As communication continues

to experience convulsively

explosive change, so do the

methodologies we use to sell.

     Playwrite Arthur Miller clearly had something else in mind at the time he wrote and titled his classic Death of a Salesman, but there could never be a more apropos expression for what’s happening today, right this very minute, that is about to forever extinguish the “sales process” as we have known it since the day anyone reading this was born. 

     What, for example, does it suggest to you that even as recent as a year ago, effective sales communication was commonly reported to consist of as much as 87% nonverbal ingredients–gestures, posture, tone of voice, appearance, eye contact, active listening, etc.– and today major companies are talking about the sales process in terms of “digital body language”?

     Except for those salespeople who haven’t caught up (or, on) yet (and you surely know who they are and where they breed), business is at the crossroads of revolutionary change, and savvy salespeople spurred on by the blinding speed of technological advances are quick on the heels of entrepreneurs worldwide in leading the way.

     With entrepreneurial base-camp entrenchments established, salespeople will be muscling their way up the mountainside and serving the rest of society and the business world as the catalysts of change who will ultimately shake our depressed economy back into place. But this will only happen if those engaged in sales careers are able to fully grasp the dynamics of what’s going on around them.

     Entrepreneurs are spirited innovators who start enterprises, and who find the fuel and who get the engines fired up, and who get that initial forward thrust to happen (which is probably the most monumentally difficult and underrated task in all of business), but it is the world’s salespeople who who are responsible for revenues and growth and profits more than any other entity.

     Ah, but therein lies the potential problem. Salespeople who don’t see what’s happening, who don’t jump at the chance to instantly and dramatically shift into higher gear, who think they can keep doing the same old things in the same old ways, will fall by the wayside and die. And there won’t be any mercy rules!

The bottom line for salespeople:

• You must adjust your mindset to become more of a marketer and less of a sales representative.
• You must provide prospects/customers with new buying process experiences that are anchored by product/service/idea and market knowledge.

         You must rely more heavily on proving performance with demonstration and testing and sampling.

• You must increase your focus on benefits and ways of integrating purchases with existing products/services/ideas.
• You must spend more energy sitting on the same side of the prospect/customer’s problem-solving table and working as a partner instead of as a representative.

HIGH TRUST/credibility, proven performance and database marketing are now the three kings of sales! Are you making it happen, or is it happening to you? 

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Good Night and God Bless You! 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!    

VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED!

     Imagine coming here for a business meeting from a small town in another country. You’re just starting to learn English. Your host picks you up at Newark Airport and–intent on getting you to her office in “The Big Apple”–heads for the New Jersey Turnpike and the Lincoln Tunnel into midtown Manhattan. Great Guggamuggah! Talk about culture shock!

     You’ve struggled with deciphering the difference between driving on the parkway and parking in the driveway. You read signs: “CASH” and “NO CASH.” You get cash at this little booth? No, it must mean you give cash. Then why go to “CASH” and pay if you can go to “NO CASH” and act broke and get by for free?

     “EXIT” or “NO EXIT” or “EXIT ONLY” present intriguing options. Then, just to screw up your brain, is “LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL” (so why not take it to avoid having to choose between “CASH” and “NO CASH”?). Aah, then there’s the whole question about whether “U TURN” or “NO U TURN” that’s just past the “CASH” “NO CASH.” 

     I mean, why would U turn and have to pay again and why would U not be allowed to turn (especially if U needed to re-turn to the little booth to use the bathroom or something)? And wouldn’t your curiosity be aroused in 90-degree July weather about “BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROADWAY”?

     This doesn’t even compare to the questions the signs raise about your head.

     Uh, “CURVES AHEAD” and “STOP AHEAD” are puzzling, but you start to wonder about what kinds of animalistic creatures would urge you to “BRAKE AHEAD.” Then you see “JUGHANDLE AHEAD”…whew! And the radio blames traffic on “RUBBERNECKERS”???

     Standing still next to the “KEEP MOVING” sign in the middle of the tunnel, your host tells you how many hundred feet you are under the Hudson River and then notes how old the tunnel is and that it periodically springs a leak or two but that you’d probably only have to be there awhile. YUGZOWIE!

     So you finally get to the office. The 35th floor reception room with 4-inch thick buzzer entry glass doors next to the elevator has 6 plastic potted palms complete with strategically located yellowing leaves, a plastic-looking gum-chewing receptionist with spike heels, a 6-inch skirt and a plastic tube and a half’s worth of lipstick plastered between her nose and her chin.

