What’s My Job Anyway?

I talk to business people all day long about content marketing (Eeks! almost typoed “contempt marketing” ) and inevitably many of them seem to want to know everything there is to know about marketing. I used to oblige them. After all, as a sales person, isn’t that my job to educate the customer? Well, eventually I realized that actually, no. It’s not. Here’s what I mean:

As part of a sales team for a content marketing company, my job is to find customers who need what we do and help them make decisions that lead to them either purchasing those services or dismissing me and our nifty services post haste so I can go back to finding more new customers. The pace and the skill level at which I am able to do this makes all the difference in my commission checks.

Sure: A small part of those conversations may be spent educating business people about some opportunity, or a new way of looking at their market, but to teach them everything there is to know about marketing is not my job. It’s not why I was hired and more importantly, it’s not what I get paid for. Besides: Did you ever stop and think that there’s really very little value in trying to know everything? It’s just not a sustainable practice.

Time Management And That Thing You Do

Here’s what I’ve noticed about winning teams vs losing teams: They usually have equal access to all the same information. The difference is that the winners have figured out how to do more of the stuff that really matters and avoid more of the stuff that doesn’t, plus they’ve figured out how to tell the difference right quick and get in play with it before the competition gets wise to what they’re up to.

Mind Over Matter – Value Over Blather

What are customers dying to hear from me right now? Is it how robust and scalable our solutions are? I really doubt it. Everybody is filling their heads with that kind of crap. One customer told me recently: “Ok. what do you got. Whatever it is, it’s the best right? Everybody’s s%#t is the best.” What he really wanted to hear, and in a few short moments if you please, is: 1.)What am I going to do for him? 2.)How am I going to do that? Then he could decide if talking to me is going to be worthwhile, or if he should get on with what he was doing before I showed up. My success in sales has been largely because I’ve cut through the crap and quickly shared the value customers aren’t hearing about from others.

The Universe Could Care Less How Busy We Are

A revelation: Every day has only 24 hours in it. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or what you do for work – it’s never enough time to do everything you want to do. Often it’s barely enough time to do what you have to do! Oh, you can game the system for a bit, but after a while time catches up with you. This is the problem with reacting to everything that comes your way, instead of settling in your mind what will get your attention and what will not; you will eventually end up with too much “do” and not enough “day.”

You Must Choose

This is what I tell my customers: Unless you are a rare and incredibly gifted individual, there are only a couple things you do really well. Look at the majority of those who make it successfully through life; one of the biggest keys to their success is that they have focused on a small set of things they are very good at. They perfect those. They dream about them. They tweet about them. They forget about the rest. They don’t get tunnel vision and ignore the world around them, but in order to compete strongly in whatever their field, they necessarily have chosen between the good and the better because there is simply not enough time to do it all. (though some of my managers have worked me nearly to death under this assumption)

It’s a Matter Of Trust

Not trying to do everything is a real problem for some because they have trust issues and control issues. Myself included. We have a tendency to want to do everything ourselves because no one else could possibly be trusted to do it as well as I would do it myself. I’m getting help, but here’s what I realized: you have to let go and let whoever. The good news is that once you breech that scary part and begin allowing others to share your load, you will be surprised how much more impactful you can be because you are now focusing on the few things you do really well instead of trying to be like Atlas with the weight of the world on your mighty shoulders. Stop killing yourself and be realistic.

When the Bar Chart Peaks

I got to meet Etien D’Hollander recently, founder and CEO of Front Row Solutions. He and his team have found a way to help salespeople prepare for meetings and update their after-call notes in under a minute. That’s phenomenal. More than that, Front Row’s Software allows salespeople to focus their limited time on selling activities, rather than spending all day on reporting activities. Reporting is important right? But it shouldn’t take up a quarter of your time explaining and chronicling what you did. I know salespeople who have gotten really good at reporting, but they suck at sales. Why? Because they have not been focused on the few things that really grow more revenue: IE: getting into great conversations with customers, building value, executing well on great experience and service. Etien knows this because he has data from his own staff that shows that this is the case and he has designed their own sales processes accordingly. His tools buy back time so sales reps get to do more of the few things they are really good at. Managers, if you want reporters, try the local newspaper. If you want sellers, free them from the shackles of cumbersome and exhaustive reporting. Let my people go.

Find Your Sweet Spot(s)

There are many things you could do to get more sales. You could have a phone stuck to your ear all day, or you could go out knocking on doors, or network your butt off. You could read blogs about sales, or take some hard core boot camp course. Some of these are higher return activities than others and each of us will undoubtedly have more success in some areas than others. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that YOU know what your high return sales activities are (because you track that) and you do them more than you do the things that don’t return well. You know that it works because you have proof, and you do it more and better than anybody else. There’s really no time to do anything less than that, except maybe hunting for a new job because you won’t be around long if you don’t exploit those areas where you really excel, ignoring those time sucking activities where someone else could do it faster and way better.

