From Have to Believe

It’s best to move on now from what you have, to what you believe.

If you are transforming from a commodity-like company to a knowledge and service based company, its best to move on from what you have, to what you believe.

So many of us are doing just that. Whether we are a company or a sales rep or a marketer or a trainer; more and more of us are adding (or must add) insight/ intelligence to our stable of widgets or even in some cases, instead of our widgets.

The market is starving for direction.

Don’t get me wrong, what you have is fine for they are the products and services. Thankfully, they pay the bills and feed the kids.

But too often we eagerly share, shout and talk about those products and services. Too often we earnestly show what we have for products and services on our websites, in our phone calls and during our webinars. Too often we study too hard about what we have for products and services. Too often we train too much about what we have for products and services.

And we spend so little time talking about what we believe.

That’s right, what we believe. What your company believes. What you believe.

You thought I was going to tell you to focus not on what we have but on what your products and services do for the customer; how they solve a problem, how they fit a need.

Good lord, that is so 80’s. And that’s table stakes now.

Belief sharing is better. Belief sharing is needed now more than ever. Belief sharing is the new black.

We spend so little relative time in sharing our credible prescriptive path to success for our customers. We spend so little relative time espousing our beliefs about the direction our clients must go to achieve what they want to achieve.

Products and Services are critical yes, but amazingly, they are too often fun, too easy to count, too easy to have sales on and in fact can crowd out the very essence that they should be an extension of a very passionate and clear belief– not just about what our products and services do but what we believe the path is to get there.

An obsession about what we have may work well for widgets, gum and shoelaces, but what we believe matters more if we profess to be in the Advice and Counsel game; the Insight game or the Knowledge and Service game as so many of us do ( and need to do).

Customers are drawn to those who have passionate beliefs. Small businesses for example, line up to get counsel from SCORE, to join Mastermind groups, to access advice and counsel from Hubspot, DuctTape Marketing and Amex’s Open Network. .

The difference between saying “We have this and this and this……” and “We believe the best route to success is …” is awesome. And powerful.

What you believe in the knowledge and service game sells the products and services that you have. It’s not the other way around.

We must also be consistent about those beliefs from the company home page to the person in the field or on the phone. And we must be different from the competition. And we must be religiously true to those beliefs as if they were inscribed on tablets made of stone; not just in what the results will be but in the prescriptive method of how those beliefs are executed upon.

It’s OK to teach and lead customers to your beliefs. It’s more than OK. In a shaky economy and a world that gets more confusing everyday, it’s got to be your lead story now.

For without that rock solid, credible path about what you believe, nobody will come to you, or listen to you or give a darn about what products or services you have no matter what they do.

Take a stand. Have a belief. Preach it, teach it, brand it, package and sell it. Leave the obsession with products and services behind.

If your customer is so inspired, have no fear, they’ll ask you what you have.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

The Most Powerful Phrase in Sales

It’s the most powerful phrase in Marketing too.

It’s shocking how many of us in Sales forget to use it. Marketing folks forget it it too but not as often as they tend to proof stuff before prospects or customers see or hear anything.

Why we sales people forget it all the time is another blog for another day but what you must do now with this most powerful of phrases is jump on it and start using it today, this hour and in as many ways and places as you can.

The world is eating this phrase up right now. It’s never been hotter. Ever.

Interestingly the key to this is not rooted in what everyone thinks are the pillars of sales success like “Solving a problem” or ” Filling a need” or “Asking great questions” or even “Focusing on your customer”

This phrase is not about your customer. It’s not about you, your company or your product either.

And what’s really really cool about this powerful phrase is that it is easier than ever for you to use it. There’s more evidence to cite it, examples to help frame it, places and spaces to preach it, teach it and shout it out from the top of your cubicle, desk or chair.

It’s simple too. Here it is.

“What most people….”

What most people…What most people…. Say it with me, “What most people..!!”

Ahhhh.

Powerful. Add “do” or your favorite action word or words – it doesn’t matter-and it all becomes gold! . What most people “say”, “ask”, “wonder”, “start with”, “buy”, “think about”, “try”.

The phrase is not about you. It’s not about the customer or the prospect either- it’s about people like them.

That is powerful. That gets attention. That starts and moves sales. That works.

We are sheep. I’ve written and shared studies with all of you on how powerful what most people do is. We want to see the most fans on Facebook, the most likes, the ratings, what others bought, the plus 1’s, the followers on Twitter. It’s all the same thing. What most people do is what I the consumer or the business owner wants to know.

I’m no fool. Not every customer will follow mindlessly like sheep do. But I guarantee the phrase gets the head and heart to at least listen to what you have to say – and that is half the battle.

Work it in to your phone calls and presentations and not just around “What most people buy is“. It’s smart, effective and the most powerful phrase in sales.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Consistency

Seems like not everyone “gets it” these days.

Open your shop 15 minutes late or have your product fail, or disconnect a caller even once and those prospects that were waiting in your parking lot, or considering the upgrade or just looking for pricing won’t come back like they used to.

It’s too easy to go somewhere else.

And it’s easier now to tattle on your inconsistencies, making even infrequent inconsistency seem like an epidemic.

Consistency isn’t sexy like your Groupon Sales plan or your YouTube buzz, yet its absence more than ever, can kill your wildest of business dreams.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Mondays are busy. All Monday posts are 100 words or less.

Have A Voice Dawg

You have a great voice.

I’m not talking about your American Idol Steven Tyler “Demon of Screamin” voice here that makes Randy Jackson grin. Rather it’s the voice that is your perspective, your message, your way.

That voice matters, maybe now more than ever. That voice needs to be heard.

You can be “voiceless” by being a fantastic collector and sprayer of facts, figures, options, processes, policies, product specs, special offers, FAQ’s or even of opinions.

But having a voice means you chose something. It means you chose some way.

And nothing influences people more – especially today.

You see, it’s an odd thing this abundance of information we live in. There is so much of it everywhere and in every way that it is often paralyzing. There’s a longing that is growing now in consumers and small businesses that when they finally get to talk to a real live human being like you – especially one that has built a semblance of trust, to grab hold of you, shake you at your shoulders, drop to a knee and plead:

“What do you think?”

Not all business owners and decision makers ( by a long shot) want to do all the research, the analysis, the comparisons or read all the posts, Tweets and articles before making a decision.

Especially when they can’t discern credible content from just plain ol’ content. And that, in the plugged in world we live in, is where we are today.

So choose that voice, human! Have a suggestion. Have a recommendation. Have advice. Have an opinion. Have a strong opinion. Heckl, have a soapbox, a vision and a darn dream for your customers.

You can choose to have your voice be based on your own beliefs or of those people or companies or content that you trust, love or study. It doesn’t matter; if you believe it and you share it; it’s your voice.

And that, as Steven Tyler would say is.”Yeow-Yak-Yak-Yak-Ooww!”

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

How To Avoid Being an HR ( and Customer) Nightmare

Am I an HR Nightmare? You decide.

Imagine that you and I just ran into each other in the street. We’ve never met before.

I smile and ask, “Excuse me Miss, may I take your hand?” or I smile and ask “You are simply gorgeous, have you ever been a model?” or I smile and I ask “Your place or mine?”

Well? Am I an HR Nightmare?

Before real HR personnel here race down the hall and escort me out of this building, let me explain why I ask. There is a lesson here.

First I understand a majority of you (OK, all of you), would have been appalled and/or frightened if any of the vignettes really happened. “Hell no!”, “Get away from me!” and “Police!!” would likely be the vitriol lobbied at me.

But let’s change the vignettes just a wee bit.

Imagine that you and I just ran into each other in the street. We’ve never met before.

I smile and say “Excuse me, I am a doctor and you don’t look well, may I take your hand?” or I smile and say “I am with Martin & Stevens modeling right here in Boston. You are gorgeous, have you ever been a model?” Or I smile and say “I am Detective McCarthy with Boston PD and I need to ask you a few questions – your place or mine?”

You get it now. Makes a little more sense.

But while I may not be a true HR nightmare; some of us are Customer or Prospect Nightmares.

Within moments of meeting customers or prospects, whether they call us or we call on them, some of us ask questions we have not yet earned the right to ask. We ask questions like “How’s business?” or “How do you market your business?” or “What challenges do you face?” Or “What are the goals?”

And shockingly we often don’t take the time to drop the necessary credibility first. We never proclaim our being a doctor, an agent or a police officer so to speak and hence we create a whole lot of tension, confusion or even anger.

Tension, confusion or anger by the way, stops the sales process dead in its tracks.

In a perfect sales world we have the credibility, trust and time already invested and would be able to ask these questions without worry of how a customer or prospect might feel or respond.

But we don’t live in a perfect sales world and yet still need information from our clients. So when that phone rings or we make that cold call we ask and ask away, sometimes to our detriment.

Here is a surefire simple way to avoid being a Customer Nightmare (Sorry really can’t help you if you are an HR Nightmare) and improve your chances of getting good questions answered.

Preface It: If you want to ask “How’s business going?” of a small business owner seconds after meeting them – Preface It with “I’m hearing a lot of things from my retailers lately, but how’s business going with you?” Here your experience with other like customers (retailers) earns you street cred and reduces risk of posing a question that might be considered an affront so early on. It also piques interest that you may know something of value; which can help you avoid getting booted out the door or off the phone sooner than you’d like.

Preface It is a simple formula: Any variation of Your Experience + Teaser + Customer’s line of business = one heck of an assist to get a good question answered.

Have at it.

(Next time, I’ll share another tip you can button right on to this one that will greatly enhance your effort to discover well with your customers and prospects).

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Cool Sheep

Google’s +1 (plus one) launched last week. It’s flattering proof once again that what your network likes is a vital influence in your decision to buy something.

We are sheep – albeit the smartest, coolest and most innovative sheep ever. And we largely act and buy because of what we see other people like us do or recommend.

No influence in the history of the world is more powerful. None.

Advertisers know it. You must know it. Strive always to share and show the cool sheep what is so liked about you and your product – all their friends are watching.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

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Mondays are busy. All posts are 100 words or less.

Help for Loooonnngg Sales Cycles

Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane

– The Police “Too Much Information” (Ghosts in the Machine 1981)

The Police (Sting’s old group for you youngin’s-) had it right way back in the 80’s with this song. Too much information is indeed a problem.

But 30 years later, insane would be better result than some of the other stuff that happens today because of information overload.

For us business folks, the sales cycles are getting longer. It feels like it is taking longer than ever for prospects to close or move to the next step or to just say “no” and allow us to move on. That hurts. That also makes us crazy. (Fortunately crazy is a tamer version of insane).

One of the biggest reason sales cycles are getting so long is that there is just so much information out there.

Today a prospect has a quadrillion options on line to learn about your industry, your company, your product or even you. And what’s worse is that this prospect given the tough economy and the corporate trust issues, feels obligated to do that research. He or she feels that due righteous diligence means a lot of research and study that years ago just wasn’t available.

You do it too. Used to be you threw the Sony Walkman on the beanbag, slipped on the Members Only jacket, jumped in the Taurus and trundled to the local department store to get a new fridge cuz’ the Kenmore up and died.

Now you analyze product reviews, consumer reports, price shopper sites, debate whether to buy online or offline, wait for Twitter and Facebook replies from friends before you trundle anywhere and have a look. Businesses do the same. Your competitors are all over the world and they all have a website. There’s a never ending supply of helpful online groups and associations to solicit feedback from. Testimonials aren’t requested any more, they are already there and must be read through.

So much to look at. So many options to study.

That takes time. And that lengthens Sales Cycles. That’s some of the pain of too much information.

So what do you do? Here are two strategies to help.

Set A Table of Urgency:

Some of the ownership of “over analysis” by clients lies with us sales and marketing folks. Our meetings or our phone calls or our emails don’t always set the best expectations (often none at all) around time. If they did, they might speed up the information review.

Set Up “Tentative” Meetings: Trying to set up a meeting for real can be difficult when the prospect has all this information they want to review. Set it up at least tentatively as you end the call or leave the meeting. Use the word “tentatively” (it keeps that buyer tension low) and get it on an Outlook Calendar. A recent study I saw said prospects are 70% more likely to keep a tentative meeting on a calendar than just an open ended invitation.

Build Checkpoints up front into the sales process. (Always position as a benefit to the prospect of course). “At the end of this meeting you should be in a position to say you want to review more materials or not. Your time is not something I want to waste.” Or “If you are interested in going to the next step after this meeting, the next 3 days are fully staffed for us to run numbers with your data groups”.

Prescribe The Research:

Part of the problem with too much information is the prospect wondering where to begin to look- further stalling the sales cycle.

Share What To Do. Give your prospect the competitor names, the associations to solicit feedback from and the sites where they can see objective product or company reviews. Send them the links to the videos or the white papers and encourage them to dig in. You’ll be surprised how this cuts the time and builds your credibility simultaneously.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

4 New Words for 2011

I heard yesterday that the word “App” was voted as the “Word of the Year” in 2010. Makes sense. It’s a nice word. Not a new word (it’s short for “application”), but it gets the job done.

Ho Hum.

If you’re going to have a Word of the Year you’d think it should be at least new. What’s going to win next year, “ping?” or “tablet?” Please. And I’m thinking we could really use some new words round here. New words are important when the world just keeps on changing.

Here are 4. We need these. They are in alphabetical order (for my friends at the Oxford English Dictionary), have phonetic spellings (for my linguistic phonology friends) and have a bit about what they mean for the rest of us.

Authorical ( aw-thor-i-cal): This is what you want to be. Way better for sales people and marketers than just being an expert or an “authority” yet has the cool factor of being “historical” too. When you are so credible for so long as a person (or a business) that people lean forward pen in hand, ready to write down your every wisdom or advice; you are Authorical. Given the wild untrusting marketplace today that’s a great way to be.

Cryoritize (cry-or-ri-tize): “Prioritize” the word, has become weak. Today “Prioritize” unfortunately has come to mean more about “What you should do first” rather than what you should do instead of something else. Lists get reshuffled but rarely get shorter. What we need is to cryoritize. It takes courage to cryoritize; people can get upset and people might even cry as their project, their idea, or their need gets cut. But business is tough. And it’s tougher when you only prioritize.

ICrutch: (eye-cruch) It is a terrible affliction. It’s when one uses the Smartphone, the blackberry or the IPad to keep those eyes low and thus avoid talking to someone and stay tuned out. It’s when one posts a blog instead of having a needed meeting. It’s weak and it’s selfish. It’s when someone Texts when they should have picked up the phone or looked you in the eye. Sufferers of ICrutch here see technology as a way to collapse their scary world instead of confidently expanding it.

Intervaluepropositionalistically ( in-ter-val-you-propp-pohs-zish-shon-nal-liss-tick-al-lee ) Ah yes, finally a word that reflects when you are speaking about a product or service’s complete set of value propositions! You can use the word in just about any ol’ meeting using phrases like “Intervaluepropositionalistically speaking, I’d say we have a real advantage here!” or “What a game changer, intervaluepropositionalistically speaking that is!” AND the best part is, it gives the current longest word in common use (i.e. non-medical) “interdenominationalistically” (meaning across all faiths) a beat down as our new word is 32 letters long versus a measly 28!

Here’s to hoping these words help you in a changing world and here’s to rooting for one of these guys to win Word of the Year in 2011. Love it when a Rookie wins.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

The Wicked Awesome Awards

If I was in fact, having an actual awards ceremony, I think these four winners would give some inspiring acceptance speeches. And if they actually knew they were winning a Wicked Awesome Award (they don’t) they would be thrilled.

Until the WAA’s reach that “coveted” status, the awards actually mean more to me (and hopefully you) than anyone else. Why? Because each of these winners affected me in some wonderfully wicked awesome way. And you get the benefit of knowing how.

Each of these people over the last 6 weeks did something simple, yet so helpful they inspired me to stop, grab my red book and write down these moments. That’s a big deal in my book (literally) and makes them worthy winners.

Here they are;

Adolphe at Verizon who called me on his lunch break from his own cell phone to confirm that my cell phone was working properly while I was traveling in Kansas City last month. He said he would; I didn’t really believe it but by golly, he did.

Helen at Target who checked left, right and then all around her looking for her boss. And not having found him, grinned, left her register and helped the elderly woman bag her groceries way down at the end of the checkout lane. Helen, you’re right; some things just aren’t in the training manual.

Rev. Dean who sat next to me on the plane last month, each of us sharing stories about work and life, stopped mid sentence and sincerely asked if there was someone in my life he could pray for over the next month. There was Rev. Dean, thank you, thank you very much.

Tim and Jimmy at Hannaford, who insisted on loading my wife’s groceries in the pouring rain saying “Just get in the car- we got it!”. Tim is a made up name (and so is Jimmy) but this complete stranger and his son totally made my day and I wasn’t even there.

Congratulations all. No lives saved or Herculean efforts here but Wicked Awesome for sure.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

What’s Easy

I write a lot about easy. But this one’s a little different.

I write often about how important it is to small business customers and prospects that your products are easy, that your website is easy, that your billing is easy, that your ordering is easy, or that your customer service is easy. Basically easy is what small business needs.

Here’s the rub though. What’s easy for small business isn’t necessarily easy for you.

What’s easy for small business is:

To Keep Who They Got: Dislodging a vendor in a small business is not easy. Last I checked SB’s don’t have a team of sales or process strategists charged with looking at the value of bringing something or somebody in brand new. Nope it’s more like, “I’ve been with them forever”, or “I know his family”, or “It’s too much work to change mid year”, or “This thing is like 1/100^th of my budget why do I care?” etc. etc. You have got to make it easier to switch.

To Blow You Off: Heck, they themselves are or were, sales reps or account managers in one way or another for their own business-most of em’ anyway. And they have staff trained to get rid of sales reps and marketers like you and some personally make it an art to avoid everybody but customers, family, their accountant or their banker. It’s not that they don’t think you have a good product, it’s just that there’s no darn time to spare. You have got to make it easier to see why just a little time with you might be valuable.

To Not Believe You: The Small Business owner who has that type A personality, and is the wearer of all hats, and with the ego through the roof and the work ethic like nobody else;– Is she going to flat out just believe you when you say you can help grow her business? Heck no. You have to make it easier for her to trust you.

I usually end all my posts with real applications, real ways to get it done. I usually give you a few things you can just run with right now and tackle the problem and grow the business.

That would be too easy.

And there’s a better way. Though this blog is only 6 months old, type in the search box the word “easy” (10 posts) or “value” (13 posts) or “credibility” (7 posts) or any darn word you think might be make sense. Therein is a lot more help to make it easier for you and your customers.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

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