Video Interview on how a senior executive turned his sales team around and forced his competitor out of a market
Posts Tagged ‘Business Development’
Growing Your Business By Sitting In The Exit Row
Yesterday I was sitting in the exit row on a flight when the flight attendant came to all three of us sitting in that row and asked if we would assist in helping to evacuate the plane in case of an emergency. Two of us replied yes. The person sitting next to me incredibly said NO! The flight attendant was stunned. Then he asked if anyone would change seats with the guy.
I asked the guy why he wouldn’t help. His reply: “I am not sticking around to save people. I am only concerned with getting my butt out.” How selfish can this guy be? I then told him “Dude, all you have to do is open the door and get your butt out. Everyone will be following you.” He then accepted his mission.
This self focused mindset is one that I often see occur with sales executives, managers and business owners at one time or another. It is often not meant to be self serving as it is in an attempt to protect one’s self interest and achieve one’s goals. It is also perceived as being arrogant and self absorbed and does get in the way of one getting rich and growing one’s business.
The key to growing sales and a business is to be dedicated to helping people achieve their goals. Help others get to where they want to go safely and you will in turn get more than you ever thought was possible. Customers do business with people who help them succeed. Not with people who are only interested in saving their butt at all costs.
You most probably do care about your customers. But please stay vigilant and do not let your actions position you as a self centered and arrogant individual like the guy sitting next to me in the exit row. It can be the difference between have a good year and having a great year.
Learn more how to be customer focused and double, triple and quadruple your sales by clicking here
Two Ways to Build a Business
In building your business, whether you are a sales person, CEO, VP Sales, Entrepreneur, Provider of Professional, etc, you have two options. A) Start from scratch and spend lots to time and money in achieving your results, or B) Acquire the knowledge you need by learning from the mistakes of others and using proven techniques to shorten your ramp up.
These two options are similar to what executives and CEO’s deal with in deciding on whether or not to bring in an outside expert to speak at their conferences or use internal experts. Experience shows that outside speakers generate different and sometimes better results than internal speakers.
Internal speakers gain instant credibility as the audience already feels they understand their environment and needs. They already have a relationship developed and can help fill the gaps. But that is as far as they can go.
The downside of using an internal speaker is limiting the viewpoints and strategies to a certain way of thinking. Outside speakers bring a new viewpoint and best practices from other organizations and industries that provide invaluable insight into new ways of thinking.
Some internal speakers are quite good in their ability to speak and move an audience. Yet, for them, it is a part time job as they only do it when asked. Professional speakers hone their craft on a daily basis with a variety of audiences. They know how to move an audience to action. They bring new ideas through personal stories complete with examples of implementation.
There are three phases to adult education: Awareness, transference of skills and measurement of results. External experts/speakers not only provide their audiences with awareness, but they also help them with implementation through powerful examples of how their ideas are transferred into action. The value of a professional speaker is the ability to tell these stories in a motivational and powerful manner to not only keep the audience’s attention but to move them to action.
The challenge for professional speakers today is that there is no patience on the part of audiences for generic presentations that do not take into account the clients environment. There are greater expectations on the part of clients for professional speakers/outside experts to tailor their content to the needs of the client. Professional speakers need to research the client’s environment, goals and obstacles. They need to prove to the audience from the first word that they do understand their world. When a professional speaker tailors her content to the needs and environment of the audience, there is no better presentation available to the client.
So when you plan your next conference, please don’t just look at the budget. While there may be an expense to hiring a professional speaker, you can easily see that by hiring the right professional speaker, the fee for their services is miniscule as compared to the time and money you save by acquiring the right content that will move your audience to action and achieve their goals. Plus, getting an outside perspective brings a sense of reality to the organization and breaks the cycle of limited thinking.
When it comes to building your organization, do you want an apprentice or a pro?
Tweeting for Sales
In April of 2008, Steve Keating, Manager of Selling Skills at the Toro Company, heard me speak about using social media to build one’s sales. Already involved with Twitter, Steve had at the time a few hundred followers. After hearing the presentation, he decided to make it a key strategy in building both his personal brand and enhancing the value proposition of Toro.
Today, Steve enjoys a following of over 65,000 people! His twitter ID is @LeadToday. In building his list of followers, Steve employed 3 simple tactics:
1. Provide valuable ideas on how to be an effective leader
2. Re-tweet valuable ideas from others thereby expanding his network and leveraging other people’s wise thoughts
3. Show appreciation by thanking those who have re-tweeted his ideas and thoughts
This was a process that Steve has nurtured on a consistent and disciplined basis.
So how did Steve and Toro benefit from getting 65,000 followers? For one, it strengthened the relationships with dealers and distributors by providing ideas on how to grow their businesses. This resulted in Toro enhancing its overall value proposition and keeping its competitors at bay.
In addition, the brand of Toro was also enhanced. Imagine having 65,000 people interested in leadership reading Steve’s daily tweets on a consistent basis. How much would it cost Toro to get this kind of exposure on a daily basis using other media outlets? With Twitter the total cost can be rounded to the grand sum total of zero dollars. Add to this the flexibility of customizing messages to events happening real time. This by itself makes Toro and Steve more relevant to the market place.
Finally, the connections Steve has made around the world with other leadership experts exposes him to additional ideas and concepts he can easily import into his organization thereby making him more valuable to Toro’s success and enhancing his own personal brand.
This is the power of Twitter. Notice how Steve does not sell his products in his tweets. He simply builds value which in turn creates buzz that generates business.
Congratulations Steve. And thank you for recommending Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way to your list.
Customization the Key to Extraordinary Sales Results
Retailers like Sam’s Club and CVS have figured out that huge profits come from customization. Using discounts to track results, Sam’s Club achieved a 1-2 percent acceptance of generic discounted offers.
Realizing it had a trove of information regarding buying habits and the purchasing history of each customer, it developed a new program called eValues. It gives each buyer discounts on the items they normally purchase. This customization has led to an acceptance rate of discounts between 20-30%, a dramatic increase from the generic discounts’ acceptance rate.
Customers want and expect vendors to know their wants and needs. In sales, this means asking the right questions, doing the right research and listening.
If you conduct sales using the old school method of talking too much about the features you have to offer, you are going to lose the deal. Find out the outcomes they are after and then only talk about the features they are interested in. Customize the solution so they will accept your offer. This strategy is crucial to being competitive and closing more business in less time.
To learn more about this subject, please join me on Monday, October 3rd at 2pm ET for a free webinar where we will show you how to engage alliances as well as other strategies to immediately grow your sales. Click here to reserve your free seat now!
Check Out the November Sales Success Summit ’11 in Orlando Florida, an event destined to dramatically increase your sales success. Spend two days with me and I will personally customize ideas that have generated millions of dollars for my clients to your selling environment. This is a small group. Two days of personalized attention. Reserve your seat today by clicking here!
Appreciate the Living, Not Just the Dearly Departed
Something happened this weekend that reminds us all that we should not only appreciate the ultimate sacrifices made by our brave men and women fighting for our freedom, but also take time to thank the living and show our appreciation for all that they have done to help us achieve our successes.
The incident I am referring to is the untimely passing of the legendary child actor Gary Coleman. The child star of Different Strokes stormed into our living rooms in the early 1980’s, broke down racial barriers and touched the hearts of many with his loveable and sassy personality. Unfortunately, after the show Different Strokes went off the air, Gary’s fortunes came to an abrupt end and the rest of his life was saddled with financial and personal woes.
You may ask how this is different from all the other stories of child actors who could not smoothly transition into adult life. What’s different is not so much Gary’s story, but the untold story of how his loved ones wished they had repaired their relations with him and his wife before it was too late.
Gary sued his parents and manager for allegedly mishandling his earnings from Different Strokes. Estranged from his parents at the time of his pre-mature death on Friday, his mother told the Associated Press that she had prayed that “nothing like this would happen before we could sit with Gary and Shannon and say, ‘We’re here and we love you.’ ”
We have Memorial Day to thank and remember those who made the Ultimate Sacrifice. We have Thanksgiving to give thanks for all of our riches.
We have 362 days a year to thank everyone who has made a difference in our lives and to simply say we love you. Use each and every one of those days to give thanks. Saying thank you and showing appreciation while people are alive allows them to experience your true heartfelt feelings. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you are then forced to say “I wish I only said…..”
Biggest Mistake Sales Managers Make
In the gym of my daughter’s high school (Northern Valley Old Tappan-NVOT), there is a banner that reads-
Welcome to NVOT-Where sportsmanship is an expectation. So please let the players play. Let the coaches coach. Let the officials officiate. Let the spectators be positive.
This sign caught my eye because all too often I see people in leadership roles who don’t understand what they are supposed to be doing. For example, sales mgrs often travel with sales reps and usually take over the call under the guise of trying to get the deal. I know we must close the business. However, the true role of the sales manager is not only to come in and save the day, but to also coach his people on how to effectively sell. That means letting the salesperson do the talking so you can see where the gaps are. Then, once the call is over, the mgr should review the call, identify the gaps and provide guidance. Then go on to the next call and do the same process.
This is critical because if the sales manager always closes the deal, then the salesperson never really gets trained on how to do it and will not be able to do it when the sales manager is not there.
Bottom line. Are people in your organization really doing the things they are supposed to be doing. If not, the growth of the business is at stake. Like the sign says- Let the players play, let the coaches coach, etc.
If you want to give your salespeople a great education on how to double, triple or quadruple their sales, check out Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way and our Two Day Sales Boot Camp Happening in Two Weeks!
Three Strategies to Immediately Increase Sales
There are three Strategies you can start to employ today that will generate a significant increase in sales revenues in a very short period of time. Some of these strategies you will intellectually understand and know already. The key is to go beyond your intellectual comprehension and identify whether or not your tactics are in support of these strategies. If they are not, then you may be missing out on sales you should be closing and leaving dollars unnecessarily on the table.
Strategy # 1: The Power of Increase
When you look at most buying decisions, the issue at hand for the buyer is to eliminate pain or gain improvement. Any time you eliminate pain, you gain some kind of improvement in an area of your life. By solving problems for your customers, they will realize a gain in efficiency, sales, performance, career path, satisfaction, enjoyment, etc. All of these gains revolve around the concept of increase.
Everyone is looking for improvement in some areas of their lives. They may want to increase their standard of living, take longer vacations, increase their satisfaction in life and career, improve relationships, increase quality of products, improve their customer service, etc. Everyone wants to achieve a level of increase in some part of their professional and personal life.
Here’s the question. What increases in life are positively affected by your products and services? Once you have answered this question, the next question is are you communicating the value of your products and services in the context of the specific increases each and every customer is looking to achieve? In other words, are you customizing your message in the sales call to the specific increases that particular customer is looking for? Most people do not. We will come back to this issue in Strategy #3.
Strategy #2: Competition vs. Creation
In my book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way, we share a story where one of my clients repositioned themselves with their key customer who in turn threw out a bid and awarded my client with a 10 year negotiated agreement worth over $200 Million. During the 18 months we worked on positioning my client as an invaluable resource, the client would ask the same question time and time again in our strategy meetings: “How is our competition going to react to this?” My answer was always the same. Forget about your competition. Concentrate on creating a new benchmark and your competition will take care of itself.
All too often companies worry too much about their competition and they fall into a zero sum game. They concentrate all of their efforts in beating the competition which only results in everyone doing the same thing and therefore being forced to do it a little bit better; Which in most cases means lowering the price. This strategy only leads to price erosion, commoditization of your products and services and missed opportunities for increasing market share.
Instead, you should be concentrating on creating new areas of value. Identifying new opportunities of solving problems no vendor has yet to achieve. Instead of fighting the same game everyone else is trying to win, you should be changing the game by increasing the bar and forcing your competition to play catch up. This is exactly what we did with this client and that’s why they were awarded the $200 million contract.
This concepts works for all sales situations not matter how big or how small.
Strategy # 3: Customer Focus vs. Self Focus
In my sales boot camps, I ask the audiences if they are more self focused or customer focused. The majority of the participants claim they are customer focused. At the end of the two day program, I ask the same question and they now claim they were self focused. Why? Everyone truly wants to be customer focused. Yet their actions throw off the perception of being self focused.
This is clearly evident when sales people “Puke” (see video) about all the features they have to offer vs. finding out what’s truly important. Selling products and services for reasons you think they should buy vs. their perceptions of what they truly want. All of you have what your customers need. But are you giving it to them the way they want it?
In his new book The Mirror Test, Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of Kodak clearly states that if you want to succeed in marketing today, you need to personalize your message around the specific needs of your market place. I take this a step further. If you want to increase your sales, you need to personalize your sales pitch around the specific needs and wants of the buyer. This means you need to ask better questions and listen more effectively. These two skills are crucial in order to build a value proposition that will compel customers to accept your offers.
All of you are asking questions. But the real BIG QUESTION is Are You Asking Enough of the Right Questions? Most people are not. This includes those selling professional services, key account managers involved in the complex sale and those selling products and services on a smaller scale.
Remember this simple message: People buy for their own reasons, not yours! Find out their reasons for buying and you will in most cases get the deal. Or, at the very least, your closing ratio will increase significantly, it will take you less time to close the deal and the deal will most often be more profitable than the deals you are closing now.
To learn more about this subject, please join me on Monday, October 3rd at 2pm ET for a free webinar where we will show you how to engage alliances as well as other strategies to immediately grow your sales. Click here to reserve your free seat now!
Check Out the November Sales Success Summit ’11 in Orlando Florida, an event destined to dramatically increase your sales success. Spend two days with me and I will personally customize ideas that have generated millions of dollars for my clients to your selling environment. This is a small group. Two days of personalized attention. Reserve your seat today by clicking here!
Marketing That Will Kill Your Brand!
You know the old saying “if you have nothing nice to say about somebody then say nothing at all”! Well, here’s a new saying: “If you don’t have your facts in order, don’t bother marketing to your audience”! Just like saying something bad can turn people off, so can saying something stupid and untrue in your marketing pieces. It will kill your brand!
Last night I got a letter addressed to me. First problem is it was addressed to my full name which is Ronald. I never use it in business, social or in any settings. On the cover of my book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way it says Ron Karr. Right there, they lost me because this letter smelled of being a rotten form letter where the sender knew nothing about me.
But Wait! It gets better. The sender of this letter is the sales rep who sold me my Audi Q7 in 2007. There is a huge punch line here so you’ll want to keep reading. I promise you are going to like this!
In his letter, the sales rep starts with “Happy Anniversary! It’s been three years and no doubt many long and winding roads since you drove away from our dealership in your AUDI Q7. We sincerely hope you are enjoying every stretch of asphalt, every twist and turn in this remarkable vehicle.” The letter goes on to ask for referrals and to let him know of if he can be of service to me.
The letter was dated May 3rd!
Here’s the punch line! I turned in my AUDI Q7 on April 16th to this very same sales rep. He took the car in and sent the papers to the leasing company. He knows I bought a competitor’s car. And yet on May 3rd he sends me a letter hoping I am still enjoying the AUDI experience!
Maybe this is a clue on why I left AUDI to begin with. Their customer service experience in the service dept did not justify the value of high prices. Obviously the sales experience was equally pathetic.
What we have here is someone who learned a marketing tactic of sending letters with the customer’s name on it to appear they are customized to the client. This is a useless tactic if you know nothing about your customer to begin with. Especially your existing customers! With this vain attempt in showing he cared about me he has literally destroyed any value I had left for the AUDI Brand and for his own personal brand.
Many of you reading this probably would never do such a stupid and senseless act. But are you doing minor things that in the end are going against the brand image you are trying to build and market?
Yesterday I had lunch with a client at a restaurant that is doing great but in a spot the last 4 owners failed miserably. I wondered why this guy was so successful. My client responded that any restaurant is only as good as the last meal served. In other words, each and every interaction has to be supportive of the brand you are building. If not, your customers will not come back again.
Now, please forgive me for a brief commercial. But we are ecstatic about announcing our all new Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way Sales Boot Camp in June. It will provide you with the tactics and strategies on how you can Double, Triple and Quadruple both your Top Line Revenues and Bottom Line Profits! Click here for more info! This program will ensure your customers keep coming back to you and buying more stuff! That is my promise and guarantee to you!
Want Success? Increase Your Velocity!
Instead of concentrating on being more successful, work on increasing the velocity in your efforts on a daily basis. What is velocity? It is the ability to get more done in less time. It is about gaining speed, power and momentum in your actions to achieve your goals in less time than originally anticipated.
Granted this is what we all want. But how many times do we let the small things in life mess with our velocity. Things like false assumptions. Too often we take people’s words and create our own stories as to what we think they are saying. Then our actions are based on these stories we have created and often miss the mark. It happens in sales and leadership all the time. And we wonder why we don’t get the sales or move the organization forward in a timely manner. There goes your velocity!
How about when you don’t think things through clearly and you operate out of a task mentality vs. purpose mentality. Yes, you may be busy. But are you doing the necessary work that needs to be done so you can achieve your goals? If you are letting your tasks drive you vs. your purpose, there goes your velocity!
How about when we try to influence others based on what we need vs. what they want and need? Are your recommendations truly being heard and acted upon? Or are they being received as some pushy sales pitch or order that is less likely to be accepted? There are two types of actions in this world: The limited action necessary to keep one happy and pretend you are doing your job, and the action of being all-in; where you are doing whatever it takes to get the job done. If you want people to accept your ideas, support you and be all-in, make sure you’re positioning them in the context of how they are going to benefit. Not because you need it. If you don’t change your context, there goes your velocity!
Velocity is the key to success in sales, leadership, negotiations, customer service and just about anything else in life. Ask yourself, what can I do today in my conversations and actions that will add velocity to my life and help me achieve my goals quickly? Here’s the funny thing. Your answer, if you think this through clearly, has more to do with how you can help others succeed vs. your own success. This is what generates true velocity!
Velocity is the key theme woven throughout the entire book Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way!
