  No lone ranger here, the most brilliant sales people and marketers don’t do it alone.

3rd Inning:  You are obsessed with differentiation.   99% of us have at least 1 competitor.  In this perfect game your lead story sets you apart in such a way that you create a buzz offline and online; just like a high and tight fastball buzzed inside gets attention.

4th Inning:  You are obsessed with credibility.  The marketplace today is trust starved.  The internet is the gathering place for pseudo soothsayers and the volume of baseless advice is endless.   In this perfect game you pull out all the stops, pick up the best radar gun and prove how credible you and your company are. 

5th Inning:  You focus on your prospect or your targeted market’s time.  It’s scarce and more valuable than ever.  The perfect campaign respects this.  The perfect campaign invests in this.  Maybe even pays the prospect just for their time.  Knee jerk spray and pray selling or marketing is the bane of the 6 hour, 9 to 8 game that is far away from perfect and creates indifferent fans.

6th   Inning:  This perfect sale doesn’t hit the prospect or the market just at the right time, no siree.  This perfecto takes   perfectly normal consumers or businesses that have no interest in what you have to sell, have no need, no desire and no problem just waiting to be solved and instead, creates interest where there is none.   If you can do that, that is really something.  This inning is where heads start to really turn and focus.

7th inning:  The 7th inning Stretch where the marketer and the sales person are getting real interest but instead of closing and/or pushing shopping carts; you are in it for the long haul.  You stretch the closing of the sale.  You ache to personalize the solution, the consultation.  You tailor your product for each client as this is a relationship you want beyond the first sale.  You want to build raving fans.

8thinning:    No need for a closing (or a closer for that matter).   The perfect sale or marketing campaign doesn’t need discounts, special offers, expiration dates and the like.  This perfect game needs none of that.  The visitors sign up in droves, the prospects ask for not just 1 but 2.  They leave a voicemail on your cell that they want to start on Monday. 

9th Inning:  Here is where the perfect games in sales and marketing matches that of baseball.  It’s a celebration.  Nobody is surprised (because they’ve all been really watching since the 6th inning.)  It’s a moment for posterity; everyone remembers where they were when that campaign or that sales rep delivered like no other.

You can still win lots of games without pitching a perfect one but at least now you know what one looks like in sales and marketing.   And just because of that, my guess is you’ll start playing better right away. 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Pssst! Check These Out

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I’ve got some uncommon sales tips for you.   Not sure why you don’t hear much about them; they really work.  

Learn From Radio Commercials:  These are some of the best guides for how to create interest and sell.  A radio ad has just 30 seconds (or less) to grab our attention and drive you to action and/or make an impression you won’t forget.  Often your sales people have just about the same amount of time.  Next time you sit in the car, really listen and break the commercials down.  You will hear concepts likely in this order; credibility, commonality, benefits, applications and testimonials mixed with humor, contact info and perhaps a jingle.  I guarantee you’ll hear something you can steal by listening, really listening, to radio commercials.  Sales managers, bring a radio to your next huddle, listen to a live commercial and break it down with your team ( I’ve done this for real and it makes a huge impact with your staff) or perhaps gather folks around your car with speakers blaring just before the shift starts- it will be worth it.

Lower Your Voice:. It’s a given in the electronic media and social psychology research shows that the lower the pitch of your voice (even relative to your normal speaking voice pitch); the more credible the message sounds.  Think of this; have you ever heard anything other than a lower pitched voice do commercials or voiceovers on the radio? (This includes female voices, which like males on radio, are more likely to be lower in pitch than the average person of their respective gender). So pick your critical sales phrasing appropriately and lower the tone in just the right places.  And the next time you are justifying why you need a raise, keep that voice nice and low…

Stop Selling One Day Per Week (or more)   Have an existing customer base?  Spend one day per week visiting / calling out and just overtly thanking your clients.  That means more than just saying “Thank You” of course, but the specifics I’ll leave to you.  You could include an article too about how the local demographics are changing saying “I was thinking of you” or drop off a branded promo item with your sincere acknowledgement of their 7 years with your company.  You get the idea. This day will leave one heck of an impression that will lead to more sales and referrals than you can imagine.  

Till next time,

Grow the Business.

Mark

5 New Rules For Business Writing

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Let’s be real.   People don’t read as much as they used to. 

They actually read more. 

It’s a texting crazy world.   It’s a blogging crazy world.  It’s a facebookin’ crazy world.  Just look at your kids or your spouse or even your Mom and tell me I’m wrong that we are reading and writing more than ever before. 

