self development

My 25 Secrets for Selling to Small Businesses

Standard

Since 1988 I’ve sold, serviced and essentially provided for my family via the results of my interactions with, and strategies toward in large part,  small business.   Maybe that’s you too.  Maybe you are an indepent, an employee of a large firm or even a small business selling to small businesses – no matter — this is all good for you.  

I’ve forgotten far more than I’ve learned I suspect, but here are my 25 best kept secrets for selling to small businesses. 

  1. The worst time to sell to a small business is M-F,10am to 12pm and 1-3pm.  Ain’t nobody in small business interested in doing any business but their own at those times. Work harder on the fringes!
  2. New In Business is gold.  It’s a little like a chick imprinting on you just after hatching.  Help a small business when they are starting out and they will be fiercely loyal to you. 
  3. Not every SB wants to grow! (but they sure as hell want to at least keep what they have).  Use a maintain angle.
  4. Testimonials are so table stakes now.  What you need are testimonials from someone your SB prospect knows.
  5. Surprise! Surprise!  Small business owners are or once were; sales people.  They can smell your trial closes and rotating yes’s from 100 yards away.
  6. The most important word to think, proclaim, represent and lead with when talking with a small business owner is the word “easy”.
  7. Never forget how prideful, ego laden and direct a business owner usually is about his/her business! 
  8. I’ve never said the word “small” to a small business.   Ever.  I just won’t do it.   
  9. Your price, your service, your terms and even your competition are not remotely close to the biggest problem you face with small business.  Time (and getting it) is the biggest challenge by far.
  10. Whoever answers the phone at a small business is good at customer service, great at connecting you to brother Billy and a pro at getting rid of salespeople like you.  
  11. Everyone in a small business has at least some influence in the decision.   Sorry.  Dems’ the apples.
  12. If you don’t make it easy to switch to you, you won’t get a sale. 
  13. You get to go home to your kids.  The SB owner’s kids are in the back room coloring on the folding table.  Free up their time to spend more time with family and you win. 
  14. The first step in the SB sales model isn’t discovery or introduction or greeting or any other silly thing; it’s building credibility.  That needs to be your obsession.
  15. Time is so precious that “either/or” leading questions about anything are always better than open ended questions for a busy small business owner.
  16. Your customers have customers.  If you focus your solution on how it impacts your customer’s customers then it’s a win-win and the sale is easier.
  17. “What most people do..” is the most powerful phrase in small business sales.  Use it liberally.
  18. The SB’s website and/or storefront is the “face” of the business.   You can tell a lot by just looking at someone’s face.  Do that first!
  19. I bet a killer secret- to- be in cold calling is the phrase “Did I catch you at a terrible time or do you have 90 seconds?” right after you say your name and company.  (I just learned it so try it and let me know!)
  20. Your SB’s don’t realize yet (most of em’ anyway),  that that cherished Word of Mouth is changing.  Not in value, but in the tools being used to pass that along.  Help your SB’s see the value of social media!
  21. SB’s don’t want to hear about your “8:30to 5 shift” (they don’t have no stinkin’ shift) the old small business you had (that failed) or the other business you go to “just like theirs” (their competition).  So just knock it off. 
  22. It’s not what you think, believe or analyze about your SB customer or prospect so much that matters- it’s what they think of you.  
  23. Asking for help always worked for me.  And you know what worked best? 2 sales people knocking on doors (one being a trainee).  You always got time!  People (SB’s too) like to help people.
  24. Slick, coiffed, corporate and the King’s English doesn’t fly in Small Business.  Be normal, polite and smart but don’t be everything SB’s hate in the first 30 seconds inside the door.
  25. The greatest secret to selling to Small Business? They aren’t a sale, a lead, a customer, a prospect, your commission or even a business; they’re human and would just like a little help.

Till next time,

 Grow The Business.

 Mark

Your Cheatin’ Start

Standard

I was young when I learned that if you combine working hard and cheating you often get something that actually pays off.    

I sat at the piano when I was 8.   The M*A*S*H song was the first real tune I played plunking out each note quite shocked that it actually sounded remotely like the theme song. 

