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.

Brooke Green

Today’s Guest Blogger is my great friend Brooke Green, principal at Caskey Achievement Strategies.  Brooke is passionate about her work coaching sales teams and beloved by her clients. Thanks for joining us, Brooke!

I always find this time of year interesting. If you have any responsibility for revenue growth within your company, I’m sure you’ve been asked to create a sales plan for how you will make that happen. My experience is that most are searching for new revenue, inside new businesses. Why would you not concentrate on what’s already there? Your key accounts.

Often when I ask this question, the response is the same “Well, yeah, of course I’ll continue to work with my key accounts . . . .” Don’t they deserve to be more than an afterthought?

In our practice we teach a sales process that never stops. There will always be new problems to solve for your clients, new expertise for you to bring to the table, new relationships to develop. However, more often than not, once the initial hunt is over we forget that the process should continue. How do you remedy this?

Put your KEY ACCOUNTS on the top of your sales and business plan. Be strategic. Work on the business, not just in it. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Who within the business deserves to know me and utilize my expertise (that I don’t already know)?

2. Do I know where the business is going and how the problems that I solve will fit into the future?

3. Have I provided a platform for learning, brainstorming and feedback exchange on the work we are currently doing and the current state of the business?

4. Have I shared the future of my business, what our company is striving to do and how my key accounts can benefit?

5. What are the threats to the partnership? Am I ahead of them or woefully behind?

If you don’t have a sales strategy each year (or even quarter) for your KEY ACCOUNTS you are diminishing your value to them and leaving money on the table. I know that the hunt for new business is exciting. Don’t let your inclination to look for the new, give an opportunity for the existing to bite you in the rear end.

How do you keep your key clients top-of-mind? Please post a comment.

This was our all-time biggest blog traffic post, originally from June 2011.

Here are five key points to consider in preparation to make your initial call on a prospective customer.   No, they’re not about putting brochures in a folder or loading up the power point!

1. 1.Know the customer.  Some sales people call on prospective customers with little more than a “lead”—maybe only an address and a name scribbled on a post-it note.  But whale hunters do not call on a large prospect until they have a complete dossier prepared by a Scout, someone in sales support, marketing or administrative assistance who has been trained to conduct the essential research. Your dossier should include a complete description of the company and its history.  You need to know its major customers and competitors, key products and services, and its market position.  Record three years of data on revenue, gross margin, and operating margin.  Total assets and total debt help you create a snapshot of the company’s current position.What is the company’s current market strategy?  Are they gaining or losing market share?  Are they poised to introduce new products or services?  Are they B-to-B or B-to-C?  What kind of  budget have they had historically?  Who is or has been their incumbent provider?
2. Think like a buyer.  We tend to have a huge need to talk about US.  We blab about our services, our track record, our cool tools and metrics and stuff that we do.  And the more innovative, the more creative, the more bells and whistles we can present, the better we like it. Large account buyers, however, are not really looking for the best of all possible solutions.  They want a reasonable solution that will work.  They want a solution that will not cost them too much money or work or time or change or internal conflict.  They want to choose a provider that will not embarrass them or get them into trouble.  So they have a huge preference for big companies, with big brands, that are well known and comfortable.If you are a smaller company or a company unknown or little known to them, you need to learn to think from their point of view.  They are afraid of you.  Your job is to make them unafraid.  (For more on this topic, join our Pier9 library and read Think Like a Buyer.)They cannot hear your value proposition until they become less afraid of you.  So what can you do?
3. Ask great questions.  Instead of leading off with what you can do, lead off with rich, meaty questions about their circumstance.  I don’t mean just the ordinary questions to discover their “pain points.”  What are their aspirations?  What do they want or need to accomplish?  What obstacles are in their way?  How can you help them define and/or scope out their hopes in terms that make sense to them and to you? Great questions invite your prospect to talk about how things have gone in the past.  How things are going now.  What is the typical way his or her company responds to the current set of needs, challenges, or aspirations?  How have they handled this need previously?  What has gone well and what didn’t work previously? Of course your questions are about the company.  However, your challenge is to frame those questions in the context of the individual or team that you are currently talking to.  Make it personal; keep it personal.
4. Listen.  When you ask great questions, you will typically get very useful answers.  If you don’t get good answers, or if the person you’re talking to doesn’t really want to interact with you and your questions, it’s a good sign to walk away from this deal at this time.  So the first point of listening is to listen for signs that you do not want to pursue this relationship at this time. But when you have asked great questions and listened to your counterpart’s answers for 30 to 45 minutes, that person begins to believe you are wise and knowledgeable.  You have learned valuable insights about what the prospect needs, wants, and hopes to accomplish.  You may have told very little about your company’s capabilities.  Nevertheless, you have proven that you “understand” the needs and desires of the buyer.
5. Ask for a process commitment.  A key ingredient in large account selling is to get commitments from the prospect and test whether they can and will keep their commitments.  A very easy and significant commitment is the process map.  This is a simple exercise that you can conduct on a note pad or on their flip chart or white board.  Map out the steps in their buying process.  Find out who needs to be involved at each step and whether the person you’re talking with is willing to get the important people involved.  See if your contact knows the buying process and if their process is compatible with your sales process.

