Funky Business and 1% Difference

Funky Business - Book Review (from my B2B Sales Lens)

I believe the authors Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale

were onto something when they decided to name their book “Funky Business”.  They are quite accurate that today’s business climate is indeed “funky” and always changing - more quickly than ever - thanks to Technology.

Digital Disruption is causing businesses to contort, twist, and morph into new enterprises just to keep up with the status quo. Companies (and individuals) who embrace and keep up with these disruptive changes are the ones who will at least have a chance to be successful moving forward.

From my sales lens,  I find Funky Business to be an accurate harbinger of what we have to do - just to keep up with our competitors. As with most business books I read these days - many authors profess the need to be truly unique. Being unique has never been more important. My favourite message in the book reads something similar to this:

“Currently there are similar companies, selling similar products, in similar markets, in similar ways, with similar features, with similar prices, with similar promotions, using similar distribution models”

Funky Business points out that technology has produced “Funky Villages” where goods and services are traded in real-time. Prices change (in some cases) within seconds as new and innovative methods of commerce are created. One of the sea-change purchasing behaviours is the result of companies like Amazon and eBay allowing consumers to buy (almost anything) merchandise online which can be fulfilled and shipped from anywhere in the world.

A “globally linked society” is widespread as companies will source numerous raw material from various parts of the planet and outsource a number of global operations in order to produce and distribute their wares. Branding has never been so important as most consumers don’t necessarily care where their product has been produced as much as “who” it is made by.

To play in the  Funky Village companies and individuals must be extremely adaptive and creative as competition will continue to escalate. There will be opportunities for the ones who are connected.

Funky Tribes. Geography doesn’t matter anymore as digital tribes connect like-minded individuals who have mutual interests. They digitally band together - thanks to the Internet.

We now live in a borderless world which allows individuals and companies to engage in numerous forms of commerce - in real-time. The competition is high and organizations that gain even small incremental advantage over others will be in a better position to win. Now even a 1% differentiation can be the difference in winning or losing deals.

The authors go on to say that we live in a “brain-based society” and point out that the Meta data (information about an object) is now more important that the actual object itself. It is the specific “information” about objects that rules. It is all about being super creative - at the same time being extremely adaptive and responsive to market trends.

Summary:

“Companies and individuals need to create their own recipe (not copying competitors) to capture the attention of the oversupplied and ever-demanding customer”.

Overall a great read (or in my case a listen - thanks to my Audible subscription) that we live in a surplus society with an abundance of products and services which are now easily available and sourced online. New forms of competition will emerge that we haven't encountered before which will challenge all companies and individuals to be more creative than ever.

Sales Pipeline Fire Drill

I'm always amazed at how much time corporate B2B sales people are forced to spend on their sales pipeline analysis.

Quite often, sales reps are required to provide weekly sales forecast updates to their managers even though very little has transpired since their last update.

These "fire" drills for the most part are a waste of time - time that could be better spent working with their respective managers on account strategy and creative brainstorming on coming up with new products and/or services to sell to their clients.

According to CSO Insights these fire drills are a real time waster.

There are now a myriad of software tools available - other than the company CRM that allow sales organizations to forecast more accurately by utilizing predictive analytics.

For more information on this subject check out my company blog:http://bit.ly/1JqcMkq

Forgive me Father for I have sinned

It has been 2 years since my last confession - or in this case my last personal blog post.

I can't believe it has been that long.  I have been posting on work related sites but I wanted to get the creative juices flowing again and start ranting on my own again.

There is plenty to talk about. One of the things I plan on doing is providing mini-reviews on the various business books I read (and listen to - thank you Audible.com). I think it's important to relay pertinent and relative information surrounding sales. In addition, corporate B2B selling has changed significantly over the last 5 years and I will be updating for those who care or visit on the continuous disruptive technologies that continue to impact sales and everything else.

Stay tuned.

Death by Powerpoint - or not?

Was Steve Jobs right?

We all miss the charisma that Mr. Jobs exuded during his product launch love-ins such as the famous iPhone announcements.When Steve did present he only used a few slides. During the lead up he would talk and "story tell" and work the audience into a frenzy. Each slide was simple, clean, and elegant -much like Apple's overall branding message. I don't recall seeing any bullet points - if there was text - it was a short impactful message that he expanded on and punctuated it in a very confident and unique manner.

Let's face it, sales people are not CEO's and all don't work for cool companies like Apple. We are the front line to the customer (and prospective customer) and we constantly make our "pitches" using our PPT Decks. (Powerpoint Presentations for those not up on the PP lingo) because that's what we have done in the past. We present what our marketing departments deliver to us (with some augmentation). In many cases we are the marketing department as well as sales - so we essentially build our own decks.

We recently presented to a new client and prior to the meeting decided to distill our 48 slide PP Prez. down to 8 slides. This was extremely tough - as you can imagine as we agonized over which slides would stay, produced new slides that summarized 10 others, and so on. The presentation went extremely well - but what was particularly interesting was - as we kicked the meeting off we informed our clients that our usual PPT Deck was 48 slides but we had reduced it to 8 slides just for them - to which they both sighed and said "Thank You - we appreciate that" and we all shared a laugh.

The most interesting comment after the presentation was the client asking - "would you mind emailing us the 48 slide deck for reference?" - which I agreed to do along with an electronic version of the 8 slides.

