It’s a new year, what’s your resolution? Perhaps not the traditional alcoholic abstinence in January as recent research suggests that abstaining for a couple of days a week is better for you. But with or without social lubricant it’s often good to share a glass and a chat with a sympathetic ear, how many of your contacts would be pleased to get a call and an invitation to catch up? There’s only one way to find out…

Cheers! 

Many organisations have a substantial delivery team with a privileged relationship with customers, ideally placed to help grow business.
The mantra “we all sell” is oft repeated but what understanding of selling do these service folk really have? It may be an assumption, an expectation, that they’ll work hard to get upgrades and new business but many delivery professionals may see it as, “a conflict of interest”, “someone else’s job” or “unprofessional”

Smart companies are proving that non sales people can make a real contribution to the drive for more business without compromising their values, relationships or professional standing.
Continue reading "“We all Sell” – Really?" »

It’s all “a bit of a pain really” and the Adara inbox is pinging with the repeated arrival of unremarkable e-xmas-cards.  Perhaps it is is tempting to forget about it all and just concentrate on making the numbers.

What a shame! Everyone knows that making a sale to existing contacts is easier and more cost effective than breaking new ground, Everyone needs to build and strengthen relationships and this is one very clear opportunity to say that you’re interested in clients, partners, suppliers, whoever. Turning the handle and producing the same old formulaic “Seasonal greetings” card will add little value, but make it personal, make it something that’s a bit different and it will make an impact, so, why wouldn’t you?

Even better, tough times are here; they're not going away soon, resilient business relationships will be a  survival factor, if a customer or contact matters to you, call them up and tell them so.

Merry Xmas

We’ve had relatively good service from our hosting company 1&1, for the last three years and no real cause for complaint about uptime which has been better than expected.

Recently they had a particularly bad outage with all dedicated server and cloud-based users unable to access their systems or the service desk. Throughout this the 1&1 website clearly stated that the service was normal!

Despite the lessons from the ‘arab spring’ they just don’t understand that the power has moved to the people, their users immediately started to make the news themselves on the company’s Facebook page. An outage like this can be understood but their lack of honest communication in a world which now thrives on instant observation, feedback and comment is inexcusable and has done serious damage to their brand, their reputation.

Perhaps one of the more positive aspects of the recession (there I said it) is that many companies are now finally biting the bullet and thinking seriously about what it is they sell and how they sell it.

In good times it’s easier to succeed with a product-led sale, setting out your stall and letting customers buy from you. In tough times, buyers are scarce and investment is limited, no-one buys ‘nice to have’ and this can easily lead to commoditisation and loss of control as the initiative moves from supply to demand.

The term “solutions” has certainly lost much of it’s meaning with just about everyone using it for just about everything. That doesn’t negate the fact that there is, for many, the opportunity to regain control of their destiny by changing focus from, “what we’ve always sold” to “solving a real customer need”.

If you’re spending much of the time struggling to make the numbers it’s tough to come up with a coherent plan to make this happen and deliver results, but there are some ideas that have worked for others and may be right for you…

Continue reading "Moving the spotlight from products to customers " »

Sometimes one makes a sales call, as I did this morning, and one comes away, (as I did this morning) with an agreed way forward, an expressed need and an ability to address it, agreement on costs, budgets and timescales and a clear and quantified understanding of the value to the business. But there was something missing, and I couldn't quite work out what, until I bumped into an old friend, who shook me by the hand, and looked me in the eye, and asked me how I was.

And suddenly I realised that despite the firm handshake, the agreeable coffee and the business-like discussion of my previous meeting, the man had never once looked me in the eye. Now, there may be valid reasons for this, I'm no oil painting, he might well be aware of my notorious hypnotism skills, but it drove home the fact that face-to-face, much of our communication is non-verbal, intuitive, and hard-wired. And now I'm by no means sure that I'm comfortable doing business with him or his company.

Watch out for the subtle signals, the ones you give, the ones you receive. 

So, autumn approaches and your sales force and many of your clients have enjoyed their well-deserved holidays soaking up the sunshine, tearing up the golf courses, broiling on the beaches and delivering record-breaking deals.  So now, as you’re spending your weekends checking your boilers, lagging the pipes, clearing the gutters and stocking up on winter fuel you’re probably spending at least part of the working week thinking…

“What’s going to keep the sun shining on us? The market’s out there, the orders are being won, we’re closing the year now, what’s the next looking like, what’s in our pipeline, is my business fit for a hard driving, hard working, order-winning winter?”

Continue reading "An ounce of preparation versus a ton of pain " »

Amongst all the revelations of the ‘just won’t lie down and die” News International story there’s one aspect that applies to most businesses, the folly of burying bad news, and hoping that no-one will ask the tough question.

Isn’t there a lesson for us, shooting messengers and supporting a ‘less than honest’ approach will inevitably, and quickly, build a culture where trust is missing?

Trust matters, customers will buy from those they trust, opportunities will be given to those who’ve proven worthy and a salesman who can’t be trusted to ask for help when it’s needed will put a business at risk.

Bad news needs to travel just as fast as good news, but it helps if it arrives with “and here’s how we can fix it!”

In good times or in bad times it’s a priority to build up a solid pipeline of opportunities so that the sales team can work efficiently on the best opportunities, but that’s not what happens.

Recent research shows that most sales organisations spend twice as much time closing deals as they do developing opportunities in the early stages of the pipeline. That’s not surprising, it’s much more satisfying to be close to the winning tape.

Perhaps that’s why the pipeline of active conversations and early stage opportunities is so weak for so many organisations. The people who could do it well, just don’t.

The temptation to “get marketing to kick off some lead-gen” is powerful. Pipeline development is too important to be left to marketing or fitted in when you’re not busy.

There’s no magic lead-gen wand, in world class organisations both sales and marketing have to work hard, together, to build a consistent (and that’s the key word) process that delivers well-developed, qualified opportunities.

It’s obviously a challenge, but well worth it if you give it the time it deserves and follow a well-thought plan.

Continue reading "Pipeline Development or the same old, same..." »

Synchronicity is splendid, I was struck by the happy alignment of a Question (my capital letter) which arose over a fine lunch and subsequent jam session  with the brand guru and best selling Author (his capital letter) Scot Mckee and a subsequent conversation with a long-time chum who's now a very senior buyer for a monolithic US megacorp.

The Question was prompted by a shared dislike of the 'beauty parade' type of pitch to which both Scot and I have an aversion, an aversion best summed up as " you asked us to tell you how we can help you solve your problem, why do we first have to reassure you that we're somehow inferior to you?"

The Answer, or rather, the better buying approach, came into view when I was asked to identify why my procurement chum was very, very good at the buying thing, and it seemed to me to be  down to two factors, she's worked for years with practicing consultants and thus spends a lot of time, firstly listening to people and secondly, actively looking for the ways she can help them, this translates into an informal but inevitable approach to any dialogue (notably sales calls) as a rare genuine example of the oft abused 'win-win' approach.

The increasing professionalism of corporate procurement functions has sometimes made for a mechanical and process-driven approach to the purchase of goods and services but the lack of dialogue and, dare I say it, humanity has resulted in the commonly held view amongst suppliers, (of things the business needs, remember) of the "Business prevention Manager".

My friend is valued, not for the fact that she negotiates really well priced deals, (although she does) but more for the longevity, amicability, lack of pain and lack of risk in the deals she makes.
We spend a lot of time helping sales and marketing folk to listen better... Maybe that's not where the biggest problem is?

As a direct result of most of the country having 11 days off last May one of our clients lost 30% of that month’s business, this, unsurprisingly, had a major un-addressable impact on their financials.

There will always be holidays, public or private, but business doesn’t have to come to a standstill. We’ve now got six weeks of holidays in prospect but not everyone will be away at the same time (unlike May) so it’s vital to keep the pressure up.

There’s a long-help and popular belief that you don’t do any lead generation in July and August as everyone is on holiday.

Tosh! They don’t all go away, it just changes, maybe a different approach, a staggered contact plan, a different call to action, maybe a few less calls but often ones of better quality.

Don’t let vacations vandalise your value

It’s convenient, and practical, to segment sales teams into three groups, the top performers, the bottom performers and those in the middle. Whether it’s a 20/60/20 split or a 30/40/30 is of little concern, what matters is that each have differing needs and need different support.

As a manager, it’s great working with the top performers, the ones winning deals. It’s often satisfying working with the middle group but naturally, the problem children don’t get the attention they deserve; it’s not fun and it’s not easy so it gets put off.

It’s well known that the cost of poor performers is high but how often do they languish at the bottom of the league table for far too long? The (still very common) tradition of simply getting rid of the bottom performers is rarely simple. It’s invariably time consuming, difficult, wasteful and in these litigious times, often risky.

Few managers like to admit failure, whether of recruiting, management or training but this is an area where, ‘step one is admitting you have a problem’ and step two, a proactive approach to fixing the problem can really pay dividends.

Continue reading "The hidden costs of the bottom 10% ,20% or 30%,..." »

As a nation we’re out of funds, living on debt and spending a fortune daily sending expensive planes and £300,000 missiles into Libya and now (after packing up for two weeks over Christmas), the whole country’s doing it again for another two weeks, is this how you get out of a recession?

 Selling is all about having meaningful conversations; leadgen is the first step in the sales process so having quality conversations to get interest is of critical importance. Realistically that takes careful thought and serious preparation but many marketing folk prefer to get straight on with the calling to show how dynamic they are, forgetting the real objective of the exercise.

Short-cuts will short-change conversation quality and lead to disappointment. The way to get results is relatively well understood but actually doing it well is where it gets more difficult.

We’ve developed 10 measures based on best practise, the things that we’ve found make the difference between an indifferent initiative and one that gets results.

Continue reading "How does your Leadgen measure up ?" »

Don’t just let them do it to you, when you get poor service, complain!

Intellectually we all know that if something’s wrong we should provide feedback, if we don’t say what’s wrong why would it be fixed ? Emotionally this may not sit well with the traditional British reserve. We’re just a couple of grumpy old men who think that Mary Portas is right to campaign against poor service.
We all talk-the-talk about being proactive but how many of us really know what our customers think of our service, how many correctly anticipate all shortcomings and how many fix them so that they don’t get complaints?

How would your business fare if the Queen of Retail was a mystery shopper?