     The coffee table sports three ragged copies of PEOPLE magazine from 1997, a National Geographic with the cover missing, and a few odd pages (aren’t they all?) of last week’s New York Times. The carpet has a large stain that resembles a Law & Order murder scene without chalk lines.

     There are dozens of moving black things breeding in the overhead fluorescents. Something piped out of ceiling speakers that resembles music is playing under the static. The coffee maker in the corner looks and smells like it’s been cooking for two days.

     Are you ready for your return flight yet?

     The business road to reception is filled with stuff we all take for granted. We’re used to rushing through this crummy airport route filled with confusion and traffic congestion. We’re used to rushing into office buildings and through disgusting and completely inhospitable reception areas every day without ever stopping to take inventory of what it must look like to a first time visitor.

     We KNOW there are no second first impressions, but we get ourselves in the mindset of thinking no one notices or cares about these things. They do and they do!

     When you take a customer, client, patient, prospect, associate, vendor, employee, friend or relative into your community and work environment , be sensitive to what that person is experiencing (especially someone from out of town!) and take the trouble to clean up the act before that individual’s arrival. Please note the word “before.” Thank you.   

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

READY . . . SET . . .

Security? Check. Employee I.D. badges? Check. Food and beverage service areas? Check. Trash pails? Check. Entertainment and sound system set-ups? Check. Parking? Check. Clean up? Check. Handouts? Check. Prizes for drawings? Check. News conference agenda? Check…

     Tonight’s grand opening of a new (years-in-the-making) BMW and Mercedes-Benz dealerships state-of-the-art-one-of-a-kind building sets the stage for an entire regional business community journey into economic recovery.

     But nothing about coordinating two diverse and highly competitive luxury car-makers interests under one single roof has been easy or accidental. Tonight’s event promises to host over 700 people. Many of the RSVP’s came from BMW and Mercedes-Benz owners who want to see the new sales and service center firsthand because it is such an exceptional facility.

     The owner/customers will get a better understanding of the fiber optics communication systems that allow this unique building to be in instantaneous purchase, service, and repair communication with car-maker headquarters in Germany.

     They’ll see the green process that recycles used car oil into heating the huge service-bay area. Building tours will also highlight owner observation windows and closed circuit TV system that allow owners to monitor technician work on their vehicles, among many other features.   

So what are you getting from this special event announcement? 

1) Businesses that plan ahead for better customer service capabilities AS they continue to manage day-to-day activities, eventually come to the day of reckoning, and economic conditions need not have and negative or delaying impact on that day, or days that follow

2) Regarding the invitations, keep focused on the truism that the best source of business is existing and past business, and continue to knock yourself out to please your past and present customers above all other marketing targets

3) If you think this kind of razzmatazz is only worthy of pursuit by abandoning other functions like customer service, think again. Cherishing and nurturing long-term customer and community relationships all the while is what makes it all work. 

4) When you have something new and exciting to bring to market, turn your tendancy to brag into a commitment to share and show appreciation to the community that supports your business. What goes around comes around.  

BOTTOM LINE? Don’t let exaggerated media reports get you so focused on business survival tactics that you start to overlook the need for planning. Planning needs to stay in the mix. It will give birth down the road to those big “15 minutes of fame” type moments when your business can step into the spotlight and get the boost it deserves. If you’ve dropped this ball because of economic woes, pick it back up and run with it . . . before your competitor recovers the fumble!  

God Bless You and Good Night!  halalpiar     

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Put this on your wall…

     Effective communication is commonly attributed 80% to listening and 20% to speaking. Experts report that as much as 87% of communication is nonverbal. So where does that leave us, besides all tangled up with sign language?

     Martin Yates, in his best-selling, well-on-the-way-to-becoming-a-classic business book (KEEPING THE BEST…And Other Thoughts On Building A Super Competitive Workforce; published 1991 by Bob Adams, Inc., Holbrook, MA) says essentially–among many other A-1 working management concepts–that your effectiveness as a communicator is as heavily dependent on the follow-up actions you take, as it is on what you say and don’t say, and how you move or don’t move.

     Yates advises, for example, that after soliciting input, the boss needs to “make a visible effort to act on it and credit its source. It is counterproductive,” he says, “to solicit good input from team members, then put it into action with no accredidation (or worse still, with incorrect accreditation).”

     Yates proceeds to suggest (to owners/operators/managers) to praise creative ideas whenever they surface. This, he says, “encourages innovation and success-oriented thinking.” Yates paraphrases the old standby message to praise in public; criticize (when it’s absolutely necessary) in private.

