The phone rings.  I pick it up, it’s a sales person from a supplier of Sales Intelligence solutions.

“Hi Dave, I’d noticed you were on our site, I’d like to talk to you about how your company can use Sales Intelligence to improve your impact,” he says.

“We’ve found the more knowledgeable you are about the people you call, the better the result.”

I respond, confused, “I’m not sure why you are calling, I know your solution, I’ve used your solution, I am a past customer.”

“Oh,” responds the sales person, “I didn’t know.”

Hmmm………..

There are the twice a day “drip” emails from the marketing tools company that advocates meaningful, appropriate, and relevant content.  I’m having difficulty opting out, it seems I have to opt out of each type of email stream.

Hmmm……..

There’s the sales training company whose weekly calls are about their process and programs, but not creating new ideas for me and what I face.

Hmmm……

Wonder what would change if they practiced what they preached?

Related posts:

1. Saving The Lives Of Malnourished Children

I’ve been tracking some discussions about old school approaches to engaging customers.  There are a number people talking about the power of handwritten thank you cards and notes (I’m a real fan of this myself).  One of my clients has done a study and has found brief handwritten introductory prospecting notes, with hand addressed envelopes are very effective.  For select prospects, they send well researched and handwritten notes–unique to each individual.  These are never more than a few paragraphs.  They seem to have high impact and generate good responses.

Leave it to some clever direct marketer to take this to an extreme, now taking something that had roots in authenticity, using the approach to manipulate and deceive the targets.  The other day, I picked up the mail, I opened an envelope and saw this handwritten letter.

I have to admit, they achieved one objective–they got me to read the letter–not only once but 4 times.  While I read it 4 times, mostly in sheer amazement, each time, it made me angrier because I recognized I was being manipulated.  The letter appeared to be from a frustrated small business owner, doing whatever he could to generate business.  “When times are tough, you’ve got to do some pretty drastic things!”  His impulsive idea was to send this “handwritten letter.”  He was so excited, he had to “hand write a note”  He clearly wanted me to know it was handwritten, because he reminded me of the fact at least 3 times in the 4 page diatribe.  He also managed to tell me the name of all his employees, who would appreciate my business to keep them employed, and the names and ages of his granddaughters.

He kept reinforcing the excitement, urgency, and his unique approach with notes in the margin, liberal cross through’s on words misused (purposefully), red ink arrows pointing me to his “bribes.” 

The first time, I read the letter, I was amazed–I only read it out of professional curiosity, it seemed incredible.  Then in re-reading, the manipulations started popping out.  It became obvious that it was professionally printed, not handwritten (I think the font is Copperplate Sloppy Unreadable Bold).  I’m trying to find the download site.  The pages had gone through a folding machine, the envelope had presorted bulk mail postage.  I called my neighbors, they had gotten the same letter.

So what’s the bottom line?

If the objective was to get me to read the letter, they achieved it.  This is the first time I ‘ve received a note like this, I won’t be so easily fooled the next time–I might even accidentally ignore a real letter.

If their hope was to elicit my sympathy for a struggling local business person and take advantage of a deal, not only would I not respond, but I would never consider this company as a supplier (I was actually interested in what he was offering, but now he is not on my list of companies I am getting bids from).  The entire premise of his very first letter to me was a deception.  I guess I must expect the same from everything else he might do.  In the very first business encounter, he has proven himself totally untrustworthy.

I continue to be amazed.  It doesn’t take a lot of scrutiny to see the manipulations, they leap off the page.  But I get at least half a dozen of these every week.  I respect someone trying a clever approach to catch my attention.  But lying and manipulating?  I guess there are enough stupid people that make these techniques have some sort of pay off.

All these manipulations create greater difficulty for legitimate direct marketers that want to stand out. As consumers, we become more numb, so marketers crank up the volume, crank up the manipulations, create a bigger lie.

