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Category: Marketing

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Best Practices Leadership Marketing Skills

30 Networking Questions to Make You Memorable

You walk into a room filled with people that is buzzing with conversations. Carefully you look around until your eyes meet a person by themselves and you smile. You walk over to them, introduce yourself, and shake their hand. Then, for many, the hard part begins. How does one have an engaging and memorable conversation with someone they just met?

For many, we tend to freeze up in these instances. Sure, you can visit about the weather or some current events, but that does not help you to understand who they are and the value they can add to your professional life or vice versa. Instead of asking the typical questions, try one of these 30 networking questions to help you get to know someone better and make the overall conversation meaningful and memorable.

30 Networking Questions

  1. What is the number one takeaway you hope to gain from this event?
  2. What did you learn from today’s speaker?
  3. How did you learn about this event?
  4. What type of connections do you hope to make today?
  5. What other events similar to this have you attended?
  6. If there is one thing I can help you with, what would that be?
  7. How can I help you succeed?
  8. What project(s) are you working on?
  9. Why did you decide to go into your field/business?
  10. What problem do you/your business solve for others?
  11. What is the biggest challenge you see happening in your industry?
  12. What is the latest news in your industry?
  13. What trends do you see in your industry?
  14. What’s the toughest part of your job?
  15. What kind of education/training do you need for your job?
  16. What is a typical day like for you?
  17. How did you come up with the idea to start your business?
  18. What book are you reading now and what is the one thing you have learned from it?
  19. What volunteer work do you do?
  20. Do you serve on any boards?
  21. What do you do for fun outside of your work?
  22. What is one interesting fact about you that may surprise me?
  23. Are you originally from this area and/or how did you end up in this city?
  24. What is the best piece of business advice you have ever received?
  25. What advice do you give to others in your industry?
  26. How do you stay motivated?
  27. What skills are essential for anyone in your industry to have?
  28. What are some of your favorite life hacks?
  29. What is the one app you can’t live without?
  30. How do you feel you or your company makes an impact?

How to Leave the Conversation

At the end of the conversation, there is always the business card exchange. Take this time to tell them how much you enjoyed visiting with them. Be sure to repeat their name as you thank them, and state one thing about them that stood out or that you enjoyed learning from talking with them. This last piece shows you actively listened and were engaged, and it will help you to remember an interesting tidbit about them the next time you are together or think of them. It will make you and the other person memorable.

I help executives create a powerful image and brand so they look and feel confident wherever they are. Contact me at sheila@imagepowerplay.com to schedule a 20-minute call to discuss how we can work together to grow your visibility through my return on image® services.

Categories
Management Marketing Skills

Always Be Closing – Get a Decision, in Place of Leaving a Brochure

I thought I’d tackle one of those challenges that we’ve been faced with time and time again in our business career. When we receive the objection early on in our sales process, such as “Can you send me the details?” This prevents you from getting down to the detail where you’ve given them enough information to make a full decision. You’ve got a conceptual yes, they’re reasonably interested in what you do, but not specifically interested enough to give a decision. 

As the brochure is stereotypical, what happens when we send them out? At best it sits on a coffee table for a period of time. Does it really get digested or discussed or lead to a decision, picking up the phone and taking action? Sometimes it does, but typically no further action happens unless we make it happen.

When we had customers interested in an overseas investment property, I heard “would you leave me a brochure?” so often that I knew I had to find a way of tackling it. I had to get into the position where I could spec something in detail–the specs they would want if they did proceed. Now you know how much better we are at looking at things in hypothetical circumstances rather than in reality, and this is exactly what we do here when faced with this scenario. I’ve developed what I call the “Devil’s Advocate Close”, the opportunity where we spec something in a hypothetical circumstance.

What I decided to do was every time somebody said ‘Can you leave me a brochure?’ I’d say “Absolutely, but why don’t you play devil’s advocate with me for a second, so you know what it is that you’re saying ‘no’ to. I know you’re not going for one of these right now, but if you were to invest in one of these properties, just hypothetically speaking, would it be for–lifestyle or investment?’