There are only a few things you do really well. Do yourself and everyone else a favor: Spend a little time today reflecting on what those are, and do more of them. If you get really good at them, people will pay you good money to do what you’re good at. How cool is that?

The problem with salespeople is that they are always trying to sell you something.

Not On Your Life

I was reading from Robert Terson’s new book yesterday “Selling Fearlessly”. There’s a section where Bob’s talking about his son Jake; about how he wouldn’t dream of being in sales. “He would swim the ocean from Haiti to Cuba in shark infested waters before he would become a salesman.” notes Bob. I can totally relate Jake, and yet, here I am working in sales. I’m what you might call a reluctant salesperson. I know some of my colleagues have a problem with that, so let me explain:

You’re Pushy And Obnoxious

I have a problem with salespeople, just as Bob’s son Jake does, probably because I equate sales with the pushy, arrogant sales people who have tried to coerce me into doing things that were not what I wanted to do time and time again. The last thing I want is for people to see me like that! Now I know intellectually that not all salespeople are like that, but some are, and it has caused me to be prejudiced toward them all. Is that fair? No. Is it reality? Hell yes, and I know I’m not alone.

You’re Not Fooling Anyone

The stigma of the sleazy salesman runs deep and wide as the muddy ole mississippi. This is why companies don’t call their salespeople salespeople anymore. According to my employer, I am a “digital media consultant.” That way, they reason, customers will not run and hide when they see me coming. Guess what? Customers are not fooled! As Dave Brock says:

“Let’s give our customers credit. They know we are sales people, they know that we will be trying to present our products and services, possibly persuading them to buy. They want to determine if we have the potential of solving their problem, if they are interested in talking to us further.”

So be honest with yourself and with your customers. If you are in sales, you are in sales. Own up to why you are there, and move on to why they should bother to talk with you.

You Talk Too Much

One of the other problems with  salespeople is that they talk too much. We’ve all been there. Some guy corners you and proceeds to kill you with death by blather. You watch in amazement for a while, because you wonder: is he getting oxygen by osmosis or something? Because damn, he hasn’t stopped talking long enough to sneak in a breath. One such salesperson I remember, probably because of some power coaching program about controlling the flow of the conversation, would ask me “questions” instead of just blathering on for an hour. She would ask a question and then nod yes or no as she told me the “right” answer. So they weren’t really questions and she wasn’t really asking, they were some bastardized form of coercive speech which ultimately had the same negative result on me as the blathering dude. RUN AWAY! It’s a SALESPERSON!!

Why You Got To Be Like That?

I don’t consider myself a top salesperson. I’m above average, but no superstar. I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a sales superstar. However, I do get a lot of great feedback from my customers about how much they like working with me. Because I ask real questions. Because I listen to what they have to say. Because I help them see what’s possible. Because I treat them with respect. These are all comments customers have volunteered upon signing contracts with me. The problem with salespeople is that they are always trying to sell you something. When we’ve done it right though, it becomes something else. It becomes a partnership where both buyer and seller get what they want, even become friends in the process. I can live with that. I don’t mind being in sales, knowing I have done so without making the problem worse.

Your Turn:

What else makes you cringe about salespeople?

 How do I become relevant to my prospective clients?

First, we might find an alternate way to envision our relationship with our prospects.  Are we merely offering a commodity whereby a simple transaction takes place or are we building a relationship with a fellow professional?  The saying goes that people buy from people and I’m a firm believer that people are interested in what other people can do for them.  In other words they might ask, “What’s in it for me?”  With that in mind, it should not only be a goal but my responsibility to provide value to the relationship. This relationship begins before any outreach to the prospect is even made.

Adding value goes well beyond a half-hearted “we can save you money, we can reduce your overhead, we can save you time, or we can automate your process.” These are not tangible results and do not add credibility to your approach.  We must find concrete examples of how we, as their partners, are able to provide something they cannot receive anywhere or from anyone else.

This process kicks off with research and taking the initiative to learn more about who we are selling to.  That may be the company, the business unit, or the individual whom you wish to be your champion.  This is where we become relevant to our prospects and begin to provide a compelling reason for them to notice us.  Not to be mistaken, though, because this is not an easy task.  Relevance will look different for every company, department, or person you are working to connect with.  There may be multiple attempts made to understand their needs while positioning your ability to meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

How do I match my relevance with enthusiasm to earn their business?

Once we’ve done our research how will we deliver our message?  Will I simply list out 10 or 20 ways it makes sense for them to do business with me?  Will I list out 5 – 10 reasons why others have done business with me?  Will I explain how much better I am than my competition?  Or will I step back and realize it’s not about me and start asking questions about their goals and their focus.

