The couple of dozen people I shared chats with over the weekend of  Michael Jackson’s death all praised Thriller as a spellbindingly awesome album.  No one had any problem telling me how much they liked his pre-light-skin recordings. As of right now, it’s impossible to avoid hearing his songs as you go about your daily routine and I have to admit to the enjoyment that creating a playlist of his songs on my ipod, ready for a long train trip to a client later in the week, gave me.

Surfing for background bereft of tittle-tattle, with genuinely interesting and fresh angles, yielded few fruitful searches.  Thankfully, one such gem came to me from the unlikely setting of the Harvard Business blogs, in the form of Michael Jackson and the Zombieconomy.  It reveals thoughts on why the music industry, among others, are flawed due to the inappropriate way in which they stimulate ‘growth’.

It immediately struck me as a trio of excellent ways to push sales forward in these credit crunch, recession times:

Change through authentic value

Firstly, it gives prospects in our b2b solution selling world a terrific analogy of why they should take the plunge and buy, should they be wavering.  The video link in the aforementioned blog post plays an audio file where one line can be paraphrased as ‘companies may know that they need to change, but do not necessarily know precisely how they can do so to create authentic value’.  And I’m sure we can pitch our solution as creating such true value.

Banish Unnovation

Secondly, there’s promotion of the idea of chasing real innovation, over what is termed “unnovation”.  If you can show (framed in this way) that what you offer is genuinely progressive for the prospect, then you undoubtedly move closer to signatures.  Two further points made here add fire.  Firstly, you must go against the perceived grain of “undercounting cost and overcounting benefit”, as well as ensuring that you do not exhibit  (the omnipresent and disgraceful) ‘indifference to whether clients are better off’.

Stop playing musical chairs

And thirdly, here’s one further delicious snippet:

“We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.”

How does your solution reward the “creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing” that could be done client-side?

So, for at least the rest of the year, telling a story which begins “…remember the Thriller video and all those zombies dancing…” and talk about this ‘zombie economy’ can only help distinguish you from competition.

The perpetrator of the biggest known Ponzi fraud (a bit like a pyramid scheme) Bernard Madoff, was sentenced to 150 years for crimes that were “extraordinarily evil” on 29 June.  To mark the occasion, the Beeb asked the son of one of his victims (who had committed suicide as a result of losing everything) to investigate how it all happened.  The style of the documentary was to shed light by way of describing it as a “classic long con”.

I was struck by how many solution sales pitches can come across as having attributes of The Long Con.  This is clearly to be avoided.  Whilst the logical extension of part of the inference (ie. never invest in anything) must be dismissed, the call to ensure forensic due diligence is overwhelming.

The ‘3 rules of the Long Con’ are apparently:

1. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is
2. Everyone wants something for nothing, your job is to give them nothing for something
3. You can’t cheat an honest man

In this case, red flags that suggested the investment scheme was fatally flawed included:

• Consistent monthly returns, not in themselves spectacular, but the same regardless of boom or bust times
• Every time, he’d seemed to have bought near the bottom, and sold near the top
• It was an Affinity Crime; it began in and spread throughout one specific community to which Madoff belonged
• Being on-board was pitched as belonging to an Exclusive Club (you only gained acceptance if recommended by someone already ‘in’)
• People were vigorously persuaded to keep their money in when wanting to withdraw funds
• Meticulous attention to detail in the minutiae of sending the false account statements through each month
• People rarely looked beyond the stated rate-of-return and requests to speak to dealers were denied
• A whistle-blower (a decade earlier) was ignored, sidelined and perhaps even deliberately discredited

So for us solution sellers picking the bones out of this, maybe the first lesson is not to make something sound quite so “too good to be true”.  For many successful sales people I know their natural exuberance renders this almost impossible!

I do like the compulsion this all propels to allow, even encourage proper due diligence as a mechanism to appreciably distance you from the charlatan’s charade.  As touched on above, in b2b solution selling, is there a better way of achieving this than an evaluation use of the goods or service?

During a deliciously tense Wimbledon tussle, a commentator asked 1997 Flushing Meadows Finalist Greg Rusedski what a particular tennis player should do to fight through.  He answered by passing on what every sports psychologist he’d met would say.

stay in the present

He elaborated.  Only focus on controlling what you can actually control.  Don’t think about the past and don’t get ahead of yourself.

In these credit crunch recession times, this advice seems especially apposite.  Why beat yourself up over a deal that slipped?  It’s gone, move on.  Why worry about the looming darkness that is Q4 all day long?  To dwell on possible problems may well be counter-productive.  Today is what matters, make something happen right now and tomorrow is more likely to take care of itself.

