Archive for January, 2010

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by:David Zahn
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Perception being what it is, if asked what they think of gossip in business settings, many people would be quick to point out the negatives and hurtful outcomes that are likely to occur. However, if those same people were asked what they think of creating buzz, viral marketing, or word of mouth efforts; and their response would be much different. For many small business owners, those represent a much less expensive and effective way to communicate with their prospects and customers than more traditional advertising avenues. The reality is that the use of those more new age methods is little more than trying to create and in part; manage gossip.

Gossip Defined

The etymology of the word gossip is from the combining of the word ‘God and ‘sib’ and denotes the connection between the loftiness or spiritual underpinnings of relating the message to a loftier purpose. While most gossip is now seen as being closer to the work of less noble forces, there is a long history supporting the value of gossip and the good it can do when properly understood and directed.

Rumor is different than gossip in this regard. Rumor is factually incomplete communication. Gossip is much more specific and purposeful in that it refers to the morals or intentions of a person or organization. Gossip can take two forms:

1. Praising gossip – providing example or insight into one’s character that is viewed positively by the group
2. Blaming gossip- where perceived moral shortcomings are identified and shared with the group.

In both instances the intention is to reinforce or strengthen the binds of the group’s values, perceptions, and links to each other by providing a basis of comparison between the entity or person being gossiped about and the group.

Different Names, Same Results

Contemporarily, organizations work hard to get mentioned in blogs, create events that generate buzz, and endeavor to be the benefactor of word of mouth or viral marketing efforts. While being called different things, they all are attempts to harness and influence the gossip shared with prospects, customers, suppliers, and even competitors about the company. As a function of the human experience, we all tend to give more credence to information received from friends, colleagues, or that has been crowd-sourced to use a more current term that refers to how many people sharing opinions or insights are more trustworthy than an official or endorsed view from a single source. Especially when that source is recognized as being affiliated with the organization or product being discussed.

Forms of Gossip

Researchers have identified three distinct reasons or purposes for gossip. Those three reasons for gossip are:

1. Information
2. Influence
3. Entertainment

Gossip, and for that matter any marketing message, serves to offer information. Updating the group or others about something or someone for comparison to the group’s beliefs and behaviors. Of course, that also means the person sharing the information has to evaluate:

• Who is the target for the message
• How to best tell it
• Whether the information is anonymous (I heard “someone” say) vs. attributed (my supplier of printer ink just told me, and he should know!)
• What is the impact of the information or newsworthiness of it
• What will the reflection be back to the sharer of the information
• How will it change the social unit or group, if at all
• Which value the group shares is it related to in terms of criticality

The informational aspects of gossip, and by extension, social media types of marketing are critical to the maintenance of social mores and values. Companies understanding that can leverage it to be sure that messaging serves the purpose of reinforcing or challenging as appropriate the conventional thinking of the group.

The influence value of the gossip or message can also be of vital importance. The gossiper can act out of self-interest to secure scarce resources that are being competed for with others. Whether the resource is attention, allegiance, the dismissal of a competitor’s claim or anything else, the pursuit of influence over the group is a strong reason for gossip’s success. The interest in the use of key community communicators in creating fads or sustaining brands or company performance over time is addressed in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, “The Tipping Point.” Of course, if the target of the message does not see the person delivering the message as credible or representative of the group’s views; the message’s ability to influence will not be sufficient to change behaviors. It is for that reason that it is of paramount importance to match the message with the credibility of the messenger for company’s looking to seek the benefit of a targeted gossip or viral message.

The third rationale for gossip is entertainment. While this may be self evident, it also serves a more serious outcome. Surely people enjoy a good story or laugh, but it also reinforces what the group perceptions are about what is funny, what is salacious, what is consistent with the group’s views, etc. This gossip or message is more self affirming and hedonistic in that it focuses on what the group and the individual see as pleasurable.

Related to the entertainment value is also the importance gossip plays in maintaining the social structure, unity, and control over the group. By ascertaining what the group views as entertaining, the messenger can provide messages that consistently entertain by sharing the point of view of the group in message delivery and construction.

