80 years of research tells us so……….

I have just spent a highly energetic day with the sales teams from three local radio stations here in Yorkshire.

Our topic of conversation was how to thrive in the challenging times ahead and the purpose of today’s blog is to summarise some of the research used in my presentation to the group. But before we get into that my first thoughts are to congratulate the management team of radioaire, vikingfm and hallamfm for holding such an event when many other companies are postponing or cancelling such training.

radioaire sales team smiling through the storm

 In the words of Nicky Pattinson, a fantastic motivational speaker who kicked off  the day for us, “sales people are the only people who are going to get us out of this mess”.

My sentiments exactly Nicky!

Anyway here is a summary of some of the key research into advertising effectiveness undertaken since the 1920’s. The quality of research methodology varies across the decades but the message is pretty consistent.

There are endless stories of the companies that have heeded this advice and those who have not.

We looked at examples of advertisers who made most of the recession including Kelloggs, Habitat, Black Magic and Virgin. Every company has their own examples and stories of clients who have taken the longer term view and succeeded. The research is interesting and useful but it is the stories that you tell that are most persuasive.

Those of us who sell products that are easy to cut, advertising and training being two key examples, must make sure that the clients really understand the true implications of making the cut as well as the advantages to be gained in terms of sales and market share in the short term and in the long term.

I have just spent a hectic hour contributing to a web chat with around 30 software entrepreneurs on the Business of Software social networking site. Our  topic was sales and selling and for about an hour I tried my very best to keep up with a constant flow of questions and  comments on how to attract and convert prospects into customers. I feel somewhat guilty that my lack of touch typing skills meant that my answers lacked some of the detail that they might. By way of recompense I will pick out a few of the key questions and try and answer them here a little more fully.

 One of the group asked what do you do when the client goes quiet, that is you have made an initial contact generated some interest and the client has gone away to think about it. If you call too soon you are being pushy, if you leave it you run the risk of losing the business.

So some rules to help with this

Always suggest a time when you will call the client. (preferably before they say I’ll get back to you..). This leaves you in control and feeling confident about calling. (you are after all just keeping a promise).

If the client says “I’ll think about it” ask “when should I schedule our next call?”

Give the client a reason for calling them back at your suggested time for example “we have some new user feedback being published on Friday I will give you a call then.

If a client insists that they will call you and that you shouldn’t call them take this as a signal that they are either not convinced or they do not have enough purchasing power to buy. Try and push your questioning a little further “at this stage what issues are concerning you” or “may I ask for your initial impressions.” You may be able to tease out any concerns and send them away in a more positive frame of mind. However still leave the call saying that you will keep them posted of any developments in the mean time.

If the client fails to take your call and then goes quiet you have a few options.

The upfront approach, “When we last spoke you asked me to keep in touch, but I haven’t heard back from you I am just a little concerned that I may be emailing you unnecessarily. Can you suggest a time to speak.”

The indirect approach, call their PA or assistant (assuming they have one ) and explain the situation and because you don’t want to leave things unresolved could they suggest an appropriate time for you to call.

In truth clients go quiet for all sorts of reasons, they get distracted, other priorities arise, or they simply need time to think. Gentle polite persistence is the right and the assertive thing to do. Clients who get angry when you call at an agreed time or keep them updated with new developments, are often just masquerading as decision makers don’t let their reaction colour your wider thinking.

So much business is won simply by being front of mind at the time the client decides to buy. If you fade into the background you run the risk of the client finding another solution while you wait for them to call.

So keep the initiative, dont worry about the really grumpy client , they are not typical of the wider population and always remember it is better to be seen to be too keen than not to give a damn.

I have just done a favour for a client they asked me to review a presentation that they are making as part of the tender process for a significant chunk of business.

The presentation arrived (all 18Mb) of it and within three pages could see a reason not to do business with this company.

Slide 1 Introduction A presentation for X by Y (Fair enough I suppose)

Slide 2 A fourteen point agenda slide , bullets 18pt no visual content at all ( I suppose they were working on that age old maxim tell em how you are going to bore them, bore them , tell em how you just bored them.)

Slide 3 A brief overview of their company history and operations.(all about us)

Sadly I see this all the time, a golden opportunity to impress and engage the group is wasted with a formulaic and self centered approach.

