S&MM SoundOff

A New Reason to Take the Express

Those of us who make the long commute into New York City everyday have some morning perks to look forward to—no driving, no traffic, comfy seats, "cheaper than gas" ticket prices, and an extra hour to get some shut eye.  As fortunate as I am not to fight the masses on the roadways, I can’t help but see a change in my attitude after taking the train.  I seem more exhausted and “spaced out” then I used to.

Apparently it isn’t all in my head.  A recent study by researchers, as reported by InsideBayArea.com, concluded that riding the train is stressful, and the longer you are en route, the more stress your body endures.

Researchers measured levels of the stress hormone cortizol in 208 passengers before and after their train commute from New Jersey to Manhattan (coincidentally the same line I take).  At the conclusion of the ride, passengers were asked to perform a simple proofreading test.  Turns out those who were on the train the longest—the full 81 minutes— had the worst scores on the tests.  End result The stress levels of train commuters increases each minute and have adverse effects, both physically and psychologically.

While the factors for this stress increase are still unknown, I find the evidence, and my own personal experience, to be overwhelmingly accurate.  When I read the headline, it was as if someone had told me what I already knew.

So I guess I can now blame my typos and morning misreads to the train rather than that bad cup of coffee?

Speaking of business travel, check out this S&MM article: Road Warrior: Avoiding the Belches and the Bulges at ManageSmarter.com.

Reader's SoundOff: Double Sales Productivity with Optimized Sales Territories

By Darrin Clement
(Principal, Maponics)

As a sales manager, you know that small changes in your sales system can have huge impacts. Sales processes, skills, and morale all need to be optimized for maximum revenue production.  But all your hard work will fall apart if you're working with unbalanced territories.

With many salespeople hitting the same general market, you probably don't want them calling on the same accounts or leaving sales territories unoptimized, causing significant gaps in coverage. Those are missed revenue opportunities. Balancing territories -- so that each sales rep has the same "opportunity" -- prevents this problem.

How To Create Balanced Territories:
Don't go out and buy software or hire a mapping company without a business strategy in mind.

* First, pick your market and the number of territories you need.  If your overall market is Chicago then maybe you need 15 reps, while if your market is the state of Florida you might need 10,000 prospects per territory.
* Next, define your customer profile.  Middle income families?  Businesses with fewer than 100 employees? 
* Third, it’s all about geography.  Do you segment by county? ZIP codes are commonly used, but what happens when the U.S. Postal Service changes ZIP codes?  Segmenting by major roads would be great, but few software packages or mapping service bureaus can handle that.
* Finally, what output do you need?  A single wall map?  Reports listing prospects in each territory?  Field maps with detailed for your reps to follow? Do the maps have to look good?

Should We Outsource or Buy Software?
If your territories change daily or weekly, you may want to invest in software and staffing.  Desktop mapping software such as Microsoft's MapPoint costs a few hundred dollars and is pretty easy to use. There are some software packages that automate the balancing; they range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands and have some great algorithms for optimizations.   The downsides are that they all use old data and the output options are limited (especially if you want nice looking maps).  And someone on your staff still has to do the work!

Using a dedicated mapping service bureau has some advantages and some disadvantages.  You have to pay them every time your territories change, which can get expensive.  Your control over the result is indirect—you can define the criteria but then they do the work.  Plus, the quality and beauty of the results will likely be better than anything you could do yourself.  A strong mapping services company will work very closely with you, including advice at critical junctures, so you would be paying as much for a process as for a result.

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Read more about best practices and in Sales Strategy on ManageSmarter.com

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Catch This Virus

Viral marketing has received such a bad rap. The term sounds like a disease you don't want to catch.

However, viral marketing, or word-of-mouth marketing, can be a great way to generate interest in your product or service. Take the new Samuel L. Jackson flick, Snakes on a Plane. While the title alone hints of a movie meant to go straight to DVD, the new action film took the top box-office spot its opening weekend, boosted by online buzz.

Who on Earth would go see this movie? At least enough people for Snakes on a Plane to rake in about $20.3 million to date.

One of the reasons for its success is this Web site where Samuel L. Jackson "calls up" your unsuspecting friend or coworker telling them to go see Snakes on a Plane. Talk about a viral marketing campaign gone right! (Try it out here)

This isn't your average pre-recorded message from a celebrity either. It's a personalized message each time the phone rings. I tested it out and each time the results were dead on! My brother got a call from Jackson and he later wondered, "How did he know I have tattoos?!!" Another call from Jackson to my coworker ignited laughter when he called her a gym rat. 

This viral marketing campaign definitely stirred up interest in the movie, no matter how bad it might be, though in the end the buzz may not have been enough to meet the high expectations of studio executives. (Check out this New York Times article.)

Nevertheless, the marketing strategy still captured movie fans' interest. Do you have a positive viral marketing experience to share? Tell us about it.

Plus, don't forget to enter our Smart Sweepstakes in celebration of the launch of our new Web portal: www.ManageSmarter.com.

Forbes Forgets Women Work, Read Magazines, Spend Money

I'm a woman. I graduated from a four-year university. I work more than 35 hours per week in an office. I expect to make over $30,000 this year. So Forbes's Michael Noer has decided his readers (apparently, all male) shouldn't marry me.

Why? According to Noer, I'm less likely to be faithful, have children, and clean the house; my husband is more likely to get sick. We'll probably both be less happy than if he had married a high school dropout who earns less money than her husband and spends most of her time in the home.

Thanks, Forbes. And I'm glad that as the "Home Page for the World's Business Leaders," you have chosen to ignore and alienate twenty of the Fortune 1000 CEOs, 35 percent of all MBA candidates, and over 6.5 million business owners--all of whom are women. You'd think a struggling magazine recently forced to sell 40 percent of its shares to Bono would recognize the error in offending the female public, which makes up 35 percent of its online audience.

Forbes.com may have increased its site traffic by posting a controversial article, now coupled with a weak rebuttal from a female staffer in the wake of blog-fueled outrage. But the sting of "Don't Marry Career Women" won't fade for enterprising, successful, hard-working businesswomen who already struggle to balance work with their personal lives. We don't need chauvinistic articles that relegate us to male conveniences and fail to address us as readers--and we'll realize we don't need Forbes. One day or even one week of amped-up page views for Forbes.com can't offset the inevitable backlash from its current female audience. This self-proclaimed capitalist tool may have just kissed away its skirt-wearing target market.

S&MM SoundOff wants to hear from you!

The idea swapping and opinion sharing on S&MM SoundOff is stepping up to the next level.  We want you to sound off!

Have your opinions on today's current sales and marketing topics heard with your very own blog entry on S&MM SoundOff. Starting August 14th, you too can join the industry experts and Sales and Marketing Management editors on the S&MM SoundOff. We will select one lucky blogger's submission each week to be posted.  It's time to shout out and share your opinions today! 

Email blog submissions to [email protected]. Include your name, email, location, company, and position. Be sure to title your post.

(Submissions should be 200-500 words in length.  Selections based on newness of ideas and topic appropriateness. Personal contact information will be used for editorial purposes only. Please refrain from naming specific people and companies when relating personal experiences. Deadline for submissions each week is Friday at 12pm. Selected entries will be posted at the beginning of the following week.)

Be sure to check out the topics others are sounding off on and share your comments on our blog, S&MM SoundOff.

Reader's SoundOff: Avoid the #1 Selling Mistake

By Mark Anthony (President, Training For Success)
New York, NY

The biggest mistake novice salespeople make is that they get in the door dying to tell the prospect about their product. Because they have so much product knowledge to share, they forget to find out what is relevant to the prospect.

This is a mistake—you can't sell unless you understand your prospect's needs, a crucial element of convincing a prospect that you are someone they can work with and trust.

Listening to your customers and establishing rapport will enable you to discover their needs and thus provide them the most suitable solution to their problem.

Your reps should therefore always be friendly and interested in what the prospect has to say. Reps should not only try to sell but also focus on developing relationships.  Remember—all things being equal—people do business with friends and people they like. Even when products or services are not equal, business is still done more often done with people who are pleasant.

Also, keep in mind that offering a service is not enough. You must state your offer in a way that fills the need your prospect has expressed. When you position yourself as someone who is serving the specific need expressed by the prospect, you become much more essential to the customer.

Editor's Note: Also, learn how sometimes the best way to a Done Deal is leaving the sale open, on ManageSmarter.com.

A Tool to Help with Reference Selling

Unless your sales method provides processes, tools, training, and measurements for leveraging existing customers as references, you are probably leaving money on the table.

I remember an insurance salesman years ago who cornered me into providing him with names of my friends and relatives so he could call them. Those tactics weren't appropriate then and certainly aren't now. But asking your customers for names of people within other companies or the same company who might need your product or service is a good sales technique.

Some of the best salespeople I know regularly go a step further: They ask their customers to make phone calls or send e-mails on their behalf as an introduction to potential buyers. Hey, if you've delivered on your commitments to your customer and they've received real business value from you and your products and services, why not?

One way savvy salespeople can leverage referrals is through the online service LinkedIn.com, a business networking site. This company provides an invaluable tool to many of their 6.8 million members.

LinkedIn makes a contribution to sales performance and helps boost referral selling. Your reps can learn where their targeted prospect worked before and with whom. The rep can then see whether the target connects with anyone in his or her business or personal network. There may be people within your company with connections to the target executive.

LinkedIn shows you those connections. The site eases the rep's pitching duties and is less intrusive for the prospect. It makes getting in contact much easier from the rep's point of view and much more acceptable for the prospect. LinkedIn is one technology helping salespeople sell more effectively.

Speaking of useful Web sites, be sure to check out Sales & Marketing Management's new online home: www.ManageSmarter.com. You'll enjoy the same management tools and resources you rely on--and a whole lot more. Click here to enter the Smart Sweepstakes!

Bring on the Li-Ions

Lithium-ion batteries have been flirting with spontaneous combustion recently, most notoriously when packaged in Dell laptops. Technophiles, journalists, and bloggers shower us with gleeful coverage of burned-up trucks, Christmas presents gone awry, and the potential danger of airplane computing.

Why's this happening? As we demand more power from our increasingly tiny electrical devices, batteries must shrink while storing more energy. Small container + lots of energy = instability. Lithium-ion batteries' potent combination of carbon, oxygen, and a flammable lithium electrolyte are a poaching ground for fire--one spark and the battery, when charged, can ignite. Mechanical malfunction, manufacturing error, or exposure to very high temperatures can cause (thankfully rare) internal fires.

But we won't stop using Li-Ion batteries, because they are lightweight, low-maintenance, and one of the longest-lasting batteries made. Take me: the idea of losing round-the-clock access to my palm-sized cell phone, iPod, or wireless Internet connection (all run on lithium-ion batteries--I checked) terrifies me. What if that guy calls? What if I can't listen to music on my commute? What if I miss a last-minute appointment? What if something happens??

And it's not just me. Everyone I know must be instantly available. If my cousin doesn't pick up her phone, my friends aren't online, my grandmother doesn't answer my e-mail, my best friend doesn't text me good night, then something's wrong. I panic.

We've condemned ourselves to 24-hour connectivity, in business and in our personal lives. And if flaming laptops are the result, well, so be it. I can handle a blaze. The fire department's on my speed dial.

Feed your connection addiction: read up on Actiontec's VoSKY Call Center, which integrates cell phone, land line, and Internet calls via free Skype software.

Efficient Procrastination

Nearly every day I read somewhere that the Internet has changed the speed of business. Where letters took days, e-mails take seconds; technology has made communication faster and more efficient. But business magazines usually don’t mention that along with the power of Google comes the power of goofing off.

Here at Sales & Marketing Management, we focus exclusively on putting out the best magazine on news, trends, and leaders in the sales and marketing industry and the management therein. But  even here, people have spent their office time closing dinner dates instead of deals, reading blogs instead of business reports.

But one blog, lifehacker.com, combines the two biggest effects of the Internet: productivity and procrastination. The site recommends downloads such as BlockSite, which bars distracting Web sites, and MacGyver tricks such as making flip-flops out of old tires.

Most of lifehacker is frivolous—I haven’t made my own sandals yet—but it aspires to increase its readers’ productivity even as they read a silly blog. Lifehacker is a distraction designed to help.

For more on productivity, check out this article on CRM productivity pitfalls from our S&MM archives.

A Virtual Handshake

Social networking Web sites, such as MySpace, Jigsaw, and Meetup, are creating a buzz in the business world as more professionals use them as an effective way to make valuable connections. They can be a virtual gold mine for cultivating sales leads and generating interest about a new product or service. Not sure which one to try? Here are a few of my personal favorites:

• Meetup.com puts a strong focus on building communities offline. From their Web site, you’ll find lots of groups for every interest under the sun, whether it’s business-related (the Atlanta Network Marketing Meetup) or more geared toward personal hobbies.
• Now here's a social networking site that means business. LinkedIn.com offers its more than five million subscribers an opportunity to share industry contacts and find jobs within their network of professionals.
• There’s nothing puzzling about Jigsaw.com. Actually, it’s fairly easy to understand and use. You can browse Fortune 500 companies, take advantage of their sales leads newsletters, and create business mailing lists. 
• At Ryze.com, the goal is to help others "rise up" through networking links. They offer online visitors access to networks related to specific career interests, industry events, and a classified section for jobs.

Speaking of cool Web sites, be sure to check out Sales & Marketing Management's new online home: www.ManageSmarter.com. You’ll enjoy the same management tools and resources you rely on — and a whole lot more. Click here to enter our Smart Sweepstakes!