Dan Waldschmidt

I’m happy to welcome today’s guest blogger. Speaker, writer, strategist, Dan Waldschmidt is at war with conventional business strategy.  His Edgy Conversations© have turned hundreds of companies into rock-star businesses and the Wall Street Journal calls his blog one of the” Top 7 sales blogs” anywhere in the world.  He’s on a mission to empower millions of high-performers all over the globe.  For more information about Waldschmidt Partners Intl, go to www.EdgyConversations.com or call at 202-630-6730. Thanks Dan, for joining The Whale Hunters again!

You’ve been there before.

The phone rings — breaking you out of your concentration. You’ve been focused on a complex task. Trying to solve a problem that has stumped you for hours.

As the phone rings a second time, your hand moves from your mouse to the edge of the phone, ready to pick up the handset. Your eyes glance at the name showing on the screen. You pause for a second.

As the phone rings a third time, you realize that have just a second to make a decision. Do you take the call or do you get back to solving the hard problem that you have been working on all morning?

That’s reality.

You’re just on the other side of the call. You’re the one interrupting customers. Jolting them out of their concentration as they try to solve serious problems that have them confused and frustrated.

Your call only adds to that confusion.

But it also adds some clarity.

Your client only has a few seconds to make a gut-level decision about your value to them. That’s it. There’s no time for complex arguments or for them to scan your latest white paper.

In a few seconds, every thing that you have ever done for them pops to the forefront of their decision-making ability. It’s raw and gritty. It might make you uncomfortable. But it’s the most honest of business relationships. There is a decision — do they take your call or do they shrug you off?

They know the truth.

Do you provide value to them or do they know that you’re calling to “just check in on them” — probably peddling another technology solution that’s close to the one they already bought from you last year. Sure you might be calling to ask them to hang out with you for a beer or to grab a quick lunch, but they know that that’s all part of your plan to extract more money out of them. To close more deals.

And in a second or two it’s all becomes clear. You can’t fake it. You have to live it. The ringing phone demands a solution.

Which brings us to the point of this discussion.

You can’t provide value when you need to get results.

By then, it is too late.

The opportunity to create lasting memories is over. You have to start caring right now — even when it seems like you don’t really need to care.

The truth is, you’ve never needed to care any more than you do right now. Right now is all you have. There is no tomorrow unless you start caring today.

• There are no phone calls.

• There are no e-mail exchanges.

• There is no extra revenue.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing works until you start loving the people that you do business with.

If there’s one thing that we’ve all learned in the last half decade of economic decline around the world, it is that people are frail and hurting beings. We’ve learned that we’re a little more fallible than we thought we were before. We’ve realized that destruction and utter chaos is a possibility. Sometimes an inevitability.

Which is why the conversation needs to change from value and solutions and service to something much more powerful. To something much more potent.

Discussions with your clients needs to be about the gritty, personal side of life. You don’t need to be corny but you do need to be caring. This isn’t about passive aggression or manipulation; it’s about a heart-felt interpretation of life and the people doing business in that life.

To grow you have to love people.

Economic patterns come and go. Businesses will fall and they grow.

Most of that will never be in your control, ever — no more than you can cause the sun to shine or the rain to fall.

You are helpless when it comes to cosmic change. But you can change your own attitude about those you do business with. You can give a hand up instead of looking for a handout. You can be genuine instead of going for the jugular. You can love and care and cry instead of twisting and cajoling and pressuring.

The decision is yours.

As the phone rings, your business intentions stand naked before the judgments of your customer. No excuses. No explanations. Only the value you’ve created stands to persuade your client to pick up the phone and hear you out.

When you give as a strategy. When you give with intention. When you give more than people deserve to get, you create a relationship that drives your client to engage with you. They’re still busy, still frustrated, but willing to hear you out. Willing to give you a chance.

Because you’ve given them much more already.

Chris Conrey

This month we are featuring ways to grow new business with your current best accounts. Today’s guest post comes from Chris Conrey,  CEO of Post Modern Sales .  Follow @conrey and learn more about Chris on LinkedIn. Thanks Chris!

You’ve got big accounts, big ones that fund more than their fair share of your revenue, or with more of your reputation at stake than you’d like to admit. But often the ones that are most important are the ones that lock you up the most and keep you up at night. Here are 6 things you’re doing right now that you can stop and stop worrying about.

1. You lower your rate – You worry so much about losing this client that the moment they mention your rate at all, you drop it down to a much lower level than your other clients, often lower than you should. This kills you in two ways; obviously you make less money, but you also are devaluing your product. You’re setting a price that you shouldn’t because you’d rather take that pain than face the confrontation of charging what you should.  Solution – Hold firm on your rate for all of your clients, regardless of size or fear. It will make your life easier when you have to deal with billing, and you’ll show confidence and that you value your own product.
2. You let them take liberties – If you aren’t bending over backwards lowering their rate, you’re giving them special treatment that makes you run around in circles with faster than usual deadlines, more flexibility than usual, different payment terms, and a willingness to push yourself beyond your usual limits. Solution – much like the price problem above, you’re in desperate need of building your confidence. Believe it or not, many clients will respect a little bit of pushback on crazy demands.
3. You take them for granted – You’ve had this account for so long and they’ve been on your books for so long that you’re just used to sending the invoice. And yet you’re not providing the same world-changing service that they saw when you first started. Eventually they realize this and you’re suddenly one key account down.
4. You don’t call for the close – This is more often for the key account you’re working on and haven’t sealed yet. You get awestruck and treat them like rockstars and your heroes instead of like your prospect and potential client. Much like an autograph-seeking teen at a Jusin Beiber concert you find yourself tongue tied and unable to get your message out, so you lose the deal to someone who remembers they are there to close to deal.
5. You sugar coat bad news – This one is common amongst salespeople regardless of how key the account is, but you’ll be way more afraid to put the bad news right on the table for your best clients. Knowing how much they contribute to your company’s bottom line (and your paycheck) makes it more likely that you are going to soften the blow. This leads to all sorts of problems later when they realize how bad it was and you didn’t tell them.
6. You let them hold you back – Your company is changing directions or shifting away from some services but you have this one big account who still wants it. So you keep doing it just for this one client, which holds the whole company back out of desire to win this big deal. This leads to your company doing sub-par work, and ultimately your reputation being tarnished when you don’t back up what you’re selling.