Business Insight

By using the insight of how gossip is more than just the idle chatter of people with nothing better to do; companies can better use blogs, community events, word of mouth, viral marketing energies, etc. to connect with those that are most influential and likely to react positively to the message. One current example is the competition between Microsoft and Apple. People identify themselves through their computer purchase and all that it says about them. Both companies have worked hard to create a community of users that are very closely affiliated with the brands.

By cleverly engaging in lifestyle marketing approaches more than just messaging about product features, these companies are working to use the power of gossip to their advantage as users or wanna’ be users amplify the value and benefits of the company and products. In effect, one’s computer purchase now represents one’s values and what they see as important in their personal identities.

ESTablish Your Image

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by:David Zahn
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One of the most important determinants of marketing and sales success is the image prospects and customers have about the company and what represents. While, there is much to be discussed and learned about the graphic, pictorial, and textual representations a company uses to market itself through; logos, stationery, signage, websites, brochures, etc. – the image being referenced here is the customer experience image that is developed through a total company exposure that includes, but is not limited to fonts, photos, or advertisements.

What Stinks

One of the best ways to market the company is to first identify what is frustrating current or future customers. In most instances, the market has developed a particular way of doing things and almost all competitors tend to follow the same way of operating under the belief that, “this is the way things are done” or “that is just the way that it is.” For example, most shoppers are frustrated by the checking out or payment experience at stores. For many, the shopping experience of choosing products, spending time perusing the options, tasting or trying on, etc. is a positive one. That is, until they are confronted by a long line to check out with their goods and are forced to wait behind others attempting to make a purchase.

Retailers will work hard to reduce the time spent waiting, but become very defensive when told that they are frustrating their customers by not changing that element of the shopping experience. Their focus is on reporting the decrease in waiting time, but not on the PERCEPTION of waiting time. The customer may actually spend less time today waiting to pay than they did last year; but they still perceive that time as being too long and so they are frustrated by having to wait at all.

But, here is where it gets tricky. If a small business person would attempt to do the due diligence and ask their customers how they feel about their business or what can be improved in an effort to respond to the above example gleaned from retailers and not replicate thinking that they are meeting needs better today than previously; most customers would not share truthfully. What often happens is that the customer will offer a quick answer that is a variation on:

• The business is doing fine
• I am satisfied
• No complaints

However, when the question is changed just a little bit to one that asks, “how is the industry failing?” or, “what about buying the product or service my competitors and I sell really frustrates you?” the answers will uncover all of the things that “stink” from the customer or prospect’s perspective.

Opportunity Uncovered

As a way of differentiating the business from others offering similar products or services, responding to the frustrations of customers provides a leg-up in the likelihood of acquiring and retaining customers. While others in the market exhibit their “stinking thinking,” the business that understands the hurdles that customers have to overcome to conduct business or transact purchases and makes a concerted effort to reduce the boundaries stands to gain at the expense of the others.

Some of the recent examples of this are:

• Banks that recognized that customers wanted to complete transactions outside of their normal banking hours and first introduced ATM machines and then ultimately leveraged the internet to permit online banking
• Stores that identified the return policies were a source of frustration for many gift-buyers and allowed internet transacted sales to be returned via courier and not require a visit to the physical store
• Music sites that permit single songs to be downloaded to address the dissatisfaction that many customers had when they were previously forced to purchase whole albums or CDs in order to access a favorite song.

By asking the simple question of customers to uncover where the opportunities exist to rise above the stench being exuded by competition or the current market, these businesses were able to change the way business is done in each of these industries.

The Need for EST

Given that the overwhelming majority of businesses are entering a marketplace that has an entrenched base of competitors that offer the same or similar product or service to prospects and customers currently, there are only two ways for the business to succeed:

1. Bring new customers into the market that currently are not purchasers of the product or service
2. Convince existing customers of one of the established competitors to make an initial purchase with the new business and remain a customer for subsequent purchases.

When a customer or a prospect considers choosing a business to purchase from, they will often seek the business that is the most or best at something. While different customers may value characteristics about the business in varying ways, the determining factor will often come down to the EST factor that the business possesses.

The EST factor is how the business is viewed by customers versus other competitors. For example:

1. The business sells products available elsewhere, but does so at prices that are the cheap-EST
2. The pizzeria delivers meals the fast-EST in town
3. The service offered is the accurate-EST (not grammatically correct, but the point is the same)
4. The technical support is the smart-EST

To cut through the clutter of all of the marketing messages bombarding prospects and customers, the business will benefit from being seen as being the bEST at whatever it does that distinguishes itself from other vendors or suppliers in the marketplace.

