Bob Poole's Water Cooler Hangout

Wrong

2010-03-08T15:58:42-05:00

Does your company have a blog?

Are you using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social media for your business?

You need to be. You already know that.

But, do you know you need to wrap a strategy around how you are using all these amazing tools?

And, do you know you need to measure the results?

Otherwise, you're wasting a lot of time and you're going to give up.

And, that would be very wrong.

Photo compliments of yuan2003

It's Not About You Valley - Continuing Our Sales Journey

2010-03-04T16:18:33-05:00

It's time to continue on our sales journey. If you've been following along so far we have visited:

The Rapport Cafe
Big Ears Mountain
Back to School

Our next stop is It's Not About You Valley. It's a really beautiful valley and worth visiting. In fact, what I've learned and seen in the valley are things that I like to use all during my sales journey - from beginning to end. One thing I learned early in sales is that people are more likely to believe what other people say about me, my company, my products and services than what I say about them. It's a fact and it is human nature. That's one reason why word of mouth marketing is so powerful.

It really is about the customer, the prospect, the person to whom you are trying to sell your ideas, dreams, products or services. When you talk about yourself (or your stuff) they may listen but they won't put as much credibility into what is said as they will if someone else tells them.

There are a few ways a salesperson can utilize the lessons of It's Not About Your Valley without having to rely on word of mouth. Here are just a few:

Use referrals - they are powerful and they also help significantly at The Rapport Cafe.
Collect testimonials and put them on your website/blog. Use the person's full name and at least a city and state. If they won't let you use their full name the testimonial is worse than useless. If you only use a first name, the same people you want to believe what you are saying will believe you made them up yourself. Kind of defeats the purpose.
I love carrying a little video camera like a FLIP and using it to make a short clip of your happy customers. Get their permission to use it on your website and blog.
Write a book, articles, and a blog. They all give you credibility even though you are the person doing the writing because they carry third-party power. I know it sounds strange but it is how it works.
When people re-tweet you on Twitter it is another form of validation of what you said.
Scan any articles, press releases or news about you, your company and your products and services. Put them on your website where people can see them.
If you speak (You do speak, right?) then make sure that you have videos done and use clips on your sites. Also, you often will be speaking with other people at the same event. Some of them may be even more well known than you. Have your photo taken with them and use it on your site.

All these things add credibility to what you say and yet, it's not about you - it's about everyone else. Failure to remember and use the lessons learned traveling through It's Not About You Valley is like tying one arm behind your back when swimming. Sure you can do it but you're not likely to go as far or as fast.

Photo courtesy of jónr's

Listen to Tim Brownson Talk About Giving Away 1,000,000 Books

2010-03-02T16:53:11-05:00

Here is an interview with Tim Brownson co-author of How to be Rich and Happy with John Strelecky. Tim and John have an audacious goal of giving away 1,000,000 copies of their book to:

Young people between 15-20 years old
Single parents on income support
Unemployed people
Homeless people

The book is fantastic and guaranteed to change your life if you read it and put what you read into action. Please give a listen to Tim and then check out their website to learn more. Please click here or on the photo of the book.

Thank you.

Back to School - Third Stop On The Sales Journey

2010-02-25T15:34:29-05:00

The third stop on our sales map is a place we've all visited before - Back to School. The reason for visiting school is it is time for us to participate in that favorite game of Show and Tell.

Let's review the first two stops on our sales journey and stopping at school will make logical sense to you. We started off by visiting The Rapport Care where we took time to get to know our potential customers. Our goal was to establish rapport and to begin a relationship based on mutual trust and understanding.

From there we made the long climb up Big Ears Mountain where we made sure we listened first before we even considered selling. And, we did that by asking questions that got our prospect telling us about what they want to accomplish, what they need, and what kind of problems they want to solve. We were careful to make sure we listened with our entire being.

Now that we have a really great understanding of needs, wants, problems, etc,. it is time to let our prospects know we really, really listened to them. We do this by using Show and Tell.

By the way, this is the stop on our sales map that most salespeople visit first. They shake the prospects hand and then start telling her all about their product or service, their company, themselves and everything but what they should be focusing on.

But, now that you've been to The Rapport Cafe and Big Ears Mountain you've ready to start demonstrating that you not only listened closely but that you have some answers that exactly addresses their needs, wants and problems. And, you can tailor your Show and Tell presentation without rambling about things they don't need or want.

Show and Tell is also a great time to share some stories with the prospective customer. For example, if you're selling an electronic component don't just blurt out a bunch of specifications. Tell a story about how this particular component helped another customer who had the same needs and wants. Don't lie or make up a story. If you've been selling for any time at all you'll have your own stories to tell. And, if you're brand new then learn stories from other salespeople or managers and share them.

The point is to let them know they aren't alone and that other people have needed or wanted the same things. They had the same problem to solve. And, here is how your product or service addresses it for them. Plus, stories are a whole lot more entertaining than statistics. And, people are more likely to buy when they know that other people have done the same thing. We all want to be part of something even something as simple as a group of loyal customers. Just ask Apple customers to learn what being a part of Apple - an Apple customer - means to them.

That's the third leg of our sales journey and you're more than halfway home. Next stop is the It's Not About You Valley. See you there soon!

Photo compliments of slinky789

Dan Pink Talks About Motivation, Carrots, Sticks, Baby Boomers and Sales Commissions

2010-02-24T08:24:14-05:00

Here is the transcription of my interview with Dan Pink for those of you who would rather read it than listen to the recording. I hope you enjoy. Bob Poole

Interview with Dan Pink, talking about Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Bob Poole: Well, I have the privilege today of being with Dan Pink, to discuss his latest book Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Dan, welcome to the Water Cooler Hangout.

Dan Pink: Bob, it’s great to be at the water cooler, hanging out.

BP: Thanks. By the way, congratulations, I took a look today and I see that Drive is ranked number three on New York Times business best sellers list this month.

DP: Hey, thanks. Thanks for noticing.

BP: Yeah, that’s fantastic.

DP: Yeah, we’re off to a pretty good start

BP: In the introduction, you said that "this is a book about motivation and I will show you that much of what we believe about the subject just isn’t so." Many years ago I was taught in Management 101, that what gets rewarded gets done. And you think about the carrot and stick kind of thing. So, what really motivates people? What did you find when you wrote the book?

DP: Well, I think that you’re right, that what gets rewarded, that is people respond very well to rewards and punishments in their environment. They don’t always respond the way we think they’re going to respond. And one of the things that I found out in doing the research for this book, and if you actually look at the science of human motivation, it calls into question a lot of practices in business. As you suggest, Management 101 suggests, that the way that people perform better is by responding to rewards or punishments, that in the absence of a carrot or a stick people wouldn’t do much. That’s just not quite right. That’s just not true, at least according to 40 or 50 years of behavioral science. What science shows, for relatively simple straightforward tasks, turning the same screw the same way on an assembly line, or adding up columns of figures in a white collar job, those kind of motivators are actually pretty good. However, once tasks call for even modest degrees of creativity, complex thinking, conceptual ability, those kinds of contingent motivators, those if/then motivators, if you do this, then you get that, they don’t work very well at all, and they often backfire.

BP: Right, the backfiring thing was very interesting as it relates to what happened in this past year with the idea of short term goals and the whole real estate market. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

DP: Sure! There are all kinds of ways that those kinds of contingent rewards can backfire. They have a lot of potential collateral consequences. One of them is that, especially if you give a very high stakes reward to short term performance, some people are going to take the low road there. Some people are going to cheat. Not everybody, but a portion of people will cheat. You see this basically in every kind of high stakes reward, where there’s a big payoff for hitting it. That’s Bernie Maddoff. That is a source of part of our financial woes.

We see it now even in schools where you have schools and teachers being rewarded based on scores on standardized tests, and there’s some recent news out of Georgia that show that something like 25% of the exams that came in had erasures that changed the answer from what the wrong answer to what was the right answer. And so some people are going to cheat. That’s the big downside of it.