The common thread here is fear. Have confidence in your abilities and your team, and put a little backbone up. This will only strengthen things for you in the long run and allow for true growth.

Our friends at The Geehan Group are launching Sean Geehan’s new book The B2B Executive Playbook in January.  They’ve got two great events coming up on January 9 and 10th.  On the 9th, a live luncheon event at Aileron in Dayton, Ohio, and on the 10th, a webinar 11 am – 12 noon EST.

The webinar is presented by Gary Vastola, Vice President Service Offering Marketing & Field Support at Xerox and Karen Posey, Senior Consultant, Geehan Group.  The title is Drive Exponential Growth through Account Based Innovation, and the registration fee of $25 includes a copy of Sean Geehan’s book.

Geehan Groups works primarily with large companies to implement executive sponsor programs.  But even smaller B2B companies can learn a lot from them about taking care of key accounts.  I think you’ll find it worth while.

More info and registration here.

#10 is the most important in my list of Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.   Here goes: You underestimate the buyers’ fears.

Often you and the whole team are totally focused on the great advantages that you provide with your products and services. You consistently make a rational case for the sale of your products, unaware that 99% of buying decisions are made on irrational, emotional bases, led primarily by fear of making a bad decision.

Unless you develop powerful ways to address the fears, you will continually lose your bids and come in second on your proposals.  And second is the worst place to finish–you stayed in too long and you paid too much but you still lost.

This isn’t a new topic for me. See, for example,  It’s All About Fear and Holly Buchanan’s guest post Wonder Woman and the B2B Sale. Nevertheless, many sellers have trouble coming at the sale from the perspective of what makes the buyers afraid.

You think the buyers are looking for the best solution–the most creative option or the solution that will get them where they want to go faster, better, or cheaper than the others.  But in reality, they will go for a solution that will probably work and seems to be a safe choice.  ”Safe” as in, “I won’t get fired if it doesn’t work” or “I’m not going to be alone on this” or “I’m not putting my career on the line.”

To overcome this problem, you will need a collection of what we call “fear busters,” tangible tools to allay the buyers’ fears of change, work, internal conflict, and most important–making a mistake.

Assume that you scare them and introduce fear-busters throughout the sales process.  Once they are no longer afraid, the buyers can appreciate the added value that your solution represents.

We’re up to #9 on my list of The Top Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.

And the 9th way to lose is:  Your team is complacent.

You’ve been so good for so long that your team expects that it will always be business as usual. You’re not scanning the market, not tracking old and new competitors, not learning every day about what’s going on in the lives of your customers.

Many growing companies are actually making a market, not taking a share of an existing market.  The more innovative and unusual your service or product, the more you are focused on a niche, the fewer your competitors, the more likely it is that you will experience a short-term success that you can’t sustain.

If you have been successful in bringing a new product or service (or product/service mix) to market, sooner or later other prospective competitors are going to challenge your dominance.  You will have painfully created a market–first persuading customers that your service is a great idea and then persuading them to buy from you.  When you hit a critical mass of customers, you will undoubtedly attract competitors.

Where will they come from?  Some will be new companies mimicking your business model.  Others will be diversified companies observing an opportunity that they’d missed.  Still others will be companies that have been very good at producing something that’s no longer valued in the market, and they are looking for a new thing that they can be good at.

There are ways to combat this tendency.  Here are a few:

• Conduct a Brand Promise Audit.  [This one-hour recorded how-to webinar is available to registered members of the Pier9 Premium resource site].  Review the marketing messages of your company and those of your competitors.  Revise your promises as required.
• Talk with your customers–those that you sold and those that you lost.  Be certain you understand what it is that people value about you and what it is that turns them away.
• Engage your team in bringing ideas and information forward.  The more individual employees who are engaging in social media platforms and knowledge bases, the more current your knowledge will be about trends that may not have even reached the “trend” stage yet.  Encourage your team to look for potential threats as well as opportunities.

Whenever you hold the position of “the best” for a period of time, you become vulnerable to many kinds of attacks.  You can’t afford for your team to become complacent about your #1 position.

We’re up to reason #8 of the Ten Ways You Can Lose Even When You’re the Best!  And reason #8 is:  Your company is too modest.

This one is sooooo hard for me to understand. But yes, we have clients who think that promoting the background and talents of their team, or documenting a few of their wins, or identifying key brands in their customer portfolio is inappropriate bragging.

This flaw can raise its ugly head near the very end of the sales process, when the buyers are making their final selection. You may have put a terrific proposal in front of them, quite likely better than the proposal from your closest competitor.  But the competitor included bio details about company leadership and key team members, success stories from several prestigious customers, a few succinct testimonials, and unique experiences or background that set them apart.

You’ve heard me say that you shouldn’t lead with the “all about us” stories.  But before you close the sale, the buyers should know what sets you apart as a delivery team.  Even having these things on your website and LinkedIn profiles is helpful because the buyers are going to check it out again when they make their final call.