When I took this up with my client (who doesn’t mind me writing this so long as I protect their anonymity) They argued that they always started their presentations this way…! In fact they could point me to an internal document from their Marketing department that suggested this was the company standard.

Talking about your agenda and your company at the start of a presentation is almost always counter productive. In a competitive tender the client wants to find out why you are the right partner for them so talk about them first.

There are many ways to do this but as a default mechanism start your presentation with a review of the client’s objectives. What are their objectives? What do they want from the partnership? If you cant answer these two questions prior to the presentation then you shouldn’t really be there.

Do your prep, and remember that the presentation is all about the client, their objectives preferences and needs. If you start talking about you, people start to switch off, talk about them first and you make it easy for them to tune in to your presentation. When you have their full attention, when they are fully engaged then you can tell them why you are their best solution.

If you have an important pitch coming up and you want to talk it through drop me a line it is amazing how your chances of winning (or at least achieving your stated objective ) can be dramatically improved with just a few amendments.

I spent a very busy weekend out in the snow that has covered much of Britain over the past couple of weeks.

After some serious sledging (one of the benefits of living in the Pennine Hills ) and a great deal of shoveling snow so as to be able to get my car out for work on Monday morning (a downside of living in the Pennines) I slumped exhausted in front of the t.v.

Nothing much caught my attention so I settled into a re run of Casino Royale (the latest version). I am a Bond fan and I love this film. It is amusing to think how much of a success this new version of the the Bond franchise has been; the two Daniel Craig films have each out performed in relative terms all the films that have gone before them. We have all come to accept the new Bond and the new style of film making.

Yet lets not forget the resistance that was generated in the media and on the internet when Craig was announced as the new Bond . Websites such as Craignotbond.com and Noblondebond.com attracted much attention. Debates on the fan sites and in the media were intense. Putting Daniel Craig in the role made no sense. He was blonde and everyone knows that Bond has dark hair, he was not as well known as some other rivals for the role, and he did not seem particularly good looking. (certainly by comparison to his predecessor) How could he possibly play Bond.

What the customers/fans did not appreciate was the new direction that the franchise was taking. In the tech savvy and occasionally dangerous world that we live in we struggle to believe in master criminals intent on taking over the world or in invisible cars. We do however understand how brutal the world can be and  post 9/11 how brutal things can happen to ordinary people. Jason Bourne and Jack Baur had also changed our expectations of what secret agents do.

If the producers of Casino Royale had listened too closely to the fans they would have hired a Brosnan /Connery look a like.  They would have created an evil genius baddie, brought Q out of retirement and hey presto the faithful would be happy. However the “faithful” do not make a film profitable, its the rest of us those who enjoy a good thriller,but who don’t feel the need to spend our time on the fansites ,that really matter.

Leadership is about taking note of what your most loyal customers say but not being in thrall to it. It is being able to see the wider forces shaping your landscape and having the courage to strike out in a different direction when the situation demands it. It is also about having the confidence to sell your vision of the world to others.

The new Bond team are to be commended for their insight and their courage and in time someone will have to reinvent he character once again. I predict that when that time comes the faithful will stand against any radical changes to the hero they have come to know, the websites will be launched to campaign for more of the same, but if the film makers do as good a job as they have with the latest Bond they will fade away and we will all settle in to the new era refreshed and excited by the prospect of something different.

Leadership is about making the right decision over the popular one.

Personally though I still miss Moneypenny!

Just about every salesperson that I have ever asked has admitted to bouts of “phone fear”. Simply put this is a state of anxiety that grabs us as we reach for the phone, that makes us hesitate to pick up the phone and start dialing and starts a chain reaction in our minds that leads to procrastination and distraction. Phone fear makes any job (even rearranging your filing cabinet) more appealing than actually calling up prospects and generating some business. If professional sales people experience this, then one must feel for the entrepreneur who is in business because they had a great idea, a grand design and all they really want to do is develop a thriving business. Having to take on the sales role without an inclination for selling can be daunting and many entrepreneurs suffer bouts of phone fear. So here are a few tips that have helped me over the past twenty years or so and still do when my confidence dips and the fear takes hold.