     His emphasis on “accentuating the positive” [See also my Prentice-Hall Action Report article, “Theory A” (for “Attitude”)  published a decade earlier on the same topic] “build(s) positive behavior. It cannot be repeated enough: whatever behavior you recognize [positive, negative or ambivalent] will be reinforced” [and will produce more of the same]!

     So, the bottom line here is that if you are managing others and not getting what you want out of them, you must look first to your self. Ask yourself if you are paying more attention to scolding, belittling, and taking people to task than you are focusing on searching out the good behaviors and publicly rewarding those?

     I know a highly skilled healthcare practitioner and prominent researcher who maintains a “Wall of Shame” where he posts representations of every manner of employee screw-up, from dumb memos and emails to photos of his people caught in embarassing moments or doing the wrong things with patients. He laughs about it, and says his people all laugh at it too, that it’s become a “company culture kind of joke.”  

     Well guess what? The wall that started with 2-3 isolated pieces of incriminating paper is now covered with the evidence of a steady stream of bad behavior. And not only does that “company culture wall” speak for itself, so to speak, but so does this organization’s employee rate of turnover.

     People leave there–rapidly and happily–for lower paying jobs. Is he successful? His research is successful. As a businessman, and a professional, he’s earning just a small fraction of his potential… because his reputation for emphasizing the negative now precedes him.

     It’s a much easier, more enjoyable, and more productive thing to reward positive behavior than negative, and if you don’t agree, I’ll print out your comments and paste them on my wall!     

God Bless You and Good Night!  halalpiar  

Special thanks to my friend Doyle Slayton www.salesblogcast.com for the indirect inspiration   

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Not much between SOME ears!

     Motivational guru Zig Ziglar says business problems are not “out there” but that they are only between your two ears! Trouble is SOME folks don’t have enough going on at that second location to even know when they are creating their own problems.

     I saw four (4!!!!) “OUT TO LUNCH” signs this past week, and two (2!!) “OFFICE CLOSED FOR LUNCH. RETURN AT 1PM” signs. I really hope someone is driving around ahead of me and quickly putting these signs up just before I get there as a joke, because if not, I’m troubled by what they represent.

     First of all, if you have one of these signs (or anything that even remotely resembles the messages noted), THROW THEM AWAY. NOW! They are costing you business!

     We are in a tough economic period and that requires — more than ever– to be catering to customers, clients and patients (2 of the 6 signs mentioned above were seen at doctors’ offices; 1 was at a veterInarian hospital if you can believe it). What makes me so crazy about this?

     OUT TO LUNCH signs are advertisements that the business or professional practice displaying them simply doesn’t care about their customers or clients or patients. Signs like this say to someone who may only be able to get to your store, office, or worksite at lunchtime, that you have no regard for that person’s time, and that you really don’t care if that person hops on down the road to see your competitor!

     A bit over the top? Nope! In the past three years, and without making any effort because the field of vision was aligned with my windows, I watched a minimum of a hundred people drive up to a CLOSED FOR LUNCH signed sales office, run by a nationally prominent neighboring real estate developer, and drive away shaking their heads.

     The company just went bankrupt. Was this the only reason? No, but the attitude it represented was!

     If you’re a one-man or one-woman band business and you need to be away from your business or practice location for lunch or meetings or whatever, AT LEAST post a phone number where you can be reached in emergency or where someone can schedule an appointment. And AT LEAST make the sign a little friendlier looking and sounding than NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

[The bankrupted developer, by the way, had a phone message machine answer saying that the sales office was closed for lunch, with no accommodation for messages. And of course, adding insult to injury, the “take-one” information box was always empty!]

     How about: “WE’RE OPEN FOR LUNCHTIME VISITORS” as a radical departure that might actually help increase business at a time when customers, clients, and patients are being much more selective with both their available time and the user-friendliness of businesses and professional practices they choose?                

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Assuming it’s 2009

wherever you are…

     “Somethings never change,” we’ve heard, but they DO! Assuming it’s 2009 wherever you are, and  you’re at least vaguely interested in surviving– your business or professional practice development efforts must start to reach out for and embrace UNusual approaches to winning and keeping customers, clients and patients.  

     “Great!” you say, “but what ARE they?” Brrrrraaaaaaaat! Wrong question!

     What you need to know –because every doctor, lawyer and business owner is different from every other doctor, lawyer and business owner– is how to get started figuring out what UNusual approaches will work for YOU.

     The first step is to evaluate what has and hasn’t worked for you in the past. [Even if the business or practice is a new one, you still know what qualities, characteristics, methodologies, approaches and behaviors have worked for you in your life to help you get to where you are; go with those to start!]