I’m longing for a kinder, simpler approach.  Perhaps a simple letter:  “I noticed the windows in your house are getting a little old.  I have an idea on replacing those, while saving you a lot of money.  Would you be willing to talk for a few minutes?”

Related posts:

1. Location-Based Prospecting? Are Ad-Hoc Sales Calls Valuable?

I’ve given up, we deserve all the jokes people tell about us.  Stupid sales behaviors—the source of endless jokes, the reason people hate sales people, the reason we have such difficulty in meeting with customers.

The tricks and manipulation……

A client sent me a note about one.  A sales person calls, leaves a voicemail, but doesn’t leave his name.  Curious, my client calls back, the sales person is totally unprepared, did not recall the message (left 45 minutes earlier), didn’t ask my client about their business, but starts pitching a meeting.

My friend, Anthony Iannarino, has another similar one:  “Should I leave a message with just my name and number, not why I am calling?”  The subtext to this is—let me trick someone into returning my call.

My own experience, just yesterday.  I get a voicemail, I return the call, the sales person answers—sounds like I woke him up from his afternoon nap.  Doesn’t remember why he called, then wanders through an aimless conversation—after 45 seconds, I didn’t get it, I understood he wanted to sell me something, but didn’t know what, so I thanked him and hung up.

Or the one, “We met at this conference, I wanted to follow up with you….”  When I reply, “I registered for the conference, but ended up not attending, so how did we meet?”

Then there’s the variant of the conference one — “We met at this conference two years ago….”  Wow, I think, they must have had so many leads, they are just now getting to me……

I could go on, I’ll stop here, but ask you to share your own stories in comments on this blog.  But the real reason for writing is:  Do we ever stop to listen to what we are saying?  Do we ever stop to think?  If we called ourselves and used the same approach, what would our response be?

Is thinking about what we are doing so difficult?  Is there some reason we spend lots of time looking for the latest trick, that hook, the way to “get our foot in the door,” rather than focus on “Why would this person want to talk/meet with me?  What could I do that would be meaningful to this individual?”  Both take about the same amount of time, but we seem to opt to sleight of hand, rather than the value we can create.

The goal isn’t about the number of calls–managers setting these goals take note–the goal is, how many value based conversations do we have?

When are we going to realize that buying–and selling has shifted?  It’s not about the pitch, it’s not about broadcasting a meaningless message, it’s about establishing a meaningful dialogue or conversation.  When do we start realizing that we don’t build trust through deception and manipulation?

Why do we continue to choose circuitous, confusing approaches to a prospect or customer, instead of being direct?

Sales is difficult enough, it requires real talent.  It requires real thoughtfulness.  Stop wasting your time on tricks and manipulation.  Stop wasting your time looking for or reading, “The 7 tricky ways to get your customer to say yes,” or “The 11 ways you can get your customer to answer the phone,” or “Master the ambush call.”

Invest your time in thinking–why would the customer want to talk to me?  What could I do that would create value for the customer?  How do I communicate that to the customer?  How do I make sure it’s a good investment of the customer”s time.  Think about what you are doing, research, plan, prepare.  You’d be amazed at how well it works.

Did you hear the one about, “What do you say about 200 sales people at the bottom of the sea….”

Related posts:

1. Creating Crap At The Speed Of Light
2. Little Things Count!
3. Dear Mr. Customer: I Try Hard To Be A Great Sales Professional……

Today, I get this email, it’s addressed to “undisclosed recipients,” which is really email-speak for “Dear Occupant or Current Resident.”  Here’s the text of the email, minus the signature block:

Hey,  ( I really love the personal touch)

Just wanted to take a quick second to see how you are doing and make sure if you had any needs before July 4^th that we get them moving now.  I notice that as we approach that holiday, many times things fall off the table, and the best way we can avoid that is getting quotes etc taken care of ahead of time.

We are also running a buy 2 get 1 free sale on select servers right now.  I have a little bit of flexibility with that promotion as well in case you do not need 3 servers…

Call me or email me for more information

Thank you!!

Now before I go further, I need to step back about 2 weeks.  I’m at a client location, just finishing a meeting and my mobile phone rings.  The sales person introduces himself by thanking me for all the business we’ve given his company for a number of years.  He goes further to explain, that he is my newly assigned account sales person.  I thank him, replying, “I appreciate your call, but our requirements are very small and I prefer to buy through the web site.  After all we only order a small number of computers a year, it is much easier for me to go in and configure and order a system on line.”

He replies, “While you can do that, we really want you to be leveraging us to serve your requirements and get you the best deal (code word for cheapest prices).  We’re here to serve you and want you to buy through us rather than the web site.  Do you mind verifying your email information so I can send you an introduction email and package?”

To which I respond, “No, I really don’t have the time to deal with a sales person.  I prefer ordering through the web, I don’t want to give you my email and I really don’t want you sending me information.  Thank you, Good bye!”

I had barely hung up, when my phone pinged, indicating a new email.  It’s an email from this sales person thanking me for the call and providing me the introduction package–ignoring everything I said.  Mildly annoyed, I file it in my folder of “examples of bad practice.”

I’d forgotten about it until I got the email above.

I hate to bash Dell–I really like the company and have loved their products.  But they’ve decided not only to stop listening to me, but that they know better about what I need and how I should buy.

I prefer the web channel with Dell.  It’s efficient, and somehow I always manage to load the systems up with all sorts of cool things, so I never order a base system.  My average purchase is usually more than twice the base configuration–an I never buy a pre-configured system.  Somehow it seems to be the ideal situation, I am the proof that well executed upsell/cross sell really works–even in a web delivered experience.

Even though we don’t buy that many computers every year, and we always tend to buy Dell, but they want to direct me to a more expensive channel.  I have to believe that dealing with a sales person over the telephone is more expensive (and less profitable), than having me order through the web.  Why are they trying to force me to shift from my preferred channel?  It’s common for organizations to try to shift their customers to a more efficient or cheaper channel to reduce their cost of selling.  This transition is always difficult, you tend to lose customers if you don’t do it right.  But I’ve never seen an organization try to shift it’s buyers to a more expensive channel!  Given our purchase needs and past behavior–it doesn’t make sense to shift us from a web based channel to a more expensive people based channel.

I have over a 20 year history of buying primarily Dell products. (I said I liked them).  We have always ordered only Desktops and Laptops/Notebooks.  It seems to me if Dell was using the “intelligence” they might have gleaned from our purchase history, that they would have known that we would probably not be interested in a server promotion–regardless of how good the price deal they might offer.

Why is the sales person making this communication all about price?  Not only by two, get one free, but the implication I can get a deep discount for fewer than 3.  He’s initiated this sales cycle and he has made it all about price–so if I were at all inclined to buy–I would make it even more about price, leveraging the best deal from whatever vendor I could find.  We always train people to focus on value and to minimize discounting, but Dell apparently believes it best to lead with price instead.

Why do they have their sales people ignore my requests to not email me–not only once, but now I am on a distribution list with no ability to “opt-out.”

But wait, things get worse, below the signature block, there is a “How am I doing?  Please email my manager [Name_Withheld] with any feedback.”  Well, I’m slightly pissed off, so I click on what looks like a link–turns out it’s not a link–the font color was changed to make it look “link-like.”  Funny, that was the only “link” that wasn’t real in the entire email, the 4 others worked perfectly.  What kind of sleazy practice is this–my sales person and Dell really doesn’t want my feedback, but wants to mislead me?  They taunt me with the request for feedback, but don’t enable the link.

Whats’ up? This is probably not just a case of bad execution by a sales person.  The sales person is executing a program designed by someone else.  In reality, I don’t think it’s a reflection of Dell, but probably some overzealous manager.  It’s a program that is probably being inflicted on thousands of other small business owners, many probably have the same reaction as me.

