Selling Through A Slump

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Over the past few weeks, I have worked with the good people at TheCustomerCollective to co-produce an ebook on selling in rough economic times. 

Eleven top sales bloggers, from distinct veritical industry groups, with Top Ten lists from each: if you can’t find a few great ideas in this compendium, you’re either hopeless or should be master-teaching the class.

Enjoy.  It’s solid material, at a price hard to beat (free).  Let me know what you think.

-Charlie

Selling Through A Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook

A Guide by Salespeople for Salespeople on How to Sell Your Way to Recovery

Download this Free ebook

Selling in a recession is tough. And simply doing more of the same is not the way to survive, much less thrive, in a recession. There are important dos and don’ts in times like these. This ebook is your industry-specific roadmap out of the economic slump.

Selling through a Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook brings together sales strategies and best practices from 11 top sales experts from 11 distinct vertical market sectors, ranging from retail to health care to telecom—because one size doesn’t always fit all. The practical tips and experience-based wisdom here aren’t just limited to any single industry, though. Regardless of your market sector, you’re bound to find value in this arsenal of great sales ideas.

Get access to exclusive tips on how to sell in a recessionary market, from renowned sales experts like Jill Konrath, Charles Green, and Dave Stein. We know you’ve got questions—we wrote this ebook to give you answers.

Click here for valuable sales strategies from experts in every industry:

Charles Green, Founder and CEO,
Trusted Advisor Associates
Selling for Accountants and Consultants

Skip Anderson, Founder,
Selling to Consumers Sales Training
Selling for Retailers

Mike Kujawski, Founder,
Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing
Selling to Public Sector Clients

Mike Wise, VP, Insurance Technologies,
IdeaStar Incorporated
Selling for Insurance Agents

Matt Homann, Founder,
LexThink LLC
Selling for Lawyers

Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO,
PhoneWorks LLC
Selling in Health Care

John Caddell,
Caddell Insight Group
Selling in Telecommunications Markets

Dave Stein, Founder and CEO,
ES Research Group, Inc
Selling Technology

Jill Konrath, Author,
Selling to Big Companies
Selling in Services

Anne Miller, Founder,
Chiron Associates
Selling Media

Dave Brock, President and CEO,
Partners in EXCELLENCE
Selling to Manufacturers

  

Click Here to Download

(A simple registration is required)

Brought to you by The Customer Collective and Oracle CRM.
Welcome to the conversation.

Consulting and the Art of Self-deprecation

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According to Wikipedia, comedians use self-deprecating humor “to avoid seeming arrogant or pompous and to help the audience identify with them.” Sounds like a good strategy for anyone looking to build trust and rapport with another human being. Sounds like an especially good strategy for anyone in the consulting profession.

Ask any client who has worked with consultants over the years – they’ll have at least a few horror stories to tell about the Big Important Expert they hired. That creates messes we are all left to clean up.

Self-deprecation is an art that should be routinely practiced by anyone who claims the title “consultant.”

Here’s some material for your toolkit (original author unknown):

Top Ten Things You’ll Never Hear from a Consultant

1. You’re right; we’re billing way too much for this

2. Bet you I can go a week without saying “synergy” or “value-added”

3. How about paying us based on the success of the project?

4. This whole strategy is based on a Harvard business case I read

5. Actually, the only difference is that we charge more than they do

6. I don’t know enough to speak intelligently about that

7. Implementation? I only care about writing long reports

8. I can’t take the credit. It was Ed in your marketing department

9. The problem is, you have too much work for too few people

10. Everything looks okay to me

Share this with your clients. They’ll enjoy laughing at your expense. And they’ll appreciate your ability to laugh at yourself!

Deadline for May Carnival of Trust Submissions

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Just a reminder: this Thursday, April 30, at midnight US Eastern Standard time, is the due date for submissions to the May Carnival of Trust.

For the few among you who have still not heard of the Carnival of Trust (you know who you are, and you’ve been warned)–it is a compilation of the Top Ten blogposts of the past month having to do in some way with the subject of trust: trust in relationships, business, politics, or society.

The host-ship of the Carnival is rotated each month. The host plays a critical role not only in selecting the blogposts for inclusion, but in adding some value of their own by commenting or adding context. Kind of like a really concise, insightful movie review.