I caught a local radio interview with Sunday Times food and television critic, features and travel writer, AA Gill whilst driving down the M40.  A writer of much renown, he really came alive when putting forward his ideas on what a review should contain.  He railed against the typical outcome with the following scenario:

When you ask someone that’s just left a cinema how the film was, and they say ‘great’, what invariably happens is that upon further digging, you receive a summary of the plot.

To him this is absolutely not what a quality review should major on.  He talked in terms of portraying the emotions you experience during the item under review.  Sure, facts are important (like is the restaurant French or Italian, is the flick sci-fi or rom-com) but getting across how it makes you feel is, to him where you should be headed.

Sales stories are so similar aren’t they?  Yes, you must have a ‘fact’, preferably a cold, hard financial amount depicting benefit.  But how you get to such a punchline is vital.  Do you merely describe the steps as an ineffective narrative?  Or are you carrying the prospect along a deal-making journey of empathy, discovery and attraction?

Browsing the FT’s ‘managing in a downturn‘ video selection during a tea-break, I watched clips that discussed what Management must do during recession.

One gave the thoughts of a private equity boss, Jon Moulton.  I was frustrated that he merely narrated what he believes to be the two choices facing Managers at this credit crunch time, rather than prescribe his preferred plan of action:

“You either stay optimistic and risk bankruptcy or you go pessimistic and miss opportunity.  Most people go for the latter route, so the behaviour of people reinforces the recession and drives it forward; cutting capital expenditure, cutting out new product innovation, cutting out marketing initiatives.  These are the things that drives recession but they also mean you survive.  And people like surviving.”

Someone less prepared to talk atop a fence was Theo Papitis, for 13 years the owner of a high-street office supplies retailer.  His advice was simple; be “adventurous”.  He was excited that there are opportunities galore.  You’ve just got to find them.  His preferred starting place was to look at the business of companies that were destined to fall by way of currently being “subsidised”, a state that cannot last for much longer.

If you’re in a mindset of cutting costs, battening down hatches and ’surviving’, then surely whenever recovery comes, you’ll be less able to reap any benefits.

You regularly hear an eminent business sage say that, whilst you still have to trim (or slash) waste from your operations, during a recession you absolutely must invest in R&D style endeavours.  Only then can you guarantee longer term success.

Most of my day-job at present revolves around helping sales teams cement and maximise one particular big initiative.  This tends to concern a new product.

In most cases, the sales team has shrunk, commission plans are frozen and key accounts have dried up to such an extent that many within them are wondering how they can possibly forecast the dreaded “bath” for Q4.

Yet in each case, having a siginifcant new product, innovation or package to discuss with their marketplace is giving them something positive that contributes energy.  I feel that as far as salesteams go, innovation is key to energising a team in these tough times.  And that innovation cannot be restricted to reliance on manufacturing for the latest snazzy gizmo, but crucially, must consider package and price creativity too.

Sainsbury’s were the UK’s number one supermarket in the Eighties, only to be overtaken by Tesco in the Nineties.  They remain unsurprisingly keen to claw back their slipped ground.  Through the joy that is Noughties business reality tv, I caught a small convenience-store employee of theirs used as a guinea pig.  The plan was to see whether a person usually considered too junior for such development could be fast-tracked to management.

Thrown in at the deep end in their largest store in the country (98,000 sq ft, 800 staff, 65,000 weekly customers) his boss for this fortnight like to repeat his favourite management phrase:

“the standards you set are the standards you’re gonna get”

The definition of set here is the one which alludes to leading by example, rather than telling people what they should achieve.

This was the first time I’d heard this expression.  It’s the kind of mantra that I remember “bingo” sheets being passed around the table during my corporate time in the Nineties.  This was a derogatory act, if you’re in the dark.  Yet unlike many of those sayings, I quite liked this one.

How can you expect a prospect to instantly return your call if you took three days to answer their most recent query?

Why would a prospect be precise on data, when you’re sketchy on your prices?

What support support staff would break a neck to rush to your aid if you didn’t pull up tree trunks to help them out last time?

For solution sellers, the list can go on for a long time.

A major obstacle solution sellers face is not simply the cheaper quote, but one where a competing bid claims to offer exactly the same as you, but for way less money.

In such cases, should you be able to justify that your price premium alone unlocks the unique capabilities essential to the success of the buyer’s plan, then you’re home.

It’s not usually as easy as that though.

Another strand is to draw attention to Lifetime Values.  This involves distinguishing between Day One Costs and On-Costs.  Matters are often further complicated by the people responsible for the former not having anything to do with the latter.

I discovered today another way of gently introducing this concept to buyers in the form of TechCrunch’s iPhone app rant on Bait & Switch.

This gives insight into the classic cheaper-vendor tactic of hooking you on a seemingly remarkable low initial price, only for a myriad of previously unmentioned and expensive add-ons to be necessary as the project/relationship progresses.

