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Jan 27, 2012 0

Client Happiness

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The rolling news I had on in the background Monday was naturally beside itself assessing the latest collation of research into that most vexed of states, happiness.

There’s been all sorts of preaching on this from Westminster’s coalition government lately. There’s even an index tracking how smiley we are in these times of economic troughs.

So we should be delighted that boffins discover just 12 secrets to banish the frowns forever.

From these mystical dozen, I soon saw the solution sell angles. Here’s how they, ahem, could look in our world when dealing with a prospect to help them become happy souls;

  • under-promise
  • find out what your prospect enjoys doing most in work
  • what do they need to accomplish just for today
  • where do they exercise ‘free choice’
  • have they a key work buddy
  • when are they engaging outside their daily cube
  • avoid comparing them to others
  • get them to ignore other’s views on them
  • never go all worrisome on them
  • help them plan and organise (just on our bid, mind)
  • promote the half-full glass at all times
  • wrap our bid in purpose and meaning

There you go, piece of cake!

Jan 26, 2012 0

Misplaced Customer Focus

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One of the most provocative, contrarian pieces in a long while, the HBR blogs recently featured results of a five-year study in customer service.

Stop trying to delight your customers pleads us to think again about the effort we put into making those that pay our wages deliriously happy with us. From over 75,000 interactions, here’s their killer finding.

…most customers just want a simple, quick solution to their problem. Exceeding customer expectations has a negligible impact on customer loyalty. Instead of providing a series of bells and whistles in customer interactions, companies need to reduce the amount of effort customers make.

Conventional wisdom is that the more we put into a transaction, the better it’ll be for us. Yet this research turns that completely around.

It is not about anything we do, ‘above and beyond’ the call of duty. It is rather all about how little the client does when they deal with us.

This has potentially widespread impact on the proactive soultion seller.

One tickling point that instantly occurred to me was that, when selling, we actively try and push the prospect into doing extra stuff. Their response often reveals a major qualifier. If they do what we ask and it was a bit of a chore, then we’re well in.

Yet in general, I really do see this as a potentially key differentiator.

What can you do to genuinely reduce prospect effort, pre-sale?

One idea that struck me was the old post-demo questionnaires that I once had buyers fill-in. Anything almost multiple choice that uncovers intel and takes minimal brain power could well be a winner.

Then you’ve the age old trick of ‘helping’ your champion client side with a piece of their internal planning. An RoI business case, a slide deck, or even full blown justification doc.

Think of all the meetings and background paperwork that your prospect may be expected to trawl through. How can you lighten that particular load? And when dealing with maybe the most important part of the whole game, consider what happens after the signature. How can you remove the workload from your customer in terms of preparing for and managing post-sale operations?

Finally, what would strike you if you conducted our own “prospect effort audit”?

Jan 25, 2012 0

Competitive Snapshot

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I’ve never been one to obsess about my competition. When they do enter my consciousness, it tends to be not for what they do, but how they do it.

Prospects, on the other hand, are a different breed. Nearly all will talk to you at length about their foes.

It’s a great topic on which to build rapport and gain insight and trust.

How do you ‘manage’ such a discussion in the field?

There are many well trodden frameworks you could deploy. Kidnap any passing first year business school learner and they’ll tell you to SWOT. Some may even bleat Porter’s Five Forces. But how can you frame your questions so that you don’t sound like you’ve swallowed a textbook?

Well, in downtime I just read an article by a leading English tech author. He sets out where he thinks the smartphone market is at right now. Beyond his obvious subject expertise, what I love about it is how simply he sums up each player. In Battle of the Smartphones, these are the six questions he asks of each;

  • Best brainwave
  • Worst decision
  • Biggest strength
  • Biggest weakness
  • What does the future hold?
  • Rising or falling?

Of course, the switched on will realise these lean heavily on SWOT analysis anyway. But they are presented in a much better conversational way.

I particularly like the idea to deduce the trajectory.

And there’s plenty of scope for personal tailoring. you could for instance ask about their best product, main gap, showpiece client or driving force.

I wouldn’t mind betting that the next time I’m talking competition with a prospect, if I used these questions then trust and insight would truly flow.

Jan 24, 2012 0

Buyer Flux Path

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The business climate has entered a next-two-hours era, which I call the Age of Flux

So goes the assessment of a one-time weather pattern researcher. Sometimes weather can be accurately predicted for days ahead, other times, you’re wild guessing even a couple of hours away. He means that everyone must now not only be merely accepting of change, however begrudgingly, but rather actively seek it out and embrace it.