We’ve all been sold to with a high-level of enthusiasm and most of the time it is completely over the top.  There’s no credibility in that type of enthusiasm either.  I’ve found that if I do my homework, and understand who I’m selling to; my enthusiasm is received as authentic and as intended.  The key is authenticity and I can access conviction by being genuinely curious.  If I am truly interested in my customer and doing what is right for my customer then I am on the right path. A prospect will be more open to connect with me because I have shown that I care about their goals and am willing to have a business conversation instead of simply selling them a product or service with a set of features.

This is a guest post from my new digital friend, Jarrad R Walter Jarrad strives to be a teachable family man. He enjoys connecting with nature and mountain biking.  He has a strong interest in sales, marketing, advertising, and customer service.  Jarrad is Inside Sales Director at Adometry Inc, Austin TX.

 
What do you think:

How do you match relevance with enthusiasm in your daily communication?

What are some ways you add value for your prospective customers beyond a set of features?
 

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!!     Really?

I’ve been talking to my customers again. They all agreed with me: threat marketing does not work on us. It does not appeal to us as consumers. It only serves one purpose: It annoys the crap out of us! When we see an email subject line that says anything like: “This is your last chance!” or “ACT NOW!” We think, are these guys desperate, stupid or both? Stop yelling at me dude. Let’s face it; we all know that if you are a legitimate company that intends to stay in business, there will be other chances for us to buy from you. Don’t insult our intelligence by screaming at us and trying to create false scarcity, unless of course you really don’t want our business now, or in the future.

But We Need More Sales Now

Yes. I get it. As a seller, you need to generate more business. I get that you’re trying to force more sales in the near term, because you realize that the longer we wait, the greater the chance that we will walk. Then we might go somewhere else and buy somebody else’s widgets. The problem is that consumers like options, not threats. Threats only make us doubt your general business sense, and frankly, we would rather do business with someone who gets that and gives us options instead. Besides, if your stuff is that good, there’s no need for any of us to panic, now is there? The fact that you are tells us that it’s probably not all that good and you’re the kind of business that resorts to scarcity tactics in a sad attempt to quickly move your product. DELETE.

Same applies for the “Going Out of Business!” sale. C’mon now. There’s an oriental rug store near me that has been “going out of business” for four years! If you’re going to lie to us, at least get creative about it. Now if you really are going out of business, that’s no good either. It means that if we have a problem with your product, we’re on our own because you won’t be there to help us. It also means that if we buy anything on sale, it’s the stuff you couldn’t sell at a regular price. So what’s wrong with it anyway? Oh and by the way, if every time we drive by your store there’s always a fire sale going on, it actually causes the opposite reaction in us: We can see there’s no reason to rush in and see you. You are always having a sale. Why should we ACT NOW!? Clearly there’s plenty of time when we are ready.

Choose Your Customer Wisely

So, threat marketer: What kind of customers do you want? Do you really want to do business with the kind of customers who are attracted by these ridiculous, all caps, exclamation mark, cheesy threats? Let me put it another way: Are you the kind of business that is only interested in getting a quick buck TODAY, with no thought to future business? If you only intend to be in business for a few weeks, then that may work just fine. Or would you rather have long range, consistent revenue, without having to work so hard? If so, there is a better way: Value Marketing.

Value Marketing

Value marketing doesn’t use tricks or base emotional shock tactics. It focuses what buyers might be thinking and what will create the greatest return over time. Everyone knows it’s way harder and more costly to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. So why not focus on the highest return customer in your marketing efforts? Repeat business only happens when consumers are happy with the value you provide and so they return to you again and again expecting great value. Consequently, if they are happy, they will also tell others about the value they found. How much is that worth to you? This is the holy grail of marketing. So give consumers credit, we’re not just panicky bundles of impulses walking around looking for bright red flashing “LAST CHANCE!!” signs. We think and reason when we buy, especially when we’ve been burned a few times. Most products or services fall into one of two categories for us: wants or needs. Figure out what the underlying want or need is, and you have a platform for value marketing.

Marketing That Keeps On Working

Instead of threatening that this is our “LAST CHANCE!! BUY NOW OR REGRET IT FOREVER!” (which causes us to immediately dismiss you as a fool), why not describe exactly how we can benefit from buying now, rather than waiting. Do a little ground work and figure out what would actually make us buy sooner, instead of just making us roll our eyes as we delete your stupid email. In so doing, you are appealing more to the thinking customer, rather than the knuckle dragging lizard brain variety. Why is this important? Because the former is more likely, on average, to actually have more disposable income. They’re also more likely to be repeat customers, be able to articulate your value in ways that make sense and to draw more solid business opportunities to you.

Well, that’s my marketing soapbox for today. To learn more from me and my customers, you can sign up for my content marketing email newsletter. No hurry though, it will be around for a while.