I haven’t stopped playing since.   But my story doesn’t blossom into me learning to really play the piano and how I got to play a couple of gigs for Journey or for Springsteen when they came to town.  I’m not a good piano player by any stretch. 

I need that music in front of me.  I taught myself the guitar chords symbols to play on the piano and know enough sight reading to plunk out the melody in the right hand.  I cheat.

But I work hard at cheating so that most people can’t tell I’m staring at the guitar chord symbols as I accompany anyone who cares to sing.  I even play in church on occasion in front of sometimes hundreds of people.

They don’t realize how much hard work this is for me and that I am in fact, cheating.  But they seem to like it.   That can’t be all bad.

In fact, it’s not bad at all, it’s OK – Happens all the time.

  • Your boss or your colleague is sooooo good at coaching people.  It comes so naturally to them.   You on the other hand, sit at your desk and bang out “How to deal with conflict in the workplace…” like 4 times a week on Google looking for a darn answer.  You find it.  You print it off.  You sweat it.  It works.   Tis’ that combo of hard work and cheating payin’ off. 

 

  • Your buddy’s closing deals like Vin Diesel in the movie Boiler Room and yet he looks like he just rolled out of bed most of the time.   You listen over the wall and start stealing his lines left and right with what he’s saying to customers.  You try em’.  You memorize em’.   You steal em’ for a week and soon you start landing deals.  Tis’ that combo of hard work and cheating paying off.  

 

  • The team needs an answer.  It’s brainstorming time.  Have to find a way to drive some more sales.  You are clueless, tired and it’s been a long week.  You trip over a book that fell off some table you walked by, pick it up, pour over it and find the answer.  You go to meeting.  You share the idea.  You don’t (gulp) share that you accidentally found the answer in a book you tripped over.   Tis’ that combo of hard work and cheating paying off. 

Here’s the deal.   Hard work mixed with cheating has its place.   Sometimes it’s for a specific need at a specific time.  Sometimes like my piano playing, it’s forever. 

When it comes easy to you it comes easy to you.   When it doesn’t, that combination of hard work and bit of cheatin’ can get you some darn good results and no worries, nobody needs to know.  

And for those of you aghast that I could condone cheating well, let’s just call it like it should be called in this case – stealing shamelessly. 

Gotta run, have to “practice” some Billy Joel.

 

Till next time,

 Grow The Business.

 Mark

From Have to Believe

Standard

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

When Just Do It is Just Worse

Standard

Tried to fix a vacuum yesterday.  Almost did too.

Nearly finished, I dropped the vacuum putting the last screw in.  Exploded all over kitchen floor.  Now it won’t even turn on. 

I do this a lot.  I get all jacked up on a whim to tackle these little projects usually on a weekend.  Move a couch and instead rip the fabric.  Fold down the lawn mower to make room in the shed and instead snap off the starting rope.  Change the shower head cuz’ gosh darn it, the other one is so old and now I’ve got a leak I didn’t have before.

 When I do these little projects things often get worse.  I realize I don’t prepare or think too much in advance of these things.  I just do it. 

 And if I’m honest with myself sometimes this happens at work too (though with my boss subscribing to this blog too, I’d rather not share exactly what I’ve made worse thank you very much :))

 But the hindsight view is usually the same – it’s a result of not a whole lot of preparation or thought before tackling an issue or an opportunity;  I get all jacked up and um… just do it.

 When just do it makes it just worse, then it’s time to ditch that catchy marketing phrase at home and at work and just leave it on the ball field. 

Till next time,

 Grow The Business.

 Mark

Sharpen Your Sales Message

Standard

Stop yourself just for a moment.  Breathe.   And Think.   

Listen to yourself or look at what you are writing.  Is it really what it should be?

Sharpen your Sales Messaging.   

It’s odd sometimes how much energy we spend pulling all the levers that we do to improve sales but often don’t take enough time to look hard or re-look at the very first lever – the most critical lever: Sales Messaging.

If your sales messaging is poo then it doesn’t matter how often or in how many ways you say it or distribute that sales message – it’s still poo.