Image Counts

A business that can quickly communicate the answer to the question, “what does your company do better or different than others?” will experience the benefit of customers choosing to do business with them. A company that cannot easily communicate how it is differentiated from competition will suffer from image issues that prevent it from standing out from competition and will struggle to thrive and possibly even survive.

Phoning It In

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by:David Zahn
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A spirited discussion occurs among entrepreneurs whenever the topic of selling surfaces. The conversation will often include the merits of selling over the telephone over the need to be face-to-face with a client. Some entrepreneurs believe that they have a better chance of closing a sale when they can actually be together with the prospect and react to body language, address issues that surface as a result of being in the office or home of the prospect, or can use their passion and personal persuasion skills to convince a prospect to buy.

Certainly, there are products and services that due to their complexity or other factors seem to require being eyeball to eyeball with a prospect and do not lend themselves to being sold as easily over the telephone. However, even those scenarios that require being in the presence of the prospect at some point, do not necessitate being in the same room for all points of the sales process. For other products and services that are not as complex, do not require as much customization or mandate the need to be on-site with the prospect, the telephone can certainly be used more advantageously to either sell or to advance the relationship with a prospect to determine the likelihood of a sale should there be a follow up meeting in person.

Define Objectives

When using the telephone as a selling tool, the first and most important decision is to identify what you hope the outcome of the telephone contact will be for the business:

1. Complete the sale and take an order on that call
2. Identify the decision-maker responsible for the purchase decision
3. Provide information or respond to a prospect’s hesitancy or objections
4. Schedule a face-to-face meeting to: deliver proof of claims, demonstrate the product or service, meet other decision-makers, or identify additional steps in the sales cycle required to meet prospect purchase process needs.

Clearly, each of these will demand a very different approach and preparation prior to initiating a telephone call to a prospect. Generally speaking, the chances of having a single call lead to a sale are fairly remote. In most instances, the initial telephone contact is better suited to advancing the sales process to the next step and not collapsing or condensing the entire sales process into the single contact call.

Voicemail

As anyone who has ever tried to contact a business person or even a prospective consumer knows, the majority of times the call will roll into a voicemail system. Hoping to connect with someone who actually answers the phone on the first attempt will lead to frustration a whole lot more often than success. However, being prepared for, and even expecting to reach a voicemail system will provide the seller with an opportunity to provide their message in a way that allows them to control what is shared without having to accommodate interruptions, objections, or having to respond to unanticipated questions. The essentials for leaving a voicemail are as follows:

• Don’t hang up – which goes without saying. Especially given that many phones now provide caller ID, your identity will be known and it will seem off-putting that you called and did not leave a message.
• Introduce yourself and speak slowly so that the person can understand you. All too often, salespeople will skip quickly past their name in an effort to get to the important message. If the prospect does not know who you are or who to call back, success will be diminished.
• Explain who you are and how you got to the person. Was it a colleague that recommended you reach out, did you meet the prospect at a function, do you belong to the same association, etc.?
• Provide a brief summary of why you called. One mistake that is often made is to go into detail on the company you represent, the history of the firm, product lines, or other superfluous details that are of no interest to the prospect. Answer the question the prospect is asking him or herself as they listen to the message – what is in it for me to continue to listen to this message? Address how the prospect stands to gain from returning the call or even why they should hear the rest of the message without hitting the delete key on their phone.
• Be specific on what you want the prospect to do as a result of the call or message. It is preferable to offer to call back at a designated time than to suggest the prospect call back. The prospect may not be certain why they are to call back, and the seller may spend time waiting for a call, anticipating that it will be returned, and the call never materializes. Offering to call back, and actually doing it demonstrates proactive follow up and allows the seller to maintain a certain control to ensure that he or she is prepared for the call.
• Of course, provide a phone number for a call back so the prospect can initiate a call at their leisure and discretion. Be sure to speak slowly so that someone can write it down. Even repeat it in case the prospect did not get it done correctly the first time through and needs to confirm their notes.
• If you are not known to the prospect, leave your first and last name at the end of the message as well. Even take the time to spell it if it is not intuitive as to how your name is spelled. In those instances where you are known to the prospect, do not assume too much familiarity and only leave a first name or a nickname. Chances are your name of “Tony” or “Mary” may be one of many such named people the prospect knows and interacts with. Referring to yourself by a nickname can be equally non-specific. If your last name is Smith and you request the prospect return the call to Smitty – it may not immediately be clear to the prospect who you are from the message.

