You Got Facts? So What?

It’s not the size of your knowledge that matters, it’s what you do with it that counts.

You see, facts are getting less and less valuable every day. They are just too easy to come by.

I saw two people sitting at a bar the other night playing that trivia game thing; you know the one you pump the quarters into and try and get the highest score. One of them had an IPhone. Fastest animal? No problem, just Google it. Superbowl X Champion? That’s easy…Badda -Bing it. Tallest skyscraper?…Yippy- Yahoo it.

Game over. That was fun. Game means nothing now and so does your score.

Got a new video game for your kid? Most 12 year olds go online, get the Cheatin’ facts and get the game codes. Game over. Good for you that you defeated Tyranna KingZilla, means nothing to me (and really to anybody else either).

Used to be that knowing a lot of facts nobody else knew actually meant something. Meant you were smart. Meant you had value. Not anymore.

If you are the Keeper of the Knowledge, the Knower of All Things or the Encyclopedia of Vital Stuff, good for you except your days of being truly valuable are numbered.

And that’s OK.

Knowing facts or having knowledge all by itself had its day, but that was so yesterday.

You’re a plumber who knows how to fix a leaky faucet. So what? In a heartbeat I can go to ehow.com ( http://www.ehow.com/video_15854_fix-leaky-faucet.html ) and get all kinds of facts by watching a video on how to fix my faucet. You’ll never get my call.
You’re a sales rep who knows every product, every process and every procedure ever created. So what? If you are up against someone who has great sales skills and a good search engine, you’ll get the steak knives and he’ll get the Cadillac.

It’s not about you knowing stuff no one else knows anymore. Your customers and your competition can know pretty quickly what you know as far as facts go. It’s about having the skills to do something with the facts. The skills and applications and ability to seamlessly and proactively use facts to market better, to sell better, to strategize better and to differentiate you from just being a repository of those darn facts.

That’s a good thing.

People and businesses that can do those kinds of things well will grow in value.

So chill a bit about the facts (you can get those so much more easily now) and work on the skills. That’ll make you stronger and nobody for a long time (maybe never) is going to say “so what?” to that.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Perfect Games in Sales & Marketing

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 9^th inning and the euphoric on field celebration as the 27^th 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

1^st 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.

2^nd 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.

3^rd 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.

4^th 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.

5^th 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.

6^th 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.

7^th inning: The 7^th 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.

8^thinning: 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.

9^th 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 6^thinning.) 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

5 New Rules For Business Writing

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

You Don’t Know, Jack

“Well Jack, that may be real, but it sure as hell isn’t interesting.”

Interesting how an insult Jack Nicholson received over 40 years ago is so relevant today. The insult was one he deemed the best piece of advice he’d ever gotten. (See extras in The Shining DVD at Netflix)

I think it is great advice for us too.

The “insult turned advice” as Jack puts it, came from a film director back in the 60’s after reviewing Dailies in which Jack (like many actors of the period), performed scenes with great effort on being as “real” as possible on screen. Hey, it was the 60’s and “being real” was where it was at.

“Well Jack, that may be real, but it sure as hell isn’t interesting”

If you are in sales or marketing (and the reality is, we all are), this advice is perfect and a little more of what we need these days. You can be “real” all you want with customers/prospects; stay the course, keep the message clear and lay out the values. You can even do it like you’ve never done it before using YouTube or Twitter or WebEx or whatever, but truth is since everyone else is doing it that way, and you are largely just changing your mediums, that may be just a different kind of real.

And while that might be a different real, it sure as hell isn’t interesting.

And that’s a problem. With all the clutter and all the short attention spans and all the competition, we should worry a lot less about being real, and start to get more interesting.

When you are selling for real, skip the “real”. Sell with a story. Sure, you can lay out the benefits of your product, it’s solving a problem or driving more clicks, or how that new logo can create a lasting impression with a prospect, or you can be interesting and start a “mental movie” in the customer’s mind by saying the same thing but with a story. A story about the prospect that followed the van with the super cool new logo just to see where the business was who owned it, is way more interesting than the customer focus group data about changing a logo. The stories are out there, and they are compelling.

When you are selling for real, skip the “real”. Sell with emotion. Nicholson learned “real” doesn’t work on the big screen, but ‘interesting” does. Make a big deal with whatever it is you are selling and let’s hear the passion in your voice or on your video. Let’s hear the energy about your 5 favorite products as you describe them to your client in breathless, halting, excited tones. Go big with emotion and storytelling when selling, it intrigues and it works.

Assume that camera is filming live as you converse with your client or your media is making its first impression. Your audience is critiquing you.

Don’t be real. Be interesting.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Are You Smarter Than Your Website?

I hope so.

I’d like to think most people are smarter than their website and quite frankly, realize they need to get even smarter.

In a cluttered marketplace, Sales people, Service people and anyone who actually talks to customers must become the Differentiator, the Linchpin, the Trust Agent, the Service Ninja etc. etc. to stand out from the competition.

Before more smartness can happen, we have to make sure we are at least not dumber than our own websites.

Here’s 5 ways you can tell.

If your website gives testimonials of how products helped solve a problem, grew top line revenue or saved costs, and you don’t; your website is smarter.
If your website recommends a new product based on the current purchase leveraging what “other like customers buy” (like most websites do), and you don’t; your website is smarter.
If your website doesn’t require a prospect to give more than a name and an email address before it sends out more information, and you do; then your website is smarter.
If your website allows a customer to quickly start an order, stop midstream and check out something else, then go back to the order, and you don’t, then your website is smarter.
If your website shows smiling, enthusiastic and happy people on every page, and you’re not; your website is smarter.