A couple of examples.  One client reports on their website that “the founding partners, combine more than eighty years of color separation and printing experience.”  Well, let’s have their names and their particular background experiences–there are three partners and each brings unique talent and background to a project.  Further, this company has produced catalogs for some of the most exciting brands in North America, but they don’t mention it.  True, some customers will not permit you to brag about them.  But others will approve certain kinds of publicity.  If you have great clients and don’t mention them, others will assume that you do not have name brand experience.

We talked with leaders of a company that provides security services for industry, hospitals, airports, etc.  Their website mentions that the founding partners have US military experience, but does not include that at least two of them were in Special Forces units. To me that background would set them apart as an elite security team whose leaders have mastered the highest levels of security practice–not just theory.

The key here is to be specific. Citing some details of your past accomplishments and those of specific team members, calling attention to key customers that you have served well, and including some honest testimonials is not bragging.  Rather, it is helping your prospective new customer to feel safe in hiring you.  There’s no need to spin the details or embellish them, just put them forward.  Don’t force the buyers to put your story together for you–spell it out.

I’ve been writing about 10 Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best. Here’s the seventh way: You are internally focused.

Some companies that are the best in their field are completely focused on sales and delivery plus R&D to develop new products and services. You may have the resources and the market share to sustain that approach, but you may be missing out on market feedback, which over time diminishes the strength of your message to the market. Your new products and services are invented inside, not in concert with your customers.

I have also worked with a number of teams who believe that no one in their field delivers the level of product and service that they do.  However, they have no evidence to support this claim.  When teams like this lose business,  they blame it on “politics” or “incumbents” or “price cutting,” but the truth is they don’t have any idea why they are losing.  They do not interact with their market enough to have a pulse on what’s changing.

Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, wrote a terrific book (published in 1999) called Only the Paranoid Survive.  It’s about the need for relentless pursuit of market information and preparation for unforeseen market disasters.  And Jim Collins and Morten Hansen’s newest book Great By Choice (published October 2011) looks at ten successful companies and their leaders who managed to greatly outpace their competition in chaotic and unpredictable markets.  “Paranoia” was a key ingredient in their success–hard-nosed, direct confrontation of all of the possible ways that things could go wrong.  The bottom line is that things will go wrong; things going wrong is a normal state.

So, do you have a deliberate paranoia mindset?  Do you encourage all of the bad news and weird news to come to your attention promptly?  Do you refuse to blame a messenger?  The more you are outwardly focused, the better you will understand how to be the best and convey to your prospective customers that you are the best company to meet their needs.

I’m up to #6 of my Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  Here’s one that I see far too often: You are out of touch with your changing market.

This problem reminds me of the grand dame who was at the height of fashion during her early and middle years.  Today, however, 20+ years later, she is still sporting the same hairdo, the same clothes, the same make-up, shoes, handbag, jewelry–and she has become a “fashion police” candidate. She was the best–in her day–but the fashion market changed immensely and she failed to change with it.

For her, of course, it hardly matters.  She’s happy, and she’s not selling anything.  But for you, failure to recognize and adapt to market changes can be fatal.

How long have you been “the best”in your market?   What are your competitors doing to catch up with you or to overcome your advantage? Is there anything you are missing? When you stop thinking like an underdog and behave like the best in field, unless you are constantly vigilant  you can miss minor and even major signs that your marketplace needs and priorities are changing.

One circumstance you’ll encounter is that as you get bigger deals with bigger customers you attract an entirely new level of competition.  Often they are more sophisticated and experienced at the new market level than you are, and frequently they’ll pull out all the stops to prove that to a prospect that they’ve chosen to fight over.  It’s like being a business fashionista in Tampa and wearing your favorite outfit to Manhattan.  Fashion police! No offense to Tampa, but you’re safest in black in a New York board room.

Market changes are constant.  Your customers want different things, or they want things delivered in different ways, or they want to engage with you differently.  They want more, or they want less.  You need to be continually vigilant about what matters to them and how you can update your fashion to remain in style.  Ask them.  Bring on a customer advisory board.  Go out and visit, not to sell something but simply to listen.  They will tell you what you need to know.

What’s changing in your market?  What are you doing about it?

We’re at reason #5 of Ten Reasons You Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  Today’s reason:

Your message is “overkill.”

When you are the best, and you know it, there’s a great temptation to document all the ways and all the reasons for which you are the best. That kind of message can backfire because it’s too hard to follow, too hard to understand, and especially too hard for your buyers to explain to their bosses.

What’s so hard to believe, and so painful to many companies, is that buyers in large organizations are not necessarily looking for the best, the most innovative, the most cost effective, or the most creative solution.  They are looking for a safe solution that will work–”safe” defined as they will not be in big trouble if it doesn’t work as well as it could or should.

So being “the best” could sometimes be defined as promising more than they can stand.  It comes in another version too.  That is the “too good to be true” version.  I worked with a global software and consulting company that specializes in spend management.  The sales team lamented that they were losing their best deals–those where they could provide the greatest savings for their prospective customers.  But in fact what they promised was so outstanding that the buyers didn’t believe it.  They had to learn to keep the promises more reasonable from the customer’s perspective, and then let them be delighted when they achieved even grater savings.

Keep your solution simple and your story simpler, and you’ll refrain from overkill.

Reason #4 on my list of Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even if You Are the Best is:  Your message is stale.

Maybe you are the leading authority in your market space. Over time, it’s possible that your message to market has become wordy or pompous or old-fashioned. You run the risk that an inferior upstart will capture a new tagline or a new promise and appeal to your market.