I think the bigger downside though—that’s a significant downside—but the more significant one for our purposes, or for the purposes of your listeners, is that contingent motivators, those if/then motivators can actually inhibit creative thinking. They’re very good for fostering simple, routine rule-based thinking, because they get you to focus. So, if you offer me 500 bucks to do something, you have my attention, Bob, I’m focused, man. I really want to get that 500 dollars. But my frame of mind is this very intense focus, narrow vision. That’s a great way to approach a problem if it’s short-term or if it’s simple, or if it’s rule based, where there’s a certain set of steps to follow to get a right answer. That’s not the frame of mind you want to be in if you’re trying to come up with something creative, if you’re trying to do something innovative, if you’re trying to solve a conceptual problem For that, for those kinds of problems, those kinds of challenges you don’t want a narrow view, you want an expansive view, you want to be seeing the periphery.

And so many times these kinds of rewards which we think of as somehow emanating from nature, as sort of a given in how people perform, these if/then rewards, they don’t work very well for creative, conceptual tasks precisely because they work for simple tasks. They narrow our vision, sometimes you want a narrow vision, other times you want an expansive vision. But you don’t want to apply a motivator that gives you a narrow vision when you really want is a wider ranging vision.

BP: So you call the new motivation—what?—Motivation 3.0?

DP: Right, Motivation 1.0 is motivation based on our survival instinct. This is the motivation of when we were evolving and trying to outrace saber tooth tigers. And it’s built mostly on our biological motivations, and human beings have a biological drive, obviously. We eat when we’re hungry, we drink when we’re thirsty, we have sex to satisfy our carnal urges. But that’s not all we are.

So we also have a second drive, where we do respond very well to rewards and punishments in our environment. Typically if you reward something you get more of that behavior and if you punish something you get less of it. And so for a long time I think our businesses had an operating system—and Bob, this is Motivation 2.0— for a long time our businesses had an operating system built almost entirely on rewards and punishments. As you’re suggesting, that was Management 101. And here’s the thing, it worked pretty darn well!

BP: Well, especially in the sales field! I grew up in the world of sales, and that was the way of working with sales people… Is it still a good way, you think?

DP: On sales? It’s actually a very, very interesting question. I’m not sure whether it is. I’ll give you an example of this. I think it’s a really interesting example. There’s a company that I encountered just a couple weeks ago in Cambridge, United Kingdom, that has eliminated commissions for the sales people. Now that seems crazy, right? And what they did… here’s the reason behind it, and I’ll tell you the outcome. The reason behind it was that they, the company, would set up a compensation scheme, and sales people inevitably—which is what I would do, not because sales people are bad people, they’re human beings, they would do what I would do—they figured out ways to game it. So, if their big bonus is based on increase from month to month, people would often have this kind of saw-tooth pattern, where they would do really well one month, not do well intentionally the next month, so they could have a big kick the next month. If the commissions topped out a certain amount in a given month, they would basically stop working, stop selling. Understandably.

And so the company in response to people trying to game the compensation system would make the compensation system more complex. As a result, sales people, understandably, made their response it more complex, which made the company make the sale compensation system more complex…. And so eventually the two founders of the company said, “Maybe we’re just going to down the entirely wrong road.” And they said, “What if we just eliminated sales commissions.” And this is a very interesting conversation that they had.

So they went in to two of their sales people individually. And they went in to their first guy, Bob—or let’s not call him Bob, let’s call him Fred—so they go to Fred and they say, “Fred, we’re thinking about changing our compensation system. What we’ll do is, instead of having compensations, we’ll raise your base pay, and give you and everyone else a piece of the back end, a piece of the profit, you know, profit sharing, and what do you think of that?” And Fred says, “Well, wow, I think that’s actually kind of a cool idea. It would make me feel less pressured each time to hit my numbers, I think I’d be more collaborative with the other sales people, and I think actually I’d serve the customer better. The problem you’re going to have is that Maria, this other sales person, Maria’s never gonna go for this. Maria only cares about money.”

And they say, “Thanks, thanks a lot. Thanks for your feedback.” So they go to talk to Maria, one of the other sales people, and they say, “Maria, we’re thinking about eliminating commissions, here’s why… higher base salary, piece of the back end, what do you think?” “Well, I actually think it’s not a bad idea. I think we’d serve customers better and collaborate more. The problem is that Fred will never go for this, because Fred only cares about money.”

And so what you had is people making false assumptions about others. That somehow sales people didn’t have any sense of intrinsic motivation; didn’t have any desire to do a job for its own sake, they were only trying to get their rewards, in contrast to every other person on the planet. And so, what this company did in eliminating sales commissions, they actually saw sales go up. Why? Well, a few things. Number one—and I thought this was interesting, ‘cause this surprised me—is that it freed up an enormous amount of management time. Managers were spending less of their time figuring out who brought in what piece of business and litigating those kinds of things and more time actually coming up with good ideas and helping run the business better.

There was certainly much more collaboration and customer satisfaction increased as well. So this seems really sacrilegious in a way, but I think there are these alternative approaches. If you start with a different assumption about people… If you start with the assumption about people that they’re fundamentally passive, inert, and lazy, and that they’re not going to do a damn thing unless you dangle a carrot or threaten them with a stick. If that’s your starting assumptions about human beings, or the people in your organization, that’s going to take you down one road. If you’re starting assumption about the people in your organization is different, that is, people actually given a chance want to do good work, they want to be active and engaged, they actually care about quality, that’s going to take you down a different road.

And what I find kind of curious is that in management, and certainly under Management 101, as you describe it, Management 101 takes only that first view. And there are many—maybe even the majority of managers out there today—who have that view of human nature. Who think that people in their organization, that people in general, wouldn’t do a darn thing unless they were rewarded or punished. What’s curious is that no one ever believes that about him or herself. Everybody always thinks that he or she is the exception, that he or she cares about quality and cares about doing a good job and has some intrinsic motivation. It’s sort of like that old phenomenon where if you go to a group of 100 people and say, “Raise your hand if you think you’re an above average driver,” 99 of them raise their hand. And so, maybe we’re not that unique, maybe people have the same sort of motivations and desires that you do, and if you start from that assumption about human nature, I think it takes you down a very different road.

BP: I think sales people have always been able to be motivated by intrinsic motivation; I just think that management failed to look at it like that. As you said, they started out with the wrong view point. That’s a great story.

DP: I think we sold sales people short, no pun intended. I think somehow we said, “Well, these people don’t care about the customer, these people are purely instrumental, these people don’t have any intrinsic motivation.” And I just don’t see how this one profession would deviate from human behavior so radically. And the other thing about sales people that I’ve found, and one of the things that I’m most interested in exploring right now, is that a lot of time these rewards that they get, they’re not only the goal, they’re also for a lot of people a form of feedback. In order to get better at something, you need feedback on how you’re doing, and a lot of time the numbers and the rewards serve as that kind of feedback. It allows them to figure out how they’re doing. And people I think have an inherent desire to want to do better and to do good work. And in a lot of professions, in contrast to sales, a lot of times people have no idea how they’re doing, and so they crave that feedback, and I think with sales people, that feedback is often baked right in.

BP: That is one of the main characteristics that is good about sales, is that you already know where you stand and you can, if you have a good manager, get good feedback, or just by winning things. I always felt that that was short term, that people who focused on rewards were going to do fine for a while, but they were going to burn out. They need to shift the focus to something that is more like focusing on value for the actual customer themselves, or doing a good job.

DP: Yeah, but here’s the thing. Suppose you’re the CEO, and you look at your sales force say well, our sales force, the only reason they care about selling our product or service, is to get a big commission and win a trip to Hawaii. If that’s the only reason they’re selling your product or service, I think you have a problem. I think that’s a problem. If they don’t truly believe in what you’re doing, if they don’t truly think that the product they’re peddling is going to make a difference in customers lives, I think that is in some ways a diagnostic that services is going to be a serious long-term problem in the organization.

BP: Agreed. So what you’re saying is that in Motivation 3.0 the activity itself becomes the driving force for the person. Doing the job is the driver.

DP: Right, but an important caveat here. Let’s talk about money here for a second a little bit more. Money is a motivator and if people aren’t getting paid enough… The starting point is if people are paid enough. If people aren’t paid enough, Motivation 3.0 is a joke. If people aren’t being compensated adequately, if they feel like they’re being treated unfairly, if they can’t support their family, you’re not even going to get to the point where you can talk about the satisfaction of the job itself. So you have to pay people enough, to my mind you have to pay people more than enough. You know, in some ways, the best use of money as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table, so that people can do good work.

BP: I do some consulting—quite a bit, in fact—with social workers, and their organizations, and there’s a group of people that, frankly, aren’t paid enough, as a group. And they have a difficult job, and face some of the most difficult tasks you can imagine, and yet, trying to motivate them, when they’re sitting there trying work two jobs just to do a job is difficult. It’s just one of my pet peeves.

DP: It’s an understandable pet peeve. And it’s really the case, if you don’t pay people enough, they’re going to be focused on their anxiety or their unfair treatment rather than on doing great work. You want people focused on doing the work, rather than on the pay for the work.

BP: And to their credit, most of the people in the social work field got into it because they wanted to do good work, and they wanted to help people, so that’s why…

DP: Of course.

BP: So that’s why they do it, and that’s why companies, organizations, or governments get away with paying them less, because the social workers are intrinsically motivated.

DP: It also could be part of what we’ve made a choice as citizens about what we value, and the same thing with teachers. Everybody thinks that teachers deserve to be paid more; no one wants their taxes to go up in order to do that.

BP: Right. So, changing gears just a little bit. Three words: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. What do they have to do with Motivation 3.0? Everything.

DP: The real pathway to enduring performance particularly for creative and conceptual tasks, are those three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is self direction, mastery is our desire to get better and better at something that matters, purpose is our desire to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. And those three building blocks are the building blocks that really lead to sustained, enduring—not short term, enduring—motivation, particularly for the more complex conceptual, creative things that more and more of us are doing on the job.

BP: I got to that part of the book and a paragraph popped up, and I laughed because what it said was (you were talking about the Baby Boomers and the fact that they go through stages), and Stage one, you say, they ask themselves “How the heck did I get to be 60?” And last September, I asked myself the exact thing.

DP: Oh my god! And that’s the on purpose. And the argument there is that Baby Boomers have a potential to unleash this avalanche of purpose because when a Boomer gets to sixty, they say, “How’d I get to be 60?” which is kind of an alarming existential question for people, understandably. And then they breathe a sigh of relief and they say, “60 isn’t that old any more,” which is true.

There’s this whole math of demographic and health information and longevity information to point that out. Being 60 today, it’s qualitatively differently than being 60 in say 1950 and 1900. I mean qualitatively different. And so, if you’re 60 today, maybe you have 25 good years left. Well, then what happens is people look back 25 years when they were 35 and they say “Man that happened fast! Are the next 25 years going to happen that fast? And if they are, when am I going to do something that matters? When am I going to leave a mark on the world? What is my legacy going to be? How am I going to be remembered? When am I going to live my best life? What is my purpose? What contribution will I have made in my lifetime?”

Those are all very heavy questions, a little bit touchy-feely in their own way. But as you know from the book, Bob, those questions are being asked on a scale that is demographically unprecedented. You’ve got 78 million people in the Boomer generation—and I’m at the caboose of the Boomer Generation—you’ve got 78 million people in the Boomer generation, who started turning 60 a few years ago, who will continue to turn 60 until 2024. That’s 100 Boomers turning 60 every 13 minutes in this country. Every 13 minutes another 100 Boomers are having those kinds of conversations, asking those kinds of questions. I mean, we’ve been talking for a little over 13 minutes, and 100 Boomers have already turned 60 and had that reaction.

BP: It is amazing, and you’re right. That exact conversation is going on. I’m part of it; I have friends that are part of it. You know, I’m kind of doing it. I’ve changed. I wrote a book this year. I’ve got another book I’m writing. This is what I’m saying for myself even, and people I talked to, “You know, we still have a lot of years left.”

DP: Yeah! That’s exactly right, Bob. So, multiply your experience or your conversations by 78 million, we’ve never seen anything like this!

BP: I think what you said is, “When the cold front of demographics meets the warm front of unrealized dreams, It will result is a thunderstorm of purpose the likes of which the world has never seen.”

DP: Hey thanks for that. A little bit over-written but…

BP: It was the best paragraph in the book.

DP: Oh man, alright! Thanks.

BP: And so last thing, you have a tool kit you gave us, for putting into practice the ideas in the book, how do you at this point best recommend that we use the tool kit.

DP: I’m glad that you mentioned that because what I do … the book actually has, believe it or not, a fairly careful architecture, and this is in response to some of my own frustrations as a reader. That is, I tried to create a book of the sort that I wanted to read. So, the first the third of the book lays out the science of motivation, and uses science to challenge these orthodoxies that the only way people will perform is with carrots and sticks.

The second part of the book talks about those three elements, autonomy, master, and purpose, and how some organizations are using those sorts of elements to produce great results. And then, so those are mostly kind of idea based, and one of my frustrations with books, certain kinds of books, is that you have certain books that are about big ideas, and they say here’s the big idea, and they make an argument for the big idea, and it’s often compelling and persuasive, and then it just ends, it doesn’t give you any advice on how to respond to that, and so what I wanted to do is take a big part of the book—or not a big part, but a third of the book—and give people some tools and tips on how to do better.

And so, we’ve got a bunch of ideas for what individuals can do, what we can do in organizations, so there’s an idea for how to do an autonomy audit in an organization, and this idea of how to do these kind of one day bursts of autonomy called “FedEx Days” that have lead other companies to really great, interesting innovations. There are a number of questions and things, self-diagnostics and questions that people can ask themselves to help navigate their lives toward greater purpose. Advocate do-it-yourself performance reviews as a way for people to achieve larger levels of mastery. There’s a list of other books that I think people ought to read to help get better at this. I even have in the toolkit a summary of the book, a twitter summary, a cocktail party summary, but also a chapter by chapter summary, because I find myself as a reader sometimes reading a book, starting a book, and then putting it down and life intervenes, and two weeks go by, and I pick up the book, and I’m like, “Okay, what was this book about? What was going on?” And books unfortunately don’t have the thing that TV episodes often have, things like “On our last episode…” that kind of bring you up to speed. So there’s a chapter-by-chapter summary so that if people put down the book for two weeks, they can pick it up and find out, “Oh, okay, this is what the Introduction said, this is what chapter one said, this is what chapter two said, Great, I remember this all now, I can start on chapter three.” So, I’m delighted that you mentioned that, because there is, amazingly enough, a very careful architecture to the book.

BP: I thought it was a terrific idea, I mean having that back there, because, just what you just said, one of the things I’ve always hated about—I shouldn’t use the word ‘hate’, but dislike—about the term ‘motivational speaker’ was, you could motivate someone and they’re all pepped up rah rah, but come Monday, they go “Okay, now what do I do?” And they don’t know what to do.

DP: Motivational speakers are… that’s just basically a snickers bar of motivation, it just gives you a sugar rush, it’s not nutritious, and it’s not rooted in any kind of science. And unfortunately it’s often given even the phrase ‘motivation’ a bad name. Fortunately, there’s 50 years of science that takes a much more serious, sophisticated, hard-nosed look at what really motivates us.

BP: Well, the tool kit is a great idea. I might steal it from you.

DP: Hey, listen, it’s open source man, you put a tool kit in your book.

BP: I will. Okay, any other last words before you go.

DP: I don’t think so. I’m really glad we got a chance to talk about sales, ‘cause I think it’s a really interesting topic. If there are companies out there that are eliminating commissions for sales people and are seeing sales go up, it again challenges our assumptions about why people do what they do. And I think that good business practice, I think entrepreneurship itself, is built on challenging conventions and overturning orthodoxies.

BP: Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. It’s been a tough sell in the past…

DP: Huge!

BP: … but I hope that the studies that you mentioned plus your book and other groups doing it—I know some that are doing it, and having success at it—so I hope all of those things change the turnaround for sales people. I really appreciate the time and thank you very much.

DP: Sure thing, Bob, my pleasure.

BP: Good luck with the book, and we’ll talk to you again soon.

DP: Okay, thanks, Bob. Cheers.

BP: Bye, Dan.

Interview With Dan Pink

2010-02-22T20:07:14-05:00

Dan Pink, author of the New York Times bestseller "A Whole New Mind" has another best seller. It's entitled "Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us."

I had the privilege of speaking with Dan today and discussing "Drive" and Motivation 3.0 among other subjects. Here is a recording of the interview. It is about 26 minutes long.For the sales people reading, you might enjoy our discussion on the merits of eliminating sales commissions.

I'll also be posting a transcribed version sometime in the next 24 hours if you'd rather read than listen.

Enjoy.

Journey to Big Ears Mountain

2010-02-22T15:08:23-05:00

When we last saw our intrepid sales travelers they were making sure they had spent enough time at The Rapport Cafe and were about to begin the next leg of their journey - to Big Ears Mountain.

Now you might be visualizing a mountain in the shape of a large ear when you hear the name of our destination. Or, perhaps a land inhabited by a civilization of large eared people. You'd be close with that last guess.

Big Ears Mountain received its name because it is the home of the Big Ear Bunny. This a species of rabbits known for their oversize and droopy ears. They have been revered for centuries beginning with the ancient Egyptians as you can see in the photo of the bunny carved into an Egyptian temple.

You can recognize them not only by their large ears but by their behavior. Whenever they first come into contact with a human they stand up on their hind legs, raise their ears as high as possible and appear to be listening. It's as if they are carrying on a conversation. Only in their case they do all the listening and communicate back with their eyes and body language. It's quite a pleasing experience if you're used to being talked to instead of listened to.

And, when it comes to my sales map, I have learned that spending most of my time on Big Ears Mountain emulating the big eared bunny is the most important part of the journey. This is where we must listen and keep our mouths shut other than to ask questions that will allow our potential customers to tell us what they need, the problems they want to solve, why they think we might be able to help them, what they've done in the past, what do they want to accomplish - the list goes on and on.

We can't ethically offer a solution or a product to someone until we know if it is the best solution for all these things. To do so would make us guilty of malpractice. We need to ask questions and we need to be like the bunny and listen with our entire being.

Eventually, the potential customer is going to make a decision as to whether to buy what you're selling. They will decide if their investment/cost is equal to or greater than the value they perceive in whatever it is you're selling. And, when that moment comes the only way they will know for sure will be determined by how good a job you did at asking questions and listening.

This is why you need to spend the majority of your sales journey on Big Ears Mountain. It is that important. You need to focus on listening 80% of the time and talking 20% of the time. Do that and you'll separate yourself from 95% of the sales people in the world and both you and your customers will have a wonderful experience.

Next stop on the sales jounrney is back to school - 1st grade to be exact. We're going to relive and relearn Show and Tell. This is the place where we get to show our potential customers that we were listening to them up on Big Ears Mountain. Everyone loves Show and Tell so get ready to have some fun! I'll see you there soon!

Photo courtesy of Keithius

The Treasure Map

2010-02-18T10:48:19-05:00

Bernadette commented that she could use some help in getting business clients to open up. She said she didn't think there was a map to follow but wondered where I start and what kind flow and questions I find most useful.

Actually, there is a map of sorts that I use. It's not a rigid map with one road that doesn't allow you to follow different paths if one catches you eye. But, it is a Sales Treasure Map with - let's call them Points of Interest (POI) - that you will want to visit in order to get to your final destination.

I call my first POI The Rapport Cafe and it is where I to get to know the person and to make a human connection. This doesn't have to be a long stop as most people form an impression of us very quickly. They form that impression of you in exactly the same way you form your impression of them.

Their brain and gut processes things like how you look, your smile, eye contact, do you project warmth and respect and are we like each other in some way. People like to do business with people they like and trust. And, if their initial gut feeling is that you are somehow alike and they feel safe - then you have had a successful visit to The Rapport Cafe.

As far as what kinds of questions to ask at the cafe here is my plan. I remember I am in a cafe and I'm having a cup of tea with someone I just met. What kinds of questions would I ask her.

Are you from the area?
How do you like the cafe?
How's your tea?
Have you worked here long?

Match the persons tone and rate of speech. Don't get all New York on them if they hail from Keokuk. It is your job to communicate with them in a style they like and feel comfortable with. You're getting to know each other and establish a relationship. Be open and ask the kinds of questions of someone you'd meet for the first time at a picnic. One question will lead to another and you will know and feel when you are both enjoying The Rapport Cafe.

However, don't be in a hurry to leave here. Some visitors want to rush ahead to the next POI which is Big Ears Mountain. But, just like a mountain climber who spends some time getting acclimated at a base camp before rushing to the top of the mountain, I like to really make sure we have enjoyed our time at The Rapport Cafe. So as we move together toward climbing Big Ears I spend additional time establishing our human connection.

I'm going to let Becky, a sales colleague of mine, describe what she sees me do in The Rapport Cafe. "You look the person in the eye and hang on every word. You make that person feel they are, for that moment, the most important one in the room. You focus on what they want or need and try to find a way for them to have it." That's a good description of how I make use of my time in the cafe.

You know how you hear the phrase, "It's a small world" when you meet someone and it turns out the two of you have a connection to each other? Well, it turns out it really is small. The odds are good that you will find a connection or several and that usually leads to more trust and rapport - and maybe a second cup of tea. That's why I am in no rush to start mountain climbing.

In my next post, we'll start on the journey up Big Ears Mountain. This will be the most important POI on the entire sales journey. Get some rest now. It's a long (but rewarding) journey.

Did You Just Sucker Punch A Potential Customer

2010-02-17T08:54:22-05:00

The growth of SPAM in your in-box is supposed to be flattening out. I thought so too but since December I've seen a large growth of junk coming in here.

The cost to to deal with it is estimated to be over $130 billion worldwide. Estimated U.S. cost is $42 Billion. A number of factors make up the cost including Spam control software and hardware, licensing fees, IT cost, and the greatest - user productivity cost.

There are professional spammers who send out millions of pieces of junk mail, hijack IP addresses, scrape email addresses, and use third-party servers. Sadly, a small number of ISP's are happy to sell their services to spammers at a premium price.

Here is what I don't understand though. People hate spam. For a legitimate business (by that I mean one that isn't engaged in ripping people off) to engage in spam is like personally visiting a potential customer in their home or office and and when they open their door you sucker punch them right in the face.

In the last 5 minutes, I have received spam email from:

Netflix - which has become one of the worst offenders in the country
File Center Inc. - which wants to offer me a lower price for something I don't use
A professional spammer who is selling Viagra at 83% off.
A photographer offering some kind of software
And, of course, a letter telling me I keep forgetting to pick up my $16.5 Million in Nigeria

By the end of today the list will grow to hundreds and too many of them will be from small businesses who think it is okay to buy a list of email addresses and then start sending to them. Others will be from people who got a list from a friend who got it from a friend who told them it was okay to email.

Here is the fact. If someone has not specifically told you that you have permission to send them email and you are emailing them - YOU ARE A SPAMMER!

I don't care if they did buy something from you within the last year. If they didn't give you specific permission to email them - YOU ARE A SPAMMER!

It's really simple. It's not gray. It is black and white.

No Permission = No Email Marketing

Photo compliments of Dave77459 on Flickr

Ten Secrets for Sales Failure

2010-02-16T05:01:00-05:00

Use your PhD level vocabulary in discussions with prospects so you can impress them.
Speaking of PhD's make sure you use all your academic degrees after your name. Think of all the value they create for the potential client?
Never give a client your cell or home phone number. They can call you during business hours.
Never do free work for anyone - not even a non-profit. They have plenty of money and giving your work away is bad for business.
Entertaining potential clients is one sure way to make them feel like they owe you one.
When it comes to charging clients for expenses, if you schedule your time correctly you can see three clients in one trip and get paid full expenses from all three.
When a colleague asks you to collaborate on a project turn them down. They almost always want something for nothing and will waste your time.
Make closing sales your priority. In fact, study and practice all the ways to make someone feel like they can't say no to you.
Focus on winning because when it comes to selling - someone wins and someone loses.
The only reason to follow-up after a sale is to get a referral.