It’s not that uncommon.  I see too many (particularly large) organizations doing stupid things like this.   A well intended market manager, a product manager, a sales manager has a mission and will execute it, possibly thinking they are doing the right thing, but so focused on their mission, they don’t understand what they are really doing.  Senior managers are supposed to help avoid this–making sure all programs and initiatives hang together and make sense. But too often, they fail to do the proper review or get involved in the details.

Despite this being more common than one would like, it is real cause for concern.  Strategies and programs executed blindly can have devastating impacts.

I’m really worried about Dell, my experience is that companies tend to adopt these types of misleading and shoddy practices when they are in trouble.

I wonder, should I contact Michael and offer my assistance?  Clearly, some thing’s way off in terms of their sales strategies and the customer experience they are creating.  The fixes are obvious, and actually could both save a lot of  expense and retain/increase revenue.

I still like Dell products.  I’ll try to buy, in spite of the way they are treating me.  I hope they don’t make it too difficult to buy–it might cause me to rethink things.

Related posts:

1. The Courage To Admit You Are Wrong
2. We Have It All Wrong When We Think About Sales Training

Why do executives, marketers, and sales people continue this insane behavior?! Why do they invest their time and precious budgets in creating meaningless SPAM which, at best is ignored, at worst creates people who are hostile to their brands and companies? A week ago, I wrote about insane telemarketing calls, “Can I Have 15 Minutes Of Your Time?”

Companies (in this case a global 50 technology company) waste millions in dollars and people hours, diminishing their brand value with mindless marketing and sales drivel.

Here’s the latest piece that sneaked through my SPAM filters:

TO: info@excellenc.com

FROM: Sunny@some nameless recruiting company dot com

CC: webmaster@excellenc.com

SUBJECT: Doing Business With You – Your IT staffing company-Application for Supplier Registration

Hi

My name is Sunny and I am seeking some advice about an introduction of our
company Some Nameless Recruiting Company, Inc., a provider of IT professionals on a contract or
executive search basis.

Candidly, I am at a crossroads about how to further an introduction at your
company, can you point me in the right direction about I.T. staffing needs?

I request you to consider Some Nameless Recruiting Company Inc as your Vendor for all your IT Staffing
requirements

Thanks & regards

There is NOTHING right about this email, so I won’t bother to critique it.

But why do sales people and managers persist in this–buy a list, send mindless drivel, out of 10,000 names, 5,000 bounce backs, you get one response that says: Stop bothering me!. From that “success” go and buy another 100,ooo names, get 50,ooo bounce backs, and now get 9 responses—Please leave me alone, and 1 that says, I’m looking for a job, can you hire or place me? Wow, 10 x the response, lets go buy some more…… and the death spiral continues.

Now if this were just a small number of companies doing this, but every week I look through my SPAM filter and see dozens of these from companies large and small. The biggest offenders are insurance companies—because my name pops up on “sales” queries, I get every mindless piece of “make millions while screwing your customer” offers to sell various forms of insurance—all with the big name insurance companies behind it (OK, I added the screwing your customer piece). Financial services companies, and recruiting organizations are close behind.

Then there are the companies that force their marketing and sales promotions on you because you subscribe to their service. For example, a major supply chain management service provider has managed to get a very large client of mine to outsource their procurement, invoicing, payables process to them. It’s a great service and very convenient. However, since I have to use this service to invoice my client, I also get daily feeds of “opportunities.” If I try to stop those feeds, I also stop communications my client might send me through this channel. In order to communicate with my customer on invoicing and payable issues, I have to accept these mindless promotions, but it makes me think less of this company and their services.