A message gets wordy when you try to capture all the history of your product/service.  It gets pompous when you use a lot of big words to prove you’re the best.  And it gets old-fashioned when the market needs or interests or even buzz-words have changed and you’re not keeping up with the dialog.

The recent Old Spice campaign is a great example of rebranding a stale message.  This is a product that’s been around since about 1934, purchased by Proctor and Gamble in 1990.  It’s a totally fresh approach, linking “how you look” to “how you smell” and particularly appealing to women to buy the product for the man in their life.  The products are now called “man fresheners”  rather than “deodorants” or “after shave.”

With well-known sexy (and funny) spokesmen they introduced a campaign to interact directly with customers on the air in 2010.  Their August 2011 YouTube video has had almost 2 million views in less than 60 days and the Old Spice YouTube channel records more than 28 million with 289,000 subscribers. They’ve kept the connection with seafaring but the captains are much younger and sexier than in the past.  One of the products is now named “Old Spice Swagger.”  The campaign “I’m on a Horse” was one of the most viral campaigns in ad agency history.

It’s not only the message that was stale; so was the advertising approach.  The social media approach to the new Old Spice appeals to a much broader and younger audience and is an integral part of the new message.

So if they can take a stodgy old brand like Old Spice and remake it for today’s buyers, what could you do with your stale message?

Yesterday I wrote about how you can lose a sale because your story is just too complicated or you are trying to be all things to all people.

Today’s post is about reason #3  of my Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best:  Your Rules of Engagement are Too Rigid.

There’s a fine line between doing whatever a customer wants, even if it’s not your core business, and learning from customers how they would like to receive your products and services.

How you present training, customer service, information or intellectual content is one example.  People learn in different ways and they have different preferences for how they take in information.  Some like to listen; others to read; still others want video.  Some people prefer live interactions in real time; others like to absorb at their own pace on their own time.  Some people like the phone, others like text; some like email, others like chat.  If you don’t offer easy alternatives for customers to select, you will lose customers.

I worked with a client that manufactures substances that are applied to road surfaces.  This client did not apply the substances that they sold; they only shipped them and then trained their customers on how to apply.  But eventually, they had to get into the business of doing the applications for those customers who demanded it.  Too many customers simply wanted them to do the entire job, and they found themselves leaving money on the table.  This company frequently–in fact perhaps always– had the best solution at a reasonable price for their prospective customer.  But they discovered that they were losing on some cases because the customer didn’t want to do the application, they didn’t want to learn it–even if that was the most cost-effective way.  The customers wanted greater simplicity, not less cost.

The way to balance flexibility with replicable process is to ask your customers, listen to what they say, and request a debrief every time you lose a deal that you expected to win.  Sometimes the reasons will surprise you and give you ideas for improvement.

Have you ever lost a deal because the customer wanted a different method of delivery?  Did it change your business?

On my list of 10 ways to lose (even when you’re the best), reason #2 is “Your story is too complex.”

Complexity in the sales story is a common flaw of young companies as they are growing.  You’re afraid to turn away any business, so you try to do almost anything that any prospect wants you to do.  Big mistake!  First off, it doesn’t work, and it will cost you money and anguish before you finally learn that hard lesson.  But also, it confuses your customers, making them afraid to buy from you, and leaving them unable to make a case for you to others who sit at the Buyers’ Table.  Large companies also fall into this trap as they add more products, services, and divisions.  Without careful management, these decisions dilute your brand and frighten your prospective customers.

A couple of examples.  One variation of this theme is the company that can do many things well, but these things are incompatible for various reasons.  Some time ago I worked with an early stage software development company that had a software product to feed data to a mobile handheld device, before this became commonplace.  This product could be used to develop and play digital games.  It could teach repairmen to fix office machines on site.  And it could help early responders find people who had been trapped in rubble from some natural disaster.  All interesting applications, for sure.  But the people who buy lifesaving equipment are a little freaked to buy it from gamers, and many prospects were worried about how much time, energy, and service would be devoted to their solution as opposed to the others which they didn’t want or need.  Too confusing.

Another variation is overkill in the marketing materials.  Several companies in the education industry have this problem; they offer so many reasons that their solution is the right one that school officials and school boards become overwhelmed.  What is the primary purpose, the primary benefit to the schools?  Cost savings?  Teacher support?  Better learning?  Improved assessment?  Up-to-date technology? Engagement with parents? Administrative services?  In some cases all of these benefits accrue to the buyers, but it’s a rare buying group that can comprehend it.  They need a simple story about a few salient points.

Two ways to help solve the complexity problem:

1. Simplify your business.  Make some hard decisions about your core business and target market.  Learn to say no to opportunities that don’t fit your Target Filter.  If you have several equally important lines of business, sell some off or market them through a strategic alliance.  Don’t allow your customers to be confused about who you are and what you do.
2. Simplify your story.  If you have a well-defined product or service that is by nature complex or solves multiple problems, work hard to craft a clear and simple message.  Remember that old five-paragraph theme you learned in Freshman Comp:  an introduction, three main points, and a conclusion.  Learn from your current customers what are the benefits they most value, and use that knowledge to keep it simple.

Have you ever had to simplify your story?  How did you do it?

Today’s guest post comes from Bill Caskey, founder of Caskey Training in Indianapolis.  (thanks Bill!) I’ll remind you that Bill is my guest for this week’s Expert Series call–Wednesday, October 19, at 9 am Pacific time–12 noon Eastern.  You won’t want to miss this one about how to turn small inputs into big outputs–improve your sales with minimal effort.  As always, this is a free call.  Register here!

Since we’re going to be talking about SUPER LEVERAGE in our call this week, I thought I would tell you a quick story.

Recently, I was asked to go to Barbados and spent a few days with a time-share sales team. “Whoa!” I can hear you squirming.  “Why would you spend time with that group…time share? Come on. You can do better than that!”

Well, not so quick.

You must not have heard me. I said BARBADOS! It was lovely and they were great. The  interesting thing was the property owner committed to himself early-on that he was not going to SELL the way other time-shares sold. He hasn’t. And he has prospered. Greatly.

But even though he never hires other time-share sellers (he prefers to hire good communicators and good character), there still is a tendency to “back-slide” into the vulture strategy (that most time-share companies seem to teach).

What They Miss

Think about it. A potential prospect walks into a time-share sales office and what typically happens? The amateur seller pounces on them and takes them through that manipulative, secret, coercive sales process. Until finally the buyer escapes—vying never to be hooked into that again.

But They Didn’t Need To Do All Of That

It just doesn’t have to be like that. One piece of counsel I gave to my client last week was “Let them tell you why they’re there.”  Relax. Don’t pounce. Just sit back and have a human-to-human conversation about their goals, their dreams, their preferences and what brought them into the office. Use the momentum of ‘coming into the office’ to your advantage.

Let them buy.

Stop getting ‘up in their stuff trying’ to sell them. Yes, you will have to inform them of the advantages. Yes, you may have to take them through some process. And yes, you will be asking them to make a decision. But no, you do not have to manipulate and coerce.

So what’s the lesson? The asset is a customer walks into your office. How much more of an asset do you want? So don’t blow it by getting in the way. Leverage that asset by being a human being with them. Be present. Give them freedom. Don’t take it away.

In our call, we’ll talk about a host of other mistakes sales organizations make in their effort to pursue business…and some ideas on SUPER LEVERAGE ideas.

I’m up to reason #5 today of the 10 Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  Let’s start with a reminder of what this is all about.  Every day I talk to clients who say some version of this:  “I don’t understand.  We clearly had the best proposal, at a great price.  Why did they go with someone else?”

It’s so important to understand how and why this happens.  It comes down to fear on the buyers’ part.  They would rather make a more conventional choice that is “good enough” than go out on a limb for a truly superior choice.  Happens every day!  And you, as the seller, contribute in a number of ways to their fear.

Here is reason #5 that you lose:  Your message is “overkill.”

When you are the best, and you know it, there’s a great temptation to document all the ways and all the reasons for which you are the best. That kind of message can backfire because it’s too hard to follow, too hard to understand, and especially too hard for your buyers to explain to their bosses.

You’ve failed to give them a clear and simple message of the value as expressed, including an analysis cost versus price.  If you spend much time talking about your benefits and advantages, they will think that you don’t understand them or even don’t care about them and their concerns.  And your champions will be at a loss for what to take upline.

You need to spend much more time listening to them and what they need rather than telling them what you can offer.  All of your marketing slicks, brochures, detailed website and related materials can backfire if you don’t zero in on the two or three salient points that will make a difference to most buyers and especially the one that you’re talking to now.

The overkill problem is most evident when there is a big gap between sales and marketing.  The marketing team is focused on documenting all of your company’s many benefits, while the sales team is listening for feedback from the buyers–which is not focused on those benefits after the initial conversations.  Further, the buyers have already informed themselves about you and your services long before they talk to you, so they are ready to talk only about them.

A simple message, simply stated, repeated in a variety of ways to a variety of people, complete with subject matter experts telling the same story, and a few simple tools to help your buyers move the story forward, will move you several steps forward ahead of your competitors.

There’s a version of this called “too good to be true.”  I’ve worked with a global company that provides spend management services, and I learned from their sales team that they sometimes lose exactly the deals where they can demonstrate the biggest cost savings and the highest ROI.  The buyers simply don’t believe them.  It’s overkill.  Our colleague and friend Merlin U. Ward did a great guest video blog on the topic of “too good to be true–check it out.

Have you ever lost a deal through overkill?  We’d love to hear about it and how you overcame it next time.

Today’s post is a reminder that tomorrow–Tuesday, Sept. 27–I will interview Anthony Iannarino, author of The Sales Blog, about The Commodity Trap: How to Get Out and Stay Out.

If your products and services are not commodities, but your prospective customers are telling you that the lowest price is all that matters, Anthony thinks you are doing things wrong.  He’s the most articulate person I’ve ever heard on this topic of how to avoid becoming a commodity, full of wise, practical advice on specifically how to deal with the price issue.

For example, Anthony recently blogged about your dream client calling with the news that you are among their top three choices, and that they want you the most, but you’re priced higher than the other two.  They want you to discount your price.  Specifically, what should you do?  That’s the kind of situation we’ll be talking about tomorrow.

I hope you’ll join us!  Register here for call-in information.  There is no registration fee for this teleconference; long distance charges may apply.

We’ll be live at 9am Pacific (and Arizona); 10am Mountain; 11am Central; 12 noon Eastern.  The recording will be posted on The Whale Hunters Pier9 (Premium site) in our Expert Series archive and for a limited time will be available for Pier9 Basic members (basic membership is free–why not join today?)

Today’s guest post comes from Anthony Iannarino, President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class staffing firm, and the Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy. He’s also the author of The Sales Blog

Companies spend time, effort, and money working to different their offerings from their many competitors. The more special their offering, the more value it creates, the greater its chances of being chosen by their clients. This differentiation also improves the margins the company earns by selling its offering and producing results.

Enter the salesperson. The deal in front of them is hot. They are competing against other firms, and they have used their company’s differentiation strategy to pull themselves out of the pack. But when all the numbers are entered into the spreadsheets, their offering isn’t the lowest price. In fact, it’s the highest of the three finalists.

Because the buyer really wants to buy from our not-so-fictional salesperson here, he
calls and says that he will sign the contract and give them the business if they can lower their price.

And this is the point at which the decision is made to commoditize the business.

It sounds like the decision is the buyer’s. He doesn’t value the differences in results that are created by paying more to obtain them. But it isn’t the buyer’s decision  to commoditize the business; it’s the seller’s.

The Slippery Slope

The slippery slope for salespeople and sales managers is allowing the business to be
commoditized and, over time, they allow the margins to be destroyed. In most
cases, the company’s ability to differentiate itself is predicated on having the margins necessary to produce a better result. Without the margins, the company not only loses the ability to differentiate—it often loses the ability to produce results.

Only later, after the lower price has been accepted and the work begins does the
lower price start to become problematic. The results promised aren’t produced, and the client isn’t satisfied. Then, based on the evidence, he says: “See? I knew I shouldn’t have paid more. You are all the same.”

This is why we don’t commoditize.

Protecting Pricing

To protect pricing, margins, and your ability to differentiate yourself and your offering, you have to resist becoming a commodity. Instead of accepting the business at the lower price, you have to make the case for the client paying a higher price (in all likelihood, the price they need to pay to get the result they really want).

It sounds something like this: “I understand that our price is higher than our competitors. That’s by design. I didn’t do a good job explaining how your greater investment is going to allow us to provide a far greater result and, ultimately, result in a lower cost. Can we get together and let me try to do better job explaining this and showing you how our price allows us to produce the results you need at a lower cost?”

The salesperson has the power to make a difference for both her client and her company here. She has the ability to resist being commoditized, and she has the ability to translate the price into value, shifting the decision from price to cost. By preventing the commoditization, she can protect the firm’s differentiation strategy and their ability to produce the results they sell.

Please join us!  I will interview Anthony on this topic (The Commodity Trap: How to Get Out and Stay Out) for The Whale Hunters Expert Series Call on Tuesday, September 27.  It’s a free call but you need to register here.

Your Opinion Doesn't Count

Today’s guest post is from Dave Cooke, Whale Hunters friend and partner. author of The Sales Cooke Blog, and co-author of the podcast “Don’t Sell Me Bro.”

Very few people welcome an unsolicited opinion.  They welcome them even less from someone they don’t know very well, if at all.  Pitching a product or service to someone with the attitude that “you know they need it” is just like an unsolicited opinion.  What gives you the right to tell me what I need when you know so very little about me?

This is the fatal mistake far too many salespeople make – assuming that everyone can use or benefit from their product.  Frankly, few business owners have the time to meet with people who know nothing about their business or with someone who believes they already have the answer. 

Believing in what you’re selling is great.  Having a high degree of confidence in where the product has been most successful or well received is wonderful.  Even having the experience or familiarity with the types of organizations that value your product can be beneficial.  However, there is one problem—like the unsolicited opinion, you have not earned the right to tell anyone what they need.  Until you spend some time learning, nobody cares what you think.

The fundamental flaw in the “I know what they need” sales approach is that the sales professional has made the mistake of looking at the sales arena through the wrong lenses — theirs.

Great sales professionals have the uncanny ability to see, recognize, and understand the world through their customers’ eyes.  In order to communicate with the customer as a trusted advisor—someone who has earned the right to offer advice to a challenge or issue – the sales professional must engage in the learning process first.  It is this learning process that provides valuable information, builds trust, establishes credibility, and facilitates the establishment of a professional rapport between client and salesperson.

When a salesperson walks in with the answers to a problem that has not been verified, discovered, discussed, or revealed, their ignorance and their arrogance is exposed.  When this occurs, there is no opportunity to recover and build a relationship.  There is only resistance to spending anytime with someone who comes in with answers without even knowing whether there was a question.

No matter how effective, wonderful, valuable, innovative, or amazing the product is, there is little to opportunity to amaze anyone with it until you have invested the time building the relationship by learning all that you do not know about your client’s business.  If your perspective is outbound on the customer, you need to change your viewpoint.  See and understand the world from the client’s perspective, internalize what they know, observe, and live everyday and you will have potentially earned the right to express your opinion; or, offer your advice.  If you have not earned the right, you are wasting everyone’s time.

Here are three things to consider before expressing your unsolicited opinion:

1. How much do you know about your prospect’s business?  By definition, “know” is specifically what they have shared directly with you about the issues, challenges, and opportunities in their organization.
2. Every single business owner has these fundamental drivers – make money, save money, solve a problem, fulfill a need.  How effectively can you directly link your product to something you “know” about their business that will help them accomplish one of these objectives?
   
3. How did the prospect or client solicit your thoughts or ideas on how to solve their problem?  This often happens when you have earned the right – when a business owner trusts you enough, they will often ask for your advice.  That is the open window to share how you and your product can help.

Stop “selling” and start “solving.”  Keep your opinions to yourself and starting learning all about the many things you don’t know.  When you are done listening and learning, ask yourself – did they ask for my opinion?  If they didn’t, you haven’t earned the right, yet.  Keep working at it.

Today’s post, #2 in the Fatal Sales Failures series, comes from Merlin U. Ward, founder and Principal of Drip Media and great friend of The Whale Hunters.  I think Merlin is very effective in using video blogs!

This post was originally published at BlogWorld on May 25th.

To be successful in B2B sales today AND tomorrow, you need to actively build your social media presence.  I assume since you are reading this blog that you already know that, or at least you are interested in knowing more.  But it frightens me how many small to midsize companies behave like ostriches when it comes to a serious evaluation of their social media strategy.

