S&MM SoundOff

Gaining Through Giving

By Bob Burg and John David Mann (co-authors of The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea)

A shift in focus from getting to giving--defined as adding value to people's lives--is not only a nice way to live life, but a very profitable one. Which makes it something every sales professional should note.

Your goal is to always provide more to your customer in “use value” than the price you charge, while still making a healthy profit for yourself and your company. Your value to others is derived from and defined by what you give. The sales professional who comes from a “giving place” seeks to add value to all. Focus on constantly adding value in everything you do and to everyone you meet.

To the degree that you focus on adding value to others, constantly and consistently, you’ll determine your worth in the heart and in the marketplace. High value will translate into high income, high health, positive relationships and self-worth.

This leads to an obvious question: How does that value you’re providing others translate into well-deserved abundance on your part?

Let’s look at a basic but seemingly mysterious fact of life: There are sales professionals with immense product knowledge, who care greatly about their clients and work endlessly and tirelessly in order to provide great value to those they serve, yet whose income is nothing special. Others can be described in much the same way, yet their income is spectacular.

Compensation is like achievement; until you understand its governing laws, it seems unfair. Most of us grew up with this often-unspoken three-step rule for how to get things in life:
• First, aspire to a worthy goal.
• Next, work hard. Meanwhile, be a good person.
• Achieve

While the above is a good start, it lacks one basic element: impact. The fact is, to reap financial abundance, you must impact many people. Yes, you must serve them and, yes, you must serve them well. But just as importantly, you must serve a lot of them.

And that’s the secret to the physics of compensation: The bigger the impact, the bigger the income.

Corporate Trends: Moving from CMO to CEO

By James Gregory, CEO, CoreBrand (www.CoreBrand.com)

Chief Executive Officers have never truly synchronized with their Chief Marketing Officers when it comes to justifying the financial investment in corporate brand strategy. Lately, CMOs are changing this practice by becoming CEOs.

CMOs, who come from the marketing world, realize that ad campaigns and logo designs are not enough to define the corporate brand today. By using their knowledge of marketing, these new CEOs can effectively lead companies in new branding efforts that will strengthen the companies and enhance their brand reputations in the eyes of consumers.

A corporate brand image is ever present in ad campaigns and logo designs. It is the reputation behind that image that CEOs must manage and leverage to entice long-term consumers and shareholders. Without a solid reputation supporting the corporate brand image, an ad campaign has only short-term effects. While CMOs realize this, CEOs often do not because they do not always consider the impact of short-term efforts on long-term corporate results.

By utilizing their marketing expertise, CMOs turned CEOs can effectively lead their companies' business strategies in a direction that will solidify their brand reputations and, in turn, their brand images. With appropriate brand strategies, these new CEOs can leverage their companies' corporate brands to their full potential.

Once is Not Enough

A salesperson contacted me via email a few weeks ago to try and schedule a telephone appointment with me. I sent him a reply outlining the days and times that I was available for a conversation. He called the following week and left a voice mail message and I haven’t heard from him since.

Like most people in business today I’m busy so I prioritize my daily activities to get the most from each day and returning his call is low on my list of priorities. That doesn’t mean that I’m not interested; in fact I am very interested in learning more about this person’s offer. However, I have several projects on the go, and as such, will not go out of my way to contact the salesperson.

Successful sales people know the importance of making multiple attempts to connect with a prospect or customer. They know that persistence without stalking is critical, especially in today’s business climate. Corporate decision-makers are extremely busy.

Contacting them once and expecting them to return your call immediately is a fantasy. If you want to meet and exceed your sales targets you must be persistence when trying to connect with your prospects and customers. One call is not enough.

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals and businesses discover new techniques to improve their sales and profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.kelleyrobertson.com. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

The Good Recession?

By James Gregory, CEO, CoreBrand

In previous recessions, the marketing communications field and related practices (advertising, public relations, brand consulting, etc.) were frequently crushed, while the financial sector remained comparatively unscathed. This time things seem to be different.

Marketing communications has traditionally been a bellwether for changing economic conditions. As clients gradually began to cut back their marketing budgets, I always found it a good idea to liquefy a percentage of my stock portfolio recognizing that a recession was not far behind. Conversely, it seemed that my friends in the financial industry would simply expect slightly smaller bonuses during a recession than in the previous year.

This recession, however, seems to be different because our clients have not been reducing their budgets. In fact, they are taking our advice and increasing their marketing budgets (I'm knocking on wood as we speak).

It also seems that the financial industry is taking the well-deserved brunt of this recession I want to cheer but only a little because there is no doubt that a deep and protracted recession in the financial industry will ultimately impact all industries--especially marketing communications.

CoreBrand (www.CoreBrand.com) is an independent, 25 year-old global brand strategy and integrated communications firm specializing in helping companies measure, understand, craft and express their corporate brands. Headquartered in Stamford, CT, with offices in New York City and Tokyo, the company works with many of the largest and best-known brands in the world. Jim Gregory is founder and CEO.