On The Call

As fundamental as it seems, many business professionals stumble on how to speak clearly on the call. Often, the person receiving the call will be multi-tasking as they are retrieving messages and so they will not be offering their full attention to the call. Or, they will be in an environment that is distracting, perhaps does not offer the quiet that they would prefer to have in order to hear the messages clearly – think airport terminals, cars on highways, or from home with dogs barking, kids playing, or other noises. It is therefore especially pertinent that the provider of the message do the following to reduce confusion and be certain that their message is heard most clearly:

• Pick your chin up when you speak. The sound of your voice will be muffled if you are slouching, looking down at notes on your desk, or cradling the phone against your ear. Ambient noise is a real distraction on a message, so do not rely on speaker phones to pick up your voice alone. Pick up the receiver or use a headset.
• Look into a mirror or at least a reflective surface to see how you sound. No, the facial expressions, the body language you use as you speak may not be seen by the prospect, but they sure can be heard and inferred. Smile, be open and positive in your posture when you speak and it will be communicated in how your message is received.
• Know what you want to say, but do not use a script. There is disagreement on this point. A script ensures that the message is communicated in full and accurately; but it also comes with the danger of sounding robotic and formulaic. Preparation is important and perhaps working from bullet points or key messages is worthwhile, but a word for word script is hard to pull off and sound conversational or professional.
• Speak more slowly and enunciate more clearly. The advantages provided by face-to-face communication are reduced when over the telephone. The message is being solely communicated via your voice. If it is not understood, then the desired outcome is in jeopardy. The prospect cannot ask a message to speak more clearly or to repeat something – and few people will replay a message to try to capture it a second or third time.

While the economy may be causing business owners to reconsider whether a prospect’s interest requires an expensive face-to-face sales call, it does not have to reduce the likelihood of a successful outcome. By using the telephone and voicemail messaging correctly, more can be accomplished from the comfort of one’s home or office while still advancing the business and meeting the needs of prospects.

Selling OUT of a Sale

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by:David Zahn
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It happened again. A client came to me and wanted me to help them salvage a sales call that had gone terribly wrong. It is as if they wanted me to give them a “morning after pill” for sales calls or turn back the clock and offer them a do-over. The best I could offer the client was an autopsy to review what had happened and offer ideas to prevent it from re-occurring.

Table Setting

My client explained to me that they had met the prospect at a trade show and had engaged in a brief discussion about industry trends, methodologies for improving performance, and some ideas for how they could work together. Owing to the rushed nature of a trade show conversation; the prospect committed to contacting my client and continuing the dialogue in a different setting as there was enough interest to pursue further.

The prospect and my client then participated in a scheduled conference call where the prospect had very specifically requested answers to provided questions that had been sent prior to the conference call. While my client admitted experiencing some degree of discomfort with a few of the questions due to their likelihood of being disqualifying type questions; their performance was sufficient on the call to warrant a scheduled face to face meeting at the corporate headquarters of the prospect about 3 hours away by airplane.

The prospect again specified exactly what they wanted to discuss at the meeting by sending a list of topics, timing, and expectations to my client. It is here where the potential sale slips away when my client chooses to ignore some of the basics:

• My client did not ask who was going to be in attendance, so they did not know how many people would be there, what level in the organization they held, and whether they would be in the same room or connected via video or telephone conferencing.
• There was no discussion about how a decision was to be reached, what the criteria were for deciding on a solution or even if the people on the prospect side were authorized to make a decision or were merely reporting back to some other executive.

Ultimately, all of these oversights would come back to bite my client, but only after he had incurred costs to fly three people to the meeting, paid for hotel stays, rental cars, food, etc.