I subscribe to a number of local news feeds to keep informed about things happening in business around the country. Now, this company uses this subscription list to send daily ads to buy something. So I get the newsfeeds with their embedded ads–which I don’t mind, and I get these direct mail pieces on buying something. Since I subscribe to the feeds for about 15 cities around the US, I get the same direct mail 15 times—every day. If I change my subscription options, I can only stop the news feed. Is this the customer experience they want to create? What do they tell their advertisers, when people like me start unsubscribing to their entire service?

Many experts talk about targeting, about tailoring your messages, about smart, meaningful, and timely content. I respond to programs that engage me in things important to me. I buy from people who do this. Quality always wins over quantity.

Sales and marketing is difficult. Catching customers’ attentions is increasingly challenging. Massive quantities of mindless drivel magnifies the problem. Smart, focused, well executed programs stand out and produce results. Which do you choose to invest your time and funding into?

Related posts:

1. Stop Being Stupid! The Customer Isn’t Always Right
2. More Stupid Selling Tricks
3. Does Your Behavior Foster Or Limit Trust?

I’m at my desk, the phone rings, I answer, “Hello, this is Dave Brock.”

At the other end of the line, in a pleasant voice, “Hi this is So and So.  I’m an account manager at Such and Such Business Banking.  I’m sure you have your banking needs covered, but…..”

“Yes we do,” I answer, “thank you for calling, good bye.”

As I hung up, I wondered, why would anyone ever plan a call this way?  The probability of the same outcome as his call on me is probably 99.99%.  But, based on his tone and wording, he was doing what he had been trained to do, and what his script said.

Which caused me to think, why do we train our people to do the wrong things?  Why do we provide scripts designed to produce the wrong outcomes?

Oh well, I’ve probably put more thought into this post than this company did in their training, scripting, and call preparation.  I’ll stop here.

Go figure!

Related posts:

1. Can Someone Help Me Diagnose This Sales Call? I Don’t Get It.
2. Shooting From The Lip, Just In Time Sales Call Planning
3. Call Avoidance

I received an intriguing invitation to “connect” today.  Best described, I was asked to connect with a “Thing,”  Not a person.  This thing had a relatively normal first name, but then a very gimmicky “phrase” as a last name. 

Curious, I looked the person up at LinkedIn.  He went by the same name.  I went to his website, likewise, he identified himself the same way.  I had no sense of the person I was connecting with.  I felt I was connecting with a “phrase,” not a real human being.  Nothing in his site or profile gave me any indication of who he was or what he stood for.  Nothing indicated, in fact, that he was real.

I started thinking, how do I address this person?  “Mr. ‘Phrase,’”  I thought, would his wife be “Mrs. ‘Phrase,’”  are there a bunch of little “Phrases” running around at home.  If they are little “Phrases,” perhaps it would be more appropriate to address them as “Words.”

I wonder what this person was trying to achieve?  I really like to get to know people.  I think relationships are about people—though I am fond of my bicycle—I spent a lot of time riding it.

I’ve noticed a lot of this recently.  People tend to be referring to themselves as inanimate objects, perhaps a collection of adjectives and verbs, a provocative phrase.  Is that supposed to be who they are, what they value, what they stand for?

I don’t know if this is a trend is a misguided attempt at personal branding.  But I don’t get it.  I still believe in connecting with people, getting to know them.  I believe in looking people in the eye, when I have the chance.  I believe in shaking hands—both as a form of greeting and as a form of agreement.  I believe in talking to people, hearing their voices.  I believe in social networking, but with people.  In social networking, I am constantly amazed at how, over time, one can really get a sense of an individual.

I understand the value of establishing a personal brand, but ultimately, people buy from people.  I don’t know how to buy from a brand, frankly, I have no desire to buy from a brand.

Many of my most valued relationships are with people I initially met through social networking.  I’ve established a new business with my friend Anthony Iannarino, I first met him when I disagreed with him in a blog post.  We’ve become close friends and business partners.  I can name dozens of others—friends, business partners, professional colleagues, customers, and clients who I’ve first met through social networking.