The journo from whom I read this (editor & managing director of Fast Company no less, Robert Safian) even uses one of my favourites quotes, from Darwin;

It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

He recommends that you join Generation Flux. Adaptability is the standout trait. Recalibrate everything, business models and assumptions, and be fluid.

For many a buyer I’ve met such talk is scary. Any request to consider such like will see you shown the door. So perhaps, as solution sellers that by definition are permanently selling “change”, we’d do well to pinpoint where our prospect is on their Flux path.

Their receptiveness to this concept could well govern the success of your proposal.

Jan 23, 2012 0

Chasing Obsolesence

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There’s been reams of writing on Kodak’s demise. Here’s a cracking insight from one such lament. For a firm then obsessed with ‘film’ the bosses were shown a new product. Which today we’d call ‘digital’;

“In what has got to be one of the most insensitive choices of demonstration titles ever, we called it ‘Film-less Photography’. Talk about warming up your audience!”

Lost on Slide One.

Firstly, when was the last time you were conscious of the importance of your presentation’s title?

Secondly, in a daily environment where we typically have to promote change to the change averse, how do you push the reluctants forward without trampling all over everything that they (however misguidedly) currently hold dear?

In this case, perhaps the title may not have made any diffence to an audience so entrenched in Canute mode. Perhaps it may just have swung the day though. On such fine nuances can such big wins rest.

I love the title chosen way back then. Most solutions offered intend to make something obsolete. If you don’t create the new way, someone else will. So why not be responsible for the next stride forward yourself?

In our prospects, it may be a process, a way of doing things. It may be providing a whole new lease of life, a new opportunity. Either way, positioning your newness in terms of the next inevitable innovation, but which you do first, can only be a good angle.

Jan 21, 2012 0

Inbound Lead Response

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I’m currently in South Africa. A place where all the locals constantly moan about the shoddy levels of customer service nationwide. With good reason too. From disinterested government bodies and vacant parastatals, right through to corner cafes and so-called ’service’ outfits, the standard is indeed generally well below that required.

Years of frustrated dealings with the ex-public telco, Telkom - a company in urgent need of total dismantling and a fresh restart - led me to hunt out a different solution. I’d been recommended Neotel. Part of Indian colossus Tata, I hoped for better.

Yet I should have heeded my friends that in England had suffered at the hands in Indian owners in the past. They simply never make decisions.

And this stretches to not bothering with their website or enquiries.

Can you believe it. The links on their own site to the product I wanted were broken. Then, two separate contact emails from their site that I asked of whether they knew a Cape Town reseller/office both went unanswered.

What a joke.

As solution sellers, we all crave the inbound lead. And many of us are in a constant state of unforgiveness that marketing fail to provide any.

But when one comes in, how is it handled? What’s the prospect’s info request route towards you? How long should they wait for response? And what should that response involve?

Who is even tracking all this your end?

Jan 19, 2012 0

Survey Canvas

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This was my view when sipping a rare cappuccino in a local Cape Town cafe, two chaps walked in and approached the manager with this.

We’re just doing a local health and safety survey in the area. Do you know it’s the law to have a first aid kit on the premises. Do you have a first aid kit?

The answer was a disinterested nod yes of the head. The spokesman said thanks and left immediately.

Well, first the positive. At least they were asking a question. Hunting out leads. Getting off their rears and getting out there. Although quite why it took two of them, I’m not entirely sure.

Sadly, I’m struggling to picture how they’ll make hay though with this. Surely they can’t be selling solely first aid kits? If someone says they haven’t got one, what next?

It reminded me of painful pitches I was long ago privy to in the incredible world of fire extinguishers. There was supposedly once a culture of ‘it’s the law guvnor, and if you don’t buy from me right now, you’ll get a visit from the local fire officer sharpish, mate…’ Clearly not right.

So, how to improve on the pitch I heard?

No-one likes to be on the receiving end of a mandatory purchase pitch. And in this case, the tactic will yield poor ‘numbers game’ results for sure. I think you’ve got to remove yourself completely from this mentality.

I suspect that most potential buyers won’t willingly equate a regulatory requirement with an immediate need. If the problem to home in on then is not the regs, then what is it? It’s difficult to recommend without knowing the full contents of the sales bag involved, but hopefully there’s something to hang your hat on inside.