If you missed even one of these, start studying hard, maybe even get a tutor; expectations of you are high my friend.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

That 70’s Twitter

I was way ahead of my time. You can be too.

Social Media is still exploding. Like huge. The FaceBooks, the Twitters, the Blogs and a dozen other tools are top of mind for consumers and businesses these days.

Businesses are scrambling to figure out these tools fast because haven’t you heard? People like you and me who use social media are supposed to have new thinking, new desires, new buying motives and if you happen to be about 20ish, perhaps you may be a new species of human known as a “millennial”.

Nope, I don’t think so. It’s not the people that are different so much; it’s the tools.

It’s the tools like Facebook, Twitter and Blogs that the media, the marketers and the businesses are getting caught up in. But don’t be fooled. It’s not enough to just embrace and use these tools. If you are in sales, teaching or marketing; it’s important to think hard about why people are using and loving these tools; what comfort and value they bring; enhance your strategy and then act accordingly.

You see, I was on FaceBook in the 80’s. I needed to be if I was going to have a life. I was actually on Twitter in the 70’s cuz’ I found it cool and informative and I was a heck of a Blogger as far back as the early 90’s.

It’s true. I was.

In the 80’s I had my little black book with Judy Lelievre (I was totally in love with her), Stephanie Bond (out of my league), Paula Kelly (we went on a date once) and a dozen other girls’ names in there. I loved that black book (even without any faces) and every time their phone numbers, or addresses or my opinion rating of them changed, (yep, I ranked them from a measly one star up to four “wicked awesome” stars), I updated that thing religiously. I needed to be connected and in the know.

In the 70’s the Twitter feeds were always on the back of the stall door in he boys’ bathroom at St. Catherine’s School. There I learned the latest thoughts (and some new words) about Sister Mary’s lightning quick back hand and about Sister John’s weight challenges. Always something new on those doors and like the Library of Congress that now holds millions of Twitter posts; I bet that 70’s Twitter is still etched in metal in the second floor bathroom at St. Catherine’s school likely for eternity.

In the 90’s, I wrote a page every night, printed it on dot matrix paper and copied it for the hundreds of call center sales people so in the morning; my wisdom, guidance (and at that time a lot of capital letters), were placed squarely front and center on the chairs of my people. Some read it, some chucked it, but just like today; it better be interesting/ helpful or people don’t care.

Here is the point. Get to know the new tools. Get to know them really well so you can better fill the desires that have been around for ages. People always want to have relationships and always want to share an opinion. They want to know the latest going on and they want a community of trusted friends and colleagues.

Whether they find some of that on Twitter or they find it on the back of a bathroom stall door; it doesn’t much matter. What matters is that you help your customers, friends and even strangers fill their desires really really well.

The tools may change but the innate desires of folks rarely do. Know this and you’ll be ahead of your time too.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Josh Beckett Came To My House Saturday

Mr. Beckett showed up at my house on Saturday. Josh is a pretty famous major league baseball pitcher and currently plays for the Red Sox.

My wife had been cleaning all morning in anticipation of his arrival (I told her that it was not a big deal; the house looked fine- but you know how that goes).

I had a busy morning too and was in the backyard when Josh rang the doorbell an hour early. My wife answered the door and not being much of a baseball fan, she didn’t recognize him even though he was decked out in his baseball jersey that said “RED SOX” on the front and “BECKETT” on his back.

I came around the front of the house and was surprised that he was wearing a game jersey. Not what I expected. I was then shocked he had put a ton of weight on and got about a foot shorter since the season started. I looked a little closer…. and realized……. that it wasn’t Josh Beckett at all, but the cable guy who was scheduled to come about an hour later.

There are a lot of problems with this; not the least of which is that there is an age when a man should stop wearing another man’s name on his back (and that age should be about 14 ). But there are bigger problems than that; problems that people and companies should fix. Problems you can get involved in solving.

Problem A): He scared my wife. Really scared her. That is not good. Who is this guy at the front door in khaki’s and Red Sox Jersey? She literally told me later “I was freaked out and scared, I had no idea what he wanted and you were way out back”. (It was only because our dog was barking that I even came around to the front of the house.)

Problem B): I didn’t trust him the entire time. About anything. He was there for an hour adding some cable service and because he chose to wear his Saturday best and he scared my wife, I had a lot of tension and concern watching him work around my house. If you don’t care how you look, do you care how you work?

Don’t tell me that his truck should be a giveaway. His truck was parked behind our two cars and the lettering on the truck if you chose to walk up to it, was tiny, had no colors and no logo. It doesn’t matter. If someone comes to your door dressed like he’s ready to go to a tailgate party, you’re not looking at his vehicle for a company or a brand to begin with.

If you serve businesses or are one you’ve known (supposedly) for years about the value of having that logo and that personalization on the clothing because it makes the customers feel at ease and that your company is professional. So why is it not happening still today?

Uneasiness was the tenor of the day and hence, the entire experience was certainly not professional.

Right or wrong, because of the way he dressed Saturday, I questioned everything about him. I questioned his ability, his commitment to his company and whether he had any concern at all about me, the customer. That’s bad news.

And worse now, whenever I see Josh Beckett pitch I’m going to think about the cable guy and wonder if my picture in HD is really as good as it could be.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

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