SalesSquawk

Social Media and Control of The Sales Process

The question was simple I thought.  Apparently not.  “If I want to use social media as a sales prospecting tool, how do I go about controlling the process so that like any other prospecting tool, I know how much of what activity will result in what amount of revenue?”  I have asked the question of multiple social media marketing professionals and of the 500 or so of my sales friends who make up the email communications list on Yahoo called AzSalesPros.  I was scolded, chided and given excellent guidance on social media protocols, tools, and websites but none of it dealt with a sales strategists guide to developing a winning formula.  While I am quite comfortable proving my own formulae, I like any sales professional, will need to know how many exposures to my value propositions will result at the end of a sales cycle in how many dollars over what period of time.

The first problem is that the notion of social media as a prospecting tool goes against the grain of what many people believe the value of social media is.  A social tool, period.  At the same time I was being chastised for misunderstanding that notion, literally thousands of tweeters (the official, if whimsical term for twitter users) were advising other tweeters how to use social media for revenue generation.  One of my personal heroes in the mix, Gary Vaynerchuck was in fact creating a video of the value and how it not only grew his wine store from a million dollar a year business to over six million dollars a year.

The second problem is that no one really knows how to convert their efforts on social media into a specific revenue number.  For one reason, if anyone has actually measured it, they aren’t reporting the answers in any place I have yet found and the second is that actually measuring the results from interested eyeballs into actual dollars is a rather daunting task. 

To accomplish this, one must first measure how many people expose themselves to your outbound communications through your various social media outlets, from there measure the number of expressions of interest in your value proposition are acted upon and from there how many people actually enter your sales cycle and then actually close a sale.  When you find a fairly consistent number over time, you end up with a controllable sales process using social media.

Once you have that information, you can add social media to your sales efforts as a legitimate tool for prospecting.  Before you social media junkies climb all over me for suggesting that not having that information does not make social media illegitimate, please understand I am not suggesting it does.  There are hundreds of analogous stories to prove the value of social media. 

What I am specifically suggesting is that not having that information means you have little or no control of how using social media impacts your revenue stream and consequently have little or no way of turning income up or down depending on your companies capacity to deliver products or services.  For a guy like me charged with the responsibility of hitting a specific number at a specific time, that is hardly acceptable.

It is also important I think to understand that every social media outlet will have different number of time and dollars involved in generating revenue and different people with different styles will impact the mix too.  That means that while we will eventually have a generally accepted rule of thumb for all this, we will all have to prove our own models.

I am happy to report I am currently building the measurement tools into my efforts and look forward to generating at least a starting point rule of thumb on all this.  I will of course report what I find.

Respectfully (& only slightly confused) submitted,

Michael D Goodman
Twitter www.twitter.com/goodmansales
Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldgoodman

 

 

 

 

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A Dream And A Drive.

My client is a software company and my work for them takes me to limousine companies, in this instance to East Elmhurst, New York in the shadow of LaGuardia Airport.  Clearly a mom and pop kind of shop where my interactions have been with the young son with a penchant for technology much stronger than my own sons interest in video games.  Today I am making a courtesy call, to introduce myself to the young man whom I have been speaking with and his father and mother who own the company.  We have long since installed software remotely though have never met.  My hope is to meet, build our relationship, solve any problems and advance our business opportunities.  This story has nothing to do with that.

This story is about dad.  Dad is a Haitian émigré who came to this country with his Honduran wife and began work in the greater New York City area as a chauffeur.  He isn’t alone; I have met hundreds of immigrants from around the world working as chauffeurs in New York City.  Dad has 20 years in the business.  He has learned the value of quality service and taking care of his customers.  So much so that Dad developed a reputation in his limousine company as the guy who gets requested all the time by their customers.  They wanted Dad to be their driver because they knew Dad would take care of them.  Dad would get them where they were going on time and dad would make sure the luggage was where it should be.  Dad would make sure they had television available if appropriate or whatever it took to help the customer know how important they were.  He didn’t just make them feel important; he made them know how important they were to him.

Then the company changed the policy.  They wouldn’t accept requests for a particular driver.  Customers became disenfranchised with the company and few other drivers displayed the exemplary service of Dad, aka Dave.  When a customer would run into Dave, they would ask and Dave would have to explain he had no control over the situation.  It happened more than once.  Dave was frustrated and clearly his “former” customers were unhappy as well.  One day Dave carried a former regular and they exchanged phone numbers.  Later when the customer didn’t see a driver on time and couldn’t get a response from the dispatch office, he called Dave to see what was up.  Though it was a two hour drive, Dave ended up driving out to pick the guy up and take him where he needed to go.

You see, he had called the office, discovered the only person working there had closed up shop early leaving the customer stranded and gone home.  Didn’t believe anyone would call or need him.  The driver never showed up for the customer and by the time he had called Dave originally had lost all trust and confidence in the company Dave worked for.  In the two hour drive to pick up his former regular, Dave stewed in his frustration over the mistreatment of both customers and staff at the company.  He told the customer he was thinking of starting his own company.  Without hesitation the customer said to call him in the morning and he would help get Dave all the passengers from his company which happened to be a very large user of limousine services.

