We met with one of our clients last week, a small liberal arts college. Their solution is up and running and we started our monthly results review meetings. The purpose of these sessions is to review the results, isolate best practices thus far and develop recommendations for things we can do differently so the results can continuously improve.  I love this process for a lot of reasons. Here are a few:

 

1)   It provides a forum for the team, which consists of staff from the admissions and communication departments, as well as key players from DIG to talk strategically about what’s happening, what it means and how it will help us accomplish the objective. We get to focus the members of the team who have lapsed into “just do it” mode on the reason we started the project in the first place.

 Kaizen means continuous improvement. And that's a very good thing.

We met with one of our clients last week, a small liberal arts college. Their solution is up and running, and we started our monthly results review meetings. The purpose of these sessions is to review the results, isolate best practices thus far, and develop recommendations for things we can do differently so the results can continuously improve.  I love this process for a lot of reasons. Here are a few:

1)    It provides a forum for the team, consisting of both client and DIG staff, to talk strategically about what’s happening, what it means, and how it will help us accomplish the objective. We get to focus the members of the team who have lapsed into “just do it” mode on the reason we started this process in the first place.

2)    It gives the client a chance to tell us about things that are happening within their organization. In many cases, things that we can help with come up for the first time in these meetings.

The last few years have been a whirlwind of challenges and lessons learned.
Before closing the door on 2011 and boldly moving into 2012, I thought I’d pass on some words of wisdom from my school of hard knocks.

1) Long hours spent toiling away at the office doesn’t necessarily indicate that meaningful work is being done.  Unfortunately, it often instead indicates a reluctance to improve processes or a misguided adherence to convoluted steps meant to provide checks and balances for bad processes.  In today’s world it should be the duty of every employee to become more efficient by learning new things, reducing steps and adding value, rather than time, to every initiative.  I’ve seen this before while managing but somehow forgot it as an entrepreneur.  A few things might fall through the cracks when you make a change from a person who thinks their job is to elongate every function but it will take a lot of things slipping through those cracks to add up to the salary being paid to the inefficient high dollar employee.
2) Do not hire employees or contemplate a partner who cannot articulate your value proposition or who does not agree with it. The owner of a small business needs every employee to be committed to the value proposition and clear on how they demonstrate it in every interaction with a prospect, client or teammate. Don't assume that because they want to work in your business that the mission of the business matters at all to them, they may just need a job.
3) A small business is not a family. It is a team and both the owner and the staff have to demonstrate their value to the team every day or risk being cut from the team.
4) Success today is about Linchpins. Every organization, non profit, not for profit, corporation, or small business needs people who are committed to learning and bringing new ideas and ways of doing things to the table. There are no positions of less import where this commitment doesn’t matter. From the owner to the guy sweeping up, you either get it or you don’t. If you don’t get it, time will not make it better, time will instead add cost and take away opportunity.
5) Trust your instincts. Many of the mistakes I made in the last three years were exacerbated by involvement with people who I originally didn’t like, didn’t respect or didn’t trust.  I talked myself into thinking they were smart and just needed a chance, or thinking they were young and had changed with experience or thinking that I could be the difference in helping them to be a better person… and I was wrong. People change because they want to, not because you want them to or because your business provides them with the means to change.  
6) Lastly “fair” is in the eye of the beholder. So trying to do what is “fair” in the eyes of someone else is inherently problematic. As the owner, your definition of fair is typically based on expectations fulfilled. Employees tend to think about fair in relationship to what happened to others and not what was expected of them specifically. I’m not sure there is an answer on this one but I did learn that you cannot make everyone happy and maybe that shouldn’t be the goal. The goal should be to make the Linchpins happy because they are the ones your business needs moving forward.

If you read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, being really great at something comes down to how many hours you get to spend doing it.  Bill Gates, through almost happenstance, got to spend a lot of hours programming a mainframe computer when he was a young man at a time when most people had never seen one. The rest, as they say, is history.

My son spent a lot of time playing baseball as a kid. His teams won four state AAU baseball titles, finished 8th and 2nd in the USA in the AAU Nationals, came in third in the Cal Ripken World Series and played for the State High School Championship multiple times. He played every inning of every game.  The difference between a major leaguer and a lot of athletes may not be talent but rather innings played while they were growing up and in college. Lots of time spent doing something often leads to success doing it.

So let’s talk sales. Does the same principle apply? If you spend a lot of time talking to senior execs, chances are you will get good at it.  The more times you interact with them – asking good questions and listening to the answers - the more times you will find problems you can solve, the more times you will present solutions, the more times you will negotiate a sale and the more times you will win.

For Bill Gates and my son, love of computers and baseball made it easy for them to spend lots of time working at their craft.  For people who truly love selling, it’s not hard to put in the hours required to get good at it. 

Unfortunately though, there are a lot of people selling who really shouldn’t be doing it. They just don’t like it! They don’t want to talk to decision makers, they don’t want to spend the time learning about their challenges or trying to figure out how to solve them. They avoid the chances to do so by busying themselves with non-productive tasks. They don’t spend enough time perfecting their craft. Not enough hours spent leads to not enough success. In fact, just 4% of the nation’s sales people sell 96% of the goods and services.  It’s pretty easy to see who put the time in.

