Loyalty

Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option.

If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.

Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.

Loyalty can be rewarded, but loyalty usually comes from within, from a story we like to tell ourselves. We're loyal to sports teams and products (and yes, to people) because being loyal makes us happy. Why else be a fan of the Cubs? Some customers like being loyal. Those are good customers to have.

Loyalty isn't forever. Sometimes, the world changes significantly and even though the loyal partner/customer likes that label, it gets so difficult to stick that he switches.

I think there's no doubt that some brands and teams and politicians and yes, people, attract a greater percentage of loyal fans than others. Not because they're bigger or better, but because they reinforce the good feeling some people get when they're being loyal. Hint: low price or supermodel good looks are not the tools of choice for attracting people who enjoy being loyal.

Rewarding loyalty for loyalty's sake--not by paying people for sticking it out so the offering ends up being more attractive--is not an obvious path, but it's a worthwhile one. Tell a story that appeals to loyalists. Treat different customers differently, and reserve your highest level of respect for those that stand by you.

If you want to learn to do marketing...

then do marketing.

You can learn finance and accounting and media buying from a book. But the best way to truly learn how to do marketing is to market.

You don't have to quit your job and you don't need your boss's permission. There are plenty of ways to get started.

If you see a band you like coming to town, figure out how to promote them and sell some tickets (posters? google ads? PR?). Don't ask, just do it.

If you find a book you truly love, buy 30 and figure out how to sell them all (to strangers).

If you're 12, go door to door selling fresh fruit--and figure out what stories work and which don't.

Set up an online business. Get a candidate you believe in elected to the school board.

The best way to learn marketing is to do it. JUST DO IT!

by: Seth Godin

Virtual Project Management

Project Management (PM) is a complex and challenging task that strives for solutions and deliverables within time and budget. Virtual Project Management (VPM) is an even more daunting task. PM is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. VPM is attempting the same, except all project team members are not physically in a single location, possibly spanning different states and/or countries. VPM is the art of bringing together many diverse people to work towards a common shared goal. One can look at VPM as a new dimension of project management, in that it is a new way to manage projects that was influenced by the rise of the internet and the use of collaborative software tools that are used to facilitate projects. Project members can now be organizationally disbursed across the globe and come together as knowledge workers to complete the tasks.

VPM has unique challenges.

Since team members are often scattered in different locations around the world, they have different schedules, cultures and expectations. Managing a virtual team makes it difficult to micro manage which is a traditional concept in project management. Project Managers often need to manage people for whom they have no first-hand or personal experience with. Project members have to become acutely aware of their team member’s differences and somehow align them to work together. The entire team is dependent on technology to do its job in order for the project to be successful. Project Managers need tools tailored to the challenges of virtual project management.

Virtual Project Management Tools

The tools that are used in VPM need to accommodate teams in a global work environment. The key task that any VPM tool must accomplish is to allow team members to communicate with one another. Because team members are not physically in the same location, and may have no prior knowledge of each other’s work, communication becomes key. In addition, tools must have the ability to allow team members to collaborate in the virtual space, as that is the only venue open to them being from different locations. Tools need to be equipped with the capabilities to allow the project manager to manage the project – scheduling resources and tracking progress on tasks. Being a project manager in a virtual setting does not allow the PM to micromanage the team, therefore the tool should be equipped so that the PM can manage, track and facilitate the projects with ease and stability.

In order to accomplish full life cycle virtual project management, VPM tools were researched and compared. Software Tools must have the following features:

• Web based
• Creation of schedules and tasks
• Assigns resources and activities
• Reporting functionality
• Document management
• Collaborative software
• Notification feature

The Corporate Conscience

...by Seth Godin

There isn't one.

Corporations don't have a conscience, people do.

That means that every time you say, "It's just my job," or "My department has a policy," or "All I do is work here," what you've done is abdicated responsibility--to no one.

It's convenient and even comfortable to blame the anonymous actions of many working in concert on a evanescent brand or organization, but that starts you on an inevitable race to the bottom. Organizations have more power than ever before. They are better synchronized, faster, and possess more tools to change the economy and the people in it than ever before. And the only option available to the rest of us is for individuals to take responsibility (it's not given) for what they do and how they do it.

The very same tools that permit organizations to synchronize their efforts are now available to you and to me. I guess the question is: will we use that power to humanize the systems we've created?

PS It's not just about being a good citizen: when bad behavior comes back to hurt the company, it hurts you, too.

Build Sales Partnerships in 5 Easy Steps

The traditional view of the sales rep is the “lone wolf” or the “road warrior” who overcomes objections and wins the deal. However, in many B2B selling environments, it’s only possible to put together a deal with the cooperation of multiple companies. And that means multiple sale reps from multiple firms working together.

For example, a company selling printing services may need to involve a graphic design company, a shipping firm and a paper supplier in order to clinch the deal. Similarly, the sale of a customized software system may involve components sources from half-a-dozen firms, requiring the active participation of half-a-dozen sales reps.

Unfortunately, not every sales professional knows how to build the kind of sales partnerships that allow teams of reps to pursue and win these complex opportunities. This post contains an easy-to-understand, five step process for creating and maintaining sales partnerships that help you sell.

STEP #1: Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Before you can consider a sales partnership, you must understand what you, and your firm, is bringing to the table. The traditional way of doing this is to use a traditional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to determine what you and your organization has to offer - and where you need help from outside.

For example, if your company has a strong set of products but little experience selling into a specific industry, you may need to partner with a firm that has few products but lots of experience inside a specific industry. Similarly, if your company is heavily deployed in one geographical region of the country or the world, you may want to develop a partnership with a rep who works in another geographical region in order to develop a global opportunity.

There’s also a certain level of self-assessment that’s required at this point. It’s a natural tendency for individuals to want to keep control of their destiny. As such, many reps feel uncomfortable giving up a certain amount of control over a customer account, which is always part of a partnership arrangement. Similarly, when it comes to selling, the undeniable fact that “knowledge is power” leads many a rep to horde information that, if shared with a team, might result in a quicker sale.

Successful sales partnerships require the development of trust as the foundation for a long-term relationship. Unfortunately, many sales reps, while trained to develop such relationship with customers are often at a loss when it comes to partnering with their peers, particular when those peers are also (in a certain sense) their competitors as well.

A good analogy might be drawn from baseball, where the “All Star” games are often relatively uninteresting because the players have little or no idea of how to work together as a team. The same is true with a complex sale involving reps from multiple divisions or different vendors. If you’re going to work together with other reps, you need to be the kind of person who can really be a team player.

STEP #2: Select the Right Partner

If you’re going to partner, you need to understand the strengths and weakness of your potential partner(s), not just in terms of their ability to contribute to the sales process, but their willingness (and psychological readiness) to partner. Just because another has a core competency that you need, there is no guarantee that they will willingly share it.

You need to find partners with whom you can create mutually beneficial value. To do this, you look for complementary core competencies and mutual circles of interest.

Here is a list of the sort of complementary talents that you should be looking for in a sales partner:

• Help in developing and leveraging your core competency.
• Ability to creating valuable synergies in your customer accounts.
• Assistance in reducing your overall sales cost.
• Elimination or reduction of duplication of effort.
• Innovations discovered with their help.
• Access to new customer and prospects.
• Help against established and emerging competitors.
  

Remember that a partnership also means giving up a modicum of control, especially control of the account relationship. Find partners who will not just add value but whom you can trust to treat your customers the way you’d like them to be treated.

As you look at a potential sales partner, go back to your self-assessment to be sure that can deliver the value that the other partner values — not just the value that you think the potential partner ought to consider valuable. The last thing you want is a situation where one partner delivers “value” that the other partner did not consider to be worthwhile.

STEP #3: Build a Relationship Consensus

Before you partner with another rep, be sure to conduct a pre-opportunity meeting with your potential partner. Hash out a working agreement of who is going to do what and when. Build a plan of action to address the opportunity, spreading the work appropriately among the partners who will be contributing (and benefiting) from the successful sale.

Now formalize your agreement with a written outline describing the commitment that each partner has made. Put it in writing, with detailed explanations of activities, expectations and responsibilities of each partner. That’s the road map for your successful alliance relationship, but it’s only a starting place. It will be necessary to make regular “relationship bank deposits” of physical and emotional energy to keep the partnership alive.

If the partnership is to be long-lasting and involves ongoing sales activities, it may be a good idea to have potential problems should be hashed out and a formal contract written and signed. In the case, the sales managers of both firms may need to discussions with their peers in the other companies, in order to reveal potential problems, the nature of the relationship, the scope of the cooperation, and the logistics of the partnering effort.

It may also be a good idea to try to get all the partners using the same CRM system, so that it’s possible for multiple sales reps to collaborate and record activity at a customer or prospect site. Without such a system, it can become impossible to keep sales partnering to from degenerating into battles over account control, where the last rep standing gets the commission.

STEP #4: Execute your commitments

Any partnership between competing reps is likely to be fragile at first, while the individual involved learn to trust. The only way to guarantee that the trust will grow is to make sure that you ALWAYS deliver exactly what you say you will deliver - and then a little more.

The best way to encourage sales partnerships inside a sales environment is to create a “Code of Conduct” that reinforces the partnership behavior and helps to eliminate conflict. Such a code helps create a corporate culture where partnership seems normal.

Here is a sample code to use as a model:

• Be the kind of partner with whom you’d like to partner. This is the sales partnering version of the “golden rule.”
• Ethics and morals are vitally important. Remember: it’s not enough to be honest, you’ve got avoid the appearance of dishonesty.
• Respect others, their beliefs, customs and policies. Every company has a slightly different corporate culture; don’t assume that yours is better or smarter.
• Think as a member of both your alliance and your industry. As Ben Franklin once said: “We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
• When in doubt, don’t! You’ll probably run across opportunities where you can use the partnership against your partner. That’s like cheating in a marriage. Don’t do it.

STEP #5: Monitor, Measure, and Celebrate

As with any other business situation, great results require ongoing measurement and management. The best ways to do this is through a single CRM system, in which all the partners communicate plans, log activities, request help, and report results. The CRM system tracks what’s happened and generates an audit trail that determines appropriate compensation when the sale is finally made.

But even if you’re not using a CRM system, be sure to consistently communicate to your partner(s) the value you’ve delivered. Ineffective communication is the primary reason that partnerships and alliances fail. You want to have enough communication so that both parties can monitor the relationship both at the “macro” and “micro” level. Then, when challenges pop up, you can quickly work together to address them.

If the partnership develops problems, don’t give in to anger or frustration. Meet your partner more than halfway. If there’s money on the table, dispose of it fairly or offer to buy your partner out. Above all, avoid taking the matter to court. The end result of such court cases is pennies on the dollar for you (if you’re lucky) and a fat stack of cash for the lawyers.

Getting your partnership from initial handshake to a done customer deal requires plenty of “emotional” fuel. The partners will need to allocate and expend resources, time, mindshare and energy to turn the opportunity into a sale. As the sales cycle progresses, you’ll need to invest in building and strengthening the relationship and the level of rapport.

Most importantly, when the sale is won, celebrate - and make sure that the celebration includes appropriate compensation for everyone involved.

SUMMARY:

• STEP #1: Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses
• STEP #2: Select the Right Partner
• STEP #3: Build a Relationship Consensus
• STEP #4: Execute Your Commitments
• STEP #5: Monitor, Measure, and Celebrate

The Art of Seduction...

Seth Godin, one of my new favorite author and writer. American Way Magazine calls him, "America's Greatest Marketer," and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. I totally agree!!!

"A problem cannot be solve from the same logical level it was created." - Albert Einstein




Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer's mistress. Seducing him probably wasn't that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time.

Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to understand about seduction is this: it only works when the other person cooperates, contributes and is at some level interested in being seduced.

In short: it's a lot easier to seduce someone whose worldview and attitude makes them open to it. If you want to be successful at whatever form of seduction you have in mind, seek out the right people.

Some people were seduced by the iPad. Many ignored it. It wasn't that the iPad changed from person to person, what changed was the audience's worldview and openness.
And yet...

And yet as marketers we seem to want to treat everyone the same, want to please everyone, want to come up with the magic words that open every heart.

…to be continued

Create a Dynamite Presentation in 6 Easy Steps

This post describes a foolproof and easy way to craft a presentation that causes an audience to ACTUALLY AND TRULY MAKE A DECISION.

I’m not talking about those stupid bullet point lectures that put people to sleep.

I’m talking the real deal here. The kind of show-stopper presentation that makes things happens. Like closing a big sale.

Interested? If so, let’s get started…


STEP #1: Decide on the Impact

When most people start out to create a presentation, they start with the question: “what do I want to say to these people?”

That’s the exact wrong question to ask because it’s all about you and not about the audience. The correct question to ask is: “what decision do these people really need to make?”

The greatest enemy facing EVERY business — bar none — is inertia. People avoid making key decisions out of fear, stupidity, lethargy, tradition, etc.

So start from the point of wanting to be of service, and that means creating a presentation that persuades your audience to make a decision.

If you don’t know what decision you want the audience to make, don’t bother giving a presentation, because you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

Now, before going any further. Ask yourself, in all honesty:

• Do I know EXACTLY what decision I want my audience to make?

If you DON’T then please don’t bother to craft a presentation, because you’ll just be wasting everyone’s time.

However, if you DO know what impact you want to have — i.e. what decision you want your audience to make — read on…


STEP #2: Understand How an Audience Decides

A decision is always the result of change in the decision-maker’s emotional state.

Prior to making the decision, the audience does not feel that a decision is necessary. Not yet. Then something happens, in the audience’s emotional state that brings the matter to a head. The audience now feels that a decision MUST be made.

At that point the audience (i.e. the decision-makers in the audience) decides. A persuasive presentation therefore changes the emotional state of the audience so that they believe and feel that a decision must be made… right now.

In business there are six emotional keys that unlock that all-important decision-making process.

They are:

• Key #1: Greed. “If we make a decision now, we’ll get a big reward.”
• Key #2: Fear. “If we don’t make a decision now, we’re basically toasted.”
• Key #3: Altruism. “If we make a decision now, we’re good people.”
• Key #4: Envy. “If we don’t make a decision now, the other guys will win.”
• Key #5: Pride. “If we make a decision now, they’ll know we’re smart.”
• Key #6: Shame. “If we don’t make a decision now, they’ll know we’re dumb.”

Truly persuasive presentations contain all six of those emotional keys, because it is only under the pressure of these emotions that any decision will be made.

The underlying drivers behind these emotions are, of course, pain and pleasure. Truly persuasive presentations play upon the six key emotions to:

• RAISE the likelihood of pleasure and LOWER the likelihood of pain if a decision IS made.

When these expectations are set, a decision is INEVITABLE.

I realize that this all seems a bit theoretical. But if you don’t understand this basic stuff, the rest of this post won’t make sense. So bear with me because we’re about to get to the meaty parts…


STEP #3: Research the Audience

While the six emotional keys (and the pain and pleasure behind them) completely drive the decision-making behavior, that activity always takes place within the context of a belief system.

For example, if a company sees IBM as their main competition, the “fear” and “envy” segments are best stated in terms of competing with IBM. Similarly, if a firm’s management consists of evangelical Christians, altruistic appeals to “saving the environment” will likely fall flat.

Therefore, if you are going to create the emotions that drive decision-making, you need to know not just the audience’s current emotional state but also the beliefs that they’re using to evaluate the emotional weight of anything that you might present to them.

And that means research. The more thoroughly you research your audience, the more likely you’ll be to understand their current state and the better you’ll marshal emotions to change that state.

It is in this context — finally — that information becomes important. Even though your presentation is intended to change emotions, because this is the business world, some of that emotional change will result from the expression of new information and the re-framing of old information.

However, please remember that it is not the information that is important, but the emotional effect that your use of the information will have upon the audience. This is an important distinction.

For example, suppose you’re trying to sell an inventory control system to a high tech firm. You learn, as the result of your research, that 1) they’ve been dinged by investors for having high inventories, and 2) their main competitors have just implemented a “just-in-time” inventory system.

That’s just information. What’s important is the emotional effect that those two facts will have when juxtaposed with one another — based upon the prospect’s belief system.

Now, let’s suppose that your research also reveals that your prospect’s CIO was just replaced and the new CIO was promoted from the ranks.

That’s more information, but what’s important is that the new CIO is may be unsure and possibly risk averse. And that provides clues into how you must craft the emotional content of your presentation, based upon the belief system (i.e. “If I screw up; I’ll lose this job”) of that new CIO.

Needless to say, the specifics will vary. And that’s why you’ve got to follow the next step…


STEP #4: Craft The Story

A story is a sequence of events that has emotional consequences.

The normal, non-autistic, human brain organizes EVERYTHING into stories, because that’s how we understand the meaning and context of everything around us. Because of this, a persuasive presentation ALWAYS tells a story.

It is this story that harnesses the power of the six key emotions, thereby changing the emotional state of the audience, so that a decision MUST be made.

Here are the rules:

1. The story starts with a “heart-stopper.” Every movie, TV show, or novel starts with something that captures your attention (i.e. captures your emotions) and holds your interest while you “get into” the story. Without a “heart stopper”, the audience’s mind will wander. Trust me.

2. The story is about the audience… not about you. The story connects emotions to the audience’s current situation so that that a decision becomes inevitable. You (or your firm) can play a “best supporting actor” role, but the main role is always the audience and what happens (or might happen) to them.

3. The story ends with a “risk-remover”, then a “close.” The risk-remover eliminates any remaining reluctance to make a decision. The “close” pushes the audience over the edge and essentially forces them to make the decision, right now.

With that in mind, here’s the basic structure for a presentation asking a company to invest in an inventory control system:

• You are losing $100 million a year. (The heart-stopper)
• A brief history of your inventory problems.
• Why it’s worse now and likely to get even worse.
• What will happen if the situation continues unabated?
• How your big competitor dealt with the problem.
• Here’s a solution that’s even better than that.
• How it will look when it’s installed.
• Our solution will have a 3 month ROI. (The risk-remover.)
• If you’re ready, let’s set up an installation. (The close.)

Note that this story:

• Maximizes the pain of not making a decision.
• Maximizes the pleasure of making a decision.
• Appeals to most of the six key emotions.
• Is mostly about the customer rather than your offering.

Needless to say, there’s got to be plenty of data and reality behind the various points in the story. And, for this to work in a sales situation, you’d have to meet one-on-one with many of the participants to get your ducks in a row, as they say.

But the structure is all about creating emotion and persuading the audience to make a decision, right now.

Once you’ve got your story in mind, it’s time to work on the actual mechanics of the presentation…


STEP #5: Compose Your Slides

Now that you’ve done your research and know the story you’re going to tell, it’s finally time to start making your slides. Here are the nine key rules:

• Rule #1: Prepare anew for each audience. Human beings share common desires and dreams, but beneath the commonalities are differences specific to individual situations. Every industry has unique needs, and every company in every industry has unique needs, and every group of customers in every company has unique needs. For your presentation to become a relationship-building event and move the sales process forward, it must address what’s important to the individual customer and must provide that information at the appropriate level of detail.

• Rule #2: Base your slides on real research. Make sure your presentation uses terminology that will be meaningful to that customer. Use proof points and illustrations that resonate with that customer’s business experience. If you’re presenting to a group with varied levels of expertise, aim for the middle ground when you target the level of detail. Don’t aim for the lowest common denominator. There’s no presentation blunder bigger than boring the bulk of the audience.

• Rule #3: Don’t just tell… show and tell. If you present information both with words and with pictures, you’ll have twice the impact, because the information will be stored in twice as many places. Combine both text and graphics in your slides when you want to make an important point. The combination will help your audience remember what you’re trying to communicate and help them fit it into the bigger picture of their working environment.

• Rule #4: Mix it up. If every slide looks the same, you risk creating a flood of images for the customer to decipher. Vary your slides so that some contain just words, some contain just pictures, and save the punchy “words and picture” combo for your most important points. Hint: a video clip in the midst of a presentation creates a sudden burst of movement. This accesses yet other areas of the human brain, making your presentation (literally) more memorable.

• Rule #5: Plan how to direct the audience’s attention. To make sure that the audience is following your arguments, make important elements larger and brighter (or louder). Provide an outline structure to help them understand where they are in the overall message. If you need your customers to understand something complex - like a multi-tiered supply chain diagram — build the slide one part at a time, showing only the part that you’re discussing at each point in the presentation.

• Rule #6: Don’t overwhelm. There’s a natural tendency, when giving a presentation, to provide so much information that it’s abundantly clear that you know everything there is to know about the subject matter. Unfortunately, this kind of “information dump” forces the customer to sort through the data and figure out what’s really important - if they don’t simply tune you out. Your presentation should provide as much information as is needed to support your story.

• Rule #7: Use a full range of communications options. Don’t let the ease of making bulleted lists in PowerPoint slide lull you into thinking that bullets are always best. A personal anecdote or telling example is often much more effective for making an important point than anything that you can display on a screen. Think of your PowerPoint slides not as “the presentation” but as a visual aid to “the presentation,” which consists of YOU communicating with customers.

• Rule #8: Build in breaks. Nobody likes being force-fed. If a presentation is longer than a few minutes, you should build in “breaks” that give the audience time to digest what’s been already said. A break might consist of a cartoon or a joke, providing they are relevant to the presentation. A video clip illustrating an important point can also break up the rhythm, and help aid retention.

• Rule #9: Prepare for questions. Even though you’ve told the story, an active and involved Q&A period often leads naturally to next steps in the sales cycle, like additional appointments, additional contacts, and even closing the deal. To make sure that you have a productive Q&A, anticipate questions that might come up - and leave those bits out of your presentation.

Follow those rules as you put the piece together to tell your story, and you’re almost there. Just one more step…


STEP #6: Rehearse, and then Go For It

Once you’ve built your customized presentation, rehearse it a couple of times to make sure that you’re ready to rock. Then, when you give the presentation, follow these five rules:

• Rule #1: Don’t hand out copies. If you distribute a hard copy of your slides before your presentation, the audience will read ahead and try to guess what you’re going to say. This will force you to remove any accidental misinterpretations prior to communicating your real message and also weaken the emotional impact of what you’re trying to say.

• Rule #2: Keep your slides in sync. You don’t want your audience reading something on the screen that’s different than what your mouth is saying. To prevent drifting, make sure that each slide should contain only as much as you can read aloud or describe in about one minute. (More than that, and either you’ll wander, or the customer’s attention will wander).

• Rule #3: Talk TO the audience, not AT them. A persuasive presentation should be like a conversation between friends or colleagues not like a soapbox speech or a sermon. Relax. Breathe. Use the same tone of voice that you’d use in a one-on-one conversation. Let your eyes meet the eyes of the various members of the group. Tell your story the way you’d tell it at a dinner party.

• Rule #4: Don’t focus on your notes. If you’re constantly looking down at your notes, the audience will see your eyes staring downwards - a primal image of embarrassment. Worse, the audience will follow your gaze and focus their attention on what you’re focusing on. In that case, their most vivid memory of your presentation might be the back of your laptop or the back of the podium.

• Rule #5: Direct the audience’s attention. At time, your presentation will direct the customers’ attention to what’s displayed on the screen, like when you’re discussing a graph, or following step-by-step through a logical argument. Other times, you’ll want to direct their attention to what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. In this case, the slide might merely introduce an anecdote with a title or an appropriate, reinforcing graphic.


SUMMARY:

• STEP #1: Decide on the Impact
• STEP #2: Understand How an Audience Decides
• STEP #3: Research the Audience
• STEP #4: Craft the Story
• STEP #5: Compose Your Slides
• STEP #6: Rehearse, then Go For It