Dave quit the company, started a company in his basement, installed his son and his sons friends as technology support (wise choice, they are very smart kids) and began providing rides to his former regulars and everyone else he could find.  He provided home grown quality service and his company has grown.  He has been assured that even though the current economy is down and the major corporation he is providing service for isn’t using much right now that in a couple months, things would pick up dramatically and Dave is well poised to build up a great and strong business.

Dave related this story to me and he said every word with pride.  Then he told me he would be a good customer of mine.  He would have lots of drivers who would use lots of our software.  I think he was trying share with me he had every intent of growing and thanking me for believing in him as a very small business today.  He didn’t have to.  I could see it in what he has already built.  I could see it in his son and I could see it in his eyes.  He is a man with a dream that pulls him to work even during the hard times and a drive to succeed.

At the end of the day this is still America, the best country on earth for any man, woman or child with a dream and a drive to get it accomplished.  I don’t care what the news media says and I don’t care what the scared people tell me is possible or not.  I care about people who wake up in the morning and get the job done.  Go Dave go!

Respectfully submitted
Michael D. Goodman

OMG Social Media is giving me a headache...

Ok, not really one to sound like a California girl stereotype or anything but this whole social media game is cooking my brain.  I set out this week to write a simple blog about social media as a sales prospecting tool and before the week was over became thoroughly engaged in the twittersphere, committed to better blog manners, planned facebook and myspace interactions, which I am not even close to getting to, and committed to writing a white paper on controlling the sales process utilizing social media.  

The good news is my twitter influence has risen, and my followers are increasing.  Yeah.

The whole point is to simply understand the value of a campaign.  I am convinced social media is an important tool in the world of sales and marketing.  I know it is helping companies find prospects and generate revenue.  What I am learning, or working hard to discover though is how to control that process.  It ain't easy.  

I am not saying social media is a raging bull though it really kind of is.  I am saying that in the world of sales management it is critical to understand what kind of activity generates what level of interest from what demographic resulting in how much revenue.  No campaign in the world should be engaged in without testing those things first.  In the world of social media, it seems no one has tackled the issue well.

It also seems that it can be accomplished which will be the resulting white paper.  The essence is to clearly understand how many eyeballs connect with your material and of those eyeballs, how many convert to cash.

The variables here include what social media you are using and there are tons to consider. It looks like the basics will rule the roost.  Certain standards like twitter and blogging must be utilized.  Then it is a matter of determining which campaigns where cause reactions of interest.  When that is measured the dollars/time ratio to revenue will be determinable and a legitimate campaign plan can be created.

Why is this important?  Simply this.  If I am responsible for revenue development I have a certain amount of time to achieve it and a finite amount of revenue.  I must be able to develop a plan that tells me what the best use of those resources are to generate the revenue I am assigned to bring home..  If social media is soon to be the norm rather than the sphere of pocket protecting, humanphobes, than I better be able to include it in the plan and define the results to be expected.  

Social media is the norm these days though many haven't realized it yet, corporate sales protocols still require budgets of time and money and all of them have expectations of revenue.  Consequently, defining the sales behavior of social media is an important role in the development of revenue.

Please pass the aspirin.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael D. Goodman

Twitter  GoodmanSales

Doug Bruhnke And The Tag Line

I was listening to a recording of The John Adam Show on the internet recently when my friend Doug Bruhnke presented a piece on Tag lines.  He shared “Where’s the beef?” and “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” as examples of tag lines that have proven memorable and tell a story of the brand promise for the company using them.

I have been thinking about it since then and wondering, as I am sure you will when you listen to it, is my tag line a boost to the brand promise I hope I am making to my customers when I speak or interact with them.  I am ashamed to admit I have yet to find a tag line I am proud of after almost ten years in my business practice providing sales force development to small businesses and individuals.

The root of my shame comes significantly because drilling down to the roots of the brand promise is no small part of my work with my own clients and I have never before taken a serious look at my own.  I am an absolute fanatic that a business must know the value proposition of its product line thoroughly and completely by all participants in the company and they must all be expressing the same thing.  Further that what they are sharing is based on what it is the customer is buying rather than whatever it is they think they may be selling.

At an early client of mine, I went around amongst the long term employees and principals of the company and asked them what the company provided.  I was developing scripts for a sales campaign and needed to be able to whittle down the language to the quickest awareness of the ROI for the person on the other end of the phone.  I was amazed to discover no one in the company answered the question the same way and every answer was based on what they sold rather than what they thought the customer might feel is valuable to them.

The next day I dragged 100% of the employees into their conference room, brought in pizza and didn’t let them out until we were all on the same page about what the companies customers bought from them rather than what they sold.  That exercise became the foundation for the entire sales language for everyone in the company.  It was common to everyone and it focused on what the buyer was looking for. 

More importantly, every marketing piece, every sales script, every tag line, every value proposition was predicated on the language we developed in that exercise and within 90 days, we turned that company profitable.  Today, that exercise is a signature piece of the Solomon Sales System.  Today I call it the Values Inventory Exercise because the whole idea is to create an inventory of all the value a company brings to its customers.

If I understand correctly what Doug was saying on The John Adam show then, the tag line is a single encapsulation of all those values into a single short line that conveys a concentrated message of what a customer can expect when doing business with the company.

I have now done my homework and I am ready to expose my tag line for review and ridicule if you choose.  Or if you love it, you can say that too.  Either way, I will look forward to your comments and discover whether or not you think this represents me well.

“Solving the mystery of sales in small business”

Thanks for thinking about it and letting me know and Thanks also to Doug Bruhnke and John Adam for working so hard to develop small business in Arizona as well.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael D. Goodman
President
USSalesForce, Corp.
Solving the mystery of sales in small business!

480-874-3664
Twitter GoodmanSales
Linked in

Defining Sales

I have been called out.  By my mentor.  Like Kwai Chang Caine, AKA “Grasshopper” on the Kung-Fu television show from the 70’s.  “How quickly they forget” he says.  Undaunted, Unrepentant and not at all unusual, my brain goes into overtime crafting a response.  Sure, it started innocently enough; Connie Kadansky asks a great and simple question based on something she had read.  It included a definition of sales and Connie asked her friends on the AzSalesPros, communications list how this group of 500 plus sales professionals would define sales.

As the author of the Solomon Sales System it only makes sense to post back the answer already written in that work.  “Sales is creating change by choice and relationships by intention.”  Months were spent crafting that definition and why it is what it is.  It is simple, elegant and powerful.  Ok, yes, I am a bit biased. 

John Buie, from whom I have learned so much, and enjoy intensely the rare opportunities for discourse on sales we get to share, fired back the dreaded judgment of shame in my forgetfulness of not remembering the definition from his amazing piece of work called PainPowerFit.  PainPowerFit is the single best intellectual property on qualifying transactions or deals I have ever seen.  And I have seen a lot of them…

John, when he wasn’t calling me out for forgetting his definition was kind enough to re-iterate it for those unwashed and forgetful sales people who show not nearly enough respect for his intellectual offspring. His definition is "Talking to Power about Pain in specific, quantitative and referential terms (stories)."

Now you know, if I haven’t already made it clear, how much I truly respect both John and his intellectual property on sales.  Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, allow me to say, companies would be very wise to understand the model, adopt it, quit asking the government for bail out money and sell their way out of their problems versus saddling the public with their foolishness.  <replacing tongue now.>

So with that much appreciation in my soul, you can imagine how difficult it is to tell John, Uhhm, ahem, you are wrong. 

The question was to define sales.  What is sales?  Well, let’s examine sales from the perspective of the three participants in the sales cycle, the seller, the buyer and the sales professional.  The seller hires the sales professional and expects them to generate revenue by changing the ownership of the sellers product or service from his to the customer.  The seller expects the sales professional to show up, perform whatever activities are required to achieve revenue goals, whether specifically articulated or not, and is willing to pay them for that service. 

The expectations of the buyer, when not overwhelmed with fear that the sales professional is going to puke his/her personal agenda all over them is to solve a critical problem or achieve a significant gain AND that the sales professional MAY have some means of achieving that.  Because they do not know what the agenda of the sales professional really is early in their relationship, they keep some barriers in place so as not to be taken advantage of.  They have an expectation that some of the sales professionals they will be talking to will try to exert influence on them regardless of their needs and they do not want to feel taken advantage of afterwards.  Because their desire to solve their critical pain is greater than their fear of being taken advantage of, they will allow the sales professional to orbit the problem and offer solutions.  They are also extremely likely to research answers on the internet in forums, communities and websites that pertain to the critical problem.  Finally, when they find a solution that seems to best match their critical need and wherewithal capability, they expect to see a return on investment similar to what they learned would be true in their research or education phase.

The sales professional expects he/she must wake up in the morning, find people who need the product or service of the company they represent (I.e. specifically looking to create a change in their lives,) build trust and credibility to overcome the barriers to really understanding what the buyer wants and needs and aid the buyer in recognizing the return on investment his offering brings.  Great sales professionals recognize that in addition to the qualifications specifically required to solve the critical problem, RELATIONSHIP criteria fall to either the investment side or the return side of the equation in the buyers mind and the better a sales professional can fulfill those, the more cooperation and happiness he will have from the buyer going into and long after the sale.

THEREFORE, sales is “creating change by choice and relationships by intention.”

The seller expects to create change in ownership, the buyer expects to create change in needs and wants and the sales professional expects to be the creator of that change, all by choice for all of the participants.  To do so, the sales professional must have sufficient relationship development capabilities and intentionally use them to develop trust, foster credibility and discover interest to effectively be the catalyst of choice between the buyer and the seller.

I would submit however, no better explanation of HOW sales is made than my most esteemed colleague’s explanation within the PainPowerFit model.  I am also happy to report that I will be teaching that model specifically in the qualification segment of the upcoming online weekly coaching/training program and if you want to learn it as well as you can along with the rest of effective selling I am happy to get you the information.

Respectfully Submitted,
Michael D. “Grasshopper” Goodman
goodman@ussalesgroup.com
480-874-3664