Saying “no” is hard. Saying “I don’t want your business anymore” is even harder. Firing clients is delicate and difficult, but it’s essential to growing your business.

Ok, let’s qualify this a little. Firing a bad client is not hard. Firing a client who treats you or your staff like shit, or firing a client who is downright unprofitable is not hard. These are easy decisions. You may tolerate their bad behavior a couple of times, but life’s too short to put up with that nonsense long term.

Mediocre clients are a different story. They’re not quite bad, but they’re not good either. Mediocre clients are the most problematic, because they prevent your business from achieving its full potential.

Mediocre clients are the weeds in your garden, and they need to be pulled so you have a vibrant, healthy business. You can spot these weeds typically in three places: legacy clients, temperamental clients and clients that were brought on for their perceived “future potential.”

Legacy Clients

Legacy clients can be some of the most challenging cases, because they’re long term customers. They are often early clients that helped you get established, or clients you’ve known for years and have personal relationships with. The challenge with legacy clients is businesses change. Your business changes, and so too does your clients’ businesses.

Do an analysis of these accounts. Are these clients still a good fit? Are they using your most current products and services? Are they inline with your other clients in terms of size, fit and profitability? If not, it maybe it’s time to part ways.

Temperamental Clients

Temperamental clients are the proverbial hot potatoes. They’re passed from client manager to client manager, because they’re not easy to work with. These clients are a challenge, because they’re hard to support and deliver consistent results for.

Do you have any hot potatoes? If so, are you delivering the level of service you want and expect for your customers? If not, it’s time to direct these clients to another solution.

“Future Potential” Clients

“Future potential” clients are the worst. A rookie sales mistake is selling a “pilot project” or giving a discount, because the client has so much “potential.” These deals may look good on paper, but they rarely materialize.

These clients don’t really need that much analysis. Did the account materialize, yes or no? Is there anything you can do to grow the relationship and take it to the next level, yes or no? If no, cut your losses.

How to get rid of them

Once you identify the mediocre clients to fire you need a strategy to separate the relationship.

The operative word is “gracefully.” These people are your clients. They have a relationship with you and your business, and in many cases these relationships are well entrenched. You’re not going to call these clients out of the blue and pull a Donald on them and say, “You’re fired!” No. Be graceful, be courteous and be helpful.

Help your clients move on:

1. Make a referral. Help them replace your services by getting them in touch with someone else you believe in and know will do good work.
2. Make a clean break. Explain the situation, be transparent and wish them well in the future.

How do you manage mediocre clients?

(Image credit: Nathan Rupert)

One of the great challenges of the information age is information overload. We have access to too much information and too many options. We’re inundated with content. Information overload creates a unique sales challenge, because before a prospect begins the buying process they have to make a shortlist.

The buying process starts with a pre-qualifying step. Prospects will search the Web and get referrals, and assess the lay of the land before they narrow down their options and select two or three companies to compare.

Are you making it to your customers’ shortlist?

Buyers have too many options

Go on Google and you can find anything you want in seconds, but that doesn’t mean you’ll process or digest all that information. Rather you’ll peck away at it. We’re like chickens pecking at crumbs of data trying to find the good bits.

We peck away at Google. Enter a search, and see what comes up. If you don’t find what you like in the first few results you’ll do it again with a more refined search. Visit a website, and you’ll scan the content. You look at the page headings, read the first few lines of text and figure out what to click on. And if nothing seems relevant you bounce off the site, and look for something else. It’s an ongoing process.

Prospects peck before they evaluate

The pecking behavior comes out in your customers’ buying processes and how they evaluate your brand online. They peck away at your website and your competitors’ websites trying to qualify you and figure out which companies to invest time in. In ten seconds or less they’re trying to qualify who you are, what you do, who you serve, and if you can help them.

The qualification process is not deep or rigorous, rather it’s happening at a very superficial level. Your clients are looking for heuristics, or rules of thumb, to assess if your company is a credible service provider. As they peck away at your site they’re drawing in information and judging your brand.

As your customers draw in information about your company they’re making split second decisions. Are you a credible option, yes or no? Should they invest time with your sales people, yes or no? If yes, they move forward. If no, they go onto the next vendor. It’s that simple.

Manage your clients’ expectations

As your customers peck away at your website and your competitors’ websites they’re building a shortlist. They’re narrowing down the field to figure out the two or three credible options to invest their time in. Are you making that list?

Study your customers, and understand what they’re looking for as they kick the proverbial tires of your brand. What keywords do they use to find their options? What content do they expect to find when they visit a website? What level of engagement do they want to have with your website and then your people? How are they judging you?

If you understand the heuristics your clients are looking for you can tailor the digital experience so that you make their shortlist every time.

(Image credit: Ian Renton)

Should your company have a Facebook Page or a LinkedIn Group? What about apps? Should your company have an app on iPhones, iPads and Android devices? I don’t know, but chances are the answer is no.

The real question is do you need these tools to engage and service your customers, or are you jumping onto a technology bandwagon? Technology bandwagons are deadly. Too many companies are diving into technology projects, because they don’t want to be left behind.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to deliver a presentation titled, “Selling is Dead: The Rise of Brand Relationships”. I was speaking at an event hosted by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating (CIPH), which is a group of manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers in the industrial valve and plumbing sector. And they are acutely aware of the technology pressures and forces hitting their business.

My message to them was avoid technology bandwagons.

We’re all pressured to change

The pace of technology today is astronomical. The advancements we’ve seen in the Internet, mobile technologies and social media over the past decade are equivalent to the acceleration of transportation between 1900 and 2000.

In 1900 the average travel speed in the United States was eight miles an hour. That’s a little faster than walking. The average person walks around at three miles an hour. Fast forward to 2000, and technology accelerated the rate of human travel to seventy miles an hour. That’s a big jump.

In the span of a century technology accelerated our rate of movement by close to nine times. That’s astonishing. But think about all that’s happened in the world of communications, mobile technologies and the Internet since 2000. In terms of communications we’ve moved from walking to flight in less than a decade.

No wonder companies are feeling pressured to keep up. They see the growth of social media, mobile communications, websites and all the other tools and just feel overwhelmed.

There’s always a flavor of the month

When you feel like you’re being left behind the natural reaction is to catch up. And this is where the technology bandwagon trap resides.

In the 90′s and early 2000′s e-commerce was all the rage. Companies were building complex e-commerce sites, because they thought all their customers would be doing their purchasing online soon. But most of these projects failed, because companies lost site of the tools and forgot complex products and services don’t sell themselves. They require human intervention.

Right now social media is the hot topic. Facebook raised close to $20 billion dollars in its IPO today with $6.8 billion coming back to the company. It generated this much money, because in 2012 social media is a big deal. But it leads to a question, should your company jump onto the social media bandwagon?

Get the data first

Popularity is not a reason to invest in new technologies.

Before you jump onto a technology bandwagon get the data first. Study your customers. Study how they buy, and understand which tools are influencing them.

For example, when you look at your customers’ buying patterns is social media influencing them? If so, how? If not, why? Get the data, then build the strategy.

(Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen)

There used to be a time when selling was a social activity. Sales people tracked their clients’ birthdays and anniversaries, knew their children by name, and fostered deep personal connections. It was a simpler time, it was a happy time. But times have changed. Today relationship sales reps do not hit quota.

Lynette Ryals, a professor at the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, did a study of 800 sales people and found only one in three reps were “consistently effective.” 63% of sales people don’t achieve their sales targets, and the worst performers were the “Socializers.”

Socializers are what we typically think of as relationship sales people. They’re good at initiating the relationship and establishing rapport, but they lack the knowledge and expertise to move the sale forward and close the deal.

Who has time for golf?

I appreciate sales people who take an interest in me and my business, but I need more than that. I need to solve problems, and move my business forward. And I’m not alone.

Time is at a premium. I don’t know any executive or business owner who isn’t concerned about their productivity or their time. They’ve got objectives to hit, and decisions to make. And when they engage a sales person they want someone who is not only pleasant to work with, but understands their business and gives constructive advice and feedback to make sound business decisions.

Sales aren’t made on the golf course, they’re made in the office.

Customers want Experts

Professor Ryals found the most effective sales profiles were “Experts” and “Consultants.” She writes, “Experts make selling seem effortless, keep customers happy, and consistenlty outperform their peers.” She goes on to state, “Consultants listen well and are good problem solvers; they develop solutions that meet their customers’ needs. But they tend to be one-dimensional and to forgo valuable case examples that could boost sales.”

The difference between Experts and Consultants is degrees of expertise. With some mentoring Consultants can integrate more case studies and industry expertise into their sales process. They have the foundation to facilitate the buying process, and as they grow in their job they’ll become Experts.

Experts and Consultants outperform Socializers, because they bring value to their clients. They are facilitators. They help clients contextualize all the information available to them, understand their needs and make sound buying decisions. And if the deal doesn’t make sense, they let the client know quickly so both parties can move on.

Great sales people are made

There’s an old myth that sales people are born not made. That may have been true twenty or thirty years ago, but not today. Extraversion and sociability may help a sales person initiate the sales process, but they’re not enough to bring it home.

Customers want experts: people who know their products and services, understand their applications, understand their place in the market, and can help clients navigate the buying process and make sound decisions.

These are not easy skills to acquire. It takes time, mentoring and lots of on the job training to grow from a Socializer to a Consultant to an Expert. The companies that outperform the competition get this, and work very hard at grooming their sales force into Experts.

What comments or suggestions would you add to this topic?

(Image credit: Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce)

Countless brands stunt their reach on social media, because all they do is broadcast their own content. Check their Facebook page or Twitter stream, and you’ll see their articles, their firm announcements, their promotions, their stuff. “Me, me, me.”

Pushing your own content is a way to get started in social media, but it will only take you so far. You may get a few hundred followers on Facebook or Twitter, but fairly quickly your growth will plateau.

If you want to achieve real impact on social media you have to lead.

My social media philosophy is governed by a mantra, “An audience will plateau, but a community is boundaryless.” Leading and building communities is the secret sauce for really scaling your brand in social media.

Communities vs. Advertising

Broadcasting content is just another form of advertising. Package a message, whether in the form of a video, an article or even a promotion, and push it as far and wide as you can. The challenge with advertising is it’s limited to your resources. To reach and engage large audiences needs ever increasing budgets. That’s why big brands can engage such large audiences. They have the budgets and resources to get a lot of eyeballs to see their stuff.

Social media communities are different. They shift the resource paradigm, and engage very large audiences organically. Communities scale, because they draw together broad groups of people with shared interests, shared experiences or shared values. Their connections create commonality, and this enables communities to engage a lot of people.

And scale is only one benefit. Communities enable two-way communications, which means you don’t have to be responsible for all the content. Actually a majority of the content can be created by the community. Others asking questions, sharing content, participating in conversations and engaging with each other.

Only 1% choose to lead

Each of us has an opportunity to lead and make a significant impact in social media, because the vast majority of brands are simply broadcasting. I spoke about this in a previous post, “Stop Shouting! Listen. Build Your Brand Listening.”

Jakob Nielsen, an internet researcher, discovered only 1% of people are active creators in social media communities. He called this the 90-9-1 Rule.

90% of social media users are “lurkers.” These are the people listening and following the conversations from the sidelines. I find the term lurkers a little derogatory, so let’s just call these people listeners.

9% of social media users are “curators.” The curators are sharing content. They’re the ones retweeting, forwarding and re-posting other’s content. They’re engaged in the communities, but they’re not actively creating new content or ideas.

1% of social media users are “active.” These are the leaders. These are the people asking questions, engaging in dialogue, creating content and taking a proactive stance to move the community forward.

Be the 1%. Lead!

You have an opportunity to be very influential in social media if you choose to lead. People are searching for ways to get involved and participate in social media. They’re looking for leadership. Take on this role.

Brands who choose to lead create a remarkable competitive advantage. Instead of simply broadcasting content and promotions they are purposefully engaging with people. They’re building relationships, and they’re bringing value to others. Communities thrive, because of the relationships. And brands need relationships to become sticky.

Be the 1%. Lead. Take a stance in your community.

Companies have a choice: get into social media, or get into it later. Either way every company is going to have to embrace social media as a key component of their marketing and communications very soon.

Yesterday I laid out this challenge to the Benefits Alliance Group in a keynote presentation titled, “Grow Your Brand in Social Media”. Right now social media is optional, but it won’t be for long. My suggestion to the group was to start mastering the tools now and get a head start in your industry.

Social media has tipped

In 2008 I wasn’t a big fan of using social media for B2B marketing. It wasn’t there yet. Not enough decision makers were using the tools.

According to Pew Internet Research, in 2008 73% of 18 to 29 year olds were using social media, while only 36% or 30 to 49 years and 16% of 50 to 64 year olds were using social media. In most companies the core decision makers are between 40 to 55, and in 2008 less then half of this demographic was using tools like Twitter and Facebook.

But the growth of social media has been a wave. By 2010 86% of 18 to 29 year olds, 61% of 30 to 49 year olds and 47% of 50 to 64 year olds were using social media. By 2010 social media had arrived and made sense for B2B marketing, because more than half of decision makers were participating in social media to some degree or another.

In less than 5 years social media has moved from the fringes of society to the mainstream, and it is becoming as ubiquitous as email and Google.

Avoid the resistance

Some companies are resisting social media.

“My clients don’t use Facebook and Twitter.” That may be perfectly true, but what about your future clients? Are you ignoring a key part of your prospect base by avoiding social media?

“I don’t have time for social media.” That too may be true, but you have a choice. You can choose to portion out some of your time towards these tools, or you can delegate it. If a company prioritizes these activities they’ll find the time and resources for it.

“I don’t know what to talk about.” Don’t over think it. Focus on the relationships. Look for opportunities to enhance your existing communications. For example, can you use these platforms to communicate more efficiently and effectively with your existing clients? What about your suppliers and partners? Go for the low hanging fruit first, and then consider how it can assist your marketing efforts.

You have a choice

I compare the growth of social media to websites. In 2000 having a website was optional, in 2012 you’re not a business without a website. Today social media is optional, but it won’t be for long.

Don’t play catch up. Get into social media, and start to enhance and extend your relationship building online. It’s amazing what you’ll discover once you get started.

What do you think?

(Image credit: Gee Ranasinha)

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason when marketers turn to social media they feel compelled to shout. They just start pitching with promotions, calls to action, value proposition, events and retweeting their content. Pitch, pitch, pitch. It’s plain annoying.

But this is the reality of the situation. Businesses look at social media as a lead generation platform, and their immediate reaction is to push their content far and wide.

You can see this happening in your own industry. Do a quick survey of your competitors’ Twitter and Facebook pages, and look at their social streams. Analyze their posts. What percentage of their content is about themselves? I’m willing to bet it’s somewhere between 70% and 100%.

But that’s not how you build your brand with social media. As my grade six teacher, Mrs. Dixon, used to say, “You were born with two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion.” This is an applicable guideline for brands marketing on social media.

Breaking a 50 year bad habit

Listening and engaging with people purposefully is not natural for many companies.

Brands have been conditioned to rely on one-way communications for the past 50 years. Prior to 2000, the technology available to engage large audiences was limited to broadcasting. As a result companies crafted messages and broadcast them as far as they could through ads, TV and radio spots, billboards and quotes in articles.

As the Internet has evolved, marketers have tried to apply the same broadcast advertising principles to the Web: banner ads, pop-up ads, quotes, link sharing and even search engine optimization. All techniques to get eyeballs to see their stuff.

But one-way communication strategies are not natural. Broadcasting content may create awareness, but it doesn’t build relationships. You need a two-way dialogue to create engagement.

Don’t shout. Listen

Users are tuning out. Many people avoid following brands on Facebook and Twitter, because they are tired of being spammed out with promotions and self-serving content.

The people who listen are the most powerful people in the room. The same is true for brands.

Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, take a stance. Listen. Pay attention to what others are talking about. Monitor the social networks, and look for opportunities where your brand can contribute value purposefully.

Listening pays off for brands, because it helps form emotional connections with customers. People want to be heard. By listening and engaging purposefully brands will get more customers to like them, trust them and find them credible. Like, trust and credibility are not formed pitching, they’re formed through relationships.

What’s your take?

(Image credit: Beverly & Pack)

Do you ever feel B2B marketing is just a little too clinical? Or better yet, a little too professional?

I’ve been flipping through trade magazines today, and struck by the number of ads that are plain boring. Transportation and logistics firms marketing themselves with glossy photos of trucks and taglines like, “Providing solutions for your mobile transportation needs.” Or HR providers using stock photography of groups of people wearing suits and smiling with crossed arms looking ‘professional.’

Generic images, generic copy and generic calls to action. They all look the same, and they’re all forgettable.

Why? That’s all I can ask. Why would any company blow $2,500 to $10,000 on a full-page ad when the ad is so abysmally boring? It’s a waste of money.

Boring, generic marketing doesn’t work. Period.

Don’t hold back. Go for it

Take a page from Jim Henson. Jason Kottke shared a video of the original pitch video for The Muppet Show.

Jim Henson didn’t hold back. He didn’t pitch the features and benefits of the show. He revealed the satirical whimsy of the characters, and how they could dazzle and delight an audience.

The announcer lets it all hang out in this pitch, “Buy this show, and we’ll be famous. So put it on the air.” He goes so far as saying, “And God will look down on us. And smile on us. And he will say, ‘Let them have a 40 share.’”

From the very introduction, The Muppet Show is differentiated from all other comedies and TV programs. It stands out and is remarkable.

Stop being professional

There’s a sharp difference in Jim Henson’s pitch from all the bland, boring ads listed in trade magazines. Henson doesn’t try to come off as reserved or professional. He presents the show for what it is, and takes a clear stance.

It’s easy to get caught up in what is ‘professional,’ but customers need more then a nice suit and platitudes to choose your products or services. They need to know what makes you different.

Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.” Facts might work for detectives, but they don’t differentiate products and services.

How can you share your passions and energy to demonstrate your company is remarkable?

A friend of mine told me I should buy stock in 3M, because I go through so many Post-It Notes. She’s right. My office walls are covered in them.

Every time I write a speech or a major document I begin the project with a brainstorming session. I collect all my ideas, stories, stats and key points on Post-It Notes, and place them on my wall. I consider what I want to say, I analyze my audience and I try to isolate the key ideas.

I love the physicality of brainstorming with Post-It Notes. They make ideas so much more tangible and real, and give them a gravitas I can’t achieve on a computer. They also feed a process of slowing me down, and purposefully considering what I want to say.

Identify your destination

When you dig a little you realize there’s never a shortage of content, ideas or stories to share. You have a lifetime of them. The challenge is how to focus.

To craft an impactful message – whether in the form of a speech, a movie, an essay or a book – you have to really isolate the destination:

1. What’s the key message?
2. What do you want your audience to do?
3. What is the one thing the audience should take away?

PowerPoint and writing comes second. Figure out the destination, and then choose which stories, stats and ideas will get your audience there.

My wall of Post-It Notes helps me find my destination. Once I complete my brainstorming session I study my wall and group ideas. I try to pick out themes and patterns, and I keep asking myself, “What is the one thing I want the audience to take away from my speech?” Very soon it becomes clear, and I can begin crafting my speech.

Organize and tell a story

A visual wall of ideas makes the writing process faster. Rather then muddling around trying to connect stories, the process helps me discover my destination and provides a starting point for which stories to share.

When you lack a structure to craft your message you can get caught up in clichés and dated formulas. Nick Morgan wrote in a recent blog post,

The oldest chestnut in public speaking advice is to “tell ‘em what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell ‘em what you said.” … Unfortunately, that’s bad advice.

Nick goes on to explain a speaker’s job is not to tell the audience the destination, but to take them there. Organize your stories and ideas to draw your audience to the one thing you want them to do, and make it an experience – that’s when your messages get really impactful.

Before I put pen to paper, I pick the top stories I want to share. This is a culling process. The goal is to get the wall of Post-It Notes down to a small grouping of highly relevant, impactful messages. Each should build on the next, and all are working to pull the audience to a destination.

How do you craft your content?

We all have different approaches to writing and communicating? What’s your approach? Do you incorporate Post-It Notes into your creative process like I do?

Your company’s social media policy, or lack of one, reveals a lot about its culture. Is yours open and collaborative, or closed and restrictive?

I find it shocking when companies lockdown their firewalls and implement policies to prevent their staff from using social media. It clearly demonstrates a lack of trust. I saw this in the late 90′s while in university.

During the summers I worked in IT support. One of my big projects was to lockdown the firewall to prevent ‘the guys in the back’ from accessing inappropriate content. We installed tools to prevent users from accessing porn and gambling sites, but we also configured it to prevent people from accessing personal email, IRC, discussion boards and a host of other sites.

All this time and resources went into creating proverbial horse blinders. The executive team did not want anyone wasting time ‘playing’ on the Internet. They felt locking it down would create a more productive and focused workforce.

I saw the opposite. The Internet prohibition created a division between staff and management. The staff clearly saw they weren’t trusted, and acted accordingly.

Punitive social media policies are misdirected

Trying to prevent employees from using social media on company time is futile. Even in 1997 and ’98, preventing people from using the Web was exceedingly difficult. Today, well it’s next to impossible. With smartphones everyone has the Internet in their pockets.

The real question is why does a company need to lockdown access to social media? The general perception is employees shouldn’t be playing on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter on company time. But locking down access to the Internet isn’t the solution.

Employees that waste their days on social media are a symptom of a greater problem, an HR issue. You need to fix the job, the employee or both. A one size fits all social media policy isn’t going to solve a structural HR problem. It’s going to exacerbate it.

The time wasters are going to find other distractions, solitaire anyone. Meanwhile everyone else is restricted, which can backfire and materialize in a host of other HR problems.

Create a culture of collaboration

Restrictive social media policies set management up to be parents. Instead of worrying about employees goofing off, embrace the tools.

Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s a primary platform of communication like the phone and email. Lift the prohibition on social media, and use it to enhance engagement and collaboration.

Engage your staff, and ask questions. How can these tools improve communication, learning, collaboration and teamwork? How can they improve and develop the corporate culture? How can they better serve both employees and customers?

Often our greatest strengths are our weaknesses. They’re two sides of a coin. To break the misuse of social media, embrace it and focus on its strengths. Get everyone involved, and prove that these tools make for a stronger, more productive team.

Trust your employees. It’s that simple.

(Image credit: Marcus Miller)