Harder Or Smarter? Art Or Science?

The Sales Director's number one priority
How can you measure the effectiveness of your sales team?  What should you measure?  How important is it that you measure it?  I guess the answers are mostly, "Not sure", "Not sure" and "Very"!  And although the second might be more specific, are the specifics quoted the right ones?

A survey of Sales Directors in 2008 showed 'measuring sales team effectiveness' to be their number two priority, which seems to justify my claim of 'very' as the third answer.  So what was their number one priority?
That was 'increasing revenue' which possibly implies a disconnection between sales and marketing as 'increasing gross profits' would have been mine!

But coming back to measuring the effectiveness of the overall sales function, we need to consider whether working harder or smarter is the better strategy.  On top of this we need to decide whether sales is an art or a science.

What areas and functions may be easiest to measure and then improve?

How can you measure the effectiveness of your sales team?  What should you measure?  How important is it that you measure it?

Sales is an art, and not a science
Unsurprisingly, the general opinion is that smarter is better than harder.  The expression 'busy fools' came up quite a lot, apparently.  Also we need to recognise that sales is an art, and not a science, as things that work once may not work every time when repeated.  But having said that, sales is a highly 'teachable' art, where practitioners get better with practice, and where coached and mentored practice is more effective than unsupervised repetition.

This leads on to the idea that there is no single 'magic pill' that will cure all ills.  Smarter will mean making smaller improvements across many areas, so what are the easiest for the Sales Manager or Sales Director to measure and then positively influence?

Lead Generation
This is essentially a Marketing activity, so the sales team shouldn't be being asked to do it all.  But neither should their performance be judged acceptable if they do none of it, and recognise that when they do so they will be wearing their 'marketing' hat!

In generating leads, the emphasis must be on quality rather than sheer quantity.  There must be better, earlier filtering of 'no hopers' and 'time wasters', with self-disqualification being particularly effective.  Marketing have a big responsibility not to attract rubbish in the first place!  The Marketing function should also be providing all who wear a 'marketing hat' with one or two simple differentiator/qualifier questions to further eliminate, at the time of first contact, those who will waste valuable resources.

Sales is a highly 'teachable' art.  Practitioners get better with practice.  Coached and mentored practice is more effective than unsupervised repetition.

Background Research
When following up a sales lead, before first human contact, there is a lot that can be done to research the prospect and thus colour the form of the response.  The internet provides a wealth of free information and a lot more at very moderate cost.  This is an insignificant investment when compared to the time and effort wasted on enquiry follow-ups that should have been seen as hopeless from the start.  Therefore it is a crime not to make use of it.

The sales team can be given simple, efficient tools to access this information, and be motivated to do so.  The lead generating function could even do this for them and supply the results with the lead.

Qualify and Prioritise
This continues the theme of the first two points.  If you're going to lose, lose early!  Don't waste time on no-hopers.  Unsurprisingly (but not always commonly seen) weeding out a list before you start working on it will improve your conversion ratio!  Qualification should become a habit.

These thoughts apply too when following up a lead.  Building a relationship, building rapport and trust, and getting commitments at every step is in itself a filtering process.

When following up a sales lead, research the prospect.  This is an insignificant investment compared to time wasted on no hopers.

Cross-Sell and Up-Sell
This should be a 'no brainer' but is it always thus?  Getting people to buy more is one of the only three ways of growing sales, gross profits and your business, so again it should be a habit, shouldn't it?

Oddly enough, this appears to be more of a problem in businesses with large product ranges.  It is reported that product training doesn't seem to be as effective as you might imagine, but I could find no information on how well the training was constructed or delivered!  Most effective is the sharing of what works.  So many internal sales meetings seem to focus on what went wrong, and skim over what went right!  The balance should be the other way round, but never lose sight of the fact that one size doesn't fit all.  The answer is to adapt and adopt, test and measure.

Get More From Existing Customers
I won't even bother with the cliché!  Suffice it to say that Account Planning and regular communication is a good idea, but don't plan for planning's sake.  Only do it if, and only do it in a way that, you can demonstrate it is helping.  Despite the cliché, you need to have a balance between first time and repeat business, and you should keep this balance under review.

Many internal sales meetings seem to focus on what went wrong, and skim over what went right!  The balance should be the other way round

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The Toughest Sell Is To Yourself

A great new idea

Often, when you come across a new idea or a new way of doing or explaining something, you think it sounds great.  You feel you want to adapt it and adopt it for yourself because you really think it will make a difference to you, and quite possibly to those around you too.

“You come across a new idea that sounds great.
You think it will make a difference to you.”

Imagine doing it yourself

So then you start to imagine yourself implementing your adaptations and guess what?  Suddenly it doesn't seem quite as right for you as you thought it did!  It still looks great for other people but, for some reason (that you get better and better at explaining - largely to yourself), it won't work for you!

“You start to imagine yourself doing it and guess what?  Suddenly it doesn't seem quite as right for you as you thought!”

Shattered confidence

The technical term for this is fear, and the biggest fear generally involves you!

With most new things the toughest sell is to yourself.  You worry about all the things that might feel uncomfortable, that might go wrong, and you've shattered your confidence before you've even started.  You don't doubt the value of the idea; you just doubt your own ability to implement it.  You need to build that confidence that was shattered before its very conception.