     Once you’ve isolated the strengths of your best past messages, make a brainstorm list of new and different ways you can apply those messages. Do not edit or critique your initial list; don’t talk yourself out of putting an idea down, even if it involves using carrier pigeons! Why? Because dumb ideas that you don’t eliminate along the way will lead to sensible worthwhile ones. Take a break. Then return with your critical red ink and eliminate, combine and consolidate thoughts.

     Online social networks like Twitter www.Twitter.com are quickly providing (for FREE) a massive referral base for those willing to invest some budgeted time and energy. www.BizBrag.com allows you (for FREE) to post a free news release about some newsworthy aspect of your business or professional practice every day if you choose.

     BizBrag even lets you set these up so they are emailed to prime customers or clients or patients. Or you can send your own personalized emails out urging your contacts to tune you in (to your releases, or your videos that you can put on www.YouTube.com and other sites). With a webcam, you can produce (for FREE) your own mini-series of lectures or seminars and email them out or post them.

     If you have a website, you probably also have (a FREE) blog capability built into it. And even if you don’t, blog sites are basically free or close to free anyway. No time to write blogs? Hire a professional blog writer who can capture your style and “voice” and represent topics you choose, for you! 

     And blogs need not be great literary works. I know an eye surgeon who’s a wizbang photographer and uses his blog site to show off his photos, along with one-line captions urging check-ups, etc. Another fills blog entries with great motivational quotes and appointment reminders.

     Professionals dependent on referrals from other professionals can develop blog posts (and ultimately deliver bound together printouts) on areas involving their specialties and special interests. An orthopedic surgeon with a special interest in sports medicine can generate referrals with booklets made of blog posts on rotator cuff or tennis elbow treatments and exercises for coaches, trainers and physical therapists. 

     Positive impressions of being an accepted authority can also be made with mailings to personal injury lawyers. All of the above become potential referrers to the surgeon. And there’s not a business alive that can’t stand to do more catering to past and present customers –the best source of business– with UNusual approaches.    halalpiar

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Survey this, doubters!

(GRATEFULNESS, LIKE FLATTERY,

WILL GET YOU EVERYWHERE) 

I know there’re places in Maine with 9-10 feet of snow. But they know how to deal with it up there. Here, the “near blizzard conditions” that dumped 4-6 inches of immobilizing snow on America’s second biggest peninsula (unless you count Florida as a peninsula, which I suppose…) has given me cabin fever. And when you read the results of some of my phone calls this week, you may think I’ve gone completely off the deep end. But here goes: my unofficial telephone survey shows —

     9 out of 10 business owners from 9 different industries in 6 different states who I’ve spoken with in the last three days (including one with 50 locations, and another with 400 employees, and yet another with three employees) have ALL said the most important thing about the bad economy is that it has made them “grateful” for what they have. 

     All 10? Yup, all 10. They all said the word, “grateful”? Yup, all 10. In fact, in each discussion, gratefulness was underscored as a dominent factor in keeping business growth steady while neighboring businesses were crumbling.

     Hard to believe, right? I thought so too, but the more I probed, the more that I was reassured of the importance of being eternally appreciative on a day-to-day basis as a leading factor in keeping associate, employee, vendor, and customer attitudes positive. And positive attitudes beget positive business!

     “When I look around me at other companies in our industry, I’m really grateful to be where we are right now,” is the kind of comment I heard over and over. “I’m grateful to have such loyal people working for me!” and “We’re grateful to our customers that they trust and support us during these tough times,” and “I can’t tell you how grateful we are to the bankers in this town who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us and are helping us to get through this recession.”

     SO, take a good hard look at yourself. Go ahead. Go to the bathroom mirror if you need to; lock the door if you need to. Look yourself in the eye. Have you been appreciating what you have? Can you act, think and talk more grateful?

     Maybe you can’t relate to the millions of people without food or clothes or a roof or healthcare because they’re not in your neighborhood, or on your street, or in your back yard . . . because the success you’ve had has served to insulate you from the anguish, poverty, hunger, and ill health.

     But it’s out there, and you need to be grateful that you are not. You need to be grateful that you have managed to be in the right places at the right times and have kept your life and your business on track. It didn’t happen by itself. It didn’t happen by chance.

     It happened because you built a reputation for trust and integrity by demonstrating trust and integrity. Be grateful you had the good sense and judgement and abilities to follow that path.          

     Appreciate who you are and what you have. Appreciate your self!                    halalpiar

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RIP Paul Harvey,

1918-2009

The greatest radio commentator

in American history

You touched our hearts!

Thank you and bless your soul for your “Good Morning’s” and “Page 2’s” and “The rest of the story.”