Who would have thought  that reading and writing would be so popular today?  Who would have thought 20 years ago that that personal email and the personal letter would still be so much alive when it came to communicating to customers and prospects?  

You’ve got to write to your customers.  Clients expect it now; they even prefer it sometimes.  But the world is changing and so are the writing rules.   Here are 5 you need to know:  

Quit Sounding Like Your Brochure.   A letter from a person (you), should sound like a letter from the person (you).  And a professional person mind you, not a buddy- chummy- BFF one.  In your emails or letters, lose the “The 3 major benefits of our product are….”  Change it to “I’ve noticed three ways customers use this service to get the most out of it…”  The easiest way to think about this is to bring the “I’s”, the “I’ves and the “me’s” back to customer correspondence.   Save the “We’s, the “Ours’” and “Us’s” for the brochure.  This letter or the email is from you isn’t it?  

Don’t Screw Up.   OK, so this one is not so new; but the pain you get is a new kind of pain. It’s quick and severe.  Mistakes in spelling or punctuation in the past might have been “cute” or could even make you look “human” (I remember in the early 90’s purposely indenting something too much so the prospect wouldn’t think this was a template letter!) Today, you make a spelling mistake and it’s a reason to delete or trash your email.  Why? Because all the customer has to do is click twice and she can find your competition who actually knows how to spell.   Don’t give her a reason to look.

Don’t Lose Your Sales Process.    This one drives me crazy.  If you weren’t betting on closing the sale on your first phone call or visit, why does your email or letter try to?  Why does it have the link to “sign up” or have the complete pricing listed?  Sales are like dating; you rarely marry the girl you meet 20 minutes after you meet them.  A (marriage) proposal inside of 2 minutes in a letter and you’ll rightly get slapped in the face (and deleted or trashed). Remember your prospect “hears” you as they read; stay with your trusted sales process, don’t change it from real life or a real phone call. 

Long Paragraphs Kill.    I love Jack Falvey (you can love him too if you go here http://www.falvey.org).  But jeepers criminy, every morning when I get his post I cringe.   It’s just a big ol’ block o’ words; One paragraph.  One looooonnnnggg paragraph.  Maybe it’s his brand or his style but I sigh, I shrug and then I ball up some energy, raise my head and bloody well decide if I want to read this thing.   And honestly, half the time I don’t.  We need the visual breaks; they are the eye candy of writing.  There is a reason Tweeting at no more than 140 characters is popular.  Break it up; think space.

Lose Your Pontificating Signature Quote.  I know you love Sartre or Brecht or Roosevelt or Einstein; good for you.  No one’s opinion but yours though belongs in a business letter or email to a customer.  You’ve messing with fire if you dangle a quote under your name or signature as your personality and your passion should have been in the content above the quote: not here under your name. You haven’t a clue if your reader cares or will be offended.   The worst of course are the people that write “Think twice about printing this email….”.  OK, I will.  I was going to print your awesome letter it and share it with my husband or my wife or my family or colleagues and consider you as a partner, but instead I’ll delete you.  How dare you preach to me, I don’t even know you!  Please don’t pontificate your views about green or blue or red or life or death or taxes in customer correspondence.  Save it for your blog 🙂

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Remembrance & The Best Advice Ever

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I had my moments this weekend.  

Moments when I should have personally used the best advice ever, but forgot.  When I did remember the advice, the setting made me feel a little embarrassed that I had forgotten it. 

The advice is grand, and its use can be grand.  Memorial Day has just passed and the men and women whose sacrifice allows us to do and be what we are today applied this advice in spades.  The advice is glorious and powerful when applied to issues large or small.  Here it is:

 It’s not what happens to you that matters most, but it’s how you react to what happens that does.

Dozens claim to have authored the advice but no matter as in this case, it’s the advice that should stick; not the source.

My moments this weekend were trivial compared to soldiers who chose and choose to react to war by joining the forces that protect this country.  But that’s OK because my reactions though significantly less impactful than our soldiers reactions,  influence my children, my wife, my colleagues, my friends, my customers and my work.  So truly, how I react to things that happen matters more than what actually happens to just me, as others are always involved. 

When I saw the flags lining the street on Saturday and when I saw Boy Scouts planting flags by each veteran’s grave, I remembered that best advice ever. 

I can get bad news, a bad report or even a bad look from a stranger and choose to anger, to revenge, to feel victimized.  Or I can get bad news and chose to be thoughtful, be assertive, to be selfless.  I don’t always control what happens but I sure as hell can control the reaction.

I pledge to do better at applying that advice beginning today, in honor of those who did it so well before me.  How about you?     

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark