Mindfulness is all the hype now. The focusing of attention and awareness on a moment-to-moment basis, based on the concept of mindfulness in Buddhist meditation is almost everywhere: books, newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet.

Mindfulness and sales

Mindfulness and sales have no relation whatever at first sight as:
- The goal of sales is to persuade people to buy stuff or services requiring to listen to what the potential customer is saying
- Whereas mindfulness is about yourself.
Apparently there is no relation between both.

Benefits of mindfulness for sales

However mindfulness has three benefits for sales:
- It helps to know what is being said by the potential customer. Instead of wrongly interpreting what the potential customer says, mindfulness helps the understanding of what he really is expressing.

- You will listen better to what is being said thanks to the focus and attention during meetings or telephone calls.

- When you can give the feeling you have understood the potential customer, they are more likely to buy from you.

Mindfulness in sales practice

Do all sales need to take a course in mindfulness: probably not just focus, be present – not slipping away to other events – really listen and pay attention to your potential customers. This mindfulness will increase your sales.

How ‘mindfulness’ are you in your sales ?

The great era of periodic campaigns is over as the timing is out of sync with the buyers. Instead people want to find information on demand. This is where Content marketing comes into play as it is always available for people craving for information and knowledge for getting insight in their problems or solving their problems.
Content marketing is available 24 x 7 from anywhere on the Internet, whereas push marketing was only available during the campaigns.

The evolution from limited to multiple publishers

We have seen the evolution from an era where a limited number of publishers controlled the information creation, flows and streams to a world where almost anyone with an Internet connection can have a voice: creation of information and publishing it almost worldwide has become easy and feasible without the need for money and man power.

The hard sell is no longer effective

The hard sell has become less effective whereas the brand ‘voice’ takes the lead in creating interest which eventually becomes lead generation.
Buyers are no longer mainly influenced by marketing campaigns like advertising or direct mailings as they are put more value on the information they find on the Internet: web sites, forums and social media.
They want to learn themselves from their peers or from well written articles that give advice instead of being lured by pushy advertising.

The advice for content marketing

The conclusion is:
- Don’ sell but add value allowing to earn credibility
- Give free advice on subjects that matter to your potential customers
- Let them use your information or free advice for their own benefit as in the long run it will be beneficial to your company
- Learn from forums and social media what are the points of interest of your potential customers
- Publish clear understandable informative messages in order to leave a lasting impression and possible goodwill
- The goal is to become a trusted party where they can reference to during purchase cycle
- Build relationships with your content and the resulting conversations instead of customer relations pushed by marketing campaigns and selling

How effective is your content marketing ?

For the almighty Content Marketing much content is needed. Creating original content is a challenge hence instead of creating all new content why not mix your created content with that of others. It keeps the attention and lowers the pressure of creating new content each time.

A prerequisite is that you are able to create original content which then you will be able to mix with existing content.

Original Content

Your original content can be:
- Original timeless content: like an evergreen
- Trending content: jumping on the bandwagon of trending content or subjects
- Reworked existing content: it is allowed to steal from your own original content but updated

External Content

The content of others can be:
- Curated content is generated by amassing content from other sources delivering it in an original fashion
- News: there is nothing wrong to inform your readers with news related with the matters of the blog or website.
- Crowdsourcing: this can be from your customers by interviewing them or encouraging customers or potential customers to send in content.

How do you manage your content marketing ?

They create content and post on regular times for their own purposes and goals.

Blog of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

Truth and Right and Freedom, each a holy gem,
Stars of solemn brightness, weave thy diadem.

Tho’ thy way be darkened, still in splendour drest,
As the star that trembles o’er the liquid West.

Throned amid the billows, throned inviolate,
Thou hast reigned victorious, thou has smiled at fate.

Blog of Hope and Glory, fortress of the Free,
How may we extol thee, praise thee, honour thee?

Hark, a mighty nation maketh glad reply;
Lo, our lips are thankful, lo, our hearts are high!

Hearts in hope uplifted, loyal lips that sing;
Strong in faith and freedom, we have crowned our King!

The Inglouriuos Bloggers are here to stay

A salesman should give the impression business is better than the competitors or the industry as people prefer to buy from successful companies in order to be part of the success and healthy business is likely to last longer. Buying from a failing company has the risk the company can go bankrupt and no more after service.
Just give the feeling of having good business and not necessarily booming business as that might turn off some potential customers too as they doubt they will get the best price or price/quality on the market.

Show your success

A positive perception and impression requires to show success in business.
Hence your salesmen need to be dressed well, look healthy, drive a nice car when visiting the customer (but not an overly expensive car: don’t posh with your Porsche while selling) and have a decent laptop and mobile phone. The should look confident and happy because he is doing well – even if he isn’t very successful lately.

Show success with limitations

Show your success but don’t overdo it as people will start questioning how the salesmen obtain this external signs of richness resulting in:
- The salesman is making loads of money so his price is way too high
- The salesman is pretending to be successful but he isn’t
External signs of wealth or success are often illusions that hide internal mediocrity or even incompetence.

How do you show your success to your customers ?

Instead of spending money on leads from an unidentified source with undefined qualification of those leads why not invest in a web service that reveals the companies visiting your website, why they are visiting and how interested they are.

Do you buy leads from a service company?

We all use LinkedIn for promoting ourselves in case of looking for a new job or in the hope to get a better (paid) job.
Companies use LinkedIn to create awareness.

As a salesman your presence on LinkedIn can work twice:
- For promoting yourself for a new job
- For getting the attention of potential customers

LinkedIn and selling

The question is can you sell through LinkedIn? In our view not directly as LinkedIn is a platform for business relationships and creating awareness for your company or solutions. Hence the big challenge is in generating enough interest with the potential customer and convincing him to make contact with you for further investigation and information.

LinkedIn for lead generation

So you can by participation in discussions:
- Inform and tease people about your solutions
- Show your deep knowledge about a market or an industry
- Create trust
- Invite to visit a website
- Ask the permission to send additional information personally
This is more or less a lead generation or pre-sales effort but not sales.

Only when the manager of the potential customer addresses you directly or allows to address him then you stand a good chance to start a sales cycle which will be conducted outside LinkedIn.

You cannot sell on LinkedIn but generate leads and move on to the sales cycle beyond the LinkedIn platform.

Ever tried using LinkedIn for lead generation or creating awareness?
Ever have started a successful sales through LinkedIn ?

Often in real business the Partner Manager has become an administrator instead of a sales driven person as he:
- Uses qualification sheets and forms for new partners
- Obliges partners to pass tests and exams for certification
- Keeps track of revenue in Excel spreadsheets
- Prefers not to change the current structure of partners
- Isn’t really sales driven anymore
- Organizes the yearly Partner Event similar to all the previous years
In such case the added value of he Partner Manager should be questioned.

How much value does your partner Manager add ?

As the perception by your clients and potential customers is utmost important for your company, your online presence needs to enhance or stimulate their perception.

Your online presence consist of very different content on different Internet sites:
- Your website
- Pages on social media
- Whatever is posted by others on forums and social media about your company or products.

While you can control the first two entirely, the latter is beyond your control. This “social input” requires to be monitored for all forums and social media in order to handle postings and issues as the reputation of your company can be at stake.

Negative news spreads faster than positive news

While a positive reputation takes years to cultivate, it can be torn apart with just a single bad review or complaint. This is why you need to monitor the social media using one or more web services.
Once an issue has been found it has to be handled with care and appropriately which can be very challenging. Hence it is not a job or function for the junior assistant but requires experience and wishful thinking. Any action should be considered twice before being published or replied – still within the shortest amount of time as negative news spreads faster than positive news.

How do you handle social media issues?

ERP solutions have grown into large and complex application that try to suit most industries.
The problem is:
- The setup and deployment becomes complex and time consuming.
- One solution cannot fulfill the needs of a diversity of industries

The choice of web services

Web services are market specific applications providing a limited number of functions or features.
These solutions range from simple and easy to use (and to implement) solutions to more complex ones.
Any company could select different solutions from different vendors and have a relatively fast implementation.

Web services is the solution from the bottom up

A company could select the most appropriate web service solution for every function in the company. If a service doesn’t satisfy anymore due to the changes in the company, then another will be selected and implemented.
Thus instead of tying up with one ERP vendor, a selection of vendors supply web services to the company.

The integration problem

The main problem is the integration of these web services into one.

Typically a company has only company wide data on:
- Products:
- Customers: leads and customers
- Suppliers
And a several processes
- Marketing
- Sales
- Support
- Production
- Administration

These different processes require integrated process flow and shared data from the different web services in order not to have enter the same data multiple times. This integration can be delivered by On Demand Business Integration and Process (also called SaaS integration platform).