Here are five serious ways that you will be left behind:

1. Thought Leadership.  You are not actively engaged in developing a point of view about your industry on behalf of your company.  You and/or your employees are not publishing articles and white papers, or participating in online discussions, or asking and answering questions in the leading social media sites for your industry and/or your state and locale.  Therefore you will not become known as an industry leader and will increasingly be perceived as irrelevant.
2. Website.  It’s a marketing piece all about you.  It is not interactive, inviting visitors to participate in any way.  It doesn’t offer any links to unbiased information or free white papers or eBooks or any little way to promote extra value.  It just sits there, doing nothing for you.  Therefore, you are by definition losing ground to competitors who are upgrading their interactivity.
3. LinkedIn.  You have a minimal presence or none at all.  Only one or two of your employees are engaged here.  There is a lack of personal photos, complete profiles, and connections to other professionals.  You are not members of relevant industry groups.  If groups don’t exist, you haven’t taken leadership to create them and invite others.  Therefore, interested prospects will not find you, nor will you find them.
4. Google Alerts. You have not set “Google alerts” (they are free) to help you monitor what is being said about you personally, your company, your industry, and your key executives on the Internet.  You do not have any system to monitor the flow of industry information and where you may, or may not, fit into it.  Therefore you have no basis for an improved marketing strategy.
5. Opt-In e-mail List.  You are not actively building your list of friends, current customers, and prospects, so you have no reliable and inexpensive way to reach them with news, special offers, or simply thanks for their business.  Therefore you run the risk that your competitors have a much better list and the capacity to reach your customers and prospects regularly.

You may not need a Facebook page.  You may not need a Twitter account.  Those channels depend highly on the nature of your business and where your audience is engaging online.  But even if you think today that your market is offline, I challenge you to think again and to investigate or ask your youngest, newest employee to investigate on your behalf.

Today’s communication channels will change, as did the mail, telegraph, telephone, cell phone, etc.  They will continue to evolve.  But the basic premise that you need to be connected will not change. If you’re not sufficiently connected, the steps you take today will pay you back many times over!

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Here’s the new part of this post.  The Whale Hunters offers you many examples of how to put your social media presence into practice.

Web | Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn
The Whale Hunters LinkedIn Group

Just finished reading a great blog post by Paul McCord, “Your Call is Very Important to Us and Other Lies.”  I highly recommend it–very good advice.  The gist is that big companies may get away with lousy customer service because we’ve come to expect it, but small companies cannot.  Paul’s observations about customer service brought to mind a long list of unsatisfactory interactions I’ve had with companies lately–and unfortunately most of these have been small companies, local companies, owner-operated companies.

My husband and I are in the process of buying a house.  I won’t bore you with the nightmare of getting a mortgage these days–everyone expects the big banks to be a hassle.  But over the weekend, I was browsing the Internet for patio furniture.  After spending time on overstock.com and amazon.com, I decided I’d prefer to buy furniture from a local showroom so I could be sure of what I was getting.  I was interested in learning whether I could do that at comparable prices.

So I visited the website of a local store that specializes in patio furniture.  Immediately a customer service representative popped up inviting me to chat.  I didn’t want to chat yet, just look around, so I closed the chat window.  But another rep popped in, and another, and yet another.  By then it was getting to be annoying.

I decided on a line of furniture that interested me, but this website does not list any prices.  Rather, it has a phrase, “This vendor does not allow us to show our guaranteed lowest price.”  In order to get a price, you have to talk to customer service.  Usually I just leave a website like that, but I had spent a long time looking for the kind of furniture I had in mind.  So I opened a chat with one of the reps.  I asked one question:  “I’m interested in the XXX line of furniture, but I don’t have any idea if it fits my budget.  Can you give me a ballpark price on this particular chair?”  Now of course I have to start answering questions.

My name.  My email and phone number “in case we get disconnected.”  What am I shopping for?  When will I need the furniture?  Have I done business with them before?  Have I been in their store?   Then the kicker:  “One of our sales representatives will be calling you tomorrow.”  I typed back, “How about the price of that chair?”  She replied, “Would you like me to email it to you?”  Well, yes I would.  Then she responded,  “You will be hearing from one of our representatives.”

Before I could finish typing my angry response to this lousy chat, she closed it out!

Now like most people, I am willing to exchange some personal data in exchange for information or intellectual property.  I found this company’s expectations to be excessive, yet I responded to all their questions.  To do that and then not get the information I requested made me very angry!

My advice to them:  don’t feature live chat on your web site if you won’t allow the reps to communicate information.  And don’t make the live chat so intrusive that it’s like a smarmy salesman following you around while you’re trying to browse.  The sad thing is they probably don’t even know how often it backfires!

We’ve found that even when the price is *FREE* — like our monthly Expert Series call — customers expect a very high level of service.  Some of our callers want it to be a webinar instead of a teleconference.  Others don’t like one of the topics.  Sometimes customers didn’t get what they expected, even if their expectations were totally misaligned with our promotion.  My point is, every interaction with a customer or prospective customer is fragile and significant, even in a B2B environment like mine.  After all, the business buyer is a person, not a corporation.

Test out your own methods.  Ask people about their experience.  Take them seriously.  Do whatever you can to satisfy them or at least explain promptly and patiently why you can’t or won’t.

Do you have a customer experience #Fail to share?

How do you overcome this kind of failure in your company?

Marlene Chism

Today’s guest post comes to us from Marlene Chism,  a professional speaker, trainer and the author of Stop Workplace Drama, (Wiley 2011).  Marlene will be my guest for an Expert Series call this Wednesday, August 17, 9am Pacific, 10am Mountain, 11am Central, and 12noon Eastern time.  To make your workplace more effective, please join us for this free call about how to stop the drama!  Register Here.

