Lesson:  Some sales manager motivate the only way they know how to – nothing personal so suck it up or move on

Can you see these letters - W2?

I always chuckle when I hear a sales rep tell me that they have ADD or ADHD.  I chuckle all the way to HR and start the process of putting them on plan.  While there are a ton of ingredients needed to make a good sales rep,  few successful reps lack focus.

Focus on establishing a system – there are a ton of bad stats about how many hours of selling there are in a day, week, month & year.  The fact is that sales reps battle time management as their #1 nemesis.  While larger companies may offer some sort of BS training course around time management and the majority of the class will be a waste, these classes will offer some sort of system.  Whenever a rep tells me they don’t do well in systems or don’t need a system, I also start the “on plan” proceeding.  Do yourself a favor a make a prioritized list of tasks to be completed.  Other small steps to increase efficiency can be making phone calls on ride to and from work or eating meals at your desk – whatever it is, do yourself a favor a get a system that works where the amount of time wasted is minimized.

Own your number – you are in sales and have a number on your back – don’t ever forget that.  The best sales reps take some time to understand how they make money within the bounds of their quota/plan.  Doing so will help you figure out that through focusing on net-new business, can you make an extra 70% on a deal by selling a partner running a spiff.  Look at your number as a game and figure out what is the best way you can win the game.

Close your mouth -this is especially difficult for many reps as they seem to think what they have to say is important.  Its impossible to hear your customer when you are blathering on about yourself, your product, your life.  No one cares – shut it.

Understand your strengths – If you are not a details person, get some help with someone who is.  Know your weaknesses and put people in place who can help fill those gaps.  I know its common sense and I hope you already know it and are doing something about it.

Sell – its your job and you need to make sure that you are focused on the selling part of it.  Don’t forget to make it a priority in everything you do – ask questions, push the deal ahead – at all times.

Just so we are all on the same page, I know that you already know most of this.  My problem is that if someone tells me that but is failing to show me that they are doing something with this knowlede.  If you know you are weak in and area and do nothing about it, then you cannot succed and should do everyone a favor and stop giving reps a bad name.

Well, OK, so maybe it isn’t quite that big but my good friend Jan Visser has merged the old SalesTeamTools.com and the old SalesMarks.com into the newly combined Sales Marks.

If you’re not familiar with either of these sites, you’re missing a great deal of important material, so combining them into a single site is a fantastic idea that will give visitors to the new Sales Marks a huge platform of great stuff all at a single location.

The old Sales Team Tools focused on examining and evaluating tools—phones, contact management software, business card scanners, you name it–to make sales and selling easier.  Tools that have been around and new ones alike have been evaluated.  One of the best aspects of the site was that salespeople who have used the various tools get to comment on them and present their opinions and experiences.  Sales Team Tools has been a great place to keep up the sales world’s tools—both those tools designed specifically for sellers and those general technology tools that make selling easier or more efficient.  If you’ve been a Sales Team Tools regular, you’ll lose nothing—just gain everything that Sales Marks had to offer.

Sales Marks offers a number of high quality downloads from Tibor Shanto’s newest e-book published by Sales Marks “6 Ways to More Sales Appointments” to How to Organize a Sales Blitz to a free Sales Activity Report template and lots more.  The site also has hundreds of articles from top sales trainers such as Zig Zigler, Dave Brock, Tom Freese, Jeff Thull, Colleen Francis, Bill Caskey, Jill Konrath, myself and many, many more.  Best of all, Jan has a section called 100 Tips that lists the newest 100 articles, saving you a great deal of time searching through the entire article database. 

But, WAIT!  There’s MORE! 

The site offers a number of free sales guides—for instance one on tuning your sales pitch or another on writing a cold calling sales script.   And as a bonus, there are dozens of great sales quotes from everyone from Florence Nightingale to Pappa Joe (Joe Paterno, Head Coach of Penn State for those non college football fans) to Eleanor Roosevelt (can’t think of her in terms of sales?  Go find out) to Milton Berle—and even some real sales folks like Zig, Brian Tracey and others.

But Wait!  There’s Even MORE!

And now, Jan has added some great new things for his visitors.  Here’s how he described them to me in an email I received yesterday:

It’s almost 2010 – so I thought I’d run a tally on available selling days in 2010. The result was 254! Only 254 days and that’s not including vacations and days around the holidays. Sales and small biz people better make sure every day counts! That’s why I developed a few fun resources.

First, there’s a section called “Sales Months” – a new PDF poster every month, showing the current/next month – displaying selling days and a motivational sales quote. They can be downloaded for free at http://salesmarks.com/sales-months/

Then, there’s a need to remember that we only have 254 days in 2010.  For that purpose, I created a Sales Days Sheet – a PDF poster listing selling days for 2010 per month, per quarter – with a reminder to make sure you make every day counts. They can be downloaded here:
http://salesmarks.com/sales-days/

 Finally, a recession brings pressure for sales people looking for a job and for hiring sales managers alike. We thought we’d help both a little with a new download called Sales Interview Questions. They saved me from mis-hiring a few times and thought I’d share them with others. They can be downloaded here:
http://salesmarks.com/sales-interview-questions/               

All of this for only one easy payment of—NOTHING!

That’s right; you pay absolutely nothing for this amazing offer.  All you have to do is use this incredible site to help build your sales business.

Anyway, go check out Jan’s bigger and better site HERE

Lesson: Think about who you are talking to before you open your mouth

Does it really have to be that way? Sure, there are lots of management courses that suggest that the old “Hire Slow, Fire Fast” process is a best practice, but there are plenty of things that have to have to go right along the way. Hiring slow the right way can make firing fast a non-issue. If so, then starting the process right pays huge dividends

Is everyone suddenly a Super Star in their own minds?

Using a proven methodology to select long term, successful hires that can and will sell ends the merry-go round practice that has become acceptable for many sales organizations.  The “hire three, keep one” stories exist in any economic condition, but with so many resumes touting a career as a top producer hitting the streets now, this practice can be even riskier. When you read these submissions it is truly hard to believe that such high producers and proven winners ever got let go at all. How did so many all-stars meet the fate of down-sizing all at the same time?

Don’t be duped

With everyone claiming they are competent, your process must include some tools and practices that separate the wheat from the chaff. Stop trusting your gut and intuition. No one’s resume says they performed poorly or got axed by an unappreciative manager, so buyers beware. Do the right thing and get some outside help. If two heads are better than one, get a second head or at least an instrument that can validate your gut feeling.  Slow down and make a selection that will last. It can’t be any worse than doing it all by yourself.

#5 – You start work at 9 and end at 5 – this is not a job, its a career ask Chris Rock

#4 – You do your forecast calls and there are more than 4 managers on the call – each firing questions at you – quit today as you cannot make money at this place – too many people taking cuts of your commish

#3 – You hate what you are selling – I’m not going to give the “be passionate about what you do speech” but you can’t be successful selling something you dislike

#2 – You blame everyone else for your failure – product sucks, operations suck, no marketing, company suck – no pal, hit the bricks – you suck – get a job as Santa in the mall

# 1 – You feel lost in your job – I’m blown away by the amount of sales people who refuse to learn the new tricks of the trade – your relationships may carry you a few more paychecks but don’t forget that the tails of the people you have been riding will not be there forever – time to buck up pal and find a new cust serv job as this is not for you anymore

If you are searching for information related to tax rebate on tools or any other such as paye tax calc, tax rebate estimator, tool tax rebate or taxes tools you have come to the right article. This piece will provide you with not just general tax rebate on tools information but also specific and helpful information. Enjoy it.

Just don’t depend on paper record-keeping always because it is an old way of doing things. Though you can have solid copies of your information and keep them in files but having a backup in your computer can be really useful.

The costs you had before making a decision to acquire or begin a specific business are your personal and non-deductible expenses. The expenses for search or investigation of a business or investment possibility are examples of this kind of expenses. The costs you had after making a decision to attempt to acquire or begin a specific business are capital expenses, and you can deduct them as a capital loss.

There are some other factors that might benefit you. You need to be organized to maintain proper and useful notes, and receipts of all our taxes deductible expenses. When you are listing your deductions, and if you’re -reimbursed medical expenses do not exceed 7.5 of your adjusted gross income, it may not reduce your Federal taxes, although it might reduce your State taxes – so it is eligible reporting. It is not that easy for everyone to stay on leading of all tax law updates at all times and that’s why you need someone to help you. Contact your local tax agent or contact us if you need more help on this topic.

Don’t forget to realize that this article can cover information related to tax rebate on tools but can still leave some stones unturned. Head on over to the search engines for more specific tax rebate on tools information.

Public Accountant is always considered as a very valuable position, because if we are going to talk about pressures, you can find it there, already being a CPA can create a difference in one’s life.

If you miss a field when completing the forms, you won’t be able to submit the information. Submitting W-2 forms online actually benefited you, as the deadline for submission is kinder than that of filing the Paper W-2 forms.

Then, you’ll need to select a guide to help you through the process to file late taxes. It’s generally best to go with someone who mainly works with those who file late taxes, but cost is also an important factor. The best middle ground is to file online.

We discovered that many people who were also searching for information related to tax rebate on tools also searched online for related information such as budget, salary tax bands, and even tax relief tools.

It’s difficult to provide accurate tax tools information, but we have gone through the rigor of putting together as much tax tools related information as possible. Even if you are searching for other information somehow related to government rebate tax, tax rebate calculater, tax tips and tools or tax relief for tools this article should help a great deal.

In our times computers can be of extreme use to save our daily records of any possible thing. We are lucky to have been special increased applications for computer to save our financial records as well. In a market, you can get a number of financial software packages that enable you to carry on track of that you are spending for tax purposes. It is one of the most effective solutions, for the record-keeping and saving tax information.

Improvements: Improvements are capital expenses if they increase the general value, or the utility value and life of the asset. New electrical wiring, lighting improvements, structural improvements etc. are examples of Improvements that can be treated as capital expense. However, the repairs intended to keep the machinery in normal operation is not capital expense, and you can deduct these repairs as normal business expenses.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: One of the other possible reasons for under deduction of Federal Income Tax (FIT) could be the new withholding table under the American Improvement and Reinvestment Act reduces the Federal Income Tax withholding (FITW) to reflect the ‘Make Work Pay’ tax credit.

I know that as informative as this article is, it might not adequately cover your tax tools quest. If this is so, don’t forget that the search engines exist for looking up more information about tax tools.

If you only require a bare-bone’s system to improve productivity, afterwards you don’t want to waste money on a high end system with unnecessary features. If, on the other hand, you need a lot of help to keep the office running smoothly, you may want to look into a program with additionally asset and client management features.

If you have a mortgage, be sure the bank has sent you the appropriate forms so you can report the taxes paid for the year. If you don’t understand what forms you need, don’t worry. Online tax software programs are designed to easily walk you through the process.

One of the most popular forms you may be searching for is the 1040-EZ; it named because it’s the simplest of the tax forms to follow and complete. Not everyone filing their taxes can use this form, as you must meet the guidelines for filing status and income.

Many people looking for information about tax tools also looked online for tax tool allowance, paye tax rebate, and even tax tips and tools.

I am venturing dangerously close to the issues of marketing in my previous posts because sales tools require it. We should probably get back to sales force effectiveness and the implementation of methods for successful selling.

One place where sales process change efforts often fail is through sales management. Too often, when a new process is developed for selling or engaging customers, all the attention is placed on the sales force, even in their many different roles. This is necessary. But sales management must also understand the new method and have tools for managing to it, lest the changes go the same way as many legacy organizations go—nowhere.

Another question you can and should ask of any piece is this: How will your own people use this? Will they show it during a sales call? Send it after a prospecting phone call? Offer to them to show others in the target company? And what should come of it? What are the specific circumstances of its use?

Too often, the design and development of sales tools is general, as if it is a better investment to create and use half-hearted tools that can do many things than it is to use a single tool for a single purpose.

One of the many annoying sayings heard around most corporate offices is “TGIF” (Thank God Its Friday) and I whenever I hear that, I say (under my breath) “You are a loser” because I hate Fridays.  As a sales rep, this is the time of the week where I get tangled up in non-productive internal meetings and forecast calls.  It’s also when most of my clients and prospects are shutting down for the weekend.  I’ve worked hard all week, moved some things forward and now I’m out of runway and must  stop pushing the deal foreward.  Or am I?  What if I could do a few small things to maintain my flow and keep the ball moving forward.  As a rep, this momentum is my lifeline.  Lose it and your are F’ed.

While there are many ways to build momentum and I thought I would share 3 ways to build sales momentum on a Friday:

1) Get Prepared & Be Productive:

Friday morning before 9:00 am – make a list with 2 columns.

Column 1 has the names of customers that you have not talked to in the past 2 weeks -NOTE: I never let 2 weeks pass without a live call into any existing client because if you don’t have time to speak to them, you do not deserve to have them .

Column 2 has a list of 20 prospects that you will connect live with that day.  This is the foundation of my afternoon call blitz.

2) Be Discliplined and Make the Damn Calls

Clear your schedule for any BS meetings and dedicate at least the afternoon to making calls – this goes for both inside and field reps.  Now while, you can’t cancel a forecast meeting, you can get prepared for that call the night before to limit the time it takes by having your shit together.  From 1pm-4pm, a little discipline and hammer the phone to reach as many people as you can.  Set a goal for each conversation to accomplish the following:

a) Strengthen the relationship – maybe its a personal sharing or learning experience but before you hang up, make sure you’ve uncovered something about the person that you did not know about them and be sure to share something with them to make sure the exchange is 2 sided.   This sharing is critical to building a foundation of a relationship and many of us are guilty of rushing through conversations because we are so busy.  I also want to stress that you must share some things about yourself.  People will open to people who are human.  If its kids, love of a sports team or an enthusiam for choppers, share as it will open more doors than you think.

B) Enter the call with a purpose to uncover a new piece of information about their job/business/pain and ultimately, to move the ball forward.  What has been the biggest pain in the ass to them?  Everyone has one part of their job that was not supposed to be there when they signed on – find out what it is and see how your product/service/partner ecosystem can solve it.

3) Schedule Networking For Next Week

I’ve stressed before the importance of making time to build a network.  Most people start networking when they have no job or hate their job.  These people make me sick and I hate them – they are incapable of being successful as they willl never be able to handle the amount of consistent work it will take.

Here’s what I do every Friday – Make calls to set 2 lunch dates for networking for the following week.  Who is someone that you should meet with but never make the time to do so.  I alway set them on Tues & Thurs to leave M,W,F for customers and prospect lunches.

If you can get prepared and put some focused, hard work into the phones, you will end the week with a clear vision of where your pipeline is, what your prospects need from you and with enough momentum to carry you sailing through the 2 days weekend.

One Final Tip: Don’t ever, ever, ever, say TGIF to me or I will cut you off like a dead lead.

The next piece needed for excellent sales tools is a detailed understanding of how the tool will be used in the sales process. What have you already achieved in the sales process? What lies ahead? And what is the specific goal this tool is meant to help a sales professional achieve? Leave behind the descriptions and case studies, web copy, brochures, and many other items that fail due to this misunderstanding. The piece is meant to have someone do something of significance to your sale. Be specific and know what that is.

In my experience if you do not do this, the tool will certainly fall flat on its face. Either customers will not respond, or the sales force will quickly conclude it doesn’t work and stop using it. Both bad outcomes.

When I wrote my EBook: 50 Ugly Truths About Owning and Running Your Own Business…and 5 reasons why you should do it anyway I was responding to a number of misperceptions I was hearing from entrepreneurs.

Historically, at any given time six out of ten US adults is thinking about starting their own business. A number of new entrepreneurs are emerging that  I refer to as “necessity-preneurs “who were downsized and can not find new employment, are deciding to launch their own businesses as they want a much more active role in the security of their careers. The last group are cashing in their 401k and or borrowing from friends or family to buy an existing business and in a short amount of time realize they really just bought a job and they are quickly running out of cash.

One thing I have learned over the past 25 years of identifying roadblocks impeding businesses profitable growth is there really is not any new creations in terms of problems and strategies to grow a profitable business. Peter Drucker simplified it even further; there are only two considerations; innovation or marketing.

Just as I shared 12 mentor moments that I have used personally over the years to help businesses grow profitably, I have the Top 20 entrepreneur best practices that I have observed and lived over the years.

#1 “More” Sales or “Create Sales Velocity”?

#2 Dismiss or Distribute “Yafo’s” quickly …

#3; If Sales are Scary, You Can NOT Afford to NOT get Creative..

#4 Remember “The Law of the Locker Room”… it truly is a small world after all

#5 Tailor Questions for your buyers that Illustrate your Expertise and Prepare you to Serve their Needs

#6 Learn To Cut Bait …early

#7 You are Not Your Market

# 8 When Sales Get Rough…Look for Diamonds

#9 Don’t Let the Two Most Important Plates Drop

#10 “How” you “CHASE” New Business Matters….Do you want pepperoni with that new checking account?

#11 Follow the leader is a dangerous game, particularly when you follow Hippos…

#12 An “Idea” is not a product…and it’s definitely not a business

#13 Hire Strategic Partners… Not “Marketing Tools”

#14 Customers will Stiff you…But Don’t Let Them Burn you…

#15 Beware of “Smores”…Social Media Whores

#16 “Make a Wish” come true with Focused Passion

#17 intentionally reward the customer behaviors you desire …

#18 You will Receive Your Best Tips To Grow Your Company From Prospects Who Do Not Buy From You…

#19 Interview those who Exit and identify Roadblocks to Achieving Your Strategic Objectives…

#20 Exercise Your Power of Choice in Choosing Your Role on the Team…If Your Gift is Being a Duck….Be a Duck!

The above are by no means an all inclusive list of every entrepreneur best practice but they are some of my favorites. The post that seemed to resonate the most and create the greatest number of discussions was the difference between creating “more” sales versus “creating sales velocity” ( entrepreneur best practice #1).

How about you….do you have an Entrepreneurial Best Practice you use regularly and would like to share?

Of the above which best practice(s) resonate most with you?

Which of the above do most entrepreneurs struggle the most with based on your observations?

Is there a Key best practice not identified? (If so please add to the discussion)

As we move into 2010 which of the above Best practices do you feel will resonate most? Why?

Thanks for hanging with me  in this series of posts and I want to particularly thank those who have reached out to me personally to discuss this series of posts. As I have discussed, I enjoy helping entrepreneurs realize profitable growth and the strategies discussed are not new. One of my goals in blogging is to help business owners who may not be able to afford outside help at this time and I hope this blog adds value.

If you are wired to take on the 50 Ugly truths of starting and owning your own business and you have intentionally chosen to do it anyway I hope the above best practices were of value to you and your team.

Entrepreneurs will lead our country to economic recovery and I am proud to serve this innovative group of passionate problem solvers along with my other clients.

Today’s customer, whether it is B2B or B2C, is a much more savvy customer than they were recently. And, their expectations of how people and companies communicate with them have changed. Amazon.com suggests books of interest to people like me based on things I bought before. The internet is changing much in relation to this—most of which is not the purpose of my blog. But whether you view Amazon’s specific targeting as annoying or helpful, it has become expected. As a result, if you can’t do something similar, your customers are likely to overlook you.

Better sales tools begin with a detailed customer profile of the specific person you are targeting—not the company. Who are these people? What point in their career? What do they struggle with? And so on. Write a profile that is up to five pages long. Yes, it requires that kind of detail.

I wanted to share a few experiences regarding the design of sales tools, because these are often the most misunderstood part of the process. The result can be an awful lot of material created by well meaning marketing communications professionals who understand marketing much better than they understand the sales force, the customers, and the interactive sales process.

One customer of ours is developing a set of sales tools for the sales force that describes the service offered and provides a case study. It all seems simple enough, but our client works in the complex market of health care, where the links between various benefits are not always clearly understood. As a result, their inspiring stories about patient outcomes and benefits are thought to be motivational to the employers they have targeted to buy their service. But it turns out that the employers have only a modest interest there. Primarily, they want the costs reduced. The problem is that the program description didn’t link these patient outcomes to cost reductions. That part was left to the customer to work out.

This is a common problem. I will share ideas of how to fix it next week.

On October 6th, BEST Health Plans released Phase I of the new BEST Life online quote engine. We have received some feedback and want to thank everyone who has recently used this quoting tool. As with any new system, there are some changes we need to make. We want to thank you for your patience as we address the issues you have brought to our attention, and as we work diligently to improve the overall functionality.

Over the last two years, we have heard a lot of feedback asking for more functionality. We know how important online quoting is and we’ve received requests to provide quoting for our medical plans. With the new online quote engine, Medical plans can now be quoted where available.

Our goal is to make BEST Health Plans a one stop shop for all your group insurance needs. As we continue implementation, BEST Life’s Group Term Life insurance will be made available to quote online as well.

Our staff is available to assist you with your quoting needs. Should any issues arise, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We also want you to keep in mind that your feedback continues to be welcomed. You can send your comments directly to your Sales Representative, or you also have the option of participating in our Satisfaction Survey.

Below are also some important tools to help you along the way: a link to our satisfaction survey, a link to the quote engine tutorial, and a copy of the email that initially announced the release of the new quote engine and provides some details on how process has changed.

Participate in our Satisfaction Survey here.

Online Quote Engine Tutorial

BEST Health Plans Launches New Quote Engine

Once again, thank you for your patience and your loyalty to BEST Life.
Don Lawrenz
CEO of BEST Life

Sincerely,

Implementation of CRM tools is generally seen as expensive, time consuming and risky. It does not have to be like that. Let me tell you about a recent project we did together with a client of ours.

The client, telecommunications operator, wanted to improve their sales results. They had created a strategy and objectives, including sales activity metrics for sales organization. The client wanted to have tools that support implementation of new strategy, e.g. real time reporting for sales management to monitor progress and performance of sales people and teams. The plan was to build a bridge from individual sales meetings to strategy and objectives.

We had few discussions and meetings with the client to understand and prioritize their needs and then drafted a solution based on SalesDriver modules that would suit the clients needs.

Once we had agreed on the scope (and modules in our terminology), it took us three weeks to develop the solution, set it up, migrate customer data from other systems and train our clients sales organization to the new tools.

First steering group meeting was held after(!) the new tools were launched and in daily use. Steering group’s primary task was to go through project reports and notice that we had executed according the project plan and cost estimates.

CRM does not have to be time consuming and hugely expensive.

Key enabler for fast and cost efficient deployment were

• modular structure of SalesDriver enable You to select most important tools for Your sales orgnization
• Agile method for fast
• Software as a service model is up and running in no time
• Focus on most important items (key features, integration, training)
• Combination of IT integrator, sales management consultants and a client with a clear plan and obejctives work very effectively

Br,

Tapio

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that marketing is a lot harder than many people give it credit for. Doing good marketing is even harder. So take my advice when I say this: the message you convey to your audience is a) vitally important, b) very difficult to target, and c) extremely challenging to get right. If you don’t understand a), b), and c), you’ll be relegated to d) crappy sales, poor marketing materials, and unrealized potential. Is there any hope?

Of course there is. C’mon… you know I’m an optimist…

Like everything else, messaging takes a solid plan and good execution. If you have a lot of different customer-facing teams in your organization, you want to make sure everyone is saying the same thing, and in the same way. Your best bet is to create a Core Messaging Platform, a systematic, strategic document that accomplishes several important tasks:

1. Centralizes your messaging in one location so that everyone in your company is literally on the same page.
2. Defines, shapes and drives all of the outbound communication for your products and services.
3. Consists of a series of overarching messages, high-level/benefit-based core messages, and supporting messages that elaborate on key ideas.

If you take the time and effort to create this “one-stop shop” for your messaging needs, you’ll be amazed at how much easier and more effective your communication efforts are.

How well do you know your competition? I’m not talking about whether you have a laundry list of your competitors, but rather if you have real insight into who they are and what they do well. I’ll bet your answer is, “I have a pretty good idea, but I’d like to know more.” Good answer.

There are a million different ways to conduct a competitive analysis, but instead of focusing on the nitty-gritty details I’d like to give you some advice from the 35,000 foot level…

• SWOT your competitors – no, I’m not advocating violence. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Analyze them, and yourself. You’ll gain remarkable insight into how you match up. You may find that you aren’t focused in the right areas, or there’s an oversaturation in a market or, if you’re lucky, that there’s an untapped area of the market just waiting to be cultivated.
• Focus on your strengths and differentiators – once you have an understanding of what you and your competitors do, you can more accurately refine your strategy to maximize your strengths while exploiting the other guy’s weaknesses.
• Good understanding = short cycles – a solid competitive understanding is essential for moving quickly and staying ahead. When it comes to business, you’re either ahead or you’re behind. In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”

You get the idea. A SWOT analysis is one of the big secrets to unlocking your company’s true potential. Like most marketing activities, they aren’t easy, but they are definitely worthwhile. If you need help, contact me and we can come up with a solid strategy.

Entrepreneurs often make the mistake of focusing the majority of their attention on what their competitors are doing instead of gaining first hand market data. When entrepreneurs play “follow the leader” they are playing a dangerous game that assumes the perceived market leading competitor is connected to the needs and pains of market buyers.

Market leaders are aware of competitor activity; however they plan their strategy with first hand market data.

Market losers set out to do what their competitors are doing…but better.

When you copy what your competitors are doing you are making one key erroneous assumption: that your competitor knows your market, your buyers, and your buyer’s buying process. ( which is often not the case)

If we recognize most marketing is developed at board room tables with gut , intuition and “back when I was in the market…” information following your competitor is a dangerous game to play.Or as David Daniels put it in his eBook : Is your Product Launch Doomed?…” Mimicing a competitor can lead to lost market opportunity, misdirection of resources, and loss of focus…”

More often than not marketing strategy is made by HIPPOS; the Highest Paid Person in marketing’s Opinions.

For example, I had to run some errands in Mesa Saturday and imagine my surprise when I returned to my car and I saw a sea of purple windshield fliers in the parking lot creating marketing litter. In my recent post I discussed how we must make sure when we Chase new business we do so in a way consistent with our brand and our brand promise.

I shared how Chase Bank used a purple windshield wiper flier to drive new accounts at month end in my last post. Do the leaders at TCF Bank think Purple windshield fliers ( Like Chase Bank) is an industry best practice since one of the market leaders does it? Or was the nimble , much smaller TCf Bank’s efforts the reason Chase Bank tried this strategy?

You have been in those meetings…everyone on the cross functional team share their views , and then the highest paid person in the room (hippo)  calls an audible from left field based on their gut and or what a market leading competitor is currently doing ( after they are real smart right?). The cross functional team is left scratching its collectives heads as strategy direction is made based on the gut and past experience of the highest paid person in the room.

Market leaders gather first hand market data and shape their strategy based on current information.

They say ; “rational people, if given the right data will make rational decisions” .What we learn in “rational choice theory” that people make decisions about how they should act by comparing the costs and benefits of different courses of action. Patterns of behavior will develop within the society those results from those choices. The society in this case is competing suppliers battling for market share each day.

Decisions made with first hand current market data drive successful strategies.

Strategies that are initiated based on what market leading competitors do often fail.

How about your organization….

Are Hippo’s calling an audible that lacks market data justification?

Does your marketing team kick off campaigns that mirror what market leaders in your industry are doing?

…how’s that working for you?

Are your sales tools built by corporate Hippos who have not met with a customer in over six months…twelve months?

Playing follow the leader is a dangerous game, particularly if your Hippos insist you mirror a competitor with the assumption the competitor must know what they are doing.

Smart entrepreneurs are aware of what the 800 lb gorilla in their market is doing, but do not blindly mirror their strategies and tactics.

Smaller competitors are often more connected to the needs of their market and more nimble.

Have you mirrored a competitor and it drove sales that surpassed your ROI goals?

Can you share a Hippo based initiative that mirrored a competitor and failed miserably?

Besides,when you choose  follow , competitor and or a Hippo,the view rarely changes,..ad the outcome often stinks.

I have heard entrepreneurs say; “any marketing is better than no marketing at all…” and they can say this…but they would be wrong! Entrepreneurial leaders must insure the marketing vehicles and tactics  they use support their brand and do not create an interruption.

Market leaders understand their buyers, their buying process and buying criteria.

Market leaders create sales velocity because everything they do has continuity with their brand.

Market losers create a variety of marketing tools and “throw them against the wall” of their market and wait to… “see what sticks”.

Market losers scare business away, and their energy and budgets are used to grow competitors’ businesses.

I Love being a Chase Bank customer.

I have used a number of banks over the years…Bank of America, Key Corp, and so on. However the service I get from Chase Bank seems to feel different, it’s as if they know me, and they answer my questions before I ask them. Just yesterday my wife and I met with Dennis at our local branch and he was obviously trained to serve his clients. When other banks have made us feel like we were putting their associates out , Dennis was like the Van’s Golf employees name tags that say “sure not problem” Even the experience of walking into one of their locations “feels” different in how you are greeted and guided to the right person to help you. So imagine my surprise after a doctor appointment to come out to my car and see a windshield flier under my wiper from Chase Bank. This was an interruption for me.

Marketing interruptions make current customers pause…and bad things happen when customers pause.

For example, at first I smiled and threw their flier in my trunk to throw away later. As I drove to my next appointment however my mind wandered…

I have been reading about banks in trouble

Is my bank…Chase Bank, in trouble?

Should I maybe check out Wells Fargo or maybe open an account with Bank America again just to play it safe?

Didn’t I just read they were downsizing?…. ut oh

However my mind quickly came to terms with what has a higher probability of truth; It was the end of August ( end of the month race to hit numbers), and some salesperson , a hunter by nature ( which is awesome) needed business. So as opposed to sitting in the branch waiting for business to come to them, they took initiative and made some purple fliers and more than likely spent hours in the 104 degree Arizona heat stuffing them under windshield wipers in hopes this would drive new business. I had a pizza shop as a client years ago that could ramp up or down his sales by the number of windshield fliers he would have his drivers place. It became a predictable outcome for him over time.

However, the way a pizza shop or even a gas station chases new business is significantly different than what I would expect from my trusted bank, and the two should never be confused.

As I discussed, entrepreneurial leaders have bad things happen when they “assume”. “Well if windshield fliers work for pizza shops and gas stations…why not…” The “why not” is whatever you do must be intentional and have continuity with your brand image, your brand promise in the minds of buyers in your market.

In defense of Chase Bank, I have had rogue sales guys and even sales managers do much worst over the years. As I said I have to smile that at least they tried! Leaders, no matter what the size of their organization, must remember;

If marketing does not create tools that help salespeople hit their objectives, sales will create their own…and although you appreciate their “be a part of the solution” attitude it may cause your market to pause. When markets experience a pause, an interruption in the brand image …bad things happens.

How about your company…..

Are your salespeople creating their own tools to hit their numbers?

…Are you sure?

What policies and procedures do you have in place to insure your brand image is protected and reinforced?

Have you ever had your salespeople create their own tools…tell me about it.

From the number of fliers blowing around in the parking lot now as “marketing litter” I could tell most of the people who had fliers under their wipers did not value this communication attempt by Chase Bank. I would be interested to know from Chase Bank if this tactic is a marketing approved new business program or if I was correct a local branch went off the marketing reservation. If this tactic does in fact drive needed new business at moth end that is greater the negative impact it has on their brand in the mind of the market.

Responding to an email is not answering it.

Answering an email takes more time, commitment, and thought. Answering gives the sender a clear picture of what to do next, responding only acknowledges its existance.

Don’t respond to an email, when you should have answered it.

“Well, things would be different if…

you had my budget.

you knew my boss.

you had to deal with my coworkers.

you were up against my deadlines.

you were dealing with our problems.”

In sales I have ran into this sentence a lot. Today it got me thinking. I can sympathize with almost all of my customers. I have ran into many of the same situations. But rarely can I empathize with them because I don’t walk an inch in their shoes.

I bring this topic to light because its easy to make selling and marketing a numbers game. Your goal is $18.2 per sale, with 3.4 items and a closing ratio of 76.5%. But to achieve those numbers you have to understand the people behind them– the customer.

Photo credit: Kashiff via Flickr

A few months ago Kathleen Fasanella from Fashion Incubator chimed in with some great links from her website on how to better work the fashion trade shows. Here are links to those tips again, posted front and center for everyone to see.

1. How to promote yourself before a show
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/how_to_promote_yourself_before_a_show/

2. How to promote your line at a tradeshow
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/how_to_promote_your_line_at_a_trade_show/

3. What it’s like to exhibit at MAGIC
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/what_its_like_to_exhibit_at_magic/

Tip from Kathleen:

“One last take away, I CANNOT stress this enough:
Make sure your booth number is on EVERY SINGLE piece of material in your booth. EVERYTHING, down to press releases, press reprints you give away, line sheets, order forms, business cards, swag, whatever. If that means you have to order little stickers to plaster on everything, so be it. Seriously.”

And lastly, I found this great interview with the folks who put on MAGIC on Fashion Biz Inc’s website. It also has some great advice on how to work the shows. It’s called “Get the most out of MAGIC!”

http://fashionbizinc.org/blog/selling-at-a-trade-show/

Good luck at market everyone!