#1 Make a game of it, imagine that you are on a reality t.v. show or in a team completing a business simulation, if you knew the whole thing was a game how differently would you react, how scared would you really be of making the call. As one of my former colleagues used to say “Fake it,til you make it”. I know it sounds a bit mad but I have used this technique over and over again. The fear just melts away in the process.

#2 Sell in half an hour chunks, and schedule the chunks early in the day. Make it your aim to just keep calling for half an hour, don’t worry about the results, they don’t matter what matters is that you don’t stop. Scribble notes as you go and do your admin once the selling is over. When you have done one half hour schedule the next one. Your only aim is to get through to clients and give it your best shot.

# 3 Challenge your negative beliefs with empirical evidence. Our negative beliefs are often played out in our minds as a critical voice, the voice that says “they wont be interested”, “your not good enough”, “everyone thinks that your being pushy”. Try my 20 Call Challenge Make twenty effective calls and keep a note of the clients reaction and see how accurate your beliefs are. During a recent sales campaign (I had a new product to take to market) I started to have doubts as to whether I was being a bit of a pain. I took the twenty call challenge and with every contact I spoke to I measured their response on a scale of 1-10, 1 being hostile 10 being welcoming with open arms. After twenty calls only one was hostile, there were no 10’s but the mode average score was 6.5. So its not true when my critical voice says no one wants to talk to me in fact only one in twenty people are hostile to the approach, the majority are reasonably approachable and willing to talk (this doesn’t mean they always want to buy your product by the way ). Negative beliefs have trouble surviving in the cold hard light of factual evidence.

# 4 Sell with some one else, time goes faster, the support is always welcome and peer pressure keeps you calling.

#5 Practice your openings and introductions. The hardest part of any cold calling is the first twenty or thirty seconds after which the nerves seem to fall away. Have a few different introductions rehearsed and ready to go so your first impression is always a good one. One of the best sales people I ever met had only three introductions which he actually kept on a piece of paper in front of him. Not once in three years did I hear him deviate from the introductions nor did he ever refer to the piece of paper. In his words the introductions were his way of easing himself into the call with confidence and the paper was merely a comfort blanket, an insurance if you will, just incase he felt nervous.

A little anxiety about sales calls is perfectly natural, in truth all the best sales people I deal with say that they feel it. I believe that some anxiety about the call shows that we care about the impact we may have on others. Sales people who have no fear generally don’t care about the clients, they care only about the sales they can make. Be aware that feeling some fear is natural, however you always have a choice about how you respond to that fear. Treat the fear as front page news and it grows, treat it as an interesting by product of how much you care about your product and your client and it becomes manageable. Your initial fears can either escalate or decline depending on how you choose to play the game.

If you have any questions about these strategies and others that can help overcome phone fear drop me aline or post them here.

To be somewhat Polly-anna about our current economic situation, I have always believed that we tend to do our most interesting and exciting work when our backs are ,so to speak, to the wall. I set up my last company in the early 90’s during what was a puny little recession in comparison to our current (mighty and global)credit crunch.A friend of mine who was in banking at the time tried to persuade me to stay put in my job arguing that the first two things to disappear in a recession were advertising and training, and with a grave nod and a headmasterly stare he reminded me that we were about to start a business training people in advertising. In truth I think that business was all the better for being a “bootstraps” venture. We couldn’t buy any training content so we wrote our own, we couldn’t hire a sales team so we went out and pitched for every scrap of work. As we grew the knowledge that we could survive and thrive in a credit restricted world gave us huge confidence even when he banks were throwing money around.

Design guru and retailer Terence Conran in a recent Guardian Magazine talked about the Habitat experience in the UK in the 1970’s. Habitat an up market furniture and interiors store responded to the 3 Day week, the energy crisis and the collapse of the UK economy by launching an affordable range called Basics, this was subsequently franchised to a Japanese company called Seibu who subsequently opened stores called Basics which eventually changed it’s name to ………………………Muji.

Just think if you have an idea to save your customers money in the short term, you could end up with a brilliant product or service in a few short years.

Be brave, but don’t be stupid, real innovation comes from resourcefulness and playfulness, when you haven’t got enough to do what you’ve always done do something better.