There are many reasons for lack of confidence, but many boil down to either a fear of getting hurt or a fear of looking stupid.  Even the fear of losing money is really only a combination of these two key fears - You'll be hurt and you'll look daft!

“You worry about all the things that might feel uncomfortable, that might go wrong, and you've shattered your confidence before you've even started”

Essential survival mechanism

These fears are largely the 'flight' part of the 'fight, fright or flight' that is hard-wired into our behaviour as a survival mechanism.  We probably need to be taught or to learn from experience that hot objects, ferocious beasts, fast moving heavy machinery and sharp tools can cause pain.  But once we're aware of a few specific examples, we can translate these into generalities, so then we can evaluate new potential threats when we meet them for the first time.  Essential survival mechanism as I said.

“Survival time.
Three choices.
Fight, fright or flight.”

The little voice in your head

Often however, the little voice in your head that's telling you not to do something becomes too arrogant and dogmatic, and tries to wrap you in cotton-wool with its CYA* policy, and you develop fears that are counterproductive to both your survival and your success.

To overcome this and gain confidence it is frequently a good idea to replace, rather than try to eradicate, this little voice in your head.  Try telling yourself that actually it's rather good to be doing this thing you're trying to do, that you'll feel great once you've done it, that it will be a pleasure and not a pain
to do it.

“The little voice in your head tries to wrap you in cotton-wool.
Don't eradicate it, replace it!”

Tell the face in the mirror

And here's the clue to increasing your confidence: "Tell yourself"!  Confidence comes from practise, not further study.  Look in the mirror and tell the face you see there the things you need to be able to tell other people.

If the highest price you've ever quoted is £1,000, tell the face in the mirror, "My price is £5,000."  Did you start to grin or laugh?  Getting in first with the laugh in the face of our own (perceived by us) silliness is a natural defence mechanism to mitigate the pain that comes when the other person laughs first at our misfortune.

Keep practising in front of the mirror until you can say, "My price is £5,000" with a straight face and mean it.  Then you'll have all the confidence you need to say it to customers!

“Tell the face in the mirror what you need to tell others.
Confidence comes from practise, not further study”

*CYA - A well known policy; it stands for Cover Your Arse!

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Be Interesting; Be Interested

I am making a huge leap of faith here.  I am going to assume that you don't want to be viewed as being dull and boring!  Or do you think you will be better liked and stand more chance of getting referrals if you are?  Was I right?  I sincerely hope so.

If people aren't already telling you that you're one of the most interesting and friendly people in the room, then you might want to do something about it.

Back in summer 2009 there was a lot of talk about a Swine Flu epidemic, but why do you suppose are there only epidemics of bad things?  Epidemic actually means 'a larger number of cases than expected', so how might you create an epidemic of people who think you're interesting?

Some of the ideas discussed in my 'Pricing By Value' Workshop are definitely applicable here.

To be interesting and memorable you must provide what the other person regards as valuable, for a very reasonable investment on their part, and receive in return something you rate highly profitable.  This applies whether you are meeting someone for the first time or re-encountering an old friend.

Taking the second of these ideas first, you may think the reasonable investment will consist of the other person taking the time to listen to you tell your tale - so you'd better not take too long.  But this is very 'me-centred' and is time-based, and thus cost-based.  How would it be if the other person's 'reasonable investment' was taking the offered (by you) opportunity to tell you about their business?  To recruit you into their surrogate sales team and train you?  Wouldn't this show you to be 'interested'?  Surely this is one of the components of being 'interesting'.

This takes us back to the first idea above.  One value outcome for the other person would be to have recruited and trained a new salesperson.  Additional value may have been perceived through your probing questioning, where you ensured you fully understood their market and product, which has helped them understand it more too and hence become better able to explain it to others in future.  But how might this be profitable for you?

By behaving in this way, which is so unlike the way most people behave, you are seen as being highly memorable by being highly interesting as well as highly interested!  But this won't be the end of the encounter.  Having derived so much value from you, the other person will feel obliged to reciprocate, and if they don't you may wish to do a little prompting.

Now their 'reasonable investment' is listening to you, so reply in a way that answers some of the questions you have recently asked them.  Do resist though, the temptation to do this without a break.  Part of the value to the other person is being allowed the opportunity to practise the questioning skills they have just heard you use, knowing how nice is was to be treated in this way.

Their value outcome this time results from their very clear understanding of how you help your customers, who they are, and the good they get out of you doing so.  The fact that they can add to their own value to their clients by bringing you in when appropriate is part of this value.  And your profit this time is in having another well-trained member of your sales team.

Of course it's possible to swap 'you' and 'other person' in all of this and it reads just as well, and is just as true!  Genuinely win-win I'd say.

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Can Your Team Really Ever Be A Team?

Previously I've used sporting analogies to talk about business folk in general and then Sales people in particular.  This time I'm returning to business people generally, though maybe with a slight bias towards Marketing and Sales.

Let me ask you, is a sporting analogy appropriate in every instance?  Or is it true that every group of people striving to reach a common goal is a team?
Is the Three Musketeers' cry of, "All for one, and one for all" appropriate all the time?

In your Sales team or your Marketing team, do you view your colleagues as team-mates or competitors?  If you get an order, does this mean that one of your colleagues hasn't got it, or have you only deprived a competitor company of the business?

If one of the team achieves what they set out to do, is this seen throughout the organisation as the team achieving what the team set out to do?  Or does the reverse apply, where the individual may have reached their goal but the rest of the team are seen not to have reached theirs yet?

Let's look at this from a sporting perspective.  If a rugby player scores a try, the team gets the points.  If players from the same team score many more tries than the opposition, the team gets lots of points and, in the absence of penalties, the first team win the match.  This then is definitely a team sport.

If a racing driver starts from pole position and stays in the lead until the chequered flag, or has passed all the cars that are in front of them by the end of the race, they are the winner, but is it a victory for a team or an individual?  Of course it is a victory for a team!  All the 'supporting cast' will have had to play their parts to perfection too for their driver to cross the finishing line in first place.

In fact it would be hard, if not impossible, to think of any sport that isn't a team sport, even if there is only one performing athlete in the mix.

Back in business though, things can be subtly different.  The skill sets and the rewards structure may be such that one person can meet their target and be rewarded, whilst another doesn't and so doesn't get rewarded.  They may well be part of a group who all report to the same person, but compared with our sports example, they don't appear to be a team, however the office jargon may describe them.

So how should we describe that group?  A useful alternative in this case is to call them a 'Committee'.  A team is where all win or no-one wins; the team's performance matters more than individuals' performances.  A committee is where one person can win but others can lose.  If you have a committee, the sports analogies actually ring very hollow, especially those about team spirit!

Is your team focused on short-term goals, as with a sports team, with importance and intensity characterising the members' behaviour - a desire to win the current game - or not?  Do they give their all for today and let their position in the league table take care of itself?  Are the elements of competition and results strong in your 'team'?

Most business scenarios do not have this same degree of short term intensity.  Instead they are complex and there are obscure links between cause and effect.  Even in competitive industries, many of the people in one organisation never get to meet their competitors, and the evidence of the results of their work is usually not as strong as in a sports team.  Many cannot see how their individual efforts contribute to the overall result.

If only the 'team' behaved more like a team, there may be more to be gained from these analogies.  A relay squad knows its job it to get the baton to the finishing line, but that only the runner on the anchor leg will actually cross the line with the baton.  Good communication, the mutual trust to pass clients from expert to expert as their needs change throughout the sales process, and the knowledge that the only thing that matters is the order, not who gets it, would stand many business teams in a lot stronger position.

We need to use sporting analogies with care here then.  Plus, there will be people in your organisation who hate sports, for whom competition is anathema, and indiscriminate sports analogies will alienate those people, not include them.

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Unaccustomed As I Am

Talking about MPs [We were, weren't we?  At least here in the UK just now!], some years ago one of the major parties tried to help its newly elected Members of Parliament by issuing them with a template for a maiden speech.
Knowing that even to appear on a ballot paper requires pragmatism, common sense and intelligence, the covering note reminded timorous new Members to insert the name of their own constituency in the gap!

Fortunately, better advice is available for the rest of us, and politicians too if they choose to look for it!  Making a 'maiden' speech to any audience of speakers might feel terrifying, but they will all remember their first time and will be willing you to succeed.

If you appear in front of them and start off by apologising, they'll expect the worst.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  We all have things we don't like about ourselves, but the reality of public speaking is that the audience doesn't see them.  So, harder as it is to do this than to say it, RELAX!

Know your subject, and know that the audience are interested in hearing about it.  Be passionate about it, and know the details.  If you're asked to speak about something you don't know about, learn about it!

Never, ever waffle, apologise or thank people for listening!  Too many speakers open with self-deprecating remarks.  Sure the best person to tell a story against is yourself, but not right at the start!  Without words, your body language is capable of committing the same sin.  So don't come on cowering and trembling, saying "I don't really know why they've asked me.  I'm not very good at this."  Take a few deep breaths, walk on stage looking confident, and smile.  Then, by way of a good, relevant introduction which grabs your audience, get to the point!

The first few seconds of your speech are crucial.  You have to grab the attention of your audience, so how can you do this?  How can you gain and keep their attention?  Firstly, engage your audience.  Some ideas for doing this are:

• A question to the audience
• An amazing statistic
• A comparison between two unrelated things
• A promise to reveal a secret
• An amusing story

Whichever you do, and I'm sure you can think of other ideas of your own, you need to make them think.  Within your 'introduction' you should also be telling them how long your talk will take, why they will enjoy it, and what they will get from it.  Then tactfully tell them that they will receive that value only if they pay attention to you right to the end.

Learn from other people's speeches, and everyday conversation.  Analyse what people do to get the reactions you seek.  For example, groups of three ideas have worked well for a very long time, and still do; from "Faith, hope, and love" in the New Testament, to "Education, Education, Education" in the 21st century.

There is a difference between written and spoken English so don't try to speak an essay, and don't try to convey too much information.  The written word is good for communicating details, but speaking much less so.  And keep it short and simple!  The full St Matthew version of the Lord's Prayer is only 66 words!

Weave imagery and anecdotes (your own!) into your speeches.  Imagery
pre-dates writing and continued apace whilst general literacy levels were not high.  Coats of arms and mediaeval inn signs are examples which survive, but parables and fables were once the only means of preserving knowledge.
Yet again, keep the anecdote short and simple.  The parable of the Good Samaritan takes only 165 words!

The ability to ad-lib, or speak "off the cuff" is often seen as an enviable skill, but look at the literal meanings of these phrases.  Ad Libitum translates as 'to the freest extent' or 'as much as one desires', and your shirt cuff is where you might well have written carefully researched and abbreviated aides memoires!.  So actually we are claiming to admire both long and rambling and carefully scripted speeches!  Over-confidence in your ability to 'wing it' can lead to an aimless, pointless speech with no clear structure and no clear message.

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Succeeding In Spite of Yourself

What does it mean to shoot yourself in the foot?  Is it that you're not just aiming too low, you're aiming so dangerously low that your foot is in the sights as you pull the trigger?  Or is it what the military call a 'negligent discharge'?  Have you accidentally pulled the trigger while your gun is still in its holster, muzzle downwards?

Whichever you prefer, the common thread is carelessly, stupidly, naïvely doing something that causes you pain and delay, and does you more harm than good.

I have come across many examples of businesses shooting themselves in the foot, so I thought I'd list some pitfalls for you to recognise and avoid.  You can imagine a (falsely) reasoned argument in favour of each of these.  I believe the counter argument carries far more weight in each case.

1. Selling to the wrong people
   Don't push your business on everyone you meet!  Know how to identify your ideal customer.  It's a waste of time trying to sell to people who simply don't need what you're offering.
   
   
2. Selling the wrong product
   Don't assume all your ideal customers want what you are selling!  Even if you believe they need it, they have to want it before you can sell it to them.  It's a waste of time trying to sell to people who don't even need what you're offering.
   
   
3. Forgetting your Unique Selling Point(s) - USP(s)
   You must offer more than just items of value to the ideal customers.  You must give them good reasons to buy from you rather than your competitors.  You must consistently tell them why you and your products are uniquely placed to help them.
   
   
4. Failing to focus on value creation
   Customers only want to buy from you because the value they get from the purchase far outweighs the value of the money they have to part with to do so.  If you don't create value for them, in their minds, they will see no need to purchase.
   
   
5. Haphazard Marketing
   You need a Marketing strategy that covers all areas of the customers' long-term relationships with your business - From them first finding out you exist, to them telling all their friends how good you are!
   
   
6. Ignoring the only three ways to grow a business
   Getting more people, to spend more, more often - These three 'mores' are the only three ways to grow a business.  You must balance your efforts to increase each factor according to your market and the needs of your business.
   
   
7. Ignoring repeat business
   The third 'more'! - You need to keep your customers aware of your existence, and have the 'more' there for them to buy
   
   
8. Ignoring Up-Selling
   The second 'more'! - You need to offer products or services that are complementary to the things the customers initially wanted to buy
   
   
9. Only advertising when you need Customers
   The first 'more'! - This is the one people usually focus on to the exclusion of the others.  "We need more sales so how can we find more new customers?"  Advertising isn't the only form of promotion, and promotion should be an on-going activity.
   
   
10. Not tracking results
    Not even the 'experts' can accurately predict what will work for you and what won't.  You have to test and measure each Marketing activity.  You have to know what produced what.  Then, if it doesn't work, drop it.  But if it does work, do more of it!
    
    
11. Not following things through
    If you're like most, you'll have many, many things you'd like to try.  Don't waste time and money starting something that you can't follow through.
    
    
12. Running an advert only once
    If you fix your 'haphazard Marketing', you'll be aware that people need to be given several opportunities to fully absorb your messages.  If your promotional activity doesn't produce results first time, it's probably never been given the chance!
    
    
13. Copying the Competition
    Do what you need to do because you know that you need to do it.  Believe me, all your competitors could easily be making the same foolish mistake!  Quite possibly because they all followed blindly!
    
    
14. Trying to save where it counts
    Don't try to save money in places where it shows.  When it comes to what your customers can see, you should spend whatever it takes to get everything looking right.
    
    
15. Spending too much money, unwisely
    Your business should put cash into your pocket, so before you invest money into it, be clear on how you're going to pull that cash back out again
    
    
16. Spending too little money
    Equally, don't be miserly and don't let frugality get in the way of efficiency.  Take advantage of skilled outsiders who can do certain tasks more efficiently than you can.
    
    
17. Going against your intuition
    While you might think that logic is the language of business, that's far from the truth.  If you base all your business deals on hard logic and ignore your intuition, you'll get hurt!
    
    
18. Being too formal
    Business is built on relationships and human beings don't want to build relationships with faceless corporations.  They only want relationships with other human beings, so build rapport and relax formality as appropriate.
    
    
19. Failing to optimize
    You can't simply focus on creating value, and imagine the rest will take care of itself.  As a business owner, you need to find a way to deliver your value in a cost effective way.
    
    
20. Not collecting your money on time
    Collecting money from people can be hard, so collect a substantial portion of the money first before you provide anything.  When it comes to debt-collecting, if you act like you don't need the money, you'll never get paid!

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Why is a Salesman Like a Sportsman?

Continuing with a previous thread of the similarities and differences between Sport and Sales, there are several obvious common themes.

• About competition and 'performance'
• Results oriented
• Have to get it 'right on the night'
• Underperformance is highly visible
• Operating under pressure
• Past and potential performance are merely indicators
• Preparation is vital
• Preparation is no guarantee of a good performance
• Complacency is a killer, e.g.
  • Underestimating the competition
  • Overestimating the competition!
  • Skimping on preparation
  • Ignoring the need to monitor and assess developments in your field

However, the approaches to training seem vastly different.
Excuse the gap.  Blogspot doesn't seem to handle tables perfectly!

Sports Professionals	Sales Professionals
Train constantly	Train occasionally, if at all - Maybe one or two days per year
Work on all different aspects of their game	Rarely address more than one or two aspects
Some training is under guidance, some is on their own	What training there is will often be self-motivated and individually organised
The Coach continually monitors performance and operates a 'continuous improvement' regime	Managers monitor performance less often, and frequently wait for a crisis before offering assistance
Coaches also develop individual training programmes for each competitor in their charge	Whole team only ever goes on the same 'one size fits all' course
Huge use of role-play in practising for their event	Apart from any that is part of a training course, there is a notable lack of role-play - You're in at the deep end, doing it for real!

Can you imagine this Sales scenario operating in professional competitive sport?  Yet we have to assume that salespeople also want to perform to their best, and that their best is at a high level - otherwise why haven't they changed to a different career?

The Sales Manager and Sales Director have to view their roles as 'Coaches'.  In professional football, for example, if the team is consistently performing badly, it is recognised that the results are the ultimate responsibility of the Manager.  If the results don't come, it will be the Manager who loses his job before too many of the players lose theirs!

If the salespeople model themselves on any particular sport, they need to be aware of the circumstances that prevail in that sport.  For example, in Formula 1 mid-season testing has been banned since 2009, but not because it delivers no benefit.  Far from it!  It has been banned purely in order to level the playing field for the less affluent teams.

In both scenarios, the team have to be trained and they have to have the opportunity in a 'safe environment' to try putting into practice what they have learned.  Further observation and suggestions for improvement must be effectively continuous.  A sports Coach will monitor their protégés in action, in competition as well as in training, because performance under pressure has to be analysed and shortcomings acted upon.  Sales needs to be similar.  In both spheres there has to be room for new ideas, new techniques, new training regimes and new approaches.

Those responsible for sales team training should ask themselves, "Could the team apply all they've been taught anyway?"  In a sporting context you'd be hard pressed to answer anything except 'of course'.  But has the sales trainer taken the time to understand the company's customers and markets?  Their problems and circumstances?  Have they observed the sales team in action, under pressure?  This type of trainer would not be cheap, and it would mean investing a large amount in your sales team.  But aren't you expecting them to be as professional at their jobs as any top professional sports star is at theirs?

Apparently, around a third of sales people change jobs each year, so does this tempt 'management' not to invest in their development?  I doubt the figure is as high in professional football, despite the lively transfer market.
Do football club Managers feel it's not worth developing their players because they'll all have moved on in a few years?  By not investing in those staff who do leave, you'll be failing to invest in those who'd like to stay, and they'll up and leave too because they want to be developed!

Many sports which operate in a 'club' environment make use of senior players to help with the development of juniors, and sales teams need to do the same.  Neglecting the accumulated in-house wisdom would be a grave error, so analyse why your top performers are at the top.  Help them to do so if they can't put it into words themselves.  Get them involved in the training and coaching of the whole team.

If you have any responsibility for the results of a team - even a team of one - don't just tick the box which says 'we've done training'!  Take a leaf out of the sports Coaches' book.  Olympic medals aren't available for selling, but if they were, wouldn't it be nice to think that your team would be among the medallists?

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Sales Myths And Folklore

Research has shown that some of the preconceptions about sales folk are in fact untrue.  Apparently salespeople are not 'only interested in deals', 'only motivated by money', 'lazy', or 'mercenary'.  What has emerged from the surveys is that salespeople are 'influential', 'hardworking', and 'passionate about their contribution to the business'.

On the other hand some of the generalisations that salespeople themselves like to believe, have been shown to be well founded.  For example, over 70% of salespeople are men, who are likely to be paid more and probably have a more senior position than their female counterparts.  Unsurprisingly there is a variation in the figures from industry to industry and from one region to another.

Over 50% of salespeople never planned a career in sales and barely 20% of salesladies look on sales as a lifetime career, compared to almost half of the salesmen.  However, the ladies felt far more positive about the way their careers had progressed in recent years, compared to the men.

Salespeople are proud to be in sales, and 95% enjoy working in the profession.  Of the 5% who say they don't, a large number are in IT and Telecommunications where earnings are generally highest.  The sector with the highest 'enjoyment factor' is Business to Business with 98%.

Salespeople tend to judge their own work primarily by performance against targets, but this maybe because that is what others measure them by.  With advances in technology being applied to the sales process, face-to-face selling is still reckoned to be the most effective way to secure business.  Perhaps surprisingly, sales divisions were reckoned to have the most influence in over 60% of companies, with accounts/finance at 20% and marketing at 11%.  But then the researchers were surveying sales people!

Unfortunately almost two-thirds of sales people do not feel well-managed, with 'laissez-faire' and 'distant' criticisms coming to the fore, rather than 'aggressive' or 'dictatorial'.  Almost as many claimed they could fulfil their line manager's role more effectively than the incumbent.  Amongst the managers of this group specifically, 'aggressive' and 'dictatorial' did dominate.

For the sales managers, long hours, long weeks, short holidays, working whilst on holiday, and taking insufficient exercise all loomed large.  These managers stated that their biggest motivator was winning the respect of their teams.

At a higher level, the sales directors still work long hours but not long weeks.  Far more than the managers, the directors were applying their own skills to their CVs and other career related activities.  Somewhat bizarrely, the directors and the non-managerial salespeople do seem to take plenty of exercise.  Looking at other aspects of lifestyle, most salespeople eat healthy lunches, with less than 10% resorting to burgers, chips and pies.  One in eight claimed never to eat lunch.

Rather worryingly, one third of salespeople had received no sales training at all in the previous twelve months, and only 10% had received more than 5 days.  Amazingly not even half had taken it upon themselves to read a self-development book, and a quarter said they would not be interested in a free newsletter dedicated to sales improvement*.  Once again it was in the Business to Business sector where the greatest proportion reckoned they actually had received adequate training.

The researchers concluded that:

• Sales is getting tougher
• Salespeople's needs are more complex than just money
• Salespeople are hardworking
• Sales needs more women
• Salespeople enjoy their work and are proud of what they do
• New talent needs to be better nurtured and developed
• Salespeople want to improve their sales skills

*There's lots more advice like this in my regular bulletin.
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You Can't Do Everything For Everybody

One of the crucial rules of marketing is that you're almost certain to fail if your strategy is to take a small slice of a large cake.  The idea sounds so plausible, doesn't it!  We must be able to take 1% and make a decent living for ourselves, mustn't we!  The trouble is it just doesn't work like that.

You might still fail, but you'll have a greater likelihood of success if you change your plans and aim to take a dominant slice of a different cake.

Imagine you've decided to take 1% of the illegal drugs supply into London.  Do you think you'll survive - and I mean that quite literally - your first day?  Will you even still be alive to enjoy your first coffee break?

You need a different strategy.  Either you and 10,000 heavily armed friends can go for 99% of London, or you aim to be the exclusive supplier to one addict.  Either way you have to plan to dominate.

You have to focus on a specific, under-served market niche if you want to be really successful.  Find a niche and carve out a reputation for yourself as the expert in that field.  A common mistake is to develop the niche product before establishing whether the niche market exists, and whether it's buying.

In their book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing", Al Ries and Jack Trout list as their first two laws:

1. It's better to be first than it is to be better
2. If you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in

To find your own niche ideas, start by getting into the habit of writing down your ideas as you have them.  Don't try to filter anything out at this stage.  So, where to look for ideas?

1. Solve an existing problem
2. Use freely available, public domain information
3. Ask your current customers and website visitors
4. Combine products into new packages
5. Sell 'own label' products
6. Improve an existing product
7. Adapt an existing product for a different market
8. Exploit today's "must have"
9. Look at your own hobbies and interests
10. Combine ideas and improve on them

Expanding on this last point, if you can marry two diverse ideas, 2 plus 2 can often equal 5!  For example:

• Gutenberg combined a coin stamp with a wine press and invented printing with moveable type
• Long ago, someone combined two soft metals, iron and tin, and produced a strong alloy, bronze
• A French chemist launched a hair colouring product but soon branched out into cleansing and beauty products.  The modern name of his company is L'Oréal.

You can take an existing product and try to think of ridiculous ways to make it work.  Trevor Bayliss combined the electronics of a radio receiver with the mechanism from a wind-up clock to create the clockwork radio.

You can make unlikely pairings of businesses or people and create the most superb results; an idea particularly used in music:- Stéphane Grapelli and Yehudi Menuhin, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé, Luciano Pavarotti and U2.  Or in business, the car maker Mercedes Benz and watchmaker Swatch combined to create the Smartcar

You can take two everyday products and create a third which has a whole new market:- A trolley and a dustbin make a wheelie bin; a copier and a telephone make a fax machine.

It isn't always easy to create a new category.  In the field of human endeavour, we're all different, so you'd think that would be simple, but after a while it starts to get ridiculous.  I can't imagine the Guiness Book of Records having a category for the first left-handed pilot with red hair to fly solo across the Atlantic!

The irony is that when someone else finds a new niche, we all say, "Why didn't I think of that?"


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Whatever Happened To Joined Up Thinking - Part 2

The title implies that joined up thinking used to be widespread but recently we've lost the skill.  Not necessarily true; maybe we never had it!  But even ancient Greek generals debated the unpredictably far reaching effects of ripples on a lake when you lobbed in a stone.

People who can foresee the unintended ought to get a more than fair hearing, but often the opposite is the case.  They get labelled as negative, or resistant to change, or not being team players.

Even the most reasoned arguments don't guarantee that the foresight will be listened to, let alone accepted.  By 2001 scientists at the University of New Orleans were already publishing papers on the risks of having built a city near the sea, protected by levees that cause the ground behind them to sink below sea-level, as it was no longer being topped up by soil deposits from the tidal waters.

In the 1930s, sociologist Robert K Merton listed five causes of 'unanticipated consequences'.  The first two were Ignorance and Error, but the fifth is the one I find most fascinating.  The fifth cause is the Self-Defeating Prophecy, in other words the fear of a foreseen consequence drives people to find solutions before the problems happen.  The prediction then becomes false because it itself changes history.  Think of warnings of the future depth of horse manure on the streets of London, made in the 19th century!

Incidentally, it was only sometime later that Merton turned his original phrase on its head and coined the more well-known expression, the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy.

Whilst unintended consequences can hinder progress for the common good, I believe the real criticism should be levelled at the scale of the 'unintentionality', which is sometimes vast.

Popularly known today as a 'lack of joined up thinking', the possession of Critical Strategic Foresight is far from universal.  As noted in an earlier post, it seems extremely thinly spread amongst politicians of all persuasions!  Maybe President Obama can break the mould.

Merton's third cause was 'imperious immediacy of interest', that is to say a vested interest coupled to a short-term action.  Here longer-term consequences are often deliberately ignored - totally different to the genuine ignorance of the first cause.  As an example, consider the enforced adoption of spreadsheets, where the user has to enter the formulae themselves.

If you are ignorant of the appropriate algorithms and their purpose, the spreadsheet will just help you to arrive at the wrong answer more rapidly.  The time spent performing manual additions and long multiplications might well have allowed greater insight into the problem, and so resulted in you arriving at the correct answer.

Many corporations lack the infrastructure to help gather Critical Strategic Foresight, or fail to use their infrastructure correctly.  Similarly individuals need the mental 'infrastructure' to consider these, "OK.  What if ...?" questions before getting their sleeves rolled up and starting the task.

Critical Strategic Foresight is unlikely to arrive conveniently, just when you're looking for it.  Murphy's law says it will be after strategies and tactical plans have been formulated and signed off!  Because the pressure is now off, and the understanding is a lot more complete, the mind can wander laterally and those, "Oh my goodness!" moments start to happen.

One answer is to create a list of testing questions by which individuals and organisations can challenge and judge new ideas and the resulting Critical Strategic Foresight.  These question may well be of the "If, then how?" variety, or with 'how' replaced by any of the other five ways of starting an open question.  Without such an infrastructure, someone who is Critical Strategic Foresight savvy will more likely be seen as a Luddite than as an innovator.

This was noted by Merton as the fourth cause of 'unanticipated consequences', the Basic Values; in other words the very culture within which change is being sought risks stifling that change, or else its implementation will destroy the culture.

So how can Critical Strategic Foresight be cultivated?  Both individuals and organisations can adopt creative thinking methods like negative brainstorming and devil's advocacy, based on seeking out counter arguments and not shying away from, "What could go wrong if ...?" questions.  Such a culture implies that inconvenient and challenging questions will be welcomed at any time, and will be given fair consideration; an important thought when, as was noted earlier, Critical Strategic Foresight doesn't always arrive just when you ask for it.  The understanding needed for Critical Strategic Foresight to flourish can take time and experience.

New strategies and technologies can usually be explained in broad terms when required, but unintended consequences often arise from the detail.  Therefore strategies should be defined in detail, prior to their implementation, and the detail not left to be created as the project goes along.  Views of consequential outcomes should be sought from those with an in-depth understanding and years of experience - the sort of 'nit-picking Luddites' who actually welcome progress, but not change for change's sake.

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Boer, Bore, Boar, Boor, Bored, Board, Bawd, Baud

Of all the sins a writer or speaker can commit, which is the worst?  Is it resolutely steering well clear of the subject indicated by the title or headline?  Is it being patronising, insulting, embarrassing, obscene, racist, or in some other way not politically correct? Is it communicating entirely in jargon, which might just as well be an obscure central Gondwanaland dialect for all you can understand?

Whilst I dislike to a greater or lesser degree being on the receiving end of any of these, I believe the biggest sin is that of being downright BORING!

Some research in the UK a few years ago showed that Engineering students had a higher boredom threshold than Psychology students.  Of course that wasn't the published conclusion, seeing that the research was carried out in the Psychology department of a leading British University!  What was claimed was that Psychology students "had a more highly developed social awareness"!  A highly measurable quantity, undoubtedly!

The actual 'yardstick' used in this research was to secretly observe the students and count how many times each one yawned!  People have earned PhDs for this sort of stuff, you know!

Maybe there's room to create a new international unit, the 'Winch', as a measure of boredom, equivalent to one unprovoked yawn per minute.  I say unprovoked because we all know yawning is highly contagious.

Do let me know your thoughts.

So, given that you might well end up writing for or speaking to, people who are more psychologist than engineer, how can you avoid being BORING?

Maybe you can adopt the principles I used when writing this piece.

• Know/consider your audience/readers.  The top tip is to make sure it comes across that you, the writer/speaker, care about the subject.  Think about what the subject really means to you.  If the answer is nothing, you may want to question whether or not to write the article or give the speech.



• The second tip is to ensure that you are writing or speaking this in the certain knowledge that the audience cares about the subject.  This is a simple extension of knowing your audience but knowing extends much further than simply knowing in which section of Yellow Pages they can be found!



• Ask the audience/readers a question, read them a quote, or tell them a story - whichever it is, be pertinent.  Engaging your audience in some way helps them to feel involved, which is a good way of minimising their boredom.  If you are giving a speech, it is a good relaxation technique for you.  After all, once you have handled the random answers they may give to your question, you can steer the talk back to where you want to be, confident that you now have a 'downhill ride' to the end.  And if it's not really the occasion for audience participation, even a rhetorical question can get them thinking, and so being less bored.



• Be creative - combine different media, or mix and match long paragraphs, short paragraphs, prose, speech, and bullet points - but don't get 'typeface diarrhoea'!  Change for change's sake is distracting and thus boring, but monotony is also boring!  Literally the word means single-tone, but common usage has invested it with far more of the 'boring' than its origin would suggest.



• Use 'white space' - pause, literally or metaphorically to let your words sink in.  You need to breathe as you speak, but people also need to 'breathe' as they read and listen.  Give them time for the mental 'action replay', so they can understand and follow you more readily.



• Think of the 'big picture' - You will be aiming to get the audience or readership to 'do' something, so make sure you lead up to it.  A 'lead in' without a 'call to action' is just as bad as the unexpected surprise of a call to action without a lead in.  In neither case will any action get taken!



• Use humour if it (the situation) is appropriate and if it (the humour) is appropriate.  Humour can be a valuable aid in making a strong point but don't 'recycle' the humour.  Tell your own stories from your own experience - They're harder to steal for a start! - Write and speak from the heart, and if the real you is humorous, this will come through.  No stand-up comic would ever say, "I've got this really great joke", so why should you.



• If you're actually giving a speech, be confident - Most young children are confident public speakers but then later something goes wrong!  One way back for adults is to practise.  Confidence comes from practise, not further study.



• Above all, be yourself!

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Why All Medallists Have Coaches

Like competing at sport, setting up and running your own business can be a great, but rewarding challenge.  But, when it comes to your business results, will you be glad just to have been selected to represent your country, or glad to have made it to the Olympic final, or is a medal the least you will be satisfied with?

If you were an athlete and not a business owner, how would you try to ensure that you at least won a medal?

It doesn't take much research to discover that all the great athletes were helped to achieve what they did by their coaches.  In fact Sir Steve, Sir Matthew, Dame Kelly, Dame Tanni, Sir Chris and the others simply couldn't have done it without their coaches.

Could the same be possible in business?  You bet it could!

Even the non-athletes among us know, I am sure, that sportsmen and women need to train for their event.  They need to incorporate a mixture of strength, fitness and stamina work, as well as skill, into their training regime.  How would they get on if they did this all themselves; unaided, unobserved and with no feedback?

I suspect that actually, at the highest level, they would make a pretty good fist of it for a few days, even weeks.  I am certain that self-motivation is no problem whatsoever for these elite stars.  Along the way they will have learned what mixture of exercises make up a top-class training programme, so they can plan their forthcoming schedule without assistance.  They will know what 'doing it right' feels like and be able to sense when they are starting to fall short of their best.  They will undoubtedly have the ability to 'shout at themselves' and not need the coach's voice in their ears.  But would they ever dream of dispensing with all coaching?  Would they ever!

Is the same true in business?  Do the Bannatynes, the Bransons, the Roddicks and the Sugars know how to plan and run a business, and make it hugely successful, without any outside help.  Of course they do, or did in the case of the late Dame Anita.  Does this mean business and sport are different?

In spite of this evidence, I actually believe they aren't that different.  I have talked about top class athletes and top flight entrepreneurs, but how did they get to the top in the first place?

If your school days were anything like mine, whatever your sporting achievements, until you were maybe ten years old you were unlikely to have had much input from a teacher, except to explain the rules of the game.  You probably didn't train either; you just 'played'.

But from then on, it is highly likely that someone was advising you on how you might do better.  And maybe around this time your world polarised into those who enjoyed and were good at sport, and those who'd rather do any anything else but games and PE.  The good got better and progressed through club and county level to become the international representatives we discussed earlier.

I think this model is exactly duplicated in business, in the early stages of this part of a business owner's career.  To start with some people just play at it, copying what the others do and discovering whether it really is as enjoyable as they thought it might be.  But then what?

Can the ones who find excitement and enjoyment in running their own business get better and bigger on their own?  My own research amongst Business Advisers is that the ones who make the biggest strides forward are the ones who have taken the decision to employ the services of a professional business coach.

Returning finally to the elite sporting personalities we looked at earlier, I said they could not have achieved what they did without the help of their coaches.  What I am equally sure is that the coaches could not have gone out there and won Olympic medals themselves, at least not at the time they were coaching their protégés to do so, even if they had been top performers themselves in the past.

So don't necessarily expect your business coach to be a better entrepreneur than you are trying to be.  It may just be that their skill is in helping others to succeed.  This skill might just be knowing all of the questions, and not necessarily knowing all of the answers.  Just like the sports coach, all they can really do is help their clients help themselves, and at this they are supremely skilful.

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