May’s host will be San Diego’s gift (or is it Pittsburgh’s?) to the (legal) world, Dan Hull.   A commercial litigator with broad experience, Dan is also the author of the popular blawg What about Clients?  We’ve been chasing Dan for months and are delighted to have momentarily nailed him down for this month’s Carnival.

Do you have a recent blogpost (or want to recommend someone else’s) that has something to sya about trust?   Submit it.  You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket; but remember, the host must choose from among much good material to select the Top Ten.

You can submit your post for inclusion here. Good luck!

Marketing Science is Great in Theory…

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Lately I’ve been struck several times by the huge gap between what we might call management science, and the reality of what really happens in the world of management.

  • Corporate training people plan multi-stage programs for the maximal developmental impact; the programs more often than not get cut off in mid-program.
  • CEOs pronounce intentions; the tea leaves are read, rightly or wrongly, and the reactions are very often deep cynicism or blind faith—not much in the rational middle area.

This runs deeper than just events overtaking plans. This pattern of the irrelevance of theory in the real world of practice is rooted far more deeply—in the human psyche.

Consider the latest on Barnard Madoff and Susan Boyle.

Madoff Less Sociopath, More Common Crook?

Fortune Magazine  tells How Bernie Did It. Many things are astonishing about Madoff. One I figured out ahead of the crowd—the fact that his “investments” were pure vaporware.

But I mistook the scale of his crime for the scale of his mental bentness. I was hardly alone in thinking him a sociopath. Now, I think, he’s just more of a common crook.

In a recorded phone call Madoff made to Fairfield Greenwich’s representatives just before an SEC visit, Madoff began with these words: “Obviously, first of all, this conversation never took place…okay?”

These are Tony Soprano lines—not mentally ill or deluded, just garden variety sleazy crook talk. This fosters distrust based not on mental stability, but on the much more familiar grounds of low integrity.

Madoff went on to remind Fairfield of their cover story, that Madoff only executed strategies formulated by Fairfield. He then essentially told Fairfield he would send Fairfield’s revised strategy on to them, contradicting himself in an almost Kafkaesque way.

Madoff successfully threatened Fairfield with taking away their golden goose–and Fairfield groveled and apologized for daring to let their customers withdraw funds! Finally, it appears Fairfield left their own money in too.

And so–Fairfield claims they were bamboozled along with all the rest. And they appear to mean it.

How is it that can you be complicit with a crook, take massive ill-gotten gains, grovel to a blackmailer, then get ripped off–and then feel righteously indignant about it?

This is the same mindset that says ‘no convict is guilty,’ at least according to the inmates. Which begs the question: What’s the difference between Fairfield Greenwhich and the Craigslist Killer’s fiance’?  (answer–the fiance is less into denial).

The best logic of the best court system can’t lay a finger on the self-judgment of those being judged. Our ability to rationalize overwhelms our capacity to be rational.

Susan Boyle: Irrational Reactions

The NYTimes today has the last (please) word on the Susan Boyle phenomenon, and it is again about how “rational thought” is an oxymoron. Let’s look at what we all thought. We thought:

-she’s a frump; no, wait, she’s an angel
-Simon Cowell judged a book by its cover; me, I just changed my mind based on new data
-people use stereotypes all the time, except for me of course

Susan Boyle proves people are prejudiced. But people won’t change. “Proof” is pitifully weak when up against assumptions.

In business, I often think of Indiana Jones’ encounter with the intricately practiced Arabian master of the sword, threatening to bring years of skill and practice to bear on Indiana in the form of whirling cold steel.  Jones responds with a disgusted eye-roll—and a point blank shot from his .45.

Theory is the sword—so often outclassed by the blunt force of emotion, a far more powerful driver of human behavior.

Management theories that don’t take human reality into account are so much whistling in the wind.

Pain is Inevitable – Suffering is Optional

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There comes that moment.  The plane taxis out to the runway, and it’s “no more cellphones or electronic devices, anything with an on-off switch.”

No more blackberry; Kindle;  iPhone-Kindle-enabled reader.  No more NYTimes online, google headlines, online magazines.   And of course I don’t bring a paper, or magazine, because, you know, I like to think I’m a wired kind of guy, and that just wouldn’t do.

So it arrives.  The moment I’ve been dreading.  The moment when all there is to read is the online flight magazine.  Great bars in Cuernavaca.  Plastic blondes hyping expensive matchmaking services.  Recipes for comfort food.

Then suddenly, everything changes.  Continental’s April issue, in “Sky High,” features Dr. Luanne Freer, an emergency medicine specialist physician, who has been donating time to the Sherpa population in Nepal.

She spent three and a half months in a Sherpa village at 14,000 feet, providing health care for both villagers and trekkers.  She says she developed a deep connection with the Sherpa people. ‘Some of them didn’t even own a pair of shoes, yet they were much happier than my neighbors in the US who have three cars in their garages.’

This is not news.  It surprised me, though—perhaps because it was in such an unexpected context.  I heard it as if for the first time.  And of course it’s true.

We are the architects of our own happiness–and of our own misery.  We all agree on it.  Yet we don’t seem to do anything about it.  Statistics prove it—the wealthier we get, the more happy we do not get.

There are cases where medication helps, though in aggregate we’re probably over-prescribed.   And for all those of us who don’t need chemical adjustment to color between the lines—what’s our excuse?  Basically, we have none.  We must do it.  Ourselves.

Prescriptions for Happiness

Me, I find it helpful to collect catch-phrases, one-liners, mnemonic devices.  Here’s a small collection.  There will not be a test at the end.

•    Pain is inevitable–suffering is optional
•    One foot stuck in yesterday and one in tomorrow means you’re probably peeing on today
•    Don’t rent space in your head to others
•    Cultivate an attitude of gratitude
•    There is a God—and you’re not it
•    Accept what you can’t change, change what you can; and learn the difference
•    No one can mentally hurt you without your permission
•    Don’t measure your insides by other people’s outsides
•    You can’t control anyone; but you totally control how you react to everyone
•    Happiness is an inside job
•    Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die
•    Find someone you hate; then say a prayer for them
•    Most interpersonal problems come from a tendency to blame, and an inability to confront (thanks Phil)
•    When in doubt, go find some adult supervision
•    Cultivate an attitude of gratitude

None of these require a pair of shoes.
 

When Service Companies Shouldn’t Talk about Products

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I like Continental Airlines. If you have to fly in the US, they’re best of breed. I go out of my way to fly them, and I fly a lot.

Which means I get many chances to hear Larry Kellner, Continental’s CEO and Chairman, do his recorded schtick on the drop-down TV screen at flight’s outset. I still miss Gordon Bethune (what a shame about the silliness that drove him away), but it seems like Kellner’s doing a good job.

Except for one thing. In his spiel, he talks about Continental’s fine “products and services.” And that just rubs me the wrong way.

I do get it, of course. If I were consulting to Kellner, I’d use those words too—in my conversations with him, that is. The abstraction that “P&S” provides is valuable for seeing patterns. Such abstractions are a consultant’s bread and butter, and I dished out a lot of that over my consulting career. I do get it.

But I’m not consulting to Kellner.  And while I am a million-miler, a platinum frequent-flyer for years, a President’s Club member since the days of Eastern and the shuttle, as far as I’m concerned, my main identity is–I’m a passenger on their planes.

I’m not a “frequent-flyer” first—I’m a flyer. I’m not a “customer,” much less a “consumer”—I’m a passenger.  I’m not buying services (and I’m sure as hell not buying a “product,” despite what I might say with my consulting hat on).  When I’m a flyer, I’m buying a plane flight.  And while I’m certainly buying an “experience,” I don’t want you to call it that—I want you to call it a flight.

I trust my life to the insane belief that tons of metal can hang in the sky.  And when Newton’s law of gravity asserts itself, as it inevitably must, I want to believe in Sully, that guy who can float me down onto the Hudson River just like he was landing on a pillow. (And hey Larry–Sully works for that fershlugginer airline affectionately known as Useless Air—heir of predecessors Agony Airlines and SloHawk.  So Larry, I know you guys at my airline, Continental, must have dozens like him–even better!)

I don’t want a high net worth credit product, I want my Platinum Card. I don’t want the best value in the mid-size performance vehicle segment—I want my Ultimate Driving Machine, 5-series please. I don’t want to see the sausage made—I want my Jimmy Dean telling me how great it is, and sounding like Jimmy Dean when he says so.

Larry, I’m sure that when you and Gordon used to kick it back at the crib, you both talked about “product.” But I don’t recall Gordon using the p-word in public. If you’re going to seduce someone, you don’t do it by reading aloud to them from the book “How to Seduce Someone.”

If you’re going to sell me a “product,” just don’t call it that. Talk dirty to me, Larry; tell me about flying, the glory of sitting alone in the front of the bus at 30,000 feet, and about how I’m so, so special. Use your marketing MBA on me–just don’t tell me you’re doing it.

Unless, of course, you want to hire me as a consultant.

In which case, here’s some free consulting.  When the Friendly Skies get wired, treat cell-phone talking just like you treat smoking.  Smoking is not a "product" you choose not to offer.  Ditto cell phone calls.  

Call them both a sin against the glory of flying, and tell us you’re having none of it.   That’s marketing I can believe in.

 

Is it Stupid to Be Trusting?

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The ever-catchy Seth Godin  highlights an ad for the new super-exclusive Visa Black Card.  So rare it’s made of carbon.  So elite that it’s limited to just you, and 2,999,999 of your closest friends. It screams exclusivity right through the mass media it’s advertised in.  

Nicholas Kristof reported last month  on how reliably un-expert experts are.  Philip Tetlock, he reports, studied 82,000 predictions by 284 experts over two decades.  The results:

“It made virtually no difference whether participants had doctorates, whether they were economists, political scientists, journalists or historians, whether they had policy experience or access to classified information, or whether they had logged many or few years of experience,” Mr. Tetlock wrote. 

Indeed, the only consistent predictor was fame — and it was an inverse relationship. The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones.

Dr. Robert Cialdini, the reigning expert in the field of influence, has identified six basic drivers of influence in human beings.  The first is reciprocity—a mutual sense of obligation triggered by the actions or words of one. 

The second and fourth are scarcity (the Black Visa Card) and authority (Jim Cramer).  It is demonstrably stupid to believe that the Black Card is exclusive, and that Cramer is a better stockpicker than the next guy.  Demonstrably.  But we believe both anyway.  (Well, not you and me, of course.  But everyone else does.  The fools.)

In sales, any number of experts will tell you that people buy from people they like, or trust; that people buy with their heart, and rationalize it with their brains.

If you’re not buying any of this, review exhibit A, Bernard Madoff.  He masterfully combined all the triggers into one slick package.  An expert, likeable, you could get in on the deal if you were special (you and your 3 million closest friends), and so forth.

A lot of people I talk to about trust throw up their hands at all this and say, “Anyone who trusts is a fool and a sucker.”  I prefer to call it human.  Trusting is not going away anytime soon; it’s too deeply imbued in our genes and is, net net, too valuable.

We can, of course, get smarter.  But the most likely result of getting “smarter” is to stupidly avoid sensible risk-taking by following the "smart" advice of someone else. 

“Smart” is a vastly over-rated virtue in the human species.  I’ll bet my Black Card on it.
 

Success – and Measuring Success

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How do you measure how much a loved one loves you?

Maybe by the flowers they send. Or the attention they pay to you. Or the look in their eyes when they talk to you, or their curiosity about what you’re doing lately.

You could, in fact, measure each one of those things. Some are easy, like flowers. Others, like curiosity, need decomposing into second-level indicators – how many questions they ask you, the operative pronoun in those questions. The point is, you could do it.

But would you?

Would you ever mistake the measure itself—roses, say—for the love they purport to measure? Of course not. It seems silly to equate the two; the poor sucker who does so is sadly self-deluded and likely unlucky in love.

Roses may be the measure of love–but are not love itself.

Now switch to business. How do you measure success in business? How about by the profits you make? After all, if you create great products that meet real needs in the marketplace and add real value in a customer-delighting manner—well, you’ll get rewarded for it, in the form of profits.

Profits are to business what roses are to love–measures.

So, would you ever mistake the measure—profits—for the success they purport to measure? Do profits really equal success?

Unlike love-and-roses, all too often our answer is ‘yes.’ Yes, we say, the whole point of business is to make profits. Success consists of making money. It seems silly, we say, to differentiate between the two–the poor sucker who does so is sadly self-deluded and likely to get fleeced by sharper competitors.

In amore, we know the difference between love itself and pale trailing indicators of its recent presence. But in business, we confuse the yardstick with length itself; we’ve lost the ability to distinguish maps from reality.

When did profit move from being a measure of success, to being iconized as success itself?

Thinking that the point of business is to make money is like thinking the point of living is to eat. Profit is a byproduct of doing great business—an indicator. Not a goal.

If all you focus on is roses, you’ll at least have flowers at the end of the day; but you’ll fail at love. In business, if all you focus on is profits, you won’t even get that. Because, simply, we don’t trust people who are only in it for the money.

Incenting Good Behavior? Or Insulting Customers?

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I got my hair cut today by Diane.  Who is great, by the way.

We talked about how good hair stylists are often great trusted advisors.  Their patients confide in them in ways that lawyers, accountants and consultants can only envy. 

And they do it through executing trusted advisor basics.  Listening.  Being concerned about the client—soliciting preferences, and only then offering suggestions.  Letting the client do most of the talking.  Practicing discretion.  And yes, doing a great job on the hair.

But this isn’t about Diane; it’s about what happened to Diane.

She went to an orthodontist.  A new one, a dentist with whom she’d had no prior experience, and therefore about whom she had a mild wait-and-see attitude.

She got a late start, traffic was busy, weather was bad, and she took a wrong turn.  She called to say she’d be a little late.  In the end, she got there about 8 minutes after her scheduled appointment.

The dentist was young, and had a modern-looking office, including a computerized check-in station, toward which the receptionist motioned her.  She input her information and hit enter.

The computer screen confirmed her information, and then—in large letters, having matched her scheduled appointment time against the computer’s internal clock—said:

           You’re Late!

Diane’s reaction was one of quiet shock.  “I really couldn’t believe they did that,” she said.  “I mean, I guess I don’t mind myself; I know they need to run a business, and I was late and that’s my responsibility. But I’m an adult.  Suppose a kid came in and their mom let them log in, and they got that in their face.  It wouldn’t be their fault they were late.  To put that embarrassment and shame on a kid, that’s just not right.”

Diane is a generous person.  I’d have been a bit more peeved.

Is there a case for the dentist?  Sure. Perhaps it was meant as a mild reminder to patients that they share some responsibility for keeping the scheduled patient flow going during the day.  It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a trend of patients being late, and this guy is doing his best in a humorous way to help shift behavior.

But I’m not buying it.  To me, it comes off as a heavy-handed move by some customer-phobic techno-dweeb in love with what he imagines to be others’ view of him. 

I doubt Diane’s going back.  I wouldn’t.  Would you?
 

Can Advertising Avoid Being Cynical?

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I saw a TV ad the other night that intrigued me. 

It showed a mother who had clearly been called to the police station about her son, who apparently had been hauled in for street racing in the family car.  The kid was clearly remorseful and ashamed, not wanting to talk about what had happened.  She was emotionally there for him, but also firmly asking him to tell her exactly what had happened.

The tag line was something like, “Responsibility.  Liberty Mutual.”

Not your everyday ad. 

Now, I like to think I’m as cynical as the next guy, but I have to say, my first reaction was not cynicism.  Instead, I thought, ‘Well that was gutsy.  I wonder if they can back it up?’

Turns out the ad is part of a broader campaign highlighting the notion of individual responsibility  , which in turn is the 2009 version of the company’s broader campaign several-year campaign about responsibility, begun back in 2006 and run by Hill Holiday.    It comes complete with website, www.responsibilityproject.com, which has had several million visitors since opening in 2008.

Without having looked deeply into it, I have to say I like this.  It’s a relevant issue.  It’s an issue they’ve done a nice job of framing, without overtly anchoring it to a particular political point of view.  And while they do say they’re about responsibility, it still has the flavor of sponsoring a dialogue, rather than of wrapping themselves in the flag. 

Business being business, some idiot had to muck it up a few years ago by buying google adwords related to an advertising exec’s suicide.  

And, my viewpoint is not shared by at least one critic, Jack Shafer at Slate, who calls it pandering on the scale of Chevron’s quasi-environmentalist ads.  

I’m glad Shafer is upholding the virtues of suspicion while I take a day off from it.  Still, at least Liberty Mutual doesn’t address me as “America” and  claim “that’s why we at [PickYourBigCo] is doing something about [PickYourBigIssue]. 

I give them credit.  A dialogue about the concept of responsibility at the individual and social level?  As long as they stand back and let the dialogue roll, I think they deserve the credit they get by associating their name  with it.