And thank you especially for all the professionalism, daily inspiration and good humor that you brought to so many for so very many years.

You were truly a man among men, and will stand for all time as one of the world’s greatest salesmen. Your mastery of both news reporting and voice delivery will never be matched.

You have set the example and held it aloft for all public figures everywhere to follow, the torch of trust that is most dearly needed in today’s world.

With God’s blessings, may we all learn from the light you have cast, and pass it along to brighten the darkness of others. We will miss you, Paul 

 . . . Paul Harvey . . .

. . . Good Day!

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  Open Minds Open Doors 

 Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

RULE ONE: Be a detective!

Lots of clamor lately about MOTIVATING employees, associates, and salespeople. It’s really simple…if you work at it. Some things, it’s true, really don’tever change! Managerial motivation is one of them.

The definitive theory, first published in the early 1940’s by Abraham Maslow and still taught today in university management programs, remains “MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS.”

• Maslow’s theoryviews an individual’s motivation as a predetermined order of needs. PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS are the most basic and imperitive until they’re met. It’s hard to need more than food, water, clothing, and shelter, for example, if survival is not assured.

• Once physiological needs are met, Maslow said SAFETY NEEDS would rise to the top. So, now that you have enough to eat and drink and can keep warm and dry, your mind moves to the need for protecting those fulfillment’s. This accounts for concerns like air bags, insurance coverage, fences, alarm systems, locks, escape ladders, and investments. 

• As safety needs are satisfied,Maslow said we move up a level to SOCIAL NEEDS. Seeking acceptance from others, giving and receiving friendship and affection are key desirables.

• With social needs met, we pursue ESTEEM NEEDS: recognition with items and actions that show appreciation and enhance reputation…things like trophies, plaques, certificates, prizes, awards, special dedications, news release mentions, etc.

• Maslow said at the top of all needs is the need for SELF-ACTUALIZATION: realizing one’s own potentialities for self-fulfillment, for continued self-development, for being a successful, creative, and balanced person who is self-satisfied and has reached a point of total accomplishment. 

As we move from one level up to the next (and Maslow said we can only occupy one level at a time in any given moment), we can easily tumble back down to lower levels in an instant.

A job loss, pay loss, family death, injury, flood, fire, or hurricane are just a few of the kinds of tragic and debilitating events that can trigger someone who may be at a self-esteem level on Monday, for example, happy with being honored at a special luncheon, to suddenly find him or herself all the way back down to a physiological need level by the end of the week, or even the next morning.     

Okay, so how does this work day-to-day in practice?

To motivate people in ways that are most appreciated and most productive requires the motivator to be tuned in and aware to what need level someone is at on any particular day and reward that individual at that level!

Recognition doesn’t mean squat to someone with a broken-down car or inability to pay for a child’s braces, or someone who lives where there are frequent break-ins and who needs an alarm system.

Cash doesn’t mean anything to someone who’s inherited a family fortune and is working to gain acceptance by others, or some form of recognition to brag about. You can only know a person’s need level when you can know what’s going on with that person’s life and what makes that person tick! 

You don’t have to cozy-up to every employee or spend more time than you choose with them.  You do need to pay close attention to the things they talk about and the ways they talk about them. It means…you need to be a detective!  Go motivate!

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  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Buyers “A Sea of Skepticism”

     TRUST is what reversing this economy is all about. And we can’t wing it with lip service. Consumers are a sea of skepticism. In fact, by just telling customers and prospects to “Trust Us” we are setting a failure tablecloth out for the picnic!

     We’ve got to earn and demonstrate trust to make it move from low to high by investing time, energy, and dedication to proving the value of the products and services we represent. We need to do this with consistent performance. We need to do this instead of pushing unit and commodity sales.

     One of my all-time great sales motivational heroes, Zig Ziglar, teaches adherence to the acronym T.R.U.S.T:

T~~THINK

R~~RELATE

U~~UNCOVER NEEDS

S~~SELL SOLUTIONS

T~~TAKE ACTION

     You’ll find this and more, by the way, in past SUCCESS magazine stories and Zig Ziglar’s sales-inspiring newsletters as well as new and time-tested thinking from Zig’s son Tom on Twitter, even in recent posts here like: FEARLESS SELLING

     Anyway, one SUCCESS article’s lead-in quote is from Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Sales.

     Gitomer says, “Today’s salespeople better be question-based, value-driven, customer-focused, and be able to prove their product rather than try to sell it. Proof,” he says, “comes from testimonials, not sales presentations.” 

Or, if I could put a little phrase-twist to work:

The proof is in the pudding,

not in the words on the package.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!