2009 November Archive - Salespodder: because today’s salespeople should be tomorrow’s chief execs

Nov 13, 2009 0

Price Discovery

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I recently treated myself to a touch of wine-tasting. I was startled at how every Cape wine farm displays their prices. As I’ve blogged before, you should never present your prices in a way that looks like an invoice.

For a prospect’s initial consumption at the wine farm, they all display a sheet of paper so it’s the first thing you see on the bartop which is precisely that; a blank invoice. Even ready to fill in the blanks for your credit card details.

You can’t help but be frustrated at the trick they’re all missing. So much so that I brainstormed on it all the way home. It would be simple to use the other side of the sheet to be the one that visitors first see.

On it you can indeed list the wines, but in context of their history, intention and crucially, allowing some jotting down of how much and why the taster liked them. Then by all means when you’ve taken a shine to one or two, turn the page and order away.

Even when solution salesreps are lucky enough to have a marketing department that creates catch-all collateral, the pricebook presentation is hardly ever how you’d like to show the money first-time around. A little extra work to help personalise them to match the marketplace’s thought process (aligned to how buying decisions are progressed) can reap huge dividends.

Nov 11, 2009 0

Are You In A Chain?

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I heard a decent joke on Friday night courtesy of an engaging chap who owns, among other things, a huge metal bashing plant so successful that he helped to make the new seats for all but one of the stadiums S Africa is building for next year’s World Cup. He was getting across his frustration with how the world economy seems to work.

A man walks in to a hotel wanting a room for the night. He asks the person on reception, who just happens to be the owner, if there are any available and how much they cost.

The owner replies that there’s a special price for cash - just 200.

The man thinks it sounds good so hands over the bills. He then decides to see the room, so is taken there by the bellhop.

The owner then rushes to the nearby butcher and gives him the 200 to clear his overdue meat debt.

The butcher then takes the 200 and pops across to the abattoir to pay what he owes for animals over the past few weeks.

The slaughterhouse manager then walks across to the farmer, as they still owe for lots of livestock, and gives them the 200.

The farmer then visits the local, ahem, escort. He hands her the 200 for various services she has provided.

She then goes to the hotel. She finds the owner and hands him 200 that she’s behind on for room rent.

The owner says thank you and pops the 200 on the counter.

Then the man reappears. He says that he no longer wants the room. The owner returns his 200.

As money circulates around the world, maybe as solution sellers we are sometimes in a similar chain, but don’t realise it?

Nov 10, 2009 0

Just One Page

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As I merrily helped put together a document for “Executive” consumption, I stated that a certain topic wasn’t succinct enough. Protests abounded. They had so much to say that it simply all had to be kept in.

The problem I had was that the info didn’t fit onto a single page.

Unaware that this stipulation could be so contentious, I quickly realised that I was required to explain this revolutionary concept.

So impassioned was my case that I even evoked the age of parchment and quill.

One of the earliest business lessons I got was when a Board member asked me for info, only to suggest that the data I’d proudly prepared was illegible.

Realising that I was wet-behind-the-ears, the chap took me to one side and showed me how to present it on a single piece of paper. Managers, he told me, with such short attention spans coupled with hatred of complexity, must never be given anything on more than one page.

I even remember joking with him that I hoped his ‘office automation’ lesson that helped me achieve his aim hadn’t cost the £350 that it was then customary to pay for a day’s such ‘tuition’.

Brevity, I learned, counts.

It’s a maxim that has happily stayed with me ever since. Whether it be a topic in a business plan, a description of a process, or a benefit expressed in beautiful hard cash, it always sticks to a single page.

Nov 4, 2009 0

Boost Your Reputation

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I caught a snippet the other day where a PR consultant (formerly of the UK’s Press Complaints Commission) mentioned an old adage that ‘reputation’ is based on just three things:

what you do,

what you say, and

what others say about you.

I sense this suggests the following process for all sellers:

Consider how and with whom you might measure these
Deduce your standing on each, and finally
Determine and enact how you can (verifiably) raise your scores

Nov 3, 2009 0

The Difference You Bring

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I chatted over a drink with a chap that was once at an international finance summit. Attendees included Gordon Brown, in his then capacity as the UK’s purse-string holder.

He noted that in the technical detail of such forum, he posed one key question for Brown. After joking that he’d soon inherit the top job (a thesis to which Brown apparently displayed a fateful deference) the questioner asked what would he do to be different.

The answer was that Brown seemed to abhor the antagonism and vitriol in politics, so wanted to re-introduce the notion that everyone shared the same core values. He wanted a tighter feeling of togetherness, with all concerned pointing in roughly the same direction. In short, he wished to propel a sense of Britishness.

Whether you agree with his left-of-centre stance or not on general policy, it is intriguing to note that he had a plan for bringing a difference. It’s a thought that many sales operations would benefit from further developing themselves.

Nov 3, 2009 0

Breaking The Unbreakable

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A couple of weeks later, you’re maybe ready to laugh about it. In the days before laptops I remember walking up shaky portacabin stairs in a gale-strewn mid-winter with a colleague and dropping a ludicrously expensive and commensurately weighted server. The damage suffered meant that the machine would turn itself off at the most inopportune moments, leading whichever one of us was closer to pretend to have accidentally kicked out the power cable and making jokes of it.

I have seen so many products demo’d over the years that I judge producing the ideal demo process as a science belonging in a class of its own.

I heard a fun story the other day about a one-time rep in his early Seventies’ days who boasted an unbreakable product. It was a polycarbonate lightbulb. He proudly told his prospect how nothing could crush it, so he dropped it onto the floor for proof.

Crash.

Apparently he was let down by a key glue not being sufficiently affixed rendering the device’s strength impotent. Smashed to smithereens, you can’t help but share a laugh with the prospect.

When reflecting on this story, it made me recollect about what makes demos fall down. It’s usually in two areas. Firstly, the person conducting the demo doesn’t quite have the familiarity that they need (or think that they may have) with the product. Second, the demo consists of simply listing the features of what they see before them.

There is a third, more subtle trap that those who do manage to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls can stumble into. It can be summarised as show-tell-show. This is wrong. You should always tell-show-tell. A nuance yes, but a critical one.

tell-show-tell