Marketing Makeover

Let’s talk for a minute about casualty number 1,300,523 of the tanking economy: Your company’s marketing dollars. In all likelihood, there’s a whole lot less of ‘em at your disposal these days, so it behooves you to get the most mileage out of your remaining resources. Insofar as specific guidance goes, MarketingSherpa offers the following great tips: 

1. One upside of your business partners being as pinched as you are is that it’s the perfect time to angle for lower pricing—shipping rates, to give but one example.

2. Now’s the time to compulsively chart every customer and dollar you get, so as to avoid any ambiguity as to what is and isn't working. Obviously, this necessitates having the right infrastructure in place for tracking every program and campaign.

3. Monitor campaign performance obsessively, and be ready to change tactics at the first sign of a problem (lest it turn into a bigger, more expensive problem).

4. Make it as easy as possible for customers to purchase your product or service by offering as many payment options as you can.

5. Search engine optimization can be a godsend to your bottom line, so make it a priority to improve your natural search rankings.

6. Savvy marketers are putting more of their dollars into high ROI approaches like e-mail marketing, online advertising and search. You’d do well to follow their lead.

7. Allocate more of your resources to your high-value customers. It's well worth affording special treatment to your biggest spenders right about now.

8. Item number six notwithstanding, don’t put all of your eggs into the online basket. The Internet isn’t a magical cure-all, and there’s still a place for traditional marketing techniques. The extent to which you employ them should be dictated by your specific industry, product or service.

Groundbreaking advice? Perhaps not, but if you're serious about weathering the current economic storm, you'll find it to be pretty darn indispensable.

Think Before You Speak

Too many sales people respond to a customer's request much faster than they should. Here's a personal example:

A client recently asked me for a concession on a program I had quoted on. Because I had worked with them for several years and this particular program was one of several I was conducting for them, I made the concession. However, a day later, I thought of an alternative idea that, in all likelihood, would have reduced my concession without costing my client anything. It would have required some barter but I am confident my client would have accepted the idea.

This happens all the time in business. A client’s request is not unreasonable so we accept it without thinking of alternatives. Or, we bend to a customer’s demand because we’re afraid of losing the sale. Yet, the first rule of thumb in negotiating is to make people work for what they get.

Before you acquiesce to the demands of loyal customer or new prospect, think before you speak (or write an email). A few minutes or hours of thoughtful contemplation can drive more sales to your top line and put more money in the bank. Think before you speak.

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals and businesses discover new techniques to improve their sales and profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at his website. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

Sales Dodo Talks Hiring

Breaking News: Sales & Marketing Management's online "Train with the Sales Dodo" columnist Lee Salz will be shifting his column's focus in May to hiring best practices. Taking on a this new perspective, Salz will offer managers best practices on hiring and retention so they can build their teams up to a new level of performance.

For a preview of topic coverage to come, watch Salz's video on how to hire the right salespeople.

It all starts May 16th--Don't miss it! And be sure to check out the other "Train with the Sales Dodo" columns from Salz at salesandmarketingmanagement.com.

Sales Training Company Revenue Models

By Dave Stein (on April 21st at http://davesteinsblog.wordpress.com/)

I was on the phone today with an associate from a private equity firm. He found ESR on the web and was interested in our opinion on a number of topics as a foundation for his firm acquiring one or more sales training companies. He asked how sales training companies were generally doing during this recession. He pondered how a services-based company could weather these types of economic downturns, correctly observing that it’s hard to find good talent when the economy is strong and when there is a downturn, you run the risk of having expensive, non-billable talent on the bench.  “Tough to grow a business that way,” he said.

Next the comparison of training classes versus daily consulting came up.  I explained how sales training companies make significantly more margin from training classes than consulting.  In fact, many training companies only  do classroom training and are not at all interested in the assessment, methodology, process, customization, design, technology enablement, coaching and post-program support work that we believe is vital to a successful sales performance improvement intervention.  Why is that their approach? Margins!  A classroom day generates a lot more margin than a consulting day.  As a rule of thumb, a training day generates between 600 to 800% more margin than a consulting day.

Companies that only offer out-of-the-box training rarely deliver the kind of long-term sustainable results that those that take the holist approach do.  The guys at Think, Inc! are proving that what was formerly considered a stand-along skill like negotiation really should be integrated with the client’s selling methodology.  As a result they have a consulting component, which they believe is required for success.

On the other end of the spectrum are companies that will not do any classroom training unless it is part of a complete solution which would include the components mentioned above.  Performance Methods is one.

There is another piece to this—non-classroom vendor-provided content, such as e-learning modules, podcasts, remote coaching, opportunity management support (White Springs, for example) and other web/software-based IP.  Vendor that license this type of content to clients should be seeing highly profitable business.

What’s the point here?  You, the client, need to have the proper mix of consulting and classroom time as well as post-program support that will result in the greatest level of sustainable performance improvement for your team.  Don’t jump for what the training company proposes.  Don’t be willing to slash what’s required for success (like post-program coaching) because a vendor recommends it.  They may be willing to drop a less profitable but more important line item in your proposal because it suits them.

Read Dave Stein's blog at http://davesteinsblog.wordpress.com/ for more on sales trends and strategies.