In the Meeting

As my client continued to tell me the story of the sale that gone bad, it occurred to me that they had committed one of the most egregious errors a sales person can commit. When the prospect was clearly telling them they were interested in a particular product or service, the sales person continued with their prepared presentation as if to say, “you can’t buy yet, I am not done selling!” Of course, by continuing on that path, the seller introduced facts and concerns that led to the prospect having doubts and raising objections, and ultimately deciding NOT to make a purchase with my client’s firm

Even though the prospect had been very specific about how much time would be allotted to the meeting, my client perceived that the timing was not applicable to his organization, and could be ignored. Much to his chagrin, when the prospect suggested ending the meeting at the time it was scheduled to be concluded, he was forced to rush through the remaining content of his presentation in order to cover it all.

While he had brought three people from his company on the sales call, he really had not clarified what each of their roles would be on the sales call. Unfortunately, there was some conflict as to which person would present what content, who would answer questions, and they generally stepped over and on top of each other occasionally giving conflicting responses. Additionally, because he had not confirmed whether the prospect was going to have all participants at the physical office setting or if some were to be remotely located and participating via webcam or just a phone; he had struggled with the portions of his presentation that required demonstrations; use of flipcharts, or other visual aspects of the presentation that were not readily seen by those not in the room.

Post Call Mistakes

The prospect graciously ended the sales call by thanking my client for making the presentation, reiterating their interest in resolving the specific problems they had requested assistance on in the documents sent prior to the meeting, and then made the request that all subsequent correspondence be channeled through a designated member of the prospect’s team that attended the session. Not even thinking about the implications of ignoring those instructions, my client did the following:

• Sent a thank you and follow up email letter to all attendees in the meeting
• Attached a PowerPoint presentation to that email that attempted to highlight capabilities and experiences that were well outside the parameters of the discussion conducted and well beyond what the client was interested in pursuing.
• Copied other executives in the organization in the hopes that they would apply pressure to the prospect committee evaluating the different vendors that were being asked to present.

What Can Be Learned

The lessons to be learned are numerous in this example of a sales call that had potential and failed to achieve the intended results.

1. Clarify and confirm what the objectives are ahead of time before committing to making a sales call. While my client’s objectives were clearly to make a sale; he did not completely understand what the prospect’s goals were or how to best align his company’s capabilities to that need.
2. Be certain you know how decisions will be reached. There was no discussion about what the steps were to reaching a purchase decision, who would be responsible, if the project was even budgeted, what the anticipated or expected ROI would be for the project, etc.
3. Think through the presentation in terms of timing, content, roles and responsibilities of team members presenting, etc.
4. When a prospect tells you how they wish to be communicated with, or how they want to proceed, don’t ignore it or think you know better. You don’t.
5. If the prospect specifies they are interested in a particular product or service and can articulate that they don’t want other products or services, DON’T TRY TO SELL THEM THOSE THINGS. Even if those things are what you are best at providing. Your strengths will not matter if they do not align with the prospect’s needs.

.While this sale did not go as planned, with some awareness and better understanding of the dynamics of the interaction between prospect or buyer and seller, my client can hopefully correct the errors and improve upon it in future sales opportunities.

Transparency, Behavior and Experience

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by:David Zahn
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Business owners work extra diligently to create the best products and services they can to attract shoppers, clients, and customers. They compete on the basis of having built a better mousetrap, a more effective solution, a cheaper version of something, a more enhanced option, or offering something that is not readily available from competitors. Unfortunately, that rarely leads to a sustained competitive advantage over time. That business model fails to account for some very important key elements of the purchasing dynamic between seller and buyer.

Product Focus

Building a better featured product or a more comprehensive service at one time was a sustainable competitive advantage that companies could use and leverage to secure market share, generate sales, serve the untapped needs of the marketplace, and distance a company from competition. The ability to protect a company’s innovation through patents or other legal means; that recognized intellectual property as an entity, and prevented other competitors from encroaching upon it, provided a shield against competitors. That shield allowed the costs of the research and development that had gone into the creation of the new product to be recovered within a protected time as established by the patent. However, that protection is no longer as powerful as it may have once been. In many instances, the ability to reverse engineer something in days if not weeks provides competitors with the ability to not only recognize the innovation or advancement in product development, but also make improvements upon it by building on the initial idea. Improving incrementally is typically cheaper than creating the innovation.