Follow these five steps and you will have more productive first meetings with large-scale prospects.  Then you will be armed with key understandings to share with your team to begin designing solutions.

#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?

Remember The Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket (I’m Special)?” [Go ahead--watch it! But come back, OK?]

There’s a sales lesson in those lyrics.

Yesterday I posted on Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  And the first way is when your service is too specialized.

“I’m special.”  “There’s no one like me.”

If you are the only company that does what you do, you have a serious problem.  You don’t have a market.  It is not generally a good circumstance to have no competitors.  In fact, it means you have create a market before you can even sell into that market.

“I’m gonna make you, make you, make you notice.”

How are you going to get noticed?  It takes a lot of work  with a new service that people aren’t thinking about.  There are lots of business services that we know we need–accounting, legal, telecommunications, insurance, office equipment, and on and on.  But what about services that come out of the blue?  One that comes to mind is “spend management,” pioneered by our client Ariba.   It’s big business now but was almost unheard of as a business service even ten years ago.

“Gotta have some of your attention, give it to me.”

How do you get in the door?  Who is your lead buyer?  Is anyone looking for what you are selling?  Who will pay attention? These are critical questions for the highly specialized company.  Your cost of sale is extremely high, your sales cycle is long, and your close rate is abysmal.

What can you do?  Companies that have successfully brought an entirely new service to market have effectively invented their new market.  Here are some strategies to consider:

• Aggressive thought leadership.  You’ll need to leverage all of your intellectual assets–especially those of your employees–to educate your potential customers.  White papers, newsletters, an informative blog, webinars (live and recorded) case studies of early adopters–all will be important to bring your concept to the attention of the new market that you are creating.
• Superior content strategy. Not only will you need to develop rich content to educate your buyers, you’ll need to get it out in public systematically and through multiple channels.  Make a plan for how to balance the social media sites with the sites you own (your website, your blog, your opt-in newsletter list).  What is the content you will post, what will you push, what will you pull, and how will you encourage your audience to react?  Don’t forget the live events either–executive briefings (ideally held at your location if it’s nice enough).
• Marketing/Sales Integration.  Far too many companies have a black hole between marketing and sales functions. But you simply can’t afford it.  What the sales team learns in conversations with prospects needs to be fed back into marketing, and both teams need to be on board with strategy and tactics.  You can’t market an unknown service with brochures.  You need dramatic, exuberant, visible tactics!

Have you ever been too special?  What did you do about it?

Image courtesy P5 Blog p5.blogspot.com

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.

Bill Caskey

I’m looking forward to this month’s Expert Series call, when I’ll interview Bill Caskey, founder of Caskey Training, on the topic of getting more sales results with less effort.

Bill will be talking about his take on a medical concept known as “Minimal Effective Dose,” which means the best dosage for a prescription is the least amount of the drug that will get the desired result.  He’s used that as a metaphor for sales–figuring out the least amount of effort that is required to get your desired results.

Bill calls it “super leverage,” and that’s what we’ll be talking about.

I often interview people whom I’ve never met, and that is always fun and often surprising.  But in this case, I’ve known Bill Caskey for quite a few years, and I have great admiration for him, his work, and the Caskey team.  So I can add a personal endorsement for this teleconference!

Please join us October 19, 9 am Pacific, 10 am Mountain, 11 am Central, 12 noon Eastern for this free teleconference.  Register here.

We’re pleased to announce a new series of online courses dedicated to helping small companies implement The Whale Hunters practices and processes.

A lot of you have said you’d like to have some help from us, but you don’t want or need or can’t afford a full-fledged consulting engagement right now. Nevertheless, you are seeking direction and accountability, which you are not getting simply from our books and materials.

So, here we go!  We’ve got four six-week online courses underway, with the first one starting October 31st.  (Boo!):

Whale Hunting Online 101: Build Your Tools–Starts October 31
Whale Hunting Online 102: Build Your Processes–Starts January 9
Whale Hunting Online 201: The Trust Cycle–Starts March 12
Whale Hunting 201: New Business with Key Accounts–Starts May 7

These courses will take place within our premiere Pier9 learning environment, powered by the internationally recognized “Moodle” learning management platform.  The courses feature weekly webinars, audio, video and print course materials, assignments, and feedback from key presenters, plus the key component of a discussion forum led by your host (that’s me!) in which I’ll answer questions and review your work in progress.

