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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Recruit And Train Your Sales Team

One of your reasons for attending a Networking meeting should be to recruit and train members of your surrogate sales team.  You are lucky if you can sell to someone in the room; you need to have them and their address books selling for you.  Pretty obviously they'll have no idea how to do this and no motivation to try, until you have told them.

Coupled with another of your reasons for attending - the ability to meet and get to know strangers - this means that 'recruitment' will be on your agenda.  Please be careful!  Don't try to rush into 'induction training' too early, and don't neglect further training for existing team members.  People who already know you, what you do and who you do it for, can be re-invigorated by some pertinent Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

Assuming you've broken the ice, established some rapport and are starting to enjoy each other's company, there is some pretty fundamental stuff you need to communicate, and then be sure has been received, understood and stored.

You can also use these same 'headings' when someone is recruiting and training you into their surrogate sales team.  If you don't understand these things about them and their business, you won't be an effective member of their team, so don't be afraid of letting them know you haven't quite got the full picture.  They will thank you for letting them help you be a better ambassador for their organisation, and they might just get better at explaining themselves in the future.  You will need to know:

• How to identify their Ideal Customers, using only public domain information - e.g. 10 to 40 person accountancy practices within 30 miles of Cambridge
• What 'symptoms' to look out for when you encounter one - e.g. Suffering from cash-flow problems
• How to check these really are symptoms of a 'disease' they can cure - e.g. They can only fix some of these personally: Low sales? Unprofitable sales? Excessive debtor days? High overheads? Inefficient staff and/or procedures?
• How to explain how wonderful life would be without these symptoms
• How to indirectly establish enough credibility for them, to allow contact

Neither of you is trying to get the other to sell their product or service for them!  What what both of you want the other to do is gain permission to broker an introduction, and then do so.

The sales training you do with your team on these occasions can be similar to training a 'regular', employed sales team.

• Some members of the team will be performing better than others, so study and analyse what they do, and share the ideas with the rest of the team
• Make study and analysis a continual activity, not a one-off fait accompli
• Best practice has to constantly evolve - something new might make the best even better
• Best practice may need to adapt rapidly to sudden changes in the market
• Don't neglect the 'tried and tested' techniques that new recruits can adopt, without fear of your (management's) disapproval
• Ask the entire team for ideas - "What's working for you right now?"

Again the best could get even better.  Modelling the best is just a starting point, a benchmark, a springboard, so accept ideas from anywhere.

Just as with a 'regular' team, you need to encourage communication within the team and with 'management'.  Encourage discussion of difficulties and have systems in place for team members to debate specific issues amongst themselves as well as with you.

As well as understanding prospects' problems and circumstances, all the team must be able to access the information which allows them to understand your problems and your circumstances.  By this I mean that they need to know the questions you (management) will ask as part of monitoring their performance, so they will have asked their own questions of the prospect and have answers ready for you.  They will be able to monitor their own performance against these well-publicised and understood rules too.  Bi-directional feedback will be of great help in resolving any bottlenecks.

For your surrogate team, out there prospecting on your behalf, processes and later developments of them will only work if the team 'buy into' them.  Your surrogate team need to feel listened to, the processes need to make sense, and they need to be extremely simple to follow.

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Destroying Your Reputation And Your Relationships

There are many ways to build a better reputation and great relationships.  It's probably true that it takes less time to destroy them than it took to build them, and it may well take even longer to re-build them.  We tend to notice these 'many ways' most readily when they go wrong in a big way, but often we are doing ourselves and our chances no good at all in small ways yet we don't realise we're doing it!

Communication
In our conversations and written communications we might be guilty of being patronising by asking lightweight, rhetorical questions at which the other person takes offence.  Even something as simple as, "Would you like to save time and money?" could be seen as patronising.

Then, our more heavyweight questions might be seen as too aggressive.  For example, "Are you sure you're getting it right every time?"

Many people dislike undue familiarity too soon in a relationship.  Using people's Christian names without even unspoken permission can set them against you, and they almost certainly won't tell you directly why they've now gone cold towards you.

Another gaffe to avoid is the use of highly dated clichés.  It just shows you've only learned what you know from a textbook, and you couldn't be bothered to buy an up to date one either!  This applies both to 'Sales speak' and to 'Adviser- or Sales Manager speak'.  Who wants to read, let alone hear, "And that's not all.  Just wait and see what else our product can do for you" or "Remember, people buy from people".  The thoughts may be correct but please, craft your own version of the message.

It is easily possible to get somebody's back up by being assumptively critical, so don't.  "You too can have an apartment in Monte Carlo like mine," isn't the best thing to say.  And putting people into categories when it's obvious you've had no prior contact doesn't do you any good at all, even if it's based on public domain information.  "As someone with two outstanding County Court Judgements against you ..."

Reliability
As well as in conversation and communication, another sure way to damage your reputation is by being seen to fail to deliver on promises you have made.  I have already explained elsewhere that the making and keeping of promises is an essential part of building people's trust in you.  If you behave like that before they're paying you, how much better will you be once they start?  And conversely, if you keep breaking promises before they start paying you, how likely is it you'll change your behaviour once they start?

The problem is that the apparent breaking of a promise can often be the result of the two parties having a different interpretation of what the promise actually was!

At its crudest, there are three elements to a promise.  For the sort of small promises I advocate you make and keep - actually I recommend you 'trade' them - continually, much of this doesn't require to be written, but it's still a good idea to make sure it is understood in the same way by both of you.

A promise generally consists of three elements, and it's essential to agree on these at the outset.

• Deliverables
• Payment
• Timescale

I believe deliverables are easy, but then my degree is in Engineering!  In that world there are some simple rules:

• If you want it, ask for it
• If it isn't in the design specification, don't be surprised if it isn't delivered
• The specification should be a list of 'questions' not 'answers' - You're paying for the 'answers'!
• If the form of the 'answer' is that important to you, it should form part of the 'question'

Going back to Henry Ford's quotation, don't ask for a faster horse if what you want is to be able to get 300 miles from Chicago to Detroit in just one day!
However, if you want to win the Derby, then ask for a faster horse!

Another thing that needs to be agreed up-front is how both parties will agree that the deliverables have been delivered - the Acceptance Criteria.  As I said, with very simple promises it's so easy it doesn't need writing down.  "I'll call you tomorrow at 10:30," contains the design specification, the acceptance criteria, the payment and the timescale.  But with more complex promises, failing to agree on the acceptance criteria at the outset leaves you open to a game of, "Oh yes I did - Oh no you didn't."

Agreeing the payment seems to be fairly simple once the deliverables and acceptance criteria have been agreed.  But, if you get into a negotiation, take a little care.  You may have to adjust the 'package' in order to reach a mutually acceptable 'price', so don't forget to feed back these adjustments into the specification and acceptance criteria.

So far, so good, but when we get to agreeing timescales, especially short timescales on more complex promises, things can get heated and emotional, if allowed to.  Only one person can control your use of your time, and that's YOU!  And it follows that you cannot control other people's use of their time.
They must do it for themselves.

On a complex promise, you need to get 'buy-in' from the rest of the team when it comes to timescales, and this must be done in an atmosphere where everybody feels free to say, "I just can't do all that you are asking within the time you are suggesting."

Have a great reputation and satisfying relationships.

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Can You Be Trusted?

This time I'm returning again to one of my old themes, "Once the customers get to know us, they love us. The problem is getting more of them to know us."

Wouldn't it be nice if enquiries could arrive so pre-qualified that they already 'know' you well enough to already 'love' you.

Some people believe that trust takes a long time to build, but it only does if you let it! The element of trust with the longest time-frame is that of reliability; the certainty that you will deliver on your promises.

So it is wise to make more than long-term promises. Making shorter-term promises is an essential trust-building strategy. The simplest promises - fulfilled, of course - will build your 'reliability quotient' without question.

How simple? "I'll call you tomorrow" or "I'll put it in tonight's post" will do just nicely. So you should rarely pass over any opportunity to make and keep a promise. At every turn, separate promise from delivery wherever you can and so build people's trust in you.

We are often urged to under-promise and over-deliver, but I suggest you should do so sparingly. Unexpected pleasant surprises are hugely welcome at Christmas and Birthdays, but at other times why not flag up what you are about to do, and then do it!

If you were to gain a reputation for always under-promising and over-delivering, might it be self-defeating as your over-delivery would become the norm. But then again, you could be relied upon to do so!