Let’s say I get the answer “investment”…

“If it is investment, you’re looking at maybe something that’s going to bring you the best possible returns for the smallest amount of outlay?”

“Yeah that’s right Phil.”

“Let’s say you were going to go with it and use that property anyway, how many of you would be using the property?”

“Well it’d be me, the wife, and the kids.”

“So you’d be looking for at least two bedrooms?”

“Yeah that’s right Phil.”

“So if it were a two bedroom apartment and investment was in mind, I guess you’d be looking at a two bedroom, first floor apartment, because those are the cheaper properties and they rent for the same as a ground floor, hence your yield is slightly higher. It makes sense to go for a two bedroom first floor.”

“Yeah that’s right.”

“Assuming, with investment in mind, that you may want to sell this on one day and be able to get some use out of it, so you’re probably going to be wanting something with a nice outlook or pool-facing view.”

Yeah that would make sense Phil.”

“Then let’s have look at what’s still left on the development – two bedroom, first floor, pool-facing. Well I’ve got this apartment here, it’s apartment A202 and it’s 74sqm and here are the two bedrooms and the two bathrooms. Here’s the en-suite and the large open plan kitchen and here’s the balcony, and on the balcony you can see you’ll be overlooking the beautiful pool area. Now I know you’re not in the position to move forward with one of these today, but again just playing devil’s advocate and so you know what it is that you say no to, would you be open-minded to take a look at what the figures look like so that you would know what a yes would look like if you were ever in that position?”

“Yeah absolutely Phil.”

So I would walk them through the payments, I’d walk them through exactly what their investment for apartment A202 would look like, and funnily enough, their final decision in order to secure that property was just a small reservation fee. At the end of that presentation, I would say to the customer, “Well in terms of what we’ve gone through, obviously we’re showing you the best of our available stock. I’ve got a number of appointments later today, as have the rest of the team, and two bedroom apartments are the most popular because they’re the best rental option. No doubt the next person who reserves a two bedroom first floor apartment will probably come to the same conclusion that you have that A202 is the best apartment. So if you were to look to reserve, then all we need is a $1200 reservation, and we take cash, cheque, and credit or debit card.”

Where people have previously said, ‘Leave me a brochure’, we’ve now prompted a discussion between decision makers. Now let’s say we did that ten times in a week…most people would continue with the “Can you leave me a brochure” along with the numbers and the floor plans for the specific apartment in question–but two or three people out of the ten would genuinely move forward with a transaction that they would have previously have asked you to leave on.

We know how hard it is to create opportunities to sit in front of people and then create a genuine opportunity for them to make a buying decision with us. Just ask yourself this, is it easier to hang in there for another five, ten, fifteen minutes to give them enough information to make a decision and help them see what they could buy from you, or easier to start again with somebody new? Because purely by playing devil’s advocate you can get some great information out of people – valuable information that puts them in a position where they can make a decision.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Skills

How to Prove Your Future Worth to Customers

Many of us are great at what we do, and the very fact that you are reading this article demonstrates your desire to continue to grow.  However, many of us do a great job of keeping our fantastic track record a secret from our potential customers.

Sporting greats are judged by what they achieve, and clubs recruit new managers based on their previous results. The same can be said when looking for new suppliers.  If you can demonstrate that you have done a fantastic job for others in the past, it goes a long way towards suggesting you will do a good job for them too.  This is more than having testimonials hidden away on your website, in a filing cabinet or in a folder in your bottom drawer, along with your customer letters.

In today’s age, social proof is one of the best convincers you have and growing your social proof can be a huge contributor in helping you win more business.  Now, the distribution of your social proof is important. However, before you can showcase it, you must ensure that you collect it.

The first bit of advice I would give is that if you don’t ask, then you don’t get. We are all busy people, and taking the time to say nice things about each other in a usable way is rarely top of the list; therefore, we have to help jump it up the list.

Asking after you have delivered your product or service is likely to bring you a better response than after that moment has passed.

Asking in a format that makes it easy for them is also highly likely to bring a better return. The two forms that have worked well for us are video and of course, LinkedIn.