Lot’s of people are using social media as a means of self-promotion, but very few of them have taken advantage of social media as a listening post. They are missing out on a great opportunity. Here’s why: Social media marketing is all about engagement.

Trust Agents

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, in their best selling book: Trust Agents, talk about how social media can open doors to more business opportunity, but it’s not just about “tooting your own horn,” it’s about building influence, earning trust and improving reputation, and this is not a matter of heavy-handed one-way self promotion like traditional outbound marketing. Rather, it starts with using social media as a listening post.

There’s Gold in Them There Digits

Social media is a marketer’s dream; a seemingly endless cache of market information to provide research and to create personas. Because most businesses customers are online, sharing everything from what they ate last night to what sports teams they are rooting for, to what kind of tools they use to do their work, it’s easy to create a profile that paves the way for greater engagement.

Dude. What’s a Persona?

Because we are social beings, people go online and share their Likes, Dislikes, Favorites, Pet Peeves, Challenges, Aspirations, Priorities, Associations, Concerns, Opportunities, Events, Hangouts, Language, Bias, Cultural Norms, Habits, Hobbies with the world.. or at least a subset of the world. It’s what makes us unique. It’s also a strong indicator of how we will react, or not to different ideas. Social media provides a window into the persona of your target audience, your competitors, your potential partners and your market.

Why Persona’s Matter

Social media offers a way to get a free education about your customer. Learn how to best engage them, how to help them, how to influence them. Learn the do’s and don’ts about what to say and not say to them. Find out what interests them, what excites them, what makes them tick and what ticks them off. Social media is a window into the treasures and taboos in people’s minds and hearts.

Don’t Be “That Guy”

Everyone has a different idea about what’s cool, what’s not. What’s acceptable and what’s not. Social media provides an opportunity to understand that etiquette and the expectation different people have. You don’t want to be “that guy.” You know, the one everyone looks at sideways and avoids like the plague. By careful observation, you can discover the cultural norms, positive and negative character traits that can make or break a conversation.

My favorite business mentor once told me: you wouldn’t just walk up to the prettiest girl in a bar and say:”Hey, you’re hot. Want to have sex with me?” now would you? Of course not! You would offer her a drink, ask about her outfit, say something interesting, ask her for a dance. You would make at least a minimal effort to demonstrate that you are more than just a walking hormone factory. In essence, business relationships also require presentation of value, a dance; a meaningful exchange that builds trust, reputation and, if done right, influence.

Influence Is Not a Dirty Word

I’ve noticed that sometimes when I begin talking about influence, people start showing signs of disgust. They somehow equate wanting influence with wanting domination. Be careful not to confuse influence with motive.

• You may want to get something
• You may want to give something
• You may want to develop relationships
• You may want to change the world
• You may want to keep it the same
• You may want to make a difference

One of the most passive, gentle people to walk the earth was a huge influencer of others. He said: “You Must Be the Change You Want to See in the World.” Don’t be reluctant to understand influence. Check your motives, but learning how to influence is not evil. Even if you are not interested in influencing others, the fact is, learning about influence will help you take charge of your life, rather than allowing others to always be influencing you!

Tools for Using Social Media as a Listening Post

Learn how to use these free tools to gather information and automate your listening post:

Google.com Alerts
Google allows you to turn any search into an automatic monitored query. They offer a mess of search operators to narrow down and focus your search terms so that you can get automatic notifications about your customers, your industry, your competitors. You can also find out what others are saying about you.

Hootsuite.com
Hootsuite allows you to aggregate twitter, facebook, google+ and many other social streams into lists for easy access. You can easily and quickly find data by hashtag, by username, or by search terms.

Hashtag.org, Ritetag.com
Not sure what hashtags are relevant to your industry? Try hashtag.org or ritetag.com. These sites allow you to find out the most popular tags associated with the topic you are interested in.

Trendmap.com, WhatTheTrend.com
These sites allow you to see what’s happening across the population – what are people sharing about the most on social media? Go here to find out.

SurveyMonkey.com, LinkedIn.com Polls
These sites allow you to ask specific audiences what they think about different topics.

Focus.com, Quora.com, Namesake.com
These sites are great forums for getting into conversations about business, about personal preferences, also great places to ask questions and get answers on all sorts of topics.

Facebook.com Graph Search
I’ve not yet used Facebook graph search, but I’m told you can create queries and build lists based on people’s likes, their age, geography, essentially, anything about them that they have not locked down within Facebook’s ever changing security schema.

Bottom Line

Social media as a listening post can be a powerful tool for understanding what to say when you get the chance in order to build trust, to improve reputation, truly engage and build influence online. You greatly increase your chances in all these areas when you know everything you can before you begin constructing a marketing plan.