Integration solution

For the integration a company can choose from a range of alternatives for different requirements:
- RunMyProcess
- IBM WebSphere
- WappWolf

Web services are the future as these bring the freedom of choice from a wide range of solutions from different vendors.

What are you going to select next time? A monolith or web services?

1. Discovery:
When people are looking for solutions to business or company problems and issues they will be enlightened by discovering your offering as it adds another solution or an alternative solution to their list.

2. Findability:
Not getting found on the Internet is the worst that can happen as it will leave the potential customer wondering why. Is the company too small to have a website. Is the company (getting) out of business?

3. Website off line:
The immediate or obvious reaction is that the company is out of business, which can only be verified by calling the company.

4. Trustworthy:
Trust in your company can be maintained or enhanced by being able to visit the website and getting confirmation on the already received information.

5. Craving knowledge:
As your website supplies ample information the need for craving knowledge will be satisfied.

6. Conversion:
All visitors have the possibility to eventually convert into customers. The website will play a major role in this before, during and after the purchase process.

7. Contact details:
The website provides contact details: email address or telephone number

8. Location:
For certain people the location of the company in certain cities or neighborhoods of cities are an indication of the success of the company.

9. Worldwide or countrywide presence:
As your website will list the office locations it will enhance the image of your company.

10. Management:
As management is/should be presented on the website it will give a face to the company and more identification.

How essential is your website for your business ?

Technology companies can’t exist without partners.
Although it is better not to grant exclusivity to partners, too many partners in one geographic region might be too much. However you should be analyzing your partner not only for the other products and solutions he carries and proposes to his potential customers and customers, you should also analyze how each partner in a region sells.

Partner sales types

- Reseller partners are likely to sell on price to buyers/purchase dept. as your products or solutions are available to many other resellers.
- Partners can sell to managers based on functions and features in order to make a difference.
- Value Added Resellers or Partners will enhance the product or solution giving an advantage over competition.
- Consulting partners are giving advice and consulting to the CxO level in companies which is quite different from the previously mentioned.

Partner – Selling

- Reseller: sell on price to purchase dept.
- Partners: sell functions and features to managers
- VAR: sell advantages to the Business Unit Manager
- Consultants: sell benefits to CxO’s

So even in one geographic region you can have several partners each having a different sales approach to potential customers.

What kind of partners do you have ?
Do you have one partner in each of these categories in your geographic regions ?

In order to shorten the sales cycle you must get the sponsor and the decision maker in a meeting together. This will allow presenting your solution matching their needs while solving their problems. The sponsor should help you convincing the decision maker as he can bring relevant information or cases to your proposition.
The debate and exchange of information will significantly shorten the sales cycle.

How often did you get the sponsor and decision maker in one meeting ?

Formerly (many years ago) it was the decision maker who decided all. Hence he was the most important for closing your sales.

Nowadays decision makers tend to be very dependent upon their administrative assistants and staff members as well as their direct professional reports.

Apparently seemingly non-powerful or non-important people in your life or business may have great influence over powerful decision makers.
This includes administrative assistants, company geeks but also even receptionists.
Although the number of decision makers is limited, anyone can be an influencer for a decision maker. Something you just can’t tell upfront.

If a staff member or assistant feels disrespected by a salesman, she or he will probably try to sabotage the chances of getting the business.
Thus you better be nice to all.

How nice are you ?

Wondering if this ‘Bring Your Own’ could turn into an evolution for the employees:

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device
Your iPad, netbook, smart phone, … for using during work in order to work.

BYOO – Bring Your Own Office
Your own chair, desk, drawer, … to work at as you already have brought the computer and the telephone.

BYOW – Bring Your Own Work
Instead of your employer giving you work, you have to sell in order to have work – like most consultants and partners have been doing since many years.

BYOM – Bring Your Own Money
Just like partners of companies and associations you could be asked to fund the company in order to get or keep you employed. You fund in order to be able to use their brand name. To work under their umbrella. Similar to a franchise.

BYOS – Bring Your Own Social security
You pay your social security instead of the employer just like independent consultant, contractors already do. As you already sell and fund then you should pay also the social security instead of the company.

BYOR – Bring Your Own Retirement fund
That’s just one step beyond as the company nor the government will have a pension fund for you in the future. Hence you have to pay all social security and medical insurance yourself.

Will the future be like this ?