Just asking will bring you huge results, but being prepared will help even further. The ability to record video on the spot will have you leaps ahead of your competition, and asking at every opportunity will give you heaps of great video to showcase what others say about you.

Once you get good at asking you’ll have so much content that you’ll want and need to get in front of people. This is some of the stuff that we do which has had fantastic results, and could work for you too:

  • Point people from emails to your Linkedin profile to read recommendations
  • Leave written testimonials in a folder in the office reception
  • Photograph written testimonials and post on Facebook
  • Distribute video testimonials across the social networks
  • Encourage others to post their positive comments on Facebook and Twitter
  • Update website testimonials as often as possible and ensure they are easily visible
  • Utilize the words of others in marketing literature

The simple lesson in all of the above is to put your social proof in front of as many people as possible. However, the real trick is to ensure that every testimonial can be traced back to its source.

Ensuring that your future customers can see the credibility in the source of your social proof will add to its effectiveness which is the bit that makes it all worthwhile.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Personal Development

How to Get More Out of People Around You

Today’s blog is all about understanding the art of sales management, and understanding how to manage even that proportion of yourself or that proportion of other people that can help you get better sales results for you and your business.

We first need to understand a little bit about the makeup of a sales person.  In my experience in all the sales people that I’ve worked with, I found that sales people are hugely competitive people, often highly strung, perhaps even egotistical, and certainly outspoken and just south of arrogant. Sales people are notoriously difficult to manage. If you try and control them too much, they will revolt. Give them too much time, too much freedom, and they’ll exploit you, become lazy and take advantage of your situation. So mastering this art form really is a massive challenge, which is regularly overlooked.

Many businesses go out and recruit experienced sales people, based on their previous track record, and think they have people ready-made for success. Management and leadership of these people is a daily, weekly, sometimes even an hourly task to get the best out of the sales people in your organization. We need to understand what we can do with these people to get them performing and continuing to perform at their best.

Below are 5 key areas to the art of sales management:

1. YOU NEVER GET THE SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION

It may be that you’ve got to set the rules at day one. You could tell people exactly what you expect of them at the very beginning of taking somebody into a sales role. You need to cover everything from company culture to dress code, personal grooming, time keeping and everywhere in between, because if you want to hold them accountable, they need to know the rules. We must also share with them the consequences of underperformance. They still need to know what happens if they don’t achieve what they say they’re going to be able to achieve.

2. SALES PEOPLE ARE CREATURES OF HABIT

You need to show them what success looks like. They’ll need to see it for themselves for them to be able to follow it, replicate it, and maybe surpass it. People do two things in business – what they enjoy doing or what they get checked on. My advice for sales people is make as much of the job fun as you possibly can. Celebrate the successes, whoop and holler at the good times and let them want to enjoy more of that. A regular meeting is important, but consider the timing of the meeting and the location of the meeting–are they congruent with the outcome that you’re looking for?

Also consider they generally don’t take well to change. If your existing routine is not working and you’re going to change something, be very conscious of the fact they’re going to resent it. So, it requires a strong leadership to change it, and if you know the change you’re looking to make is going to make a long-term improvement, they’ll make an instant decision and stick to it. Your sales team is selling all the time. Sometimes to your customers and your potential customers and sometimes selling to you! Maybe it’s the reason they can’t do something or why an idea will or won’t work. So stick to your guns. Be strategic. Know what it is you’re doing and lay down the path for them to follow. They’ll soon come around to your way of thinking, providing it delivers the results.

3. PLAY TO THEIR EGO

Give them a fine reputation to live up to. Great sales people are competitive, and although they’re often employed by your business, the most demanding boss in the world typically manages them –-him/herself.

Remember, however, that although your sales staff may seem thick skinned, they’re often emotional people, so it’s essential that any praise that you give is loud, is lavish, and it’s in public. Any genuine criticism, when you’re looking to be constructive towards how they can improve, is done behind closed doors. You must protect their ego. Their ego is remarkably valuable to you, and a sales person lacking confidence and lacking self-belief will always underperform.