Getting buyers to sit down and acknowledge the true like-for-like proposal comparison can be far from straightforward, especially when the resultant ‘hit’ would affect neither them personally nor their budgets, yet using this ‘bait & switch’ analogy could well be a winning way to move them towards this vital thinking.

At a recent out-of-hours event, the second slide one presenter showed betrayed his allegiance to the type of networking organisation only truly embraced inside America.  He trumpeted their current slogan, that you can even buy on a dollar-a-throw pin badge; “I Refuse to Participate in a Recession“.

I’m minded to accept this kind of thinking as a good thing (as I’ve blogged before at the outset of all this) yet I have felt this conclusion come under threat due to the way in which the mantra is being carried.  My unease was exacerbated by my not being able to put a finger precisely on why this was.

Then from a bizarre corner of the media, I found out exactly why.  Channel-surfing the tv looking for Lion’s rugby reaction, I bounced through a closedown message.  Here’s a photo of the screen:

I was instantly struck at how much better your anti-recession thinking could be framed using CNN’s approach.

For me, merely saying you’re not going to take part in any credit crunch slide can come across as a bit King Canute.  I feel it is also a touch too negative.

Whereas if, when someone asks you how business is going, you respond instead along the lines of your sole focus being that other r-word, Recovery, then I believe that you provide a far more potent message about where you’re at.  Hats off to CNN’s copywriter for going against the grain of tv news editors and understanding the power of Recovery over recession.

The head of the army, Sir Richard Dannatt, announced his 3-year tenure will end in August.  During the round of subsequent media appearances, I caught that he’d just “kicked off” a “lessons learned exercise” of the operation in southern Iraq.  This begins now as one had already been done on the “warfare part” and so the time becomes right he felt for looking at what followed.

I am forever amazed at how salesteams universally fail to conduct similar reviews.  A caricature it could be, but it is true.  When a salesperson wins a deal it’s because they’re the best [insert verb here].  When they lose, it’s the product fit or price’s fault.

Lost Deal Analysis as an initiative always fails.  Whatever cultural allowances may suggest otherwise, people shy away from providing potential ammo for any future detractors and instead cloaks and mirrors descend to apportion all blame firmly elsewhere.

I’ve seen this process formulised by both a form to fill-in and face-to-face meetings.  It takes a strong, supportive management style to make either of these work.  I have not yet witnessed such circumstance.

My view is that Lost Deal Analysis can work, but you need a standardised sales process in place against which to chart results.  And of course, far too few firms have one in documented form.  Also, annonymity is vital, yet hard to achieve.

I’ve found another issue is that there isn’t a person who has the time (or inclination) to own such a project.  The sales chief usually considers it too tactical for their direct involvement, and the “2 i/c” (typically with a title like Sales Ops Manager) realises it may subtract rather than add to their popularity so kick it into long grass.

Then there’s capturing why a deal was won.  I’ve spent much of my last ten years on this single subject.  The vast majority of salespeople are blissfully unaware of why they win.  I found that to dig as deep as possible often meant exposing this lack of tacit knowledge, leading to its own round of problems.

Here are four entry-level questions you can ask to institute an initial procedure in an (admittedly broad) Win Analysis, with the caveat that you should not rely on the salesperson themselves to document it:

what would you do again on future campaigns?
what will you not do next time?
what could have quickened the deal?
in a sentence, why did they buy?

I attended a presentation the other evening billed as how to fight your way through the credit crunch recession using lessons from when lawyers and accountants gain more clients.

Whilst it failed to deliver anything earth-shatteringly new or unique on this score (but then perhaps merely confirming ‘basics’ was the unspoken point even if the audience were hoping for something a little more creative), the speaker (founder in 05 of a four-person marketing consultancy, battling to increase the average marketing outlay of the 1,200 prospects in his universe to spend more than the average 2½% of revenue on Marketing) certainly believed in himself and, despite a notable absence of tangible examples from his chosen niche and client base, managed to provide a trio of useful points in his hour-long slot.

Actively Differentiate

Don’t trot out the same trite rubbish that everyone else does on their website (true partnership, genuine value-add, etc).  Think about what makes you special (or famous).  Stories are fantastically powerful with this.

Emotion Promotion

Promote emotions, and what people should feel when thinking of you or using your products.  “People buy on emotion first, logic second”.  “To influence someone you’ve got to touch them five, six, seven times”.  What can you do to keep your visibility high?  What plan can you have for these multiple touches?  Consider activities like cups of coffee, sending article (”saw this and thought of you”) and see at events.

Strategic Focus

Stressing you shouldn’t lose this, and continue to focus on areas where you shine, the possibility exists to laser-in ever closer on a key niche that you could own.  In addition, recessions tempt many to mistakenly erode their margin by reducing prices.  That this must be avoided is a fundamental point and is merely a “shot in the foot” as you “won’t sell more and it’s very hard to build [the price] back up again”.