I’m reminded of the old building site reps. They’d walk onto a construction site with a bucket full of commonly used disposables. Tools, fixings, gloves. Items used a lot and replaced just as often. They hope to find someone in need right at that time. And even sell the bucket.

Maybe my dynamic duo could walk in brandishing a kit? Even sell some plasters to start a relationship? It’s a tough door-to-door world. But at the very least there should be some kind of conversation that brings out what’s in place, how often replenishment occurs, and eke out some other habit or need.

And there’s the run off in b2b-land. Assess your pitch. If there’s any element that smells of a binary one-in-a-squillion stop-go, then how can you ditch it and instead generate a proper conversation?

Jan 18, 2012 0

Escape Boss Betweeness

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Is it still the silly season? I could hardly believe that I wondered across this broadsheet article. The topic of, ahem, male anxiety was not quite what I was expecting, courtesy of Cornell University research.

We chaps need our own special friends, apparently. Not those more inclined to run off to our beau and repeat our every utterance;

“The important thing is that he can let it all hang out and know that what he says isn’t going to get straight back to his wife.”

Of course, I instantly saw the Sales parallel.

Who else other than our Sales Superior do we have when wanting to talk through dicey issues? Whether it be Manager, Director, VP or even CEO, surely we are strangled if that’s all we can call on?

Where’s that valued external ear in your sales career? Escape the trap of “partner betweeness”…

Jan 17, 2012 0

31 Million Reasons To Know Your Sentence

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Can you believe it. I stayed in on Friday night. And watched terrestrial telly. Please don’t tell my younger self.

All I got to see were old US crime shows and a generally lacklustre local South African magazine show. Trying to be in the mould of an Entertainment Today, Flash rushed along to a home-grown movie premier. The interviewer excitedly quizzed stars and director of Durban-based 31 Million Reasons.

I appreciate that post-battle editing can devilishly portray interviewees as dullards, yet the first run of exchanges was amazing. Spliced in rapid fire sequence, the question put was simply;

Sum up the movie in a sentence.

Each person paused, stuttered, and was generally flustered. Even the director.

The closest anyone got to having a worthwhile stab was, complete with faux American accent;

It’s a heist movie that kicks ass.

Now, you’d expect Hollywood film studios to boast behind the scenes armies. Diligently preparing their main luvvies for such responses. Akin to a defence lawyer painstakingly readying a key trial witness. The evidence of any such forethought in this case was cringe-inducingly absent. The same fate befell the further queries, ‘what was your favourite moment from making the movie?’ and something like, ‘what does the film say, for you?’

There is of course a compelling message here for solution sellers.

What’s your sentence? For your main product, what short, snappy, memorable and wonderfully encapsulating sentence can you repeat at a moment’s notice?

And not only for that, but what about the same treatment for your other products? Or newest add-on? Or even company’s vision?

Shamefully, I sense that the lack of these such single sentences are part of the difference between winners and losers.

Jan 16, 2012 0

The Coupon Train

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I blogged the other day about Groupon revelling in their self-description of being ‘the fastest ever growing company’. With several copycat operations setting up in their wake, it’s likely we’ve all been hit by the coupon bug.

Whether it be offers constructed specifically for a mass, community style take-up or not.

So it was with great interest I’ve read this past week about the travails of Tesco. Surprisingly, they’re a shop that most of the British media seem to love to hate. If anything tells you about the damning culture of the country, then constantly smashing one of it’s most successful ever companies is shamefully it.

Even though worries about the “tescopoly” are I believe, founded, their drive has been impressive. Until, it seems, now.

Festive season sales have ‘tanked’. £5bn wiped off their value as a result. Broadsheet gloating abounds.

A key reason appears to be that they chose to promote a huge discount campaign. Whereas their rivals all went down the coupon route. Coupons won, hands down.

Is this a one-moment-in-time event, or does it signify a trend?

If it’s the latter, then what are the implications from this retail emergence for us b2b solution sellers?

It is unfortunate that the largest weapon in our armoury often feels like the price cut. Incentives to buy based on lowering the tag are a scourge on our cut of the sale. Even if you do conclude that some commsssion is better than no commission.

Yet perhaps a coupon approach may counter such diminishing recompense?

Yes, I accept that discounts offered on the proviso of extra spend elsewhere can be a winner, yet a coupon type idea semi-formalising this could also fly, right?

Time dependent up-, link-, cross- and switch-sells could be created in a swift brainstorm session. Act now to get your marketing colleagues out of their post-holidays snooze?

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