4. MEASURE AND MONITOR THEIR PERFORMANCE

What we’re looking to do is to manage the results and measure their activity. Whether this is you managing others or yourself, set your stall out in terms of the activity levels you’re going to be following, not just the results that you want, then work back from those results. You might be measuring the number of calls you make in order to win appointments or the number of face-to-face appointments and the results that they bring. By chunking it down to the activity, you can find out which part of the machine is broken.

The thing with measuring activity is activity doesn’t lie, yet the results themselves can be influenced from so many different variables. So, record the results of your efforts. Make sure that you’re keeping statistics on the activity levels and patterns that will occur. Ratios will start to appear and you can understand exactly what it takes to get the results that you’re looking for, as well as understand the scenarios where the ratios don’t fit the pattern. This allows you to reward effort, not just results, and allows you to manage complacency where people might be getting great results but only put in minimal levels of effort. Because of the fact they’re above average and better skilled than maybe somebody else in your team, you know that they can achieve a great deal more for you. Identifying those development opportunities allows you to find out which parts need to be improved in your sales team and how you can then provide them the skills to grow in that specific area.

5. HAVE HUGE RESPECT FROM YOUR SALES TEAM

One of the only ways to get respect from people is to earn it. Far too many business owners and business leaders expect respect. In my experience, I found myself in sales roles running large teams of people, all of which were far more experienced in their roles then me. One particular example I remember was at 20 years of age, running a sales team where the youngest person in the team was nearly 15 years older than me. They’d all been doing the job for 5 years or more, so the chances of me being able to have any impact on them initially was slim to none. They’d also already decided there was nothing they can learn from me. In cases such as this, you must be able to adopt a principle that I call, let me show you. This means having the ability to roll your sleeves up and not just tell somebody what to do but be prepared to show them how they’re going to get a result.

This means you go out on appointments with them and demonstrate exactly what success looks like. Pick up the phone and show them how to win appointments for themselves and show them what success looks like. Turn around a customer that previously had said no to you and bring them back into a yes environment, showing them what can be done. And the more that you show people what they’re capable of, the more it will empower them to do the same and the more it will allow you to demand more of sales team.

So I hope this will give you some good ideas of how to get more out of the people that you’re working with right now. You now have some understanding on the art of sales management and what you could be doing to get the maximum amount of effort, the maximum amount of energy and then more importantly, the maximum results out of the people that are selling in your business.

Categories
Management Marketing Skills

Process Focus: Finding Your Needleshop, Not a Haystack

Process focus is all about giving you a system, strategy or scenario that can lead you through understanding a key area of your business, helping you get more of what it is that you want. 

I’m pretty sure one thing you really want is more new business. If you want new business, start at the beginning. I’m sure many of you spend a lot of time, effort and energy on marketing your business. 

However, there’s a key difference between sales and marketing. Marketing is all about getting bees around the honey pot. Your business is the honey.

The difference with sales is that we get to choose our customers. Provided we go looking. The art of great salesmanship is like fishing. It’s knowing what fish you’re looking for, where to find them and what bait to use. That way, when you go fishing in the right place at the right time with the right bait, you catch the right fish. That’s what Process Focus is all about this month. It’s about getting what you focus on.

We communicate it to you in so many ways. The brain is processing so many pieces of information. If you’re looking for anybody and everybody at the same time, you’ll find nobody. If you get specific on what it is you’re looking for, you’re far more likely to spot opportunity. A simple test on this, might be anytime in your life where you’ve looked at buying a new car. When you’ve looked at buying a new car, what’s often happened, is you’ve decided what it is that you’re buying. And in the period of time between you deciding and collecting the said vehicle, you can’t help but see tons of those vehicles everywhere you look on the road. I promise you that it wasn’t the strategic marketing campaign from the company you were looking to buy from. They were there already. It’s just that you’ve set a part of your brain to be able to identify, spot and look for them. This is exactly what we need to do to find more of the right kind of customers. So please take time to consider exactly who your target customer is. How many of them are you looking for?