Perhaps this is a method we can use for future presentations - present the concepts and benefits in 10 slides or less - but have the complete Deck as a backup. We do our own version of "Steve" with a creative front end - and follow it up with the complete Deck so the client has something to read on the next flight.

Death by Powerpoint is a great moniker as in many cases - it is true - 60 slides are the norm these days. If we can reduce the deck down to 20% of the original. This gives us more time with the client - discussing issues, answering questions etc, versus powering through the entire deck without time for qualification.

What a concept - spend more time with the customer understanding their needs.

Great read: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Powerpoint-Michael-Flocker/dp/B000WCTNF4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348779463&sr=1-1&keywords=death+by+powerpoint

Never Cold Call

I recently read Frank Rumbauskas's book - you guessed it (Never Cold Call) and I must admit it is an interesting read for sure. For reference:  https://www.nevercoldcall.com/

Sales people are always looking for methods to avoid cold calling and Frank does a good job in supporting his methodology that only old fashioned sales guys (or their dinosaur sales managers) are still cold calling. He has plenty of supporting evidence that cold calling is a total waste of time. At best it yields an 8% success factor and is a practice that continues to live on - almost as a business tradition. "It's what we've always done" most sales managers will say.

I have signed up to Frank's newsletters and I receive an email once a week on "horror" stories on how some sales people have been fired because they didn't make their monthly quota of cold calls. In one case a sales  person was always over plan at his company but because he didn't adhere to the sales manager's policy of excessive cold calling he was let go - "no exceptions" the sales manager said. I agree with Frank - in most cases sales people have to tow the line and set up a cold call facade by making the quota of "dials" to ensure they at least stay in their company's Salesforce.com analysis -  that incidentally  breakdown stats on every possible detail you can imagine.

Frank's point is (to paraphrase) "why spend the resources on a relatively useless exercise when you could be spending time more proven methods of networking and business development". Cold calling has been around for ages and I don't think it will evaporate overnight because of the Internet, however, getting found online and having the prospect call you is obviously a more preferred method of sales prospecting.

I have a sales colleague who works for a web agency and has not cold called once in the five years he has been there. His firm invests in creative marketing efforts including: advertising using Google Adwords, sends out direct mail to targeted prospects, frequently blogs, organizes networking events, and is involved in community outreach by sponsoring charitable organizations. Every morning he has at least 2-3 leads from companies that are interested in his company's services. Now granted not every lead is golden, but when my colleague calls them they are definitely interested in his company's services.

My take on this is that our respective marketing departments need (at least) to launch continuous online marketing initiatives that are designed to make the phone ring - at our end. If you are in a B2B scenario where marketing resources are extremely thin - then explore the agency route as there are several alternatives available to promote your brand online - including: Google, Linked in, Facebook, and Twitter to name a few.

I do like Frank's motto - Never Cold Call - whether or not we will see cold calling eliminated in our sales lifetime is anyone's guess. However, I kind of like the idea of calling a prospect (back) and confirming an appointment time rather than wasting time calling cold prospects and having to follow an introductory phone script.

The "B" Word

The "B" word I am referring to is of course "B" for Budget.

I recently had a situation where a potential client called and wanted to create a new website. We reviewed the general scope of the project at which time I asked the "B" word. This was over the phone but I could feel him "squirming" and he came up with a feeble and vague statement such as "I don't really have a specific number - but why don't you meet with our stakeholders and create a proposal for me?"

My spidey sense told me this was a price check - and that this opportunity could be flaky, however, I continued the process as they were in a vertical we had been targeting. I met with their stakeholders and expanded the original scope based on what they told me their needs were. I sent the proposal with two options.

Sure enough - after several un-returned phone calls later he finally sends me an email to tell me that he has chosen to go with his wife's agency. I emailed him back with a "good luck" comment.

The reason I bring the "B" word up is basic. It has been and always will be a great harbinger of things to come. I equate it to driving a car and you are stopped at the intersection (in this case a discovery meeting) - you wait for the light to turn green when you get the "B" dollar range answer) - or you get the "we haven't established a budget yet" answer - which is a yellow light and proceed with caution.

Sorry for the traffic metaphor but it is certainly accurate in this case.

So, continue to ask the (sometimes uncomfortable) "B" question - upfront - as it may save you a great deal of time and frustration in the long run.

Going Off-Line

Last Monday I arrived at work and as usual pulled out my laptop, set it up on my desk, and went to grab the AC adapter out of the laptop case and much to my surprise - it wasn't there. I realized that I had forgotten it at home as I was doing work in the Living Room of my house the night before - and left it behind the couch. At first I thought - oh oh - what am I going to do for 2-3 hours - in the office with a "dead" computer.

It turned out to be a great 3 hours. I shut my door and completed a number of tasks:

1. Planned my week out
2. Rehearsed a presentation that I was doing the next day
3. Made some changes to a brochure that I had in the "creation" phase
4. Came up with 3 new ideas regarding an upcoming product launch

I actually felt invigorated by being unplugged - so to speak. I wasn't distracted by email, news, browsers, and electronic documents.

I think we sometimes become over connected and lose sight of our overall objectives. Try it sometime - leave your laptop in the case - it will still work when you plug it in after lunch.

In the meantime, let the creative juices flow and use a pen and paper - or sketch out some ideas you've been thinking about on your White Board.

Go Off-Line and discover.