Social networking was the means by which we were introduced.  But I know each of them as people—who they are, where they’ve come from, what their dreams and goals are, what they value.  Maybe that’s old fashioned, but people are important.

Am I missing something?

While you consider this, I have a meeting with Mr. Specialized Roubaix.  We’re off for an hour of hill climbing.  Guess I’ll ask him how the family of little bikes are doing, wonder if they’ve outgrown their training wheels?

Reminder:  Our Friday Office Hours at Future Selling Institute are becoming very exciting with great discussions on issues critical to sales leaders.  This Friday, February 18, 2011, at 1:00 EST,  we will be tackling the conroversial  topic of “Coaching Approaches and Communications Styles.”  Make sure you reserve your space in the discussion, “seats” are limited, so Enroll Today!

Related posts:

1. Social Networking—Lot’s of Friends, No One Wants To Know Me
2. Social Networking, Form Triumphs Over Substance
3. Social Networking, Quantity or Quality

Yesterday afternoon, I was in JFK waiting to board a plane.  I’d had a long day, nothing to eat, and a 6 hour flight with only the prospects for a bag of peanuts in front of me.  Even though it was only about 20 minutes until boarding, I decided to stop in the restaurant next to the gate.  I asked the hostess if 20 minutes was enough time to order, get served and eat.  She reassured me that I could and seated me. 

I was near the kitchen, 10 feet away from me, the manager stood with a huddle of all 8 of the wait staff.  Quickly I decided what to order, put my menu down and looked, expectantly, at the group of waiters (and manager).  They looked right back,  a few with eye to eye contact, most looking just over my head.  I waited a minute or so, then started looking at my watch, tapping the menu and looking back at them.  They, along with the manager, just kept looking.  They were laughing and joking among themselves.

A few tables away, I noticed another road warrior doing the same thing.  His body language could have been read by a blind person, “I need to order and get going!”  He and I were looking at each other, looking at the manager and wait staff, getting increasingly nervous. 

Five minutes passes, the hostess comes to me, looking a little surprised, “Has anyone taken your order?”  “No,” I respond, “I’m a little worried about making my plane.”  I said this loudly enough for the group 10 feet away to hear.  No response.

My new friend at the other table overheard that, piping up, “I need to order too!”  I could hear him clearly, and assumed the crowd 10 feet from me could hear as well.

The hostess goes to the assembled group, clearly asking,”Who’s handling these tables?”  Lot’s of shrugging shoulders, manager says nothing, just peruses the nearly empty dining room.

I look at my watch, it’s now 12 minutes to boarding time–I see the sandwich stand down the corridor, perhaps I can get something there.  As I stand up, a waiter starts to take a step forward.  I say in a loud voice (I can be such a jerk at times), just loud enough for the group and the tables around me to hear, “Apparently, all of you are too busy talking to pay attention to your customers.  I’ll find someone who wants to be helpful!” I walk out.  My new friend, stands up and joins me, we turn around and notice people at two other tables also standing and walking out.

What did the manager do?  He just turned, walked back into the kitchen.  The rest of the wait staff were just looking at each other, shrugging their shoulders.

Clearly, there were a lot of problems in the restaurant.  They started with the manager and his attitude.  He didn’t care about his customers, probably didn’t care about the business.  He didn’t take the opportunity to show leadership, either directing someone to the tables where people were waiting to order, or coming up and apologizing as 4 customers were walking out.

As managers and leaders, if you don’t care about your customers, if you don’t care about your people, if you don’t demonstrate some leadership, why should you expect anything better from your people?  Each of us, as leaders, set an example for our people.  Let’s make sure we set the right example!

Oh, by the way, if you happen to be in JFK, Terminal 2, good luck finding good service in anything other than the snack stands!