Sooooooo, if you’re an aspiring whale hunter; if you’ve gotten started but the process stalled or you want some feedback; if you want to bring some new people up to speed; if you want to put a toe in the whale hunting water — why not register for the first of these courses?

There’s much more information online here that outlines each week’s topics, tools, and outcomes.  In this first course, you’ll build all the tools you need to refine your market message, create the metrics that will define your ideal customer, find those customers through online research, locate warm introductions, understand what the buyers are afraid of, and prepare outstanding presentations.

This is a great way to manage your 2012 sales planning!  Plus, this course is priced at only $550, with a $55 early bird discount if you register by October 17–that’s a bargain at $495.

I look forward to working with you online to become a successful whale hunting company!

This post was originally published at BlogWorld

Many large companies have rigid policies prohibiting employees from any business-related social media activity. If that’s your practice, I recommend you reconsider.

The Whale Hunters business is helping  B2B companies accelerate their growth by selling bigger deals to bigger customers. Most of our clients have some kind of a complex sale, such as a software solution, a technology, a marketing plan or a training program, for a few examples. When they are selling into a large company, they find that many people are involved in the decision of what to buy and from whom or whether to buy or do it themselves in house.

One or two people will make the final decision but many more will influence that decision. Whoever ultimately decides will not choose a solution or a service provider that is not widely accepted among other internal influencers. The price of change is too high; the price of internal conflict is too painful.

The other influencers will make their recommendation based on their confidence in the capability and likeability of the people from your company with whom they would be interacting. So, they want to get to know these people. They want to check out the credentials of members of your project management team or your trainers or your customer service staff or your IT department or your graphic designers or whomever. They want to know their peers in your company.

Now here’s where social media comes in: they will look for your employees on LinkedIn and on Facebook and possibly on Twitter or JigSaw and they will check to see which employees contribute to your company’s blog or Facebook page or LinkedIn discussions. They will want to see a profile, work history, where people went to school, what kind of credentials they have. Especially on LinkedIn, they will explore whether your employees have received recommendations from past or current customers, supervisors, or co-workers. They will be interested to learn whether your employees are thought leaders; for example, do they comment on relevant industry blog posts, do they ask and/or answer questions on LinkedIn, and do they participate in special interest groups online. They’ll look to see how your employees are connected, to them and to others. They may ask to connect with members of your team.

If your employees are invisible online, or if their only presence is a personal presence, you will be at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to other competitors whose employees are visible and active online.

Of course you need policies and procedures, mostly guided by common sense. If you have a marketing team, someone there can draft policies and provide some training. If you’re smaller than that, find a blogger or a savvy GenY employee to take a lead. To start in a small, safe way, encourage your employees to create a LinkedIn profile. Teach them what a good one looks like, and help them get a professional headshot photo. Ask them to request recommendations. Show them how LinkedIn works, how to find groups, and how to participate appropriately. Make your expectations clear, and be explicit about how much time during business hours would be acceptable for professional social media activity. Even a limit of 10 minutes a day on LinkedIn will enable them to become well-connected (and LinkedIn won’t require a daily check-in).

The more your team “connects” with others, the more powerful your company will become in business development opportunities-more sales, bigger deals.

Today I’ll tell another of my own Fatal Sales Failure stories.  This one is also true, and it happened not so long ago.

My team and the prospect’s team were sitting at The Buyers’ Table in their conference room.  Enthusiasm was high and conversation was coming fast from every corner.  They wanted to know what outcomes they could expect and how we would work with them.  We talked about our standard implementation for a company like them, and we talked about some additional modules in which they expressed interest.  We discussed price.  By the end of the meeting, we were setting dates to get started.

Next day, we had a formal proposal to them.  Here’s what the standard implementation includes, and here is its price.  Here’s what the additional module includes, and here is its price.

Problem was, they heard us name the price for the standard implementation and did not hear that the “extra” module was not included in that price.  I received a follow-up phone call inquiring about that, and a few days later we received notice that the company was “too busy” right now to implement our solution and wanted to postpone their start date.

Unfortunately, I failed to communicate accurately the pricing that they could expect to see in the proposal.  In fact, I didn’t even think there was a discrepancy until they called.  What seemed quite apparent to me was a shock to them, and I’m sure in their eyes it looked like a bait-and-switch.

