SalesSquawk

Toxic Marketing

Hey wait, marketing isn't toxic.  marketing drives revenue to companies.  Doesn't it?  Sure it does.  Just the way all selling drives revenue to companies.  In sales though, we learned a long time ago that selling is based on relationships and relationships are based on Trust, Credibility and Interest.  Trust is based on the buyers believing that their agenda is the most important in the transaction and the seller is there to serve them.  

In the exact instant that the buyer believes the seller only cares about the sellers agenda, trust, relationship and the sale all go out the window.

Toxic Marketing is the exact instant that the buyer believes the marketing effort is no longer there to serve them but instead support the marketers agenda.

Unfortunately, the company putting out the marketing rarely if ever knows it has happened.  Marketing, by its nature can only be measured by it's capacity to bring in more dollars than were received before the marketing intervention.  It cannot measure how many people were turned off and chose to not buy, nor return to that company

Even more unfortunately, many companies don't care.  Shame on them.  While it is possible to find out if marketing is toxic, to do so requires surveys and customer interaction requesting that information.  Of all the things you have purchased in the last three years, how many companies asked you about your experience?  Some do, most don't.

Now here is the real question, of all the companies you DID NOT buy from, how many asked you why not?  Right.  They generally don't even know they were shut out do they?

So instead the leaders of marketing departments happily prove their success by additional sales and no one in corporate leadership cares about how many people think poorly of the company and encourage purchasing elsewhere.

For some reason or another this is pretty annoying to me and I am looking forward to shooting video or recording examples of poor marketing to share with you.

If you have examples, will you let me know?  Even more importantly, if you hate the idea, will you let me know that sooner?

Very respectfully submitted,
Michael D Goodman

The Secular Value of Spirituality for Sales People

Well that title is a mouthful, isn't it?  Lots going on there and tons of room for conflict in all kinds of ways.  So if you could, for just a moment, suspend all your thinking on religion, judgement, and preconceived notions on what I am about to say.  Track with me if you would the opening construct and why it matters and know it is not my purpose to persuade you to my spiritual beliefs here.

Sales, as a career, is harder because of what we face in relationships than because of the mechanics of sales.  

The effort of sales activity regularly places us in a perception of conflict with our buyers in both their minds and our own.  It happens in our actions, our presentations, our words, our products and in everyones expectations.  

You see, the nature of our world is that we are effectively asking someone to, "change" which by itself is often an uncomfortable proposition, and to do so, the buyer has to recognize that need.  The range of "fight or flight" responses they throw back at us if we don't recommend change at the right time (when they are ready) is simply amazing.  

Unfortunately, what often happens is that one of their strategies for resisting change runs headlong into one of our personal triggers for being "good enough" or valuable as a human being.  Many times, this head-on collision of wills and feelings happens so fast we are never aware they have occurred.  The Cognitive Behavioral Psychology folks call this an, "automatic thought" because it has long since been relegated to a habit in our mind.

When we enter the field of sales, if we are going to be effective we must turn our attention to what is important to our buyers.  Unfortunately, we don't give up our automatic thoughts automatically!  Consequently we WILL have these moments, when their responses to us will cause us to have thoughts and feelings which don't really promote great salesmanship. When we act on 'em, we injure the relationship and the sale.

If you are with me so far, congratulations, it's kind of dry, I know.

Here is the payoff.  

By having a spiritual faith that goes beyond ourselves, our belief in our value is determined by that faith.  While this is always a growth process for us mere humans, being on that path allows us to recognize and give up our own automatic thoughts that feel bad during a sales effort much quicker and refocus on our customer and their needs for the betterment of the sale.

The greater overall impact here, a spiritual faith, helps release the emotional beliefs of all value judgments we carry that tell us we are not good enough.  More than just in our sales career, this freedom is powerful for all of our relationships and all of our efforts.

Feel free to comment, either for or against if you like.  I know this is only the first post on this topic I expect to share as we go forward and I would love to have your thoughts for some of the rest of them.

Respectfully Submitted
Michael D Goodman

Firestorms, Tornado's and Hot Sales

The road between Sioux Falls and Omaha meanders across cornfields, rivers and farmhouses.  A perfect place to think through the previous weeks successes while driving to make a plane back home.  15 years ago I had begun thinking about what I wanted to do in my life that mattered and I realized that if I took my skills at selling and managing sales people, adjusted it a little bit, I could fundamentally change the way sales is done globally.

The proof of that concept showed up last week and I think Mother Nature wanted to let me know she was paying attention.  I work with a company that has 2 major divisions of sales people and their summer sales conferences were both this week.  I was the leader of both, one in Flagstaff, Arizona, one in North Western Iowa.  

The day before going up to Flagstaff to organize the conference, I received a call letting me know that there was a fire outside the hotel, Little America, and it had been evacuated.  The conference was on hold pending arrangements.  Fortunately the fire turned away from the hotel and we were allowed in on Sunday though all the way up the hill during the drive, clouds of smoke billowed over the city from now two fires in town.  The 30 some attendee's at the conference demonstrated an amazing shift also.  

For over a year, we have made a huge effort to get this team to move from presenting the solution to diagnosing the problem first.  At this conference they presented again.  This time though, they presented their capacity to change.  Like a battleship turning slowly, we could see the team shifting into a diagnostic mode and learning the skills to do so.  They left reporting the single best conference the company had invited them to attend.  I think they left with the comfort and confidence to try new skills out in the field.  Turns out we just had to light a little fire under them...

Off to Iowa, to repeat the process with the second division.  Flying in at midnight to the center of the College World Series required finding lodging a little ways up the road from Omaha.  Missouri Valley is really only about 15 minutes up the road and I had reservations there.  Tornadoes got there first.

GPS told me I was in the right place.  Utter darkness told me I was no place.  Apparently a tornado took out all the electricity for miles around and I couldn't see it cuz it was you know, dark.  Found a place another 40 miles up the road and made it to the conference in time.  

This team, a staid, conservative, and older team of sales people got it too.  Some of them with as much time in selling as I have in living.  This team went through the same program after a year of working with them and demonstrated an excellent capacity to twist their thinking to a much stronger skill set of questioning and listening.  Their funnels are improving and there are less clouds on their horizon.  As a sales team of Christian Curriculum, what was fantastic about this is, this team recognized a powerful way of selling with dignity and integrity, how to build bonds simply by listening and asking good questions.

Now I am riding in the car with my buddy Arturo Fuente and he is glowing, along with me about the joys of lighting up sales people to red hot effectiveness.  Looks like we are going to have a hot sales year.

Respectfully submitted,
Michael D Goodman

PS, Thanks for allowing me to wander around in my own happiness for a day.  Thanks for joining in the celebration of success this week represents of the last 15 years worth of work to fundamentally change the way sales is done.  MDG

Tomorrow - The Secular Value of Spirituality for Sales People.

Fishing? Really?

I know.  I never watch fishing shows on TV either but someone must because there it was.  Oddly enough before I flipped the channels, I got fascinated.  There is no need to panic, I am not a fishing show addict but I am fascinated by the work it takes to find a good fishing hole.  The announcer and color commentator were discussing the difference between the timing of the year, and the relevance of the location to the amount and types of fish they were catching.  You see because this particular location was in Canada, in late November before the lake froze over, the types of fish they were catching were all found at a particular depth.  Earlier or later in the year and they would be scattered all over the lake, but at that precise time, there were few places in the lake that supported that depth so the fish were concentrated, making for a target rich fishing location. 

For years, we have spoken of the value of Trust, Credibility and Interest in developing the relationship necessary for effective selling.  We should add Timing and Relevance to the "fishing" side of the equation as well.  A great prospecting or fishing trip for our customers will be made up of Trust, Credibility, Interest, Timing and Relevance.  I am guessing when you find a fishing hole with those things, you will be amazed at how effective your fishing will get.  Maybe even get your own TV show.  Let me know if you do.  I could probably watch it.

Respectfully submitted,
Michael D Goodman

The Longest Day

So I thought I would commemorate the upcoming summer solstice by writing something on it that tied together with sales pretty well.  The only thing I could tie it to however was that feeling you get, deep into a negotiation where you just want it to be over.  The pressure is high, the battle has been intense to move forward and you already know you are going to close the deal.  but in the late stages before the commitment is made, the buyer just wants to wring a few more drops of sweat out of you.

If you haven't been through it before, it is very easy just to give up, give in and close the deal the way they are working you to do.  You can.  But if you do you lose.  

Oh you got the deal, that end game only cost you a little and you have earned yourself a nice little commission to go celebrate with.  But if you want to be the professional, if you want to play in the big leagues, than think about us poor Arizonans who face summer heat like you can't imagine, and the longest day of the year seems to last forever.  In the late stages of the 21st day of June, the rest of the ride is downhill and if we forget that, it is easy to quit late in the game.

The trick to winning the day in either case is to stay focused on what got you to this point of this deal, or this point of this day.  Don't let the enthusiasm of the end creep up and take over your soul until the deal/day is done.

Keep your head in the game all day, and I guarantee, tomorrow will be cooler.  Either way.

Happy summer,
Michael D Goodman

Confusion Selling

With millions of books and billions of opinions on how to sell best produced over the last thousand years it is absolutely no wonder why people get confused on the best way to sell.  Added to the fray are the various types of selling environments, like differing sales cycles, multiple levels of authority, percentage of the total budget required and other factors and some poor sales guy with little or no understanding of how to sell in that particular market is going to learn a sales model called confusion selling.  And if it seems only natural for the sales person to be confused, imagine what that is going to do to the customer.  Looking deeply into that crevasse of overwhelming odds, it almost seems amazing that we get much sold at all.  But we do.  How?

At the end of the day, buyers buy and sellers sell.  It isn't whether goods and services are sell- able, it is whether we can sell enough of our goods and services to keep our selves and our companies earnings at their desired level.  

So how do you beat the odds?  How do you wake up in the morning KNOWING that you know what to do that day?  Confident that the effort you put in will indeed earn you income even though it is for some point in the future?

Understand the, "Structure of Sales."  The skeleton framework on which all sales reside.  Then when you read a good, "How to" book, you have some concept of where to hang that information to improve your own efforts.  When you achieve success with this new knowledge your confidence will soar and your comfort level for generating revenue in the future will skyrocket.  Just like a farmer is fairly certain his efforts will produce crops though a few months away, you will know you can produce sales at will because you understand what goes where, and why.

Respectfully submitted,
Michael D. Goodman

PS, want a quick diagram of the structure of all sales?  Drop me a note.  I just created one for a couple of sales conferences I am running and I am happy to share it with you.

The Big Idea

He was beating me up about it and the problem was, he was right.  Like so many salespeople I wanted to drown my audience in content that mattered to them, I knew it did, I had seen it work for others and I was excited to share it.  Only thing is, like many of our customers, my audience could only accept so much at a time, process it, and then determine if they wanted more.  His big idea?  Simplify.  What a concept!

While preparing for a National Sales Conference, I was building the content I knew could absolutely take this sales team to new heights.  His thought hit me like a ton of bricks.  How many times have I advised sales professionals not to talk so much.  I have been overjoyed at their success as they finally learned not to "feature dump" all over their prospects.  Here I was, in my own way, doing the same thing.  Silly me.  Today, the week before the conference, I live by what I know works.  "Less is more."

Respectfully,

Michael Goodman