Exciting News:  Next Friday, January 28, at Future Selling Institute, during our Office Hours at 1:00 EST, we will be focusing the discussion on Coaching.  We will be debating issues on the importance of coaching, critical success factors in coaching, what happens if we don’t coach, and more.  It is certain to be a lively discussion.   No presentations, just discussion and a healthy exchange of ideas—and I’m certain a few fireworks!  It’s open to everyone, just register at:  Coaching:  The Highest Leverage Use Of A Sales Manager’s Time!

Related posts:

1. Do You Trust Yourself And Your People Enough To Let Go?
2. Games Sales People Play — The Challenge Of Activity Metrics
3. Do Great Sales People Make Good Sales Managers?

Sales professionals get paid and measured on the products and services they sell.  But is that what your customers are buying?

Within our companies, everything we focus on is our products.  Do they have the features and functions needed, how do they compare to competition, how are they positioned in the markets, how should they be priced.  Product managers, marketing,sales, everyone talks about our products.  Ultimately, we hope to get purchase orders and we ship our products.

But are our customers really buying our products?  Just because that’s what we happen to ship, is that really what our customers are buying?

There’s the very old story, “A customer doesn’t want to buy a drill, what they want to buy is a certain type of hole in their wall–the drill is just one of the methods that create holes in walls.”  Simple concept, but if we manufacture drills, we forget to talk about the holes they create, but focus on the drills—variable speed, reversible, cool blue color, light weight, and so forth.  The customer is just thinking, “how do I put a hole in the wall.”

Today we wrap a lot of fancy words around this concept, we call it the customer buying experience.  I think it’s a critical concept.  I think it’s a much richer way of thinking about hole’s in the wall.

The customer buying experience starts with what the customer wants to achieve, but it becomes much richer than just the end goal–the hole in the wall.  The customer buying experience looks at the whole (meaning complete as opposed to hole–sorry, couldn’t resist) process the customer has to go through to get fulfill their goal.

If we are going to be successful in maximizing our sales and share of our products, we can’t focus on our products, but on the whole customer buying experience–designing and “pricing” that experience to be superior to all alternatives the  customer might consider.

For example, if I want to purchase a hole in the wall, I might consider a number of alternatives.  I could call “Joe.”  He’s our local handyman, has done a lot of work for us, and I know that he has devices that creates holes in walls.  But then, Joe is sometimes hard to reach, he’s busy, sometimes he takes mornings off to go surfing, generally, he doesn’t like being bothered to create just one hole in my wall.  If I persist, Joe will respond, with a proposal to create a high quality hole in the specified location on a certain date, for a certain price.  The date may be far past when I really want it, the price may be a little high, but I know Joe will do a good job and he always cleans up.

I could go to Home Depot or Lowes’s.  They have a variety of devices that create holes in the wall.  But I have to go fight all the Saturday morning crowds, stare at some tools locked behind a cage, eventually get someone to help me–but they may not know a lot about devices that create holes in walls, eventually buy a drill (Makita Blue, Rykobi Red/Yellow–decisions, decisions.)  I could make a choice, stand in a long line, pay for the drill, get half way home and realize I needed drill bits…..you know the rest of the story.  Ace Hardware is just around the corner, but they have a limited number of devices that make holes in walls.

Or I could decide to watch the football game–and defer making a hole in the wall.  But then there’s that nagging voice in the back of my head–actually behind my head—it’s Kookie, she’s impatiently giving me an instant performance review.

If all you make is drills, and all you worry about is drills, then you are probably missing a whole lot of what I’m going through–and I’m the buyer.  If you start thinking about what I go through and design an experience that makes the process of creating a hole in a wall very easier than any other alternative, and you somehow have a mechanism of letting me know about this–maybe a marketing program, maybe a sales person–you probably would get me and a lot of others like me to buy drills.

I’ve gone through a trivialized example of what’s alternatively called the buying experience or buying journey–but it’s important.

This weekend, pick up a copy of the best book on customer buying experience ever written, Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs And Ham.  At the beginning of the book, Sam is typical of too many product managers, marketing people, and sales people.  He’s focused on pushing his product, “Try my green eggs and ham.”  After trying hard and having no success, he realizes he needs to focus on the customer buying experience.  “Try them in a boat, try them on a train, try them on a plane, you’ll find you like green eggs and ham.”

We know the end of the story, Sam makes the sale and creates a happy customer!

Make sure you are selling what your customers are buying.  If you sell what they are buying, you’ll ship a lot of your product.

Related posts:

1. Rethinking The Customer Buying Experience
2. Lean-Mean Selling Machines
3. Our Customers Need To Do A Better Job Of Buying!

Everyday, at least one copy of the following email arrives in my junk mail folder.  It is never addressed to me, though my email address is widely available.  It’s always addressed to other employees in my company:  Mr. Info@… or Ms. Contact_Me@… or Ms. Enroll@…  never one addressed to dabrock@……   It’s always from “Bob.”   The email is the same, day in, day out, week after week:

Subject:   ….is Lead Generation of interest to your company?

…….no harm in asking.

 I’m a Telemarketing Lead-Generator…I work out of my home in Pennsylvania. …I use the phone to set appointments……I use the phone to determine decision factors in an organization… 

…As I call I upgrade my client’s contact list to keep that list current.  I do not sell..(((.that’s not true…)))  I sell only one thing and that is an appointment or whatever my client wants me to accomplish over that phone to his/her prospects on that list..

_______________________________

I exist only because of time and – this is a big one-…………….Call Reluctance.  My clients do not have the time to use the phone continually to make appointments or to do various screening objectives necessary for a continual growth of their organization. I assume these phone tasks.  But…and this is the rub…  Most organizations or, I should say, individuals, have a very big reluctance (some call it fear) to pick up the phone and cold-call a stranger concerning an appointment or concerning anything regarding a potential business objective.  …………….The phone weighs 500 lbs. to them.   In essence they hate or can’t handle REJECTION.

 They make excuses, find other things to do, rationalize away that necessary task of cold-calling …they hate it. Maybe a couple of hated calls and then to a more relief type of objective or task…nothing consistent. That is where and why I exist

_______________________________

 I work only on a weekly basis.  “…week by week…NO CONTRACTS….”  Now…knowing all this…Shouldn’t we at least chat?   “Pays to talk – costs not to.” 

[Name/Number Withheld To Protect The Offensive]

I find emails like this intriguing.  To me, it’s an indicator of how the telemarketer might work, the time spent in researching, targeting, and personalizing their message to catch the interest of the prospective client.  If anything, you would think in trying to generate business business for himself, Bob would do his homework and really try to hit my hot buttons.  It’s pretty easy to determine those if you just spend 15-20 minutes reading my blog, website, LinkedIn profile or anything else.

I then think, if Bob isn’t going to take the time to do this and deliver an impactful message about how he can really help me, how is he going to represent me or anyone else to their prospective customers?

It’s important for any sales or marketing professional to recognize that customers are always watching.  The way we conduct ourselves in marketing and selling sets an expectation about how we and our companies are likely to treat them if they were to purchase our products and service.  This is why customer experience and buying experience is so important for us to understand.  In our marketing and sales, are we creating the customer experience we intend, are we representing the experience our prospects and customers will have–want to have– over the duration of the relationship.

Customer experience is part of what each of us does.  As a sales professional, what example are you setting in every interchange with your customer?  Are you setting the example you want and that your company wants?  Are you creating value in every interchange—demonstrating the customer is likely to get value from buying what it is that you are selling?

Bob in his communicatons has clearly demonstrated his “value proposition.”  It’s proper that all his emails automatically go into my Junk Mail folder.  Make sure your communications aren’t treated the same way!

Related posts:

1. Pssst…..Isn’t It All Really About Self Interest?
2. You, Your Products, and Your Company Suck!
3. Lead Nurturing Or Harassment?