I recently had a meeting with the CEO of a small $3M company.  He wanted to increase sales.  When I asked him what was keeping him from increasing his sales he mentioned that he was limited by his inventory, or rather matching the right inventory to the right customer.  I asked him how much he thought he could increase his sales if he wasn’t restricted.  He said he thought he could add $250-300K easily.

I didn’t really know much about his business, but since I wasn’t restricted in my thinking by his experience, I was able to give him a simple solution, and it didn’t cost him a thing. His business was regionally based.  So I asked him if he knew his competitors in the surrounding states.  He did.  I then asked him if he’d ever gone to a car dealer that didn’t have the model or color he wanted.  He said yes.  What did they do for him?  They called a neighboring dealer and ordered the model in the color he wanted.  I suggested he could do the same by setting up a cooperative inventory-sharing program with competitors outside of his area.  They would have similar inventory issues and could even buy from him.

Why couldn’t he think of this?  It’s hard to say.  We all get tunnel vision.  We get busy doing the linear things that keep the business afloat.  Or maybe we don’t have a process for identifying and solving issues.  So they just continue to get in our way.

That’s the reason it’s valuable to network and expose yourself to outside thinking. Make it a habit to get an outside opinion.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Challenging your team requires that you do things smarter and not just harder.  There are some goals where working smarter is difficult.  So for example, if you are working on an assembly line, it might be difficult to increase your output, especially if you are not given any latitude to change things.

One common case of the “false challenge” can occur in sales forecasting.  It stems from the belief that sales people are lazy and will sandbag their numbers.  So management might add 20% to their numbers regardless of history or latitude.  The root problem is not sales achievement, but trust.   As a result, the organization winds up with multiple forecasts.  The one management thinks they might achieve, the one that sales thinks they might achieve, and the one operations scales to.  With three forecasts, no one knows where they are.  Since they are all based on mistrust, they are unlikely to be dealt with rationally.

The worst case of this phenomenon I’ve seen was in a company where the CEO either didn’t trust the sales team or was simply stingy.  He continually set sales goals so high that he didn’t have to pay bonuses.  He felt he was challenging his team.  But he wound up with a yearly turnover in his organization of 50%.

A challenge must have an element of achievability and support in order to work.  This doesn’t mean that sales teams can’t be challenged.  But that Management needs to stand behind one forecast, not three, and support the sales team.  If everyone is on the same page, then it’s much easier to deal with mid-coarse corrections, and it’s much more likely you will actually achieve a stretch goal. Make this year’s new years resolution to have one forecast.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Doing great things doesn’t come naturally.  It requires an internal drive and often it also requires some external demand.

Several years ago I had the privilege of watching a senior executive challenge a small team intent on developing a new business.  They were entering a new market, one that didn’t exist.  It was expected that many competitors would enter the market at the same time.  Their plan was a little tentative since there was no history in the new market.  They predicted that their market share would be ten percent after a year.  He then asked a very critical question, “What would it take to get to twenty five percent market share?”

The team had limited themselves and their thinking.  So they went away, regrouped and came back with a plan they thought would achieve that goal.  A year later they had twenty three percent of the market and were becoming the dominant player.  It took a lot of hard work, but it also took thinking differently about how they would approach the market.

During strategic planning sessions, it is easy to set your goals too low because you know too much about constraints.  You know about a lack of resources, potential competition, and other limitations.  So you tend to average down.  There is nothing worse than a group that begins to re-enforce itself on what can’t be done.  The lesson is that you don’t have too.  Separate opportunity from limitations then figure out how to overcome the limitations. Challenge yourselves.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Because this is election season, and because I am an advocate of 1:1 marketing, I masochistically thought I would sign up for the campaigns of both parties to see how they are using email marketing to reach their constituents.   I now receive over forty emails a day asking for money.  How stupid of me.  I suppose I also now know that Obama is a Muslim talking the country down a socialist radical agenda, and that Romney is a Mormon and likely to attack Iran with nuclear arms.

The tragedy of political emails in the age of 1:1 Marketing is that they are so not 1:1.  There appears to be no feedback loop or evaluation of any interaction with the email.  It is entirely batch and blast.

Wouldn’t it make sense if I opened an email on an environmental issue that my next email might not be on the Keystone pipeline? (I’m making this up.)  Or if I contributed just this morning, that another solicitation at noon doesn’t really work, and merely pisses me off? (I’m not making this up.)

The second tragedy is that it seems they’ve sold or donated my email address and broken my trust.  There is a subtle proliferation of email senders in each party.   Not just the names of the sender, but the organizations.  Just because I responded to your immigration email, doesn’t automatically mean I want to receive emails from the NRA.

But surprise!  I did receive an email the other day that said… “Thank you for your contribution last month of $19.29.  We used that money to run a campaign for the left-handed speckled grebe.  It was a successful campaign and we figure we saved twelve grebes.  Now, we know things are tight, but we wanted to ask if you could help us with the right-handed grebe?  Etc.”

How much more effective could these campaigns be if they followed the basic principles of good email marketing?  Then again, as they say, maybe we would only encourage the bastards.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

http://www.ratepublic.com

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A long time a go, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran a team that developed a photo-retouching and pagination system that broke the $100K barrier.  We were competing with a $1M system.  Today you can perform similar tasks for less than $1000.

You can also:
•    Send emails for $15/month
•    Set up your own sales force automation for $15/month
•    Put up your own website for $75
•    Run your own social media campaigns for nothing
•    Communicate with clients over Skype and Webex

I recently had someone living in Mexico put up a website using Brazilian resources.  My son-in-law uses a resource in the Philippines to load images to his site.

You can also:
•    Have people in the UK write your blog for $25 a blog post.  I guess they are unemployed ‘English’ majors.
•    Run a design competition for your logo that will have designers from around the world provide you with a design for $150.
•    Have someone from India cold call for you.  Yes really.

These two trends, the democratization of marketing tools, and the ability of really smart people to do business from anywhere, regardless of accent, have changed marketing.

What they haven’t changed yet, is your ability to understand your customers and clients.  They haven’t yet provided you with the messaging needed from that understanding.  And they haven’t provided you with your core plan.  Or the inspiration for your new idea and the courage to implement it.

This left over stuff, is the big stuff.  It requires creativity, hard work, risk taking and even a little luck.   The other stuff is easy now.  So marketers, do the hard work.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Slow:  unhurried, lazy
Synonyms: apathetic, crawling, creeping, dawdling, delaying, deliberate, dilatory, disinclined, dreamy, drowsy, easy, gradual, heavy, idle, imperceptible, inactive, indolent, inert, lackadaisical, laggard, lagging, leaden, leisurely, lethargic, listless, loitering, measured, moderate, negligent, passive, phlegmatic, plodding, ponderous, postponing, procrastinating, quiet, reluctant, remiss, slack, sleepy, slothful, slow-moving, sluggish, snaillike, stagnant, supine, tardy, torpid, tortoiselike

Fast: speedy
Synonyms: PDQ, accelerated, active, agile, blue streak, breakneck, brisk, chop-chop, dashing, double-time, electric, expeditious, flashing, fleet, fleeting, flying, hasty, hot, hurried, hypersonic, in a jiffy, in nothing flat, lickety split, like a bat out of hell, like all get out, nimble, on the double, posthaste, presto, pronto, quick, racing, rapid, ready, screamin’, snappy, speedball, supersonic, swift, velocious, winged

As children, we are told the story of the tortoise and the hare and how the hare wins the race by ‘slow and steady.’   In today’s business environment, no one would agree that slow and safe is better, but I see it all the time.

I have a client that told me he wanted to produce a newsletter for a group of prospects at the request of a sales person.  So he sat down and wrote one in thirty minutes.  He used material already published by his company.  Then he made the mistake of showing it to his Marcom people, and they showed it to their legal department.  You know the rest of the story.  Several months later there was still no newsletter.

Maybe it’s the size of the organization.  Large companies reward people for maintaining the status quo and avoiding risk.  But I think it’s a personal issue.  Are we afraid to make mistakes?

Of course, direction to action is important, otherwise all you have is speed.  You wind up like a 22 caliber bullet shot inside a grain elevator.   That’s why Agile Marketing is going to be really important to your organization.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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In Cost, Quality, and Value – The Buyer’s Side, I defined value as quality divided by cost.  And quality was loosely defined as the degree to which customer or prospects needs are met.  But that’s not the end of the story.

The problem with this definition is… what happens when the prospect doesn’t know what they need?

In sales we are taught to ask questions in order to understand what the prospect needs are.  This is often an excruciating process.   The buyer has to trust that you will add some value after he answers all your questions.  But it’s boring and sometimes a waste of time for the buyer to do this.

So what happens instead, if you tell them what they need?

It depends on how you do this.  If you’re too direct, you come across as bossy or aggressive.  No buyer likes to hear, “Let me tell you what you need to do.”  They hear it as, “All you need to do is buy my product or service.”  It’s a sales kiss of death.

But often what prospects want is for sales (or marketing) to make them think in a new way about their business.  In order to do this, you often have to challenge their current thinking.  They are busy, and they want to know things that will help them in their business.

How do you do this?  By educating them.  Providing them with useful information.  By pushing them out of their comfort zone.  That’s the basis of Quid Pro Nada.  And Quid Pro Nada is owned by both sales and marketing.

So to really add value, can you challenge your buyers to think about their businesses and issues in new ways?  Quality is not just understanding their needs but understanding their businesses better than the prospect.  Can you help them by providing them with useful information?  Or are you simply going to agree with them.  If you simply agree with them and copy down their needs, then everything reduces to the lowest common denominator… cost.

Some of the best sales people I know, make me uncomfortable.  So grow some cajones.  Talk back to your prospects.  Respectfully.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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I was on a website and had just downloaded a whitepaper when I got a call from the company sponsoring the paper. I hadn’t even exited the site.

The eager inside sales person wanted to know if I had any questions. I replied that he was creeping me out, that I hadn’t even had a chance to read the whitepaper, but as long as he was on the phone, I had one question; “What made him think it was a good idea to call me within 60 seconds of the download?”

He apologized and said he just wanted to make sure I got what I needed. We then had a discussion about the appropriate length of time and approach for responding.

There is a 2007 study by James Oldroyd, PhD Professor Sloan School of Management at MIT and David Elkington of InsideSales.com that I think is worth looking at.

In this study, they found a ten-fold drop off rate in odds of calling and connecting with a prospect after the first hour of delayed response to an inquiry. The odds of calling to qualify a lead drop six-fold after an hour, and after twenty hours, calling may actually hurt your chances.

What really isn’t clear is what is the event that triggers the call. If a prospect actively sends a question, or requests contact, then I believe response time is critical. Prospects tend to want what they want when they want it. And their attention drifts if you can’t give it to them. That’s why bounce rates are important to websites.

But what is your response to a sales clerk in a store who immediately asks if they can help you? Most people say, “Just looking,” which is code for don’t bother me. So the key is not response time, but understanding what the prospect is looking for.

For anything but a direct request, it’s best to log a download or event into your lead scoring system and treat is as a developing lead. It’s a best practice to automate your response so they get a thank you. Then you may even suggest another subject in which they might be interested. The logic and architecture of your campaigns becomes very important at this point and should be A/B tested.

But please don’t creep out your prospects and kill your speed to lead. Delight them by providing them with what they need or may need when they need it.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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I once had a telemarketer keep me on the phone for over a minute.  My usual average is less than 15 seconds, depending on how long it before they take a breath.  I’m polite because I like to hear their approaches.  He asked me a key question; “Was I earning 20+% on my investments?”  I said, no.

He then asked me if I’d like to earn that much.  I said, “sure,” and then I asked him what the investment was.  He demurred and said he couldn’t say what it was yet.  He then started in on his “sales pitch,” about the returns and his happy clients.  I interrupted and told him I would hang up in ten seconds unless he told me what the investment was.

Knowing he had ten seconds, he told me.  It was ostrich farming.  All I had to do was buy some ostriches to earn 20+% on my money.

I said, “Hmmm, what is the price of ostriches these days?”  They didn’t cost very much he assured me.  Only ten grand.

I then asked if he knew where he was calling?  He said, no.  I was living in Minnesota.  The temperature that winter was particularly cold.  That day it was minus 10 degrees.  I told him I thought the ostriches would die in these temperatures, and as a result, they would be a bad investment.  However, if he had any penguins, I might stay on the line.  He hung up.

If you are in sales or marketing and selling your products, your first task is to really know your prospects.  This is Sales 101.  My telemarketer failed miserably in this step, and it cost him valuable time.  Although perhaps his time wasn’t worth much.

The second step is to understand what the prospect is trying to accomplish and their goals.   However, most sales advice is to ask a few broad questions, and then quickly steer the conversation to discover issues with which your product or service can help.  I disagree with this approach.  It doesn’t build trust.  It says, “I’m in a hurry to sell you my “solution.”  If instead, Mr. Ostrich had provided me with some useful investment information first, or asked about my goals, maybe I would have been more receptive to a new investment idea.

When I asked him the price for ostriches, I was being cynical.  Without establishing my goals, and the cost of overcoming the barriers to achieving them, any price would have been too much.  If he had established that my goal was to put my kids through college, and that I was worried about doing this, he might have been able to justify the price of his investment or create some value.  Though at today’s college costs, I would have had to buy a lot of ostriches.

If the client believes your solution may help them overcome a problem, the difference between the cost of their issues and the price of your solution becomes the value.

Cost of Problem – Price of Solution = Value of Solution

It can only be called a solution if the prospect comes to that conclusion, and the prospect develops the value in their mind.  This is true no matter how hard you try to tell them what they need. (Don’t do that.)

So slow down, in both your marketing and in sales efforts.  Understand your prospects.  Help them in ways they don’t expect.  Give them information that is useful to them.  And don’t rush them.

Nobody shows up on a first date with flowers, their parents, and a proposal.  By slowing down at the beginning of your sales cycle you can speed up the sale later.

Only after you’ve built trust, have you have earned the right to ask prospects about their goals.  Then if you establish the true cost of failing to achieve these goals, and next help them see a vision of what their lives would be like if barriers to their goals were overcome, then you might ask them if your capabilities could help.

Why this sequence?  Because then your conversation won’t be about price.  Your conversation will be about value… and not about penguins.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell24x7)

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If this isn’t the coolest thing you’ll watch this week, I want to know what is.  It’s the ultimate whiteboard video.  But just a second.

Let’s say you weren’t convinced by my meager whiteboard video and the concept of story in your messaging, because your product or service is mundane or boring.  I have friends that do a great job of selling really boring SaaS for 1099 filings.  (Gag!)  This is just the kind of service that needs a whiteboard.  The proof you say?  How about 750,000 hits?

OK.  Now you can look at the video.  As you do, think about the following:
•    The subject could be boring.
•    It’s a technical subject.
•    The video title contains the word “Terror.”
•    The opening music is “Jaws like.”
•    The  opening “hook” is “When people look at it, it looks crazy!”
•    Find the drama.  The odds, the potential crash, their reputations.
•    Notice the two second scene changes.
(click the image to play)

And they spent a little money.  But Mars curiosity will be landing one way or the other August 5th. Will you have seven minutes of terror or will you know your prospects are watching your video before it’s over?

Send your whiteboard video links.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell24x7)

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