So here’s the magic formula to sales success: Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect. Lots of Perfect Practice Makes Perfect. Loving the fact that you can solve people’s problems, loving the process of moving the decision from one step to the next, loving figuring it all out, makes it easier to do a lot of the things necessary to be a good salesperson. But the reality of it is, like Bill Gates and my son, loving it isn’t enough, you have to DO a lot of it too.

I’m actually a nice person. Many people don’t know this about me. They think I’m a hard ass because I work really hard, am focused and actually care about whether they have a job next year. I push them hard to learn what they need to learn. I ask them hard questions and most of them just don’t like it. 

The world is changing rapidly. What marketers did for the last 50 years is not what they will do in the next 50. What sales people did for the last 50 years will definitely not be what they do in the next 50. Not even the next two years! What business owners and senior executives should be doing today, is vastly different from what was done even a generation ago.  

So let’s get down to business. My philosophy as a sales coach or as a marketing partner is pretty much the same one I have for being a friend. Anybody can tell you what you want to hear, what makes you feel good, what doesn’t challenge you to be better. Real friends tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Good sales people don’t just do what you ask, they try to figure out what you need, even if both of you aren’t sure what that is. And marketing partners should try to keep you from becoming complacent, from doing what you’ve always done or what others have always done, just because they’ve always done it (or for any other nonsensical reason).

I’ve been in the business world now for 30 years. During that time I’ve watched really good companies, full of really good people go out of business. I’ve seen sales reps bounce from position to position because frankly, no one has the guts to tell them that they don’t have what it takes. And I’ve watched companies spend unbelievable amounts of money on marketing that doesn’t work because that was easier than trying new things that might actually work. So basically, when I’m not nice – it’s because I see you getting dangerously close to those outcomes.

There's a DIG Marketing Minute this week about the importance of content in helping prospective customers and donors find you via the internet. It is content that fuels an effective SEO and social media strategy. Great content helps position your sales force as experts and helps your customers overcome their challenges, which minimizes attrition and increases profitability.

So content is critical to success in today's world...but so is authenticity.  If the social media world has taught us anything, it's that people will easily find out if you can't walk the walk that you sell in your content. You can't just ride along on the coattails of other people with great ideas. You've got to have some of your own.

Does this mean all those companies that sell you content are bad? No, it just means that you have to supplement their content with your commentary or ideas. Make it better, use it as a springboard but don't rely on the content of others entirely or it's not authentic. And people will find out.

Selling Power Magazine CEO, Gerhard Gschwandter, believes the world will have 15 Million fewer sales people by the year 2020. So, take a look around the bullpen and try to figure out which 3 of the 18 sales reps will still be in sales in eight short years.

 Here are some characteristics of those who won’t be around: They…

… Haven’t read a non-fiction book since college.

… Think LinkedIn is a waste of time.

My weekends are exhausting! No kidding. My husband went to see my son's team, the Davidson Wildcats, play the College of Charleston Cougars. Someday I will write a lot about the college baseball experience but today I'm in a different place. With my husband out of town, I was left to shuttle the other two offspring around. Saturday was filled with a pitching lesson, gymnastic team practice, a trip to Target and a few hundred loads of laundry.  Sunday included a trip to Virginia Beach for softball team practice (that's a four hour excursion to and fro) and a gymnastic clinic back in Richmond. I managed to squeeze in grocery shopping at Kroger and 5:00 PM Mass, which was truly a miracle.

On Saturday while one took a pitching lesson, those left went to Panera Bread for breakfast. While there, we decided to pick up some cookies for the pitching coach. This woman, Keri Cobb, can settle the nerves of a 16-year way better than I and she does this without eliciting the faintest trace of emotional meltdown, which often accompany my efforts to do the same. If the cookies were gold, they would not be enough.

Anyway, while standing in line my 11 year old asked for a baguette. She is thinking of the small piece of bread that comes with your lunch but you can't buy those. The person taking care of us (these words are chosen carefully) offered a full size baguette, which I don't want near me in a car where I won't be able to resist its strange powers. I tell my daughter no and continue processing the cookie transaction. While I'm digging for my Panera card, my guy hands the transaction off to another equally talented person who completes the transaction and sends us on our way. But as I turn to leave, the first guy is back and what does he have? You guessed it, a small baguette that he presents to the 11 year old who is tickled pink and off we go. He didn't have to do that, we didn't' ask for him to, but it was perfect. I immediately tweeted #Panera Bread - Staples & Parham Rds RVa. You made our day. Thanks Nick! The owner of Panera, if he is paying attention can now thank Nick for the great advertising he got for the cost of a small hunk of bread.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition for silver bullet:
The term has been adopted into a general metaphor;  "silver bullet" refers to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technological development or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem. 

Daily I interact with people who think there is some sliver bullet to marketing.  They fall into two or perhaps three groups:

1. Group One believes they have the silver bullet and already know all the answers.
2. Group Two knows they don’t have all the answers but they think there actually is only one answer – again, the silver bullet.
3. Group Three would probably be classified as not knowing the questions. 

For the purposes of today’s post, we’re going to focus on groups one and two.

Click here to listen.

Topics covered in part three:

The Sales Role During Implementation