Here’s a transcript of the conversation: Cracking the Social Media Egg:

Don: How’s it going today TJ? TJ: It’s going great. You guys are in my office, so it must be good. Don: Yeah, it’s a neat place. Lot’s of toys in here.

So TJ, when it comes to social media, what kind of things are you seeing out there with your customers?

TJ: Social media has been interesting, certainly within our town and within our space. One of the things that’s been a big struggle, at least from our experience, has been this idea of turning people who historically aren’t social into social people.

It can be a struggle going into an organization, especially a B2B organization and trying to convince an executive team that they need to talk more, inform more and use tools that, quite frankly are really more familiar to their children. So that’s been an interesting journey.

Personally, you either get social or you don’t. It’s a lot of work if you’re not historically comfortable engaging in that medium, but it can happen. We’ve seen it happen with a lot of businesses.

There are some instances where you’re just not going to be able to get those people to change the way they are. You’re asking an introvert to be an extrovert openly on the web.   In those instances what we’ve seen to be very very powerful is pairing up youth and the excitement and the energy and the innate ability they have to just embrace social and this idea of authenticity which we’ll talk about, and pair that up with the knowledge and the tenure and the wisdom of an executive.

In the middle there can be a very beautiful thing. It’s takes some finessing and it takes some time and some effort there, but when you have an executive or a management team that isn’t comfortable in this new medium, and it is a new medium, regardless if it’s two or five or however years it’s been around, that’s how you kind of crack that egg and get them into it. The reality is most executives are not going to do it. They’re not going to get it. It takes a unique perspective and a unique personality. You get victories where you can find them and you find ways around it. It’s worked real well for us and I think it’s an evolving thing.

As younger management teams start to evolve, we’re going to see that be more ingrained in their day-to-day operations.

Don: That’s neat. So you have sort of a team of two leveraging the best of both worlds; the old and the new.

TJ: Yeah. Shy of having a PR firm and an army of people, I mean, I’m not a big fan of contrived social. So yeah, I think to get started, you get started low and slow and simple and see how it goes. It’s really not a natural fit.

It’s not natural for a lot of people; especially traditional executives of the world with the way they’ve been brought up. You know, a lot of things we want them to talk about are things that they don’t talk about, except among themselves, so it’s a quantum shift. It’s going to happen, it’s just that it’s going to happen over time.

PixelMEDIA is an innovative creative agency located in Portsmouth NH. Visit PixelMEDIA on the web. Check out what they are doing with their clients to grow more revenue with online strategy, digital marketing, social media,  content strategy and much more.

An Apple a Day Keeps the Dog Awake

Thanks to my old friend Frank down in the great republic of Texas for this amusing story: He was chatting with his neighbor out in the yard between chores, sharing sagacity and one-liners about growing old and trying to stay healthy. A neighborhood kid overheard them and offered his nugget of wisdom: “An apple a day keeps the dog awake” he declared.  Evidently he had heard his Dad offer this health advice before, and thought he would beat him to the punch. Unfortunately, he had misheard his Dad using the age old maxim: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” They all had a hearty laugh, but it goes to show people don’t always hear what you are saying, at least not with the accuracy we are hoping for. It’s like that game we played as kids where someone whispers a message into some else’s ear, and then they do the same to a third, and they to a fourth. By the time you get to the seventh or eighth person, you all get a good laugh at what they heard and no one can remember what the original message was. Word of mouth is great for building trust, but sometimes your message can get kind of jumbled.

Word of Mouth Marketing Groupies

Last summer I made a sale that broke records for revenue. I was an instant rock star because it was my largest sale with that company to date. On signing the contract, the client said to me: “I’m glad we’re doing this. I don’t know what you said, but it made perfect sense to me.” Unfortunately, I was riding high on the crest of the signed contract wave and I couldn’t remember either. To this day, he’s one of our biggest fans and contributes lots of word of mouth marketing, but he’s a craftsman – not a marketer. He really likes what we do, but he doesn’t know just how to describe the benefits or value. Evidently I had done a poor job of making sure that our message was easy to remember. Word of mouth can be a vague blessing at times.

Do You Hear What I See?

I had a client tell me yesterday that the thing she hates about a lot of the content marketing is all the videos. She would much rather read a page of text about a product or service than watch a video. I told her what I tell many of my clients: when it comes to content, you should try and think like your customers and not like yourself. For her, reading to herself off a page is more meaningful than it would be to the vast majority of us who are either visual or kinesthetic learners. Visual and kinesthetic learners get a lot more from pictures or having some sort of hand’s on experience than reading plain text. Statistically, only around 20% like her are auditory learners. That means that if we ignore the world at large and go with what she feels is important, we risk alienating 80% of the market. Word of mouth marketers tend to tell your story emphasizing the things they like or think are important, which may not or may not generate mass appeal to the majority of consumers out there.

Spit It Out Already

Joke: A young man goes fishing down at the stream on a cold, cold spring morning. Despite all his best efforts and tricks, he can’t get a bite. He notices an old man downstream reeling them in one after the other. He keeps trying different spots, getting closer and closer to the old man, but still nothing. Finally he says to the old man: “Excuse me. I couldn’t help but notice you are having great luck over here. What’s your secret?” The old man mumbled back something. “What’s that?” said the young man. Again the old man mumbled something, but he didn’t understand. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand…” The old man spat something into his hand and said: “Son, you’ve got to keep your worms warm!”

Here’s one area where content marketing could take a cue from word of mouth marketers. Generally speaking, word of mouth is as uncomplicated as can be, expressing value in layman’s terms. I used to work for a barcode scanner terminal company. On a call with a client on the docks in Rhode Island, my colleague was going on and on about technical specs for ruggedness and durability: MIL-SPEC this and IP54 that. Meanwhile I could tell by the look on the client’s face that he was skeptical of the durability of the device. So I grabbed the thing out of my colleagues hand and tossed it in a nearby bucket of water. We fished it out and turned it on and completed the demo. The client didn’t need specs. He needed to see that if this thing gets wet, it’s still going to work. Sometimes word of mouth doesn’t do you any favors. Depending on the word of mouth marketer, they may give your prospect way too much information, overcomplicating what might be a really simple value statement.

Word of Mouth Marketing VS. Content Marketing

One big problem with word of mouth is that it’s hard to control what people will hear, understand, remember, or say about your product or service. Unlike content marketing, it’s also very difficult to track. It’s worth noting that among those who have never done any advertising, they tell me that 100% of their new business comes from word of mouth. (naturally, since they don’t advertise, it’s hard for any of their new business to come from something they don’t do!) Among those who do advertise though, the range is between 10% to 30% of their business still coming from word of mouth, while 70% to 90% is a result of direct advertising efforts like content marketing. They also tell me that somewhere between 10% and 30% of their customer base goes away each year. Clients move, they die, they do something else and unless they are replaced with new clients, the business eventually becomes nothing more than a sweet memory. All this depends on industry, region, market, demographics, etc. of course, but one thing is clear, relying on word of mouth marketing alone is not enough for the majority of businesses out there trying to grow more profit year after year.

4 Keys Takeaways for the Content Marketer

1. Make your message so simple that an eight year old can tell you what it means.
2. Make your message accurate, with enough detail that it doesn’t get misunderstood.
3. Make your message targeted so that you reach the correct audience and resonate with them.
4. Make your message memorable so that even after some time has passed, the message sticks.

I love a good old-fashioned word of mouth recommendation as much as the next guy, but while you’re keeping the dog awake, tell your friends about my website too please.

Last week I found out my dream company had an opening for my dream job. PixelMEDIA needs a digital marketing specialist! So I went to work thinking about how to get their attention. I built a website demonstrating that I have skills and qualities that match what they’re looking for. Then I asked my network community to crowd source a confirmation of my most memorable attributes. What resulted was an amazing outpouring of support and a real learning experience for anyone attempting to use digital marketing to move the needle:  If you want to grow your business, grow a strong community.

The Real Power of Digital Marketing

As I read through the comments of my colleagues, a striking thought occurred to me. Their comments demonstrate an important principle: Digital Marketing is driven not by what you think of yourself, or your company. It’s driven by what others think about you and your company. I could sit here all day long and come up with colorful adjectives about how awesome I am, but it doesn’t really matter unless others are willing to put their name behind it and agree with me, and that’s just what they did.

Digital Marketing is driven not by what you think of yourself, or your company. It’s driven by what others think about you and your company.

The Difference With Digital Marketing

Old school broadcast marketing is an outward push of information. Digital marketing on the other hand has evolved out of people’s abandonment of these traditional marketing techniques and is more akin to the phenomenon commonly referred to as “word of mouth.” AKA: if you are really good at something, you really shouldn’t have to constantly be telling everyone about it. People are observant; they take notice when someone’s ability is worthy of noticing, and they will naturally talk to other’s about it. People will find you instead of you finding them.

The Things That People Remember Most

As I read through the thoughtful responses of my colleagues, I was overwhelmed. It’s amazing to hear the impressions I’ve made in their minds and what they thought of when they were asked to give PixelMEDIA an idea of who I am. As a point of reference for commendable qualities that people remember when it comes to social media and digital marketing influencers, here’s a list of some of the high points from the comments:

1. Effectiveness - Almost all of respondents recognized the value of consistent, solid execution. Produce results, get things done and people take notice.
2. Inspiration - Finding opportunities to bring out the best in people is huge. Knowledge transfer is nice, but as my colleague Matt Bertuzzi says: “People want to be inspired.” Inspiration combines emotion and energy to motivate us to greater achievement.
3. Driving Change - You won’t get far in business without taking some calculated risks. Our tendency is to avoid change, because we don’t like uncertainty. It’s rare, but pioneers stand out because they are willing to endure the discomfort of change to gain an advantage in the business world by driving change instead of shrinking from it.
4. Willingness to Help - God helps those who help themselves. ~Ben Franklin.
5. People help others who help them get what they want. ~ Don F Perkins
6. Perceptiveness - Understanding difficult concepts is critical to effective digital marketing. Curiosity, critical thinking and a passion for learning are an advantage, especially in the digital world where other conversational cues are largely absent. (consider that as much as 93% of the meaning in communication is visual or audible and is lost when relying on written communication alone.)
7. Thought Leadership - With over 180 million people blogging, originality and innovation are extremely valuable to digital marketing. Unless your content is fresh, relevant, and exclusive, it gets ignored. Stay in tune with the pulse of the market and find your unique voice in it. Be interesting, entertaining, and educational and people will respond.
8. Developing Community - One person can accomplish a lot, but when the community decides to act, results are magnified dramatically. Connecting with people, understanding what they care about and helping them grow builds powerful allies in digital marketing.

What Goes Around Comes Around

I intend to thank each and every one of my colleagues personally for their support, but let me publicly thank all of you here and try to express just how honored I am to experience the relationship we have. Please know that I will be looking out for ways to demonstrate my thankfulness through thoughtful, impactful community building.

If you feel that I’ve positively impacted things in your world and would like to weigh in on your experience and impressions, you can visit go to my comments page here and tell PixelMEDIA your thoughts. Thanks!

Listen With Your Mind

Expert hiring managers do this all the time: they ask leading questions then they observe to see how their candidate reacts to them. They key in on the body language, the tone of voice, the pace at which you are speaking. They’re not just drilling you with questions and listening to the words you spout back at them. They are looking for the emotions and thought processes that give them a picture of the reality that exists behind all your verbal responses. Without these cues, it’s very easy to get a bad read on what a person is really thinking, what they are all about and what it is they are trying to do today. With a little practice, you can learn to employ the same concepts to get more happy customers. Here’s how:

Oh No You Didn’t

What if you ask someone: “Did you know that your competitor is using XYZ?” and the other person responds by saying:: “No. I didn’t.” Doesn’t the way you respond back depend entirely on the way they said it, ergo, the emotion behind their words: “No. I didn’t.” Does their tone imply surprise? Envy? Anger? Fear? Curiosity? Interest? Disgust? If you misread the emotion behind their response, your response could be totally off-color and even off-putting. Now you’re wasting their time and yours.

This is especially hard for sales people just starting out because we usually get trained (indoctrinated) with all the right things to say, but we rarely get taught to ask leading questions, to listen well, and to read between the lines. That’s because it’s more like developing an intuition than learning a script of tightly squared-away questions.

Let’s look at another one: You ask: “What are you doing to improve quality?“ And they come back with: “We haven’t had any complaints.” On the onset, this sounds like a great question and an equally positive answer. The answer to this question might be highly relevant to progressing the sale, but in reality it can sound to them like an indictment that they’re level of quality is too low. Also, the fact that they haven’t had any complaints could just mean they haven’t asked. So, not such a great question after all.

Ok, one more. This time from my own long list of stupid questions: I ask: “What was your gross income last year?” To which they answer: “None of your #%$^*@ business!” As it turns out, it was highly relevant information to our discussion, but I hadn’t earned the right to ask it yet, and the response was overt anger. No need to read between the lines there… You see, I blurted out a question, albeit a great one, but in an unthinking way, without regard for the other person’s state of mind. I lost respect and I lost rapport.

Integrated Exchange Trumps Fact Acquisition Every Time

At least part of the problem is that we tend to approach people like we’re scientists. We treat people like specimens, when what we really need to do is approach people like people who care about what they care about. The only way to do that is if we know what they care about and help them arrive at a point of discovery that they can readily integrate the ideas we’re introducing into the balance of their lives, their thoughts and their emotions. If what we say; our ideas, our proposals don’t fit with where they are, they will be dismissed, sometimes with extreme prejudice. But there’s a better way.

Asking More Than Questions

If you get people to think about the issues in their own terms, rather than just confronting them with your terms, barriers come down. Then we’re not just asking questions, we’re asking them to think. For example, instead of saying “What was your gross income last year?” what if I said: “That was a tough year last year wasn’t it?” And if that question doesn’t produce a read on what they earnings were like, what if I talk about something else a while; perhaps offer some valuable insight or interesting news and come back to the income topic later? I’m not a physician and this is not a rectal exam. We’re just two people and this is just an exchange of ideas. People don’t think in lists of facts, and why do we try to talk in them? By asking the question slightly differently, I’m focusing their attention on reflecting about their situation, provoking them to think about their welfare in ways they may not have previously.

Instead of saying: “What are you doing to improve quality?” it might be better to say: “How important is the quality of your work to your customers? What do they like about it?” In so doing, we’re now standing side-by-side thinking about their world and looking out at their issues together, rather than me getting in their face and pounding an inquisition down their throats.

Instead of saying: ”Did you know your competitor is using XYZ?” I might say: “I raised my revenue by X% last fall. You know how? I did some research and found out my competitor was using XYZ to boost sales. Now we are on equal footing again.” And then I might employ a technique that is rare in sales.. I might shut up and wait for them to fill in the silence with an idea of their own. I’ve just introduced an idea about improvement. So now I will let them decide if they might need one too. Or they might decide that they want to brag about some improvement they’ve made, and that might give me more of an idea of what they do, how they feel about it and what might be missing, in their minds, about their current process, what’s working and what’s not.

Incite Curiosity, Engage Possibility

This month has been far and away the most successful month of my sales career. It’s not because I read the right book, or found some magic sauce. It’s because over time, I’ve slowly changed my thinking about how I talk with my customers. Think about not just asking questions, but how to incite curiosity in their minds; how to get them to think about the possibilities. Get good at not just hearing words, but listening for viewpoints, desires, priorities. People hate being sold to, but they usually don’t mind being heard and listened to and exploring new ideas in a non-threatening way. It’s a refreshing change from the typical attack by blather they have heard from less astute salespeople. Strive to have a more thoughtful exchange with your customers and you will start to see far more happiness on their faces.

My hat is off to the Portsmouth Music Hall for their extraordinary purposefulness in building community:

Portsmouth NH’s historic downtown district and the whole New Hampshire seacoast region benefit from the role that the Music Hall plays in building business for the local community. In this 4.5 minute video, Monte Bohanan, the Music Hall IT and Social Media Director & Don F Perkins, Content Marketing Fellow discuss how the Music Hall has bolstered the local economy through the arts and through the building of community.

Transcript of the Video:

The Music Hall

Don:
“So what we were talking about the other night was this idea of community, collaboration and opening up the venue to some of the other groups in the area that are in need of a place to congregate and build more community, right?”

Monte:
“That’s right. One of the guiding principles of our organization is that we’re really in the community building business and it just so happens that our medium to get there is through the arts, traditionally. You come to a show, and you might be sitting with 800-900 people that you may or may not know in this room but you all are there together and you have this shared experience. My experience may be very different from yours. I may hate it or love it or whatever, but I get some reaction from it and you may have a different reaction.

Monte:

Then over a beer or out in the lobby, we happen to talk about it and share each other’s reactions and that sort of keeps a conversation going; a nice dialog between people that sometimes I feel, especially now, it’s harder for people to interact with one another. They spend so much time interacting with their phones or on Twitter that to get that real human interaction reminds us how to be social with one another in a real-time environment. That’s really important; increasingly important in these sort of plugged-in times, I feel. So we sort of took that model and we’re trying to branch out from just strictly a performing arts center to doing more with community building, with technology, with leadership, with entrepreneurship, mindfulness and innovation.”

Building Community

Don:
“So when people come to the Music Hall, they’re not just coming to be entertained. They’re coming to be a part of the community and they’re also, inadvertently in some cases, showing support for the community. Right? Because it is all about community and collaboration. Like when you were talking about the events happening around town; the tree lighting, the trolley, and all of that, it’s just all a big ecosystem to help support the community.”

Digital Portsmouth Events

Monte:

“Right. As an arts leader, the Music Hall rents the hall out to other non-profits; about 40-45 each year to run their own benefits and help them to run their events and maximize their return from putting on an event here, so we’re helping other non-profits as well.

Also the ticket buyers don’t come here in a vacuum. If they come downtown to the Music Hall, chances are they’ve got to park, so there’s revenue for the parking garage. They’re going out to dinner. They’re going to the shops. They may stay at a hotel if they’re from more than an hour away. So the arts really are an economic engine and economic driver.

Monte:

Americans for the arts just completed a survey. It shows that in non-ticket related spending; outside of the Music Hall proper, we’re actually pumping 7 million (dollars) a year back into the Portsmouth economy. That’s a pretty big number considering that we’re a small business. We’ve got roughly 25 full-time employees. I think that’s a real testament to the community that has come to support the Music Hall and they come to the shows and they give money to become members.”

Monte Bonanan and Family

Build Community: Support the Arts

Check out the Music Hall’s upcoming events and consider becoming a supporter of the arts. There are shows and community events year ’round. Also, check out the Digital Portsmouth events quarterly at the Music Hall Loft to laugh, learn, and grow the local community spirit as well as the economy.