  • It’s not “We have a special right now..”,  it’s “This special we have right now is flying out the door..”
  • It’s not “We can help you get Online..”, it’s “We can help you get more good leads …”
  • It’s not “There’s a price break at 2,000….”, it’s  “Hold on, let me save you some money here…”
  • It’s not “I’m calling to see what your supply of..”,  it’s  “I’m calling to take something off your to do list..”
  • It’s not “We’ve updated the product to include…”, it’s “Most people are flocking to the updated product because….”
  • It’s not “We have a some brand new Holiday cards and gifts this year…”, it’s “ Let’s help you stand out from your competitors this year..”
  • It’s not “We can customize this for you and add those things you want..”,  it’s “Let’s make your life easier for you…”

You get it.

But be honest with yourself.  Are you doing it?

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

A Fool With a Tool is Still a Fool

Standard

A fool with a tool is still a fool.

 

Me using a Weed Whacker?  Nah, I can handle that.   Me after logging into my website control panel or trying to build a half decent Facebook Business page?   Yep, that’s me as a fool.

 

Last week one of our customers said, “I so cherished the time with my marketing advisor because heck, a fool with a tool is still a fool”.   Everyone in the room nodded a collective head in agreement. 

 

It was beautiful.  

 

And timely.  Because right now is when to amp things up in small business that people cherish given the sketchy economy the confusingmarketing world we live in. 

 

Small Business success is a lot of things and successful Marketing is a big piece of it.   But successfulmarketing, (no matter how much we want it to be), is not a commodity, or a widget or something that spits out of an assembly line.  

 

Successful Small Businessmarketing is not just about using 3 random “tools” like Groupon, Emailmarketing and Pay Per Click plus 4 platforms, 5 posts, a bucket of content and a prayer.  Those are, without superb advice and counsel, just shiny and trendymarketing tools fluttering about meaninglessly unconnected and ineffective.

 

Here is the truth; successfulmarketing is a science.   It has a formula, a cadence, a structure and a path. 

 

And it needs to be learned.   And it needs to be taught.  And it needs to be studied.  And in this ever changingmarketing space, it needs to be continuously learned, taught and studied. 

 

And it’s not just onlinemarketing that needs the learnin’.   How to use demographic data to determine mailing lists, how to network in local business groups or how to use QR codes on your business cards or better,  how to connect online and offlinemarketing really well is not all that crystal clear for many small businesses either.

 

So if you are a small business owner or someone who helps them, quit obsessing with the marketing “tools” and realize that the lead story is the insight you need to use them. 

 

We fall into this trap in many parts of our working lives.  It’s easy but foolhardy to just see the “Whats” and grab on to those tools be they online or offlinemarketing wizardry or even sales tools like CRMs and online Demos.   It’s harder yet smarter to see, get or teach to the “How” of using these tools well. 

 

Insight, in the eyes of those who need it most it seems, is the most cherished tool of all.

 

 

 

Till next time,

 

Grow The Business.

 

Mark

Inside Thoughts

Standard

I suspect some things are better left unsaid.   

I know this when my 14 year old son, mortified about something I’ve just uttered, hangs his head and tells me,  “Dad, I think that….. was an inside thought.”

Here are 6 random thoughts that probably should have stayed inside but if they did, there would be no blog today. 

  • I saw those “End of the World 5.21.11” Billboards over the last few months while traveling but no lie, I did not make the connection to the Rapture thing until this last Sunday – I thought they were just an ad for new movie coming out.

 

  • I think Old School Prospecting is dead.  Really dead; not even a fundamental anymore.  New School Prospecting today is about giving something of value freely first – be it product, information, kindness, advice or a stick of gum.  But it won’t be just “give free” for long – soon enough we’ll all have to Future School it and “buy” the right to be heard all the time.   I’m OK with that.

 

  • I worry that someday I’m going to watch TV and see my headless body walking down the street (“Hey, that’s my shirt!  Hey, I have those same pants!  Hey that’s (gulp) me!”) as Eyewitness News does yet another story on obesity zeroing in on those fat belly close ups.

 

  • Consensus decision making is overrated.  It has its place but an important decision or action that takes 5 times longer when 8 to 80 people get involved is a problem.  Add to that, that the quality of that decision often degrades with everyone “giving in” along the way, ending in a watered down decision or plan.  Some decisions are better made by just you with whatever degree of input you want or need.  That goes for buyers, sellers and everyone in between.