Strong workplace relationships among leaders and their employees are vital to a healthy organization. Gallup found that no single factor more clearly predicts the productivity of an employee than his relationship with his direct supervisor. The ability to build solid workplace relationships and effectively communicate in a positive manner is the core of good management. Here are seven bad-boss behaviors that managers, owners and bosses might have that negatively impact workplace relationships. I’ll also discuss ways that leaders can improve upon these behaviors to strengthen their relationships with employees.

1. Multi-tasking
2. Interrupting
3. Eye-Rolling
4. Yelling
5. Justifying mistakes
6. Judging
7. Ignoring

Multi-tasking.  When it comes to leading, one of the most challenging behavioral changes is to be present to the person in front of you. If you are shuffling papers or on your Blackberry when an employee is talking to you, you inadvertently give the message that he or she is not important. In addition, chances are you’ll drop a ball or miss something important because of being pre-occupied. Scientists now have proven that you can’t really multi-task anyway. What you are really doing is shifting attention back and forth which actually hurts your productivity. Focus on what is in front of you especially if what is in front of you is a person.

Interrupting Silence is difficult. In this fast paced world, especially if you happen to be a fast talker, waiting for someone to finish a sentence can feel quite painful. When you interrupt you are giving a message that you are impatient. If you don’t have the time, say so, and re-schedule with the person who can’t spit it out fast enough. Taking the time to listen to your employees with your complete attention makes them feel valued and appreciated and will go a long way toward strengthening workplace relationships.

Eye-Rolling This is a complete no-no when it comes to managing and leading others. Eye-rolling is a form of disrespect. The message you give is that you don’t respect the other person and you come off as superior or snobbish.

Yelling Managers who resort to raising their voices are showing their employees that they have low levels of self-control. It’s true some of us are more prone to being hotwired, but this is no excuse for not working on this problem. I often say that you don’t have an anger problem; you have a self-control problem, or a self-awareness problem. Hold a higher standard for yourself and lead by example by having high regard for your employees and co-workers.

Justifying Mistakes Leaders have to set the example. Any leader who blames an employee for mistakes or for bad behavior is playing the victim role on the Karpman drama triangle. Step up and take charge. If one of your employees is driving you crazy, you have some work to do, in the form of discipline or a difficult conversation. You have a higher rank so you have to play a higher game.

Judging Everyone has good reason for why they do what they do. Before you try “shame” tactics, get curious. Ask good questions and get into the mindset of the employee who made a mistake or did something wrong; then you can be the judge of the next appropriate step.

Ignoring You probably don’t mean to do it, but it’s a common habit of busy leaders: They ignore their employees. Nothing hinders workplace relationships more than when a leaders makes you feel ignored and unimportant. Yes, you are pre-occupied and have a million things on your plate. You are results-driven, but it only takes a moment to acknowledge people when you walk in the door and this new habit will keep the drama and storytelling at a minimum. These behaviors can ultimately derail even the best employee-leader workplace relationships. Fortunately, they are easy to fix and can build a more loyal and engaged workforce for any leader.

For more information visit www.marlenechism.com or the web at www.stopworkplacedrama.com

On day three of the #OverTen campaign, our topic was increasing sales.  Contributors talked about methods, about how to treat your existing customers, and about how to get noticed.

Do you want to increase your sales to over $10 million? Listen to ideas from Margie Traylor, CEO of Sitewire and The Whale Hunters (and also named by the SBA as 2010 business owner of the year for Arizona!)

Our friend Chris Conrey (author of the “Conrey is for Closers” blog and co-host of Don’t Sell Me Bro’ podcast) says:  How do you increase customers? Be good to the old ones.

My personal contribution to the campaign is about how to get noticed.

And to hear more all of the #OverTen contributors,  follow @GingerSell/overten on Twitter.

Have you checked out any of these video tips?  I’d love to hear what you think.

You can’t grow a business to more than $10 million in annual revenue without taking risks.  But how do you know when to take a risk?  Or which risk to take?

In the second day of the #OverTen campaign, we heard from four business leaders on the topic of risk management:  Here are links to their videos:

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh answers, “How do you know when a risk is worth taking?

What does it mean to really fail?  Michael R. Hunter, co-founder of EntourageMarketing responds.

Cynthia Figge, co-founder and COO of CSRHUB explains how to evaluate risk.

Why don’t women take more business risks?  Holly Buchanan, co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth, weighs in.

How about you–what’s your strategy for balancing risk and caution?

Yesterday we reported on Ginger Whitesell’s “OverTen” campaign aimed at encouraging small business owners–especially women–to set their sights on growing their companies to greater than $10 million in annual revenue.

Ginger has recruited some amazing business leaders to summarize their best advice in 30-60 second videos.

In case you missed them, here’s a recap of first five featured videos:

Why is small business growth important?  Holt Hackney (B2BBuzz) responds.

Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman says government doesn’t produce wealth; entrepreneurs do.

Do you want annual business revenues of Over Ten million? ChadRoot (Spearhead Marketing) weighs in.

Patrick Quinlan, RivetSoftware CEO, discusses maintaining performance while you grow from 20 to 500 employees.

Halpin Companies CEO Katharine Halpin believes in motivating employees as you grow.

Thanks to all of the busy leaders who have taken time to produce these videos for Ginger and The Whale Hunters.  We appreciate your help, and we share your passion for small business growth and prosperity.

What do you think about the OverTen campaign?  We’d love your comments!  And stay tuned for new videos each day this week!

Today we’re privileged to have a video blog post by our friend Merlin U Ward of Drip Media.  Thanks Merlin–great advice!