How to avoid that kind of fatal failure?  A variety of ways would be an improvement:

• Think like the buyers.  What are they hearing?
• Pay close attention to all the details if you are discussing price.
• Write it down while you are talking, and use your notes in your proposal.
• Don’t give numbers in conversation, only in writing.

At The Whale Hunters, we constantly urge our clients to consider the fears that buyers may harbor about doing business with them.  The fear that you are not truthful, in my view, tops that list.

We’ve had a bunch of sad stories in our #FatalSalesFailures series–hard lessons learned through someone else’s experiences.  Those are all opportunities for you to avoid learning them by yourself?

Do you have a Fatal Sales Failure story?  Please send it on, and we would love to feature it on the Whale Hunters Wisdon blog.  barbara (at) thewhalehunters (dot) com.

Image courtesy dailyhaha.com

Today’s guest blogger is the inimitable Gini Dietrich, queen of Chicago, CEO of Arment Dietrich, and author of the wildly popular Spin Sucks blog. 

I’m a big believer in integration. Not integration from the perspective that you’re saying the same thing through every communication channel, but from a “breaking down the silos” point-of-view.

You see, marketing, public relations, advertising, HR, IT, customer service, and all of the other disciplines are supposed to work in tandem with sales. Not in silos, but together.

But it rarely happens that way, which is why we see the fatal silo mistake in B2B sales.

Consider this: You’re on the road, meeting with clients, prospecting for new business, and attending conferences, trade shows, and cocktail receptions.

You’re rocking your meetings and ready to get back to your desk in a couple of days to start closing some new deals and make your numbers for your year-end bonus.

Back in the office, your colleagues have created a campaign that integrates direct, email, public relations, and print advertising around a series of webinars. The webinars are created to generate leads that they’ll then hand over to you for conversion.

You get back to your desk and start closing the deals you started on the road. The webinar series finishes and you’re handed 1,000 new leads.

Which do you focus on first?

I’ll bet I know the answer and it’s not the 1,000 new leads your marketing peers handed you.

So what’s the point?

Well, marketing has been told to integrate so they’re using all of the disciplines to promote the webinar series. And that’s where they’re held accountable and how they make their bonuses.

But they’re not integrating with you, nor are you integrating with them. You’re doing your job and they’re doing theirs. And those 1,000 potential customers? They’re left with a bad taste in their mouths.

Following are six ways to avoid this fatal mistake:

1. Lobby senior leadership to make total integration part of the bonus program for every employee.

2. Develop a team, made up of one person from each discipline, to work towards the same business goals and break down the silos.

3. Meet every other week (at a minimum) to discuss upcoming activities, goals, and review the dashboard that everyone reports in to.

4. Work with senior leadership to consistently convey the integration message and support the efforts of the team.

5. In the webinar example used above, work with your colleagues to determine how/when the series will be held and create a process for following up with the leads that are generated. It could be an email drip campaign or it can be personal phone calls. That’s up to you, but what’s important is the pre-determined process.

6. Create a system for complete transparency so people move out of their comfort boxes and are willing to work together, instead of in their silos.

In some ways, this is change management and, in others, you’re going to be asking senior leadership to do something out of the norm.

But if you think about all the time and energy you spend on the road and how many deals you close that way vs. creating a webinar series that generates hundreds or thousands of leads, where would you rather spend your time?

More on this topic of sales, marketing, and PR silos from Frank Strong, Chad Root, and me (Barbara Weaver Smith).

Today’s guest post is from Chad Root, President of Spearhead Marketing and Certified Partner of The Whale Hunters.

The biggest sales mistake I’ve seen is failure to invest in branding, advertising, public relations and web technology.

For companies that have historically been heavily invested in sales salaries, commissions or one-off trade-shows, proper marketing investment may require divesting in sales in order to invest in marketing.  Otherwise, marketing will always be seen an additional expense because it wasn’t in last year’s budget.

It becomes very clear that marketing has a higher return on investment for certain stages of business development than sales when you break down the desired outcomes:

B2B organizations should all desire an increase in each of the steps in this cycle.  So what is the best way to go about it?

Best Practice #1:  Get help with branding.

Does your company have a unified brand or do your individual salespeople have their own brands?  When you’re responsible for growing a business and not just your own commissions, clearly organizational success should be the goal.  Is this a sales challenge or a marketing challenge?  It’s a marketing challenge, yet many companies turn this over to salespeople.  Getting outside help on branding makes sense for many reasons.  One, it’s easier for others to compare you to your competition when they have an outside perspective.  Two, it’s not likely that you have the level of technical and creative talent on staff to pull off successful corporate identity, advertising, public relationships and web marketing initiatives.  Even very large companies with in-house agencies go outside for inspiration, innovation and specialized execution.  For more on this topic, view our SM-art Sales & Marketing introduction video.