 

  • Who decided so many years ago that people who answer a phone should enter orders or update screens?  Isn’t the skill of verbal communication something to rethink as far as value goes?  Answer the phones hands free! – The art of the language and the phrase.  What could we do with an obsession and admiration of that?

 

  • Phone selling is going away.  It’s coming full circle.  Years ago it was always face to face and before you know it, it will be again.   Smile at your Tablet folks,  your non verbal expressions are going to matter again!

 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

I Love Dirty Jobs

Standard

I love Discovery TV’s Dirty Jobs.  

They are always looking for new ideas for those dirty jobs.  I wonder if I should send a note to the producers and invite them to come out my way.

 

Dirty Jobs is a popular show where host Mike Rowe performs some of the most difficult and frankly, disgusting jobs done by real people.   These jobs run the gamut from the needed cleaning of shipping lane buoys ( crusted molting squishy marine life that needs to be chiseled off) to scuba diving for hippo poop at a zoo ( where else is it going to go?) and everything in between.

My wife loves Dirty Jobs too but I think she’s just in love with Mike Rowe.   He’s funny, smart and good looking.  Whenever the show pops on she’ll stop whatever she is doing and say “Oh, my Michael is on.”  Once, as she sat next to me on the couch watching the show, she began think out loud and dreamily blathered to nobody in particular, “I wonder if he’s married.”   (He isn’t).

Mike might be a smoldering hunk of handsomeness to some but truth is Dirty Jobs is a tribute to the people who do these jobs.  Mike Rowe simply adores these folks and it shows.  Most are people take great pride in either the “dirty job” at hand or they take pride in that the dirty job is just part of a larger endeavor that needs to get done right.  We here in our work have some jobs like these.  Jobs that are difficult and tough and hard and done by prideful, caring people.   They may lack the “ick” factor for TV but I’m betting they’d be some of the toughest work Mike and crew would love to try. 

Selling On The Phone:   Lots of rejection.  Lots of pressure.  Lots of importance.  Mike and crew would arrive and he’d strap on a headset and give selling a good try.   And he’d fail.  He’s get a lot of “no’s” and even more “annoyed” customers.  He’d get the kind of rejection Mike probably isn’t used to being a TV star and all.  But that’s OK because he would spend time with the pros who do sell well and then cut to a new scene where he’d share what he learned and say “It’s not really “selling” with these sales people, it’s more like they are helping out someone”.

Training:  Especially the “stand up in the classroom 10 hour day with the adults” kind.   This is simply exhausting stuff.  You have to be “on” all day.  Be on target, on message, on time and totally on hand with people who all learn differently and bring and array of attitudes to the party.   We’d give Mike a couple of hours to prep and have him lead the class.  By4 o’clock he’d be triple dog tired and barely able to speak.  No worries though, he’d turn slightly, smile into the camera and tell us how “crazy and tough” real trainers need to be to make learning happen.

Team Leader:  They’re the boss, the support, the help desk, the number watcher (and often the number cruncher), the master listener, the coach and oh by the way, they have one of the most difficult professions in the world; continually improving the performance of people (and sometimes 30+ people at a time).   Mike would set up in a cube and start leadering’ and Boom he gets an irate customer, then the system crashes ( everyone on paper!), the mid day numbers deadline comes and goes and then his boss walks by wondering where first pass of all the employee reviews are.  That’s enough and as Mike’s head is nodding in surrender he looks up at the camera and says “Boss’s day only comes once a year?  What a rip off!”

I think the producers of Dirty Jobs would like the opportunity to come here.  If they decide to come, do me a favor and keep it just between us.  My wife doesn’t need to know.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Why I love Dancing With The Stars

Standard

I don’t dance.

Well, I do but it’s frightening.   Think Kevin James dancing in Hitch and that’s me.

I don’t watch dancing and I certainly don’t watch a TV show about dancing with celebrities.  

Three weeks ago my wife and daughter forced me to watch at least the start of this Dancing With The Stars show.  Glumly I sat ( though not that glumly holding an ice cold beer in one hand and a spatula in the other as I had every intention of making a break for the grill as soon as we hit first commercial), and I watched.