Consider how many new customers you’d like to acquire in the next 12 months. Maybe break that down to how many new customers you’d like to have per month. And then define exactly what they look like because then you can go looking for them. Some of the things that you might want to consider are:

Where are they located? 

If you have an account management or a servicing responsibility, look for those customers in a simple geographic region. That way getting face-to-face to them adds value to them, then being able to access you easily adds value to them. Could you have enough of the right kind of customers purely located around the simple geographic region that you can service correctly?

How big are they? 

Are you targeting single person micro businesses? Are you targeting Fortune 500 companies? You might even be appointing your business where you’re looking to make a step change, to change the type of customer that you’re looking for.

What industry are they in?

Getting industry focused can really help you find what you are looking for.

Who exactly is the decision maker within that type of business? It might be one person. It might be more than one person. But really define who that is because actually, what you’re not looking for is an organization or a type of organization. You’re looking for an organization in a certain location of a certain size, and a certain person within that organization, because without that person you’ll never get the decision.

The more focused you get and the more you define your target market then you might realize that you have more than one target market. But the more you define it, the easier it is to find it. Coupled with the fact that once you know exactly who it is that you’re looking for, you can share it with others more easily, and they can help you find more of the right kind of people.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Marketing Skills

How To Use Mind Probing Questions to Negotiate Better

“Rest your mind when reflecting, move to action with conviction.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

When it comes to negotiating better, the questions you ask will be the gateway through which success awaits. The more probing the questions, the more engaging will be the mind. The more engaged the mind becomes, the greater the opportunity to alter the state of mind.

The following are mind probing questions you can pose to yourself and the other negotiator to achieve greater negotiation outcomes. By thinking deeper about the negotiation mindset you should possess, you’ll also deepen the thoughts that you engage in during the negotiation.

Questions to ask yourself and to consider about the other negotiator:

Do you know where you’re really going in the negotiation (i.e. end goal), and the detours you might have to make/take, if you encounter roadblocks you’d not considered? When putting your plan in place for the negotiation, you should consider the style of the other negotiator, what style you’ll display in response to the opposing negotiator’s style, and how you’ll attempt to sway his perspective once the negotiation has begun.)

Do you know how long it might take to reach your negotiation goal and what other obstacles might compete for your time and attention? In this sense, you have to consider how time might be used for and against you. The longer it takes to reach a negotiation outcome, the more likely you and the other negotiator may fall prey to the pressures of time, which means, you may make concessions that are not beneficial to the outcome you’re seeking.

At what possible points might you exit the negotiation based on what you’ve achieved or not achieved at that point? Always have exit points in mind whereby you’ll exit the negotiation if it’s not going according to your plans and you don’t see the opportunity to salvage a plausible outcome.

What’s your ‘fallback position’ if you have to exit the negotiation? You should always exit a negotiation by letting the other negotiator feel respected, even more so if you don’t come to an agreement when you exit.

What body language and other nonverbal signals will you be vigilant of in seeking added meaning to a statement or question made by the other negotiator? Negotiators exhibit body language signals that give insight into their mindset when they make offers/counteroffers. The better you are at deciphering such signals, the greater insight you’ll gain into what’s really on that negotiator’s mind.

What is the opposing negotiator really seeking from the negotiating, and what will he really settle for compared to what he says is his best offer/deal? The way he makes such statements (i.e. leaning towards/away from you when making such a declaration, exhaling strongly after making the statement, raising/lowering the tone of his voice, etc.)

Be very aware of the questions you ask during a negotiation. The quality of the questions will determine the quality of the answers you receive, which will enhance or detract from your opportunity to enhance the outcome of the negotiation. By being vigilant to the body language signals that are displayed, you’ll receive hidden meanings that’ll add value to the answers. Thus, by asking mind probing questions, coupled with reading body language, you can increase your negotiation win rates substantially … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

The 4 Word Secret to Confident Public Speaking

Today I had a first session with a new client whose primary focus is public speaking. Her story is common: While she’s confident in front of her team, when addressing larger groups, high-stakes audiences or people she doesn’t know as well, her heart starts to race, her face gets flushed, palms sweat, and a whole litany of self-defeating “what if” scenarios race through her mind.