Best Practice #2: Sales needs to be involved in nurturing new leads that come in through marketing channels.

Great sales people have both empathy and ego.  When it’s comes to ego, it can sometimes get in the way of nurturing new leads.  Attention salespeople: Set your ego aside just enough that you can be grateful that new leads are coming in the door.  Keep in mind, the lead will not be ready to buy today. Give marketing some direction on how to best nurture the lead along and make personal contact with the lead when the timing is right.

Best Practice #3: Encourage new ideas and creative ways to utilize marketing tools in the sales process. 

“How-to” videos, demonstration kits, online assessments, photo scrapbooks for project management, etc. These are all “marketing investments” that can have a huge impact on how many leads make it into the sales pipeline.

Best Practice #4: Teach your sales people to be Sales Professionals.

Sales pro’s are hard to find.  Just because you can cook, doesn’t make you a
chef.  We recommend The Whale Hunters because it’s centered on organizational success and will teach a salesperson how to be a valuable leader in their company and industry.

With a certified Whale Hunter running point, your business development cycle of closing sales  in your pipeline, maximizing lifetime client value and developing referrals will be a natural way of doing business.  Keep in mind, these steps also need marketing support.

For more on this topic, read Why Can’t Sales and Marketing Get Along?

For help creating a balanced sales and marketing budget to meet your company’s growth objectives while maximizing return on sales and marketing investment, contact Chad Root at Spearhead Sales & Marketing.

Spearhead Sales & Marketing
223 S. Main St.
Elkhart, IN 46516
574-294-6900
www.spearheadsalesmarketing.com
croot@spearheadsalesmarketing.com
Twitter:@chadroot

This week I featured five guest bloggers on the topic “fatal sales failures” and how to avoid them.  Here’s a recap:

Chris Conrey on how to treat the front line people.

Merlin Ward on not sounding too good to be true.

Barbara Hauser on mistakes of avoidance.

Jill Konrath on the biggest goof sellers make with hot prospects.

Dave Cooke on why your opinion doesn’t count–until it does.

I have more great people slated for the coming week:  Gary Hart, Gini Dietrich, Margie Traylor, Anthony Iannarino, and more.  I hope you’ll join us and let us know about YOUR fatal sales failures and how you learned to avoid them!

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 contribution to Fatal Sales Failures comes from Barbara Hauser, The Whale Hunters Certified Partner in Weston, Florida and president of Barbara Hauser Associates.

As I work with accomplished sales teams and their managers around the world, I experience a common phenomenon that I see as a fatal mistake for their organizations.  I see it as the fault line in many sales cultures that runs from the top down – and it shows up like the monkeys who can see, hear and speak no evil – no offense intended.

When business is on an upward, growth curve the monkeys can’t see the things that might threaten progress.  The blindness often keeps the monkeys from seeing how misguided compensation systems create competition internally and drive a wedge between departments.  It also tends to hide unnecessary costs and overhead and sees competition as a nasty speck of dust on their computer screens.  After all, things are good!

The monkeys are also hard of hearing during these times.  They listen to the opinions they agree with and filter out what they don’t like.   In some cases, they are so focused on talking and delivering the business case, they don’t even slow down long enough to give the customer a chance to get a word in edgewise.   Customer complaints are just static in the background, especially towards month end, a “no” isn’t really a “no” with legitimate reasons that could guide our offers– it’s an excuse to discount deeply to show the customer that they can’t make a good decision without our help.

The monkey habit that I think makes this a fatal mistake is that while things are on a roll,
there’s a tendency not to speak up on issues that need to be resolved.  With an attitude of wanting “solutions, not problems,” much of the early intelligence that sellers pick up from the market never makes it as credible data and evidence onto management’s radar screen. Instead, sales strategy that pushes people to do more of the same and try harder to perform arises from the insane logic (which seems totally reasonable at the time) that sellers could produce more if they wanted to – they just don’t have the “buy-in” and “commitment” they need.

3 things that will help you avoid the monkey trap

 1)   Hire an outside coach or consultant to challenge you and your team’s perspectives.  Find out who your best competitors are in your industry and research what they’re doing differently.

2)  Put feet on the street to listen closely to current and past clients.  Use the net promoter score or similar tool to rate their willingness to refer you to others.  Keep your focus on creating an outstanding customer experience.

3)  Train your staff continuously.  One of the greatest fears any adult performer has is to admit that they don’t know how to do something.  Help people feel comfortable expressing their limitations by being a good role model.  Make learning a number one team priority.

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!