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.

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.

I have a problem with most diets...

They expect you to eat regularly. I don't. Most days I don't even think about food until I hit the back door, which sometimes is close to 8 pm depending on the kid's schedules. Most working days I consume one meal and like 6,000 cups of coffee. Everybody tells me that eating one meal a day is bad, everybody tells me I've ruined my metabolism. I understand that my body needs fuel at regular intervals to work optimally. I just don't think about eating when I'm busy and I'm really, really busy. Unfortunately, I'm not so busy on the weekends, so I do think about and consume food often and this too, according to my scale, is not good.

This is a business blog, so here's the connection. Think of marketing as food that runs our organizations the same way we think of food fueling our bodies. Without enough fuel, our metabolisms slow down to conserve energy and they don't work as efficiently. Instead of consuming a steady diet of marketing during the recession, many organizations reduced their diet to a few marketing initiatives or none at all. This seemed like a good idea to save resources, but now they are left with sluggish organizations that don't respond to a healthy meal of marketing the way they would have had they been eating regularly.

I was working with a client today who is trying to come up with a positioning statement to differentiate themselves from their competitors. They are in an industry where, unfortunately, most companies look a lot alike from the customer’s perspective. I asked the owner and one of the salesmen to articulate for me what it would feel like for one of their customers to leave them and go to a competitor. They answered that challenge by giving me a list of what equipment they had and services they offered. Their answer was about them and I wanted to know what it was like for their customer. They seemed stymied. I was struggling for an example to illustrate my point and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese came to mind.

Every now and again while doing my weekly shopping, I am briefly tempted to try another version of macaroni and cheese and save thirty cents or so. I never do. It would have to be discovered that Kraft Mac and Cheese is made by 5 year olds in a sweat shop in the Sudan, was threatening the dolphin population, poisoning the water supply or the boxes have exploding gas tanks for me to waiver from this brand. The reason is simple. About ten years ago I tried a competitor of Kraft. I remember it as if it was yesterday. The macaroni was a slightly different shape. When I mixed in the powered cheese (we can take this up on another day), it wasn’t exactly the right color. As I mixed in the margarine and milk, it wasn’t the same consistency. It sort of clumped together.  I had a feeling of impending doom as I started to put it on plates for my hungry brood – a 10, 6 and 2 year old. I pressed on, as it was almost 7:00 pm. It had already been a long day and I picked this particular menu because it can go from my head to the table in less than 9 minutes, near perfection after a day like that. I just wanted to get them fed, bathed and through story time and then gleefully head for my bedroom where control of the remote awaited because my husband was out of town. As I headed toward the table, plates of hot dogs, mac and cheese and peas in hand, I had a fleeting thought that in a worst-case scenario, the two year old would go for it.  Nope. You would have thought I had presented squirrel toes and robin beaks for dinner that evening. A chorus of comments rang out:  “What’s that?” “What’s wrong with it?” “It doesn’t look the same.” “It doesn’t taste the same.” “Why isn’t it the same color?” “It’s bad.” “I’m not eating that.” My night got better. “The hotdogs don’t smell right.” The peas aren’t green.” The peas and hotdogs were exactly the same as every other time I had served them. Somehow the weird macaroni and cheese had enveloped the whole plate.  Even the little one was turning up her nose. For a split-second, it crossed my mind that I should handle this mutiny the way my Dad would have handled it. “You’ll eat what I serve you and you’ll like it,” rang out in my head. I’m an evolved parent. When my father’s words ring in my head I usually try to do something else so back to the dinner drawing board I went, having already exhausted my 9-minute arsenal options. If the Kraft people ever ask me what it looks like to try a competitor. I can tell them. It looks like whiny kids, turned up noses, searching the fridge and pantry in desperation for a 10, 12 or even 15-minute option for dinner.  It looks like cranky kids at bath time, fighting with me over getting in, getting out and brushing their teeth. It looks like an even crankier story time ruining one of the highlights of my day. It looks like not even being able to enjoy sole control of the remote.

There are two big lessons here. If there isn’t much difference between what you do and what your competitors do, you’re going to lose your customers eventually. If there is a big difference between doing business with you and doing business with your competitor but you don’t know what it will feel like for your customers if they leave, you can’t stop them from trying.

Last Friday I realized I needed a projection screen for an event on Saturday night.  I checked the Internet before leaving the office to confirm Staples carried them and headed off to the nearest one to pick it up. I had exactly 20 minutes to execute this mission.  I quickly found the area in the store and located a display box meant to symbolize the actual item that is too bulky for retail shelves. I picked up a few more items for the office and headed to check out. This is where it got interesting. Apparently, a box on the shelf doesn’t indicate that Staples has the product. In fact, in this case they didn’t. No worries I was told by a confident young chap, we’ll order it over the Internet and you’ll have it tomorrow. I told him, it absolutely positively had to be there tomorrow and he, once again confidently, assured me it would. We even discussed sending it to a store nearer my home since it would come on Saturday. He advised me that deliveries to the store would be there before 11 but having it sent to my home might mean a delivery later in the day.  He painstakingly entered my info into the magic computer – typing skills are not required for this position – printed out a form and sent me off to check out. I trotted off to the front smugly thinking what a great power shopper I was.  But alas, my smugness was short lived. The gal at the front checking me out actually read the form, I merely assumed it matched the verbal information I had been given. She discovered upon closer inspection that the item wasn’t due to ship for three weeks. The nice chap now apologized and explained he wasn’t used to working on Fridays. He confidently shared, that normally things ship the next day unless it’s a weekend.  He had no idea how to help me since it was Friday and all. Oh really, your next business day equals three weeks later? The miracle of this is that anyone noticed at all. I had already gone back to reading my Blackberry in line. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed it until the next day when I showed up for the pick up, found it wasn’t there and then inspected the form. I would have been livid.
I then dashed off to a competitor, Office Max where I met a not-so-confident and not so young man. He wasn’t sure what the product was and expressed surprise that they even carried them. He needed me to show him where in the store I had found the tag.  He seemed to have no clue who to ask and wasn’t even familiar enough with the store to know where it might be. He told me to keep shopping while he tried to find out what to do. He had to launch a full out recognizance mission to locate it. A couple of times I saw him walking back and forth almost aimlessly trying to find someone else while talking into a microphone attached to his ear. I was so worried that I called my husband and sent him out to find a projector on the other side of town.  I had already started planning my next move which would be a post on Facebook looking to borrow a projector when low and behold, he reappeared with the screen. I happily went on my way having devoted a lot more than twenty minutes to this endeavor but successful none the less.
So what’s better someone who seems in control, who confidently assures you that your problem is taken care of and then completely fails or the not-so-confident guy who had me worried the whole time but in the end delivered?
It drives me crazy when a person in a place of business responds to a question with the words “I don’t know.” It drives me equally crazy when someone tells me something as if they know what they are talking about but it turns out, they don’t.   In any company, no matter how big, everyone who is customer facing should know where to get an answer. And they should confidently assure the customer that they know where to go and will set the wheels in motion so that the customer gets their question answered.  You can’t just go through the motions, you have to deliver which means you need to be familiar with the products, the processes, and the organization so you know where to go to get an answer.  Customers need to feel that they are dealing with a competent representative at all times.
Ask yourself if everyone in your business knows where to go to get any question answered. Watch or listen to how they handle customers in person or on the phone. Do you hear the words “I don’t know?” Do you hear inaccurate information being conveyed? Fix it.

I spoke with a company today who is in the process of providing training to their sales team.  Margins have been shrinking in this industry for years due the commoditization of the product and increased competition. This trend was exacerbated by the recession and many sales reps have seen their incomes drop anywhere from 30% to 50% in the last few years.   The management team decided to spend a bundle on training to help the sales team learn to position their products as value generation tools and not commodities. During the first weekly session one of the reps opted out of the rest of the training.

Management in relaying the story to me wasn’t surprised. They didn't want to expend resources on a person who wasn't receptive so they were glad to see him go. Leave the training I mean, not the company. The rep is on 100% commission so he is sleeping in the bed he made for himself. However, let’s examine this further.  Why isn’t he worried about his dwindling income? Why isn’t he afraid of losing his position?  Why isn’t he afraid of trying to find another job in the midst of record unemployment?
Why isn't his company worried about how this attitude will manifest itself with customers and other employees? What's the value of the lost opportunities he will fail to develop as he continues instead to sell the old fashion way by quoting and hoping?

Even if he didn’t plan to learn anything, why wasn’t it easier to just go with the flow? He certainly could have sat there during each session, feigning interest and day dreaming about his next yard project as millions of sales reps have done before him. Had he chosen this more frequented path, he would not have called attention to himself and at least maintained the illusion of a team player, a committed employee. He might have actually learned something too, albeit by accident. But he chose to renounce the training rather than participate apparently without fear of reprisal.
Is this just total disregard for his employer, his job, his family, himself? Or is this what happens when there are no conditions of employment?