What if I forget what I want to say?

What if I make a mistake?

What if they’re not interested in my topic?

What if I don’t seem expert enough?

What if I can’t answer a question?

 This kind of self-destructive talk is what is referred to as “head trash.” It piles up, festers, and can become overwhelming if you don’t get rid of it.

So I said to her: “I’m going to tell you the secret to changing everything and speaking with confidence. It’s four little words, and I want you to write them down in big letters and tape it to your bathroom mirror, computer, refrigerator or anywhere you’ll see it regularly, got it?”

“Got it,” she said, and grabbed her pen.

Then I told her the secret: “IT’S…NOT… ABOUT… YOU.”

She finished writing it down, then stared at the paper, processing its meaning.

“Here’s the thing,” I explained. As a presenter, you’re now in customer service. Your job is to make sure that the audience has the best experience possible. Do you love your topic or at least think it’s really important? Share that passion with them, and help them understand it.

“Don’t worry about being self-conscious when making eye contact with people. Each person there wants to feel like you’re talking to them personally. Look at each person so they know that they matter to you, that they feel like they’re part of the event.

“When you go to hear a speaker, or when someone is talking to your team, are you sitting there silently evaluating them the whole time, waiting to catch them in a mistake, or are you just hoping that they’ll be interesting and give you some important information? Of course it’s the latter. You don’t want a speaker to fall flat; that makes everyone uncomfortable. You are subconsciously rooting for their success, because if they have a good speaking experience, you’ll have a good listening experience, and that’s your main interest. That’s exactly what your audience is hoping for too.

“How do you feel about that?”

“Truthfully?” she began, “As soon as you said that, I felt instant relief. If I just focus on taking care of the audience, then I’m not worrying about my own perfection, whatever that means. It suddenly feels like a very realistic, attainable goal. I can do this.”

With that, I encourage you to take out your “head trash,” and turn your attention to serving your audience. A good place to start is with the goal of being the speaker you’d want to listen to if you were in audience. Put them first, and you’re guaranteed to come out on top.

********

Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

 

 

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Truth Versus Lie

“Truth Versus Lie”

Have you ever been deceived, or lied to? The answer more than likely is, yes. When that occurred, how did you feel? Were you happy, elated, or overjoyed with a sense of exhilaration? Again, probably not.

Here’s the point, when we label an occurrence as a lie, it takes on a different meaning per the way we act, versus thinking of it as the truth. Nevertheless, in some situations, because someone has lied to us, we move towards a more positive outlook in our life but we don’t realize it at the time. Even though we may not know it at the time, that person has done us a favor. Now, I’m not suggesting that you seek to associate with those that lie to you to have them extend a favor. Instead, be mindful of the benefits derived from not being told the absolute truth about something, per the benefits it may hold for you. That may sound strange, but in life we get what we expect, so expect something good out of the situation.

The next time you catch someone in a lie, appreciate the fact that you’re seeing the person in a different light and be glad of that additional insight. You can use it to improve yourself, which might mean getting away from that person. If that turns out to be the case, you’ll be moving your life upon a path of future discovery and  be away from the environment that’s not serving as well otherwise … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a negotiation, deceit can reign supreme, as negotiators go about playing jet-eye mind tricks to position the other negotiator. It’s expected that neither will be so transparent as to disclose their full negotiation position. So, if it’s expected in a negotiation, and you’re always negotiating, why do you allow it to be permissible during a negotiation and not in other aspects of your life? The answer lies in the fact that you more than likely see one aspect, negotiations, as being something more formal than other aspects of your life. In essence, it’s the mindset you possess in one situation versus another. If that’s the case, and you’re the person controlling your mind, you can give the meaning of a lie a meaning that’s beneficial to you. That doesn’t mean you have to drop your guard, it means, be mindful and understanding of what you’re guarding. Do so … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

Sales is a Philosophy

Every business that fails to acquire new customers at some point will fail in business. The acquisition of new customers is essential to be the lifeblood or the pulse of any business growth, and there will always be natural wastage. So bringing new customers on board is incredibly important. In this article, I want to talk to you about a mindset focus, rather than a process focus, as normal. A simple shift in the way you currently see things or believe things may well have a dramatic increase or an impact upon you and your business. Lets look at sales–the acquisition of new customers, the winning of new business and understand whose job it is to do so. Who’s really responsible for the acquisition of new customers?

In every business that I’ve been involved in, before I got involved, there was a huge divide between the sales side of the business and the operational side of the business. Sales is the sales team’s job, and the operational team is there to deliver the activities and the actions that result in the product or service being created. For me, sales is a philosophy, not a department. Everybody sells. I want you to look at it quite simply–that there are two departments. One department is selling and the other department is selling support. Those are the two critical roles. People will fall into one of those two camps. So, the responsibility of everybody outside of the sales team is to support the sales team, be it delivering on the promises that are made, ensuring that the products and services are delivered in a way that is fitting with the explanation, and ensuring that the administrative processes that follow allow sales people to sell more effectively. Where you can get the two working coherently, you get massive uplifts in results. This has been crucial in the success of every turnaround project that I’ve been involved in. Turning around retail operations in major department stores, furniture retailers, or football retailers, have all come from creating this coherent response where everybody understands that they all contribute towards the sales process. If you’re building a business that looks to connect with its customers, where it has long-term relationships with these customers, everybody who is involved in any customer-facing role needs to be aware of how they impact upon the sales process.

Let’s look at this in a number of ways and see where people make an impact, so you can really understand and illustrate the point that I’m making to you. Number one is identifying new prospects. You have sales people on a regular basis looking to identify the next person they can speak to. In simplistic form, if you have a dream customer, a most wanted list or a prospect list, sharing that list with everybody within your organisation may well create an opening or an opportunity that doesn’t yet exist. You don’t know who knows who, but when you share stuff, stuff happens. The more people that know what it is that you’re looking for, the more chances you’ve got in finding it.

Let’s look again at another area that is usually impacted upon by other people in your business. The first impression on a customer or potential customer is incredibly important. When the phone rings, the way in which that phone is answered will set the tone and the expectation for how your customer believes your business to be run and what results they can expect from it. There’s a sales responsibility there for the people that answer your telephones.

The uplifts that I’ve enjoyed purely by looking at all of the areas where sales and sales support teams cross over are huge. Where we’ve made it work, we’ve seen an increase in revenue, in profits. We’ve seen no late payments from our customers because we’ve impacted sales skills upon our cash collection teams. We have no bad debts. We get preferential treatment from our suppliers because we stand out. We understand the impact and importance of managing great relationships with our suppliers. When favours need to be called upon that allow us to win new business, fulfill challenges and stand out from the crowd, our suppliers look upon us favorably because of the way they’ve been treated up until that point in time. We can increase operational efficiency, because our selling support teams are fully aware of the part that they have to play in supporting the sales team. So paperwork moves quickly, jobs get fulfilled quickly, stuff gets ordered quickly. Those are things that we’ve seen with clients in the past. We’ve seen improved staff product productivity when everybody is chasing the same rabbit. You can’t chase more than one rabbit. It’s remarkably difficult if you’re trying to chase too many different outcomes. Everybody pulling in the same direction will lead to far better results. You gain more free time when everybody pulls in the same direction and understands that they have a role towards the sales team.

Overall, what you really get is improved communication. In every area, people understand what their purpose is. Everybody is accountable for better sales results–not just one person. Look at everybody in your business and look at every process within your business. Does it support your sales process or does it hinder it right down to the delivery? One of the best examples I’ve got of the final touch with a customer is in furniture retail. We took time to train the delivery drivers on basic sales skills, how that delivery driver would act, what they would install, what packaging they would take away, and what lengths they would go to ensure that the customer was delighted. They knew what was expected of them so they could over deliver. We then helped them understand that they were the final part of the customer experience, so we said, “Let’s make it a good one.”