Competing on the merits of product or service options is still a requirement of succeeding in business, but it ignores an equally important aspect of the value provided by the business. Focusing on the WHAT of business; that is the product, the service, the “thing”” being purchased is easily competed against by an overcrowded marketplace filled with competitors looking to ride the coattails of the product innovators. Rather than create new or fresh options, these businesses seek to improve upon the work of others and either do it more inexpensively, add a neglected feature to the original, or in some way incrementally improve upon the original. So, while having a worthwhile product or service that is desired by the market is essential; the company must couple that with the uniqueness that it brings to the relationship with the shopper, customer, client, or buyer.

Transparency

In the past, a company could be judged by the WHAT factor without having to pay attention to the same extent to the WHO or the HOW of their business. As long as a company was able to produce a product or create a result, the methods used were of little concern. Anything that allowed a company to live up to the Nike slogan of “just do it” without committing felonious acts was to be celebrated and admired. Many bosses would parrot some version of, “I don’t care how, just get it done.” That lack of interest in the WHO and the HOW no longer exists. Whether it is due to the internet, the focus on the global economy, or the interconnectedness that we now have, the rules have changed:

• Producing a product, even one that is cheaper than competitors; but employing foreign sourced labor where laws around using sweatshops, paying substandard wages, employing people in dangerous work environments or poor conditions are more lax; impacts the WHO and the HOW of business and will not be tolerated by most consumers.
• Walmart has been a frequent target of attacks, some spurious and some legitimate, that are quickly communicated and disseminated via social media, web posts, and the ability to almost instantaneously provide information to others about their actions both intra-company, as well as across different markets.
• Companies are no longer held accountable to “just do it” now, but rather, “just do it right.”

In the current marketplace, there is no realistic hope that we will become LESS transparent, that we will seek to have fewer sources of information, or require a smaller amount of knowledge. Rather, it is incumbent upon companies to learn to survive in a more transparent marketplace where the HOW they do what they do is factored into whether they will succeed.
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Behavior

As companies succeed, they often look to institutionalize their practices and procedures. The way that this is most often done is by creating policies, procedures, methods, etc. for employees to follow. And at some point, an employee will do something that the business owner would prefer was not done in the way the employee did it. As a result, a rule will be instituted that attempts to limit, control, mandate, or prevent that occurrence from being repeated. And that rule will stand unaltered until another attempt is made to circumvent it, intentionally or unintentionally.

Unfortunately, rules lead to creating a minimally acceptable standard, but do not provide direction for succeeding. Rather, a rule creates a boundary that hopefully prevents failure – and even then, only if it is a well written and understood rule. So, businesses worked hard to legislate expectations:

• Answer phones within three rings
• Quality standards were developed for manufacturing, production, time for deliveries, etc.
• Customer service was measured on speed of the call or transaction amounts handled in a given time period.

However, the quality or caliber of the interaction often remained elusive. For example, what rules can be put in place to achieve the following:

• Treat vendors, suppliers, customers, and co-workers fairly
• Exceed customer expectations or delight clients
• Provide exemplary service

In a competitive marketplace where products and services are often seen as commodities, is exactly the behavioral component of the exchange or dynamic between selling organization and purchaser that will determine which company secures the business. However, that is also where most companies struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Experience

When the buyer is uncertain of which option to choose between competitors in the marketplace, or even among choices available within a company’s portfolio of offerings, they will often rely on an intangible – the purchase experience. If they feel that a salesperson, and by extension the company will take the time to explain options, provide guidance, or offer something that is reliably consistent and unique to them – and not widely available elsewhere in the marketplace – the customer will view the experience positively and reward the business with their purchase.

Rather than focus exclusively on providing a better product than other providers in the marketplace; many businesses would be better served to focus on being more transparent, or at least harnessing the power of their transparency to communicate to their prospects and customers better. Additionally, if those businesses would see that their businesses would benefit by focusing on; how they behave in competing against others in the market, and how they behave when trying to woo the customer carries as much, if not more weight in the determination of what business will attain the sale from a prospect.

Prospects and customers have a multitude of choices and options from which to choose. If all a company has to offer is a product without recognizing the importance of transparency, behavior, and experience; the long-term viability of the business is sure to suffer. The relationship aspect of the purchase dynamic is even more important than ever, and often is the difference maker between making the sale and losing one.

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