I watched it again last night.  There is something about the show that moves me (thankfully not literally) aside from the competition.  Some things I think can make a difference that if like me, they move you too.

It’s uncomfortable.  Stars in their field (like sports or acting) are doing something perhaps against every fiber of their body and mind.  I get that some celebs are addicted to the celebrity or the money but honestly, there are more than a few where it is very clear that the person is both highly comfortable with themselves and yet remarkably self deprecating.  I know people just like that at work and in my life.  They are the best leaders and the best friends.

There’s a mentor.   I want one.  I want a dance pro partner who takes me under her wing and says “This is crazy but you are going to do it anyway”.  I want to stretch and do uncomfortable things, really uncomfortable things and would love that kind of guidance and support and direction from a mentor.    It’s powerful.  Maybe I need to go find one and beg him or her to consider helping me in a space I long to be but seemingly do not fit.  Or maybe, I need to be available as a mentor for someone else who is looking for that unbelievable stretch.

That expertise blows my mind.  The dance professionals – they are athletes at the highest level.  Yet unlike most athletes, they also choreograph the plays.    How many superstar athletes have that vision, that artistic vision, to tell a story on so many levels?  They must interpret the dance, the era, the story, the emotion and oh yeah actually dance it themselves.  That depth of skill is bit unfathomable to me.  See, Create, Direct and Do.  To See, Create, Direct and Do exceeding well yourself is incredible.    Many of us play, gravitate or just settle at doing one of those four things at work.  Why not do them all?

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

QVZ

Standard

I suspect some of you are like me.  

And I bet like me, you would hate it if you started seeing highway signs with just three letters – “QVZ”.

Let me explain.  

On Sunday, my wife and I decided (along with the two 13 year olds in the back seat who somehow pried the Ipods and Iphones from their cold cramped hands), to play that classic Alphabet game you play while driving.  Don’t think too deep; it’s a long ride.   But the game is Old School.  Good Times. 

20 minutes into the game, one of the recently minted teenagers, (perhaps cranky not used to keeping his head held level for any extended length of time) exclaimed “I wish there was a sign with all the hard letters!”  

Really?

What fun would that be?  Where’s the challenge in the alphabet game if the three toughest letters to find (Q, V & Z) are just given to you? What mini thrill, what little adrenaline rush would that be?  None is the answer.  And what good is that?

People like us enjoy the “thrill” of getting through that alphabet before we get to our destination or we …..LOSE.  We like to look hard, fast, wide and crazy** trying to find what we are looking for.  

People like us set little challenges, little goals, little obstacles in front of us just to see if we can get it done and….WIN. 

People like us do this at work too.   We challenge ourselves to make 30 calls before 11:30, to not leave work until those three competitor sites are reviewed, to spend 3 hours on the floor coaching cuz’ that is what we woke up with as goal for today and today only.

People like us add an initiative to our list that must be done in a week not because it’s been asked of us, but because we want to challenge ourselves in a good way. 

It’s a bit of game for us; these mini challenges.   And when we succeed it’s a rush – perhaps even addictive.   If it’s not something you’ve tried before, I encourage you to give it a whirl. 

And I promise there’ll be no highway signs with the answers to ruin it for you.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

** Last year, with the same two kids in the car (pre- teens then at 12) we played that alphabet game.  We played to win.   We got to “Q” and found nothing (alas, no QVZ highway signs) and with just 6 miles left before home we, ( as you would expect), pulled into a handy cemetery to find our “Q”.   

 

News Flash:  – Meeting House Hill Cemetery in Dunstable, MA has apparently no Quinns, McQuaids, Quimbys or any other such souls with a darn Q in their name.  Not one.  We rolled and wound our way peering and craning to look at hundreds if not thousands of headstones and yet no Q was found. 

 

Darkness loomed, we left depressed and slowly headed towards home with irises wide straining to see anything that might have a Q.   200 yards beyond the entrance to the cemetery on the left stood an old house with a little lit sign that read “Antiques Sold Here”.  Hurrah!  We got our Q and the remaining 9 letters (V and Z were shockingly easy finds license plates that night).   Victory!