Let’s make sure they thank the customer for their business, are courteous and shake hands”. We even went one step further. We trained delivery drivers to ask for referrals and some of them got them.

You can get everybody pulling in the same direction. You can get everybody sales-focused, everybody focused on the task at hand of acquiring more new business. Your sales results will go up because everybody is pulling in the same direction and everybody is selling.

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The Surprising Secret to Sales Growth

Every company has ups and downs, but what if yours has had a few quarters of disappointing revenue? You might be thinking it’s time for a big marketing investment, but where would you focus your energy?

  1. On rewarding regular customers with promotions to keep them coming back.
  2. On improving the customer’s experience at the time of purchase.
  3. On providing comparison shoppers with rational reasons to choose your product over another one.
  4. On customers who are only starting to consider making a purchase.

Most people would choose (A), and in fact that’s been the trend with brands over the past few years. But according to a recent article by global management consulting firm McKinsey&Company, (D) may actually be a better answer.

Customers aren’t as loyal as you think they are.

Traditional sales advice says that it’s easier to keep a past customer than to get a new one, and so there’s been a proliferation of customer loyalty programs over the past few years. However, McKinsey reports that fewer people are actively engaged in these programs today than in the past. And 58 percent of loyalty members don’t even use the programs they signed up for.

McKinsey researched a database of 125,000 consumers across over 350 brands and found that only three out of 30 categories of purchases were driven by loyalty: mobile carriers, auto insurance and investments. In every other category, from breakfast cereals to personal care items to laptops, at least two thirds of people shopped around. For cosmetics and shoes, almost everyone did.

The researchers then looked at whether these shoppers ultimately stuck with their tried and true brand or switched. In the 27 categories where people were likely to shop around, 13 percent of people never considered another brand and another 29 percent shopped around but stuck with the brand they’d bought before. The real news is that a whopping 58 percent ultimately decided to buy from someone else. And shoppers were twice as likely to buy a brand that they’d considered at the beginning of their buying journey, as opposed to a brand they became aware of later on.

One of our team members at Beyond Philosophy offered this example that I think explains these changing trends in customer behavior. She says that for the past 30 years, her mother has bought all of her cosmetics at the local department store’s Clinique counter. She is the ultimate loyal customer who never even considers buying another brand, and she might buy more if there’s a special promotion. My colleague’s 19-year-old daughter, on the other hand, hops from one makeup brand to another based on reviews, blogs and what her friends are buying. She already knows what she’s interested in when she steps into a store, though she’s likely to look around before making a decision.

Loyalty programs might work for the mother, but for the daughter, it’s more important to get on her radar before she goes shopping.

Getting in on the Initial Consideration Phase

As a customer experience consultant, I of course have some ideas about how companies can more effectively become part of buyers’ initial consideration phase.

  1. Understand what the customer is experiencing as he or she first begins interacting with your brand, whether that’s on a website, through social media, or in person. Before you begin to design a better experience, you must understand the rational, emotional and subconscious factors that make up your current experience, and how it can be improved. We use a process called  Customer Mirrors to make these assessments and provide practical recommendations.
  2. Appeal to your customers’ emotions. When we talk about “shopping around,” it’s easy to think that customers are comparing features and prices, but that’s only a small part of the story. Our research has consistently shown that customers’ decision making is more influenced by emotional and subconscious factors than rational ones. That includes the way your brand or product is perceived by your customers and their friends.
  3. Make it easy for people to buy from you. In my recent book, The Intuitive Customer: 7 imperatives for moving your Customer Experience to the Next Level, Professor Ryan Hamilton and I talk about the role of behavioral economics in the buyer’s journey. When people are tired, stressed or simply overloaded with choices, they revert to an intuitive form of decision making. They go with their gut and choose something that’s easy. You can take advantage of this by setting your product or company up as the easy choice.

This of course doesn’t mean that you need to abandon loyalty efforts altogether. But the more you begin recognizing that the customer’s journey begins earlier than you might have thought, the better you’ll be positioned for the challenges of the future.

How likely are you to switch brands, and why? Let’s talk about it in the comments box below.

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Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of six bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX