Zane Safrit

It’s Because They Care

Customers are like parents, you know. They ride you. They tell you to do things you don’t want to do. They hold you accountable. They make you honor your promises, make you listen to and be aware of others. Pick up clothes, do your own laundry. They insist you learn how to iron your own clothes and order from the menu and chew your order with your mouth closed. You’ve learned how to handle a knife and fork well enough so that you leave any remnants from your menu choices on your plate and nowhere else like your chin, the table or your shirt.

Every night they ask you to do your homework. And if you forget, they help you remember in ways that are increasingly loud and uncomfortable until the choice to not do your homework is less pleasant than the choice do it. One day you’re surprised with a positive test score and you connect the results of that discipline, not their tactics of course, to the result.

Still, you’re a kid. You have lessons to learn and you’re anxious to get ahead, reach your goals. Older kids, kids you idolize, already have. So you take some chances, you skip a few classes, hang with the wrong kids. KaBAM they crash your world with complaints and reminders and punishment.

It’s because they care. It’s because they see your potential. It’s because they’re partnered with you; they’ve attached their life to you. They’ll help you every step of the way.

Customers are the same way. They can be, if you give them a chance. They believe your promise. They believe in you. They trust you enough to risk their business, their career, their mortgages, the majority of their day on your promises and the potential they see in you. Their discipline is the best discipline. Their suggestions to improve are the best for you to hear. Their complaints are the most painful. On the other hand, like parents, they are the most forgiving.

Listen to what they tell you. Honor your promises. Eat your vegetables. Do your homework. Practice, practice, practice. Listen to those around you. Play nice with the other kids. Let one or two go first. Get better. When you screw up. And you will, we all do; them, too. Call them, ask them how to fix it. Ask them how to make it right.

They’ll tell you. They’ll tell you because they care. They’ll tell you because they believe. They’ll tell you because you matter and because they’ve attached themselves to you.

Those are the customers that matter.

It's because they care.

They Don't Need Our Permission. You Need Theirs.

Customers.

They don't need our permission to peruse our website, comparing and contrasting ours with...our competitors.

Neither do our prospects.

Now with smartphones, tablets, desktops, laptops they can do this 24 x 7. Of course, they, we all, did this via word-of-mouth from the time there were two customers who compared and contrasted...fruit, snakes, size and speed of gazelles, elephants, whales...vs us.

I was reminded of this obvious, but often and conveniently overlooked, reality last week. Over lunch with a friend from a long lost company, we caught up on our lives and jobs, successes and failures and entertaining parts of our lives. We revisited the time our Sales VP was angry at a prospect.

He should have had that conversation without us. He shouldn' have made that decision on his own....without talking to us first.

That decision was to buy our competitor's product that was priced 70% cheaper - that was easier to find on their website, that was explained in clearer terms. We both remembered being barely able to stifle a laugh, a guffaw, a SERIOUSLY? long enough to find another job.

Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we lost that one. We lost a lot more, too. 10 times as many, I bet, from prospects who never bothered to tell us.

We lost customers, too, because they did their own research, without asking our permission, and discovered the same. They didn't need our permission to make a decision in their best interests with the information we gave them.

Quite frankly, we gave them permission, even opening the door for them, with our out-of-date prices, poorly designed website and our leadership's arrogance.

And, we - all the employees, did our own research and realized management was not listening, would not listen and never would listen. We made our own decisions and left.

Bottomline? They don't need your permission. You need theirs.

Infographic: The evolution of customer empowerment

via www.selfserviceworld.com

Interesting. Some points on this timeline were new.

I'm not sure I equate self-service with customer empowerment. Self-service is a pretty transparent strategy to push more of the costs for customer service on to the customer. You replace the 2nd party of 'customer' with the first party term of 'self'. And (Presto!) you push all the costs and responsibilites for that customer's experience  off your balance sheet, income statement and onto those of the customer. Now them and their selves are responsible for it, not you.

Neat. Cheap, too. Sometimes better, but always cheaper.

Social Media remains far more important than Mobile Payments for either customer empowerment or customer service. Customers now have a very simple, effective, tool to make their needs heard, globally and collectively, instantly and repeatedly, to brands of any size. That makes them a partner, a co-creator, a very important stakeholder. And you never push the costs of maintaining that account onto their 'self'.

The C +++++ Program for Social Media Success

Clicks

+

Conversation

+

Community

+

Conversion (aka, customers, customer evangelists, testimonials, referrals...see above.)

= (+) Cash-Flows

Questions?

Maybe we should call this the C5 explosive for social media success. Maybe not. Sounds a little too MLM.

But, all those riches are found here:

Word-of-mouth. In particular, you need a word-of-mouth worthy product, service, experience...

And that, my friend, is created with employee engagement. You need passionate, engaged, recognized employees with the tools and resources and in the right positions with the right incentives aligned...to create this word-of-mouth worthy product, experience, service...widget.

So that makes the formual:

EE = WOM = C+++++.

Questions? See me after class.

 

 

 

Walt Disney Explains Word-of-Mouth

 
WALT DISNEY

Via Patti Blackstaffe, President of Strategic Sense.

 

Do Customers Still Call You?

Do customers still call you?
Their needs still not met
Just like yesterday
Or Tuesday
Your records are empty
No worries
You smile, offer hope
Though none is real

I've always like poetry, but not enough to read it often much less attempt it.

But, my brain grew tired as I wrote business posts in a business form, even if I allow for my more direct, energetic writing style. And as it grew tired, as those muscles fatigued, others rose up to say Hey, try me. I want to do something. One of those was ...poetry.

And at the same time, I wondered about, wandered around the idea, of creativity in the workplace and communication skills or their lack in the workplace, and the means to share ideas, to explore a little creativity in a workplace. Poetry workshops over lunch was not the solution.

Still, what would happen if...employees were allowed to write poetry about their day, their work, their challenges and victories? My experience in just a few attempts was...invigorating. Those dormant parts of the brain enjoyed being scratched a little, having their backs rub and massaged, brought to life with the chance to see the sun.

Awhile back, back when I was CEO of a small company, I started a project or initiative. That initiative was to invite/allow one person from the company to share a personal story of their choice at a company meeting. 10-15 minutes, use whatever media you wanted. Share a story, a personal story.

We all did. Every day. Informally. I wanted to bridge that gap, to further open our culture and communication to better marry up the spontaneous, open moments of sharing, with a more formal wholistic presentation which incorporated synthetic, spatial/creative skills as well as those very necessary verbal-analytic skills.

The point was...well, there were many. But they centered around communication, connection, coordination, collaboration. We were a communication company. So...it makes sense then that we had good communication skills. And everyone did. That's a key part of why we were successful.

But, in order for us to continue to thrive we needed to be more comfortable and adept at communicating more abstract ideas, embracing our passions and yeah some failures, and be willing to step forward in areas not defined by policies or habits or best practices.

Everyone liked the idea. We tried it once. We had a good time, both the presenter and the audience.  Then things changed and we didn't get to purse that idea.

Back to this poem. Yeah, it's a little dark. But then so many companies' customer service is pretty dark. They offer customer service in a manner not much different than opening a dark hole for its customers. This isn't to bash the unfortunate ones who work in customer service, nor those behind them in operations, who see what a dismal experience they have and offer each day. So...a moment of honesty. It's a first step.

I wrote this poem several months ago. Then, let it sit for awhile. Out on walks or during a run, I'd revisit it. Shake it up a bit in my head. Stir it, taste it...not quite right.

Then I had this idea...maybe I could start a series of Customer Service haikus. Just for the exercise, for the fun. We'll see.

The poem is inspired by Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams.

 

Take Care of Employees...They'll Take Care of Customers

“Take care of employees better than anyone else and they will take care of customers better than anyone else.” — Kip TIndell

via www.brandautopsy.com

Pretty simple thing.

Pretty obvious thing, too.

Pretty obvious too many companies ignore this simple thing.

Check out the awesome, inspiring, so spot-on post that accompanies this post. It's by John Moore at Brand Autopsy. If you're not reading him, then you should.

How US Lost Out on iPhone Work

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

via www.nytimes.com

Yeah, ok. American workers will always remain uncompetitive if being competitive means living in dormitories, available at a moment's notice from a kinder and gentler foreman who quietly knocks on your door and offers you a biscuit and a cup of tea, in return for rousing you from your dorm-room slumbers.

The question is how long will those current workers who live in dormitories sacrifice their lives to satisfy the digital fetishes of ...us? Or anyone?

Is this a sustainable business model? Ultimately, no. Look at the picture with the article at this link. Lots of people offering their resumes. Look again, these are not dormitory dwellers. They have expectations that their education and their skills will give them access to the lifestyles they see, locally and globally.

Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. But one day somebody's going to say I don't want to live in slavery, I mean a dormitory so this company can continue to put profits over lives.Sure. Maybe in China there remain enough unemployed who see dormitory life in their golden years as a great step forward. But word-of-mouth is universal. And words from the mouths of those who've lived in and worked from those worker-paradise dorms will soon turn employee evangelists into....employee vigilantes.

Stories like this, also from the NY Times, will help change the conversation, the choices being made, about our favorite digital product:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

From Mother Jones comes this,

A few weeks back, there was an incredible episode of This American Life, wherein Mike Daisey, a monologist and "self-described worshipper in the cult of Mac" visits the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where iPads are made. What he finds there is mind-boggling. First, the sheer size of the place: 34,000 workers. The cafeterias seat thousands, and the dormitories are so crowded the beds remind Daisey of coffins.

Daisey meets a young woman who cleans iPad screens and discovers that she is just 13. While he is there, a worker dies after a 34-hour shift. But the most chilling part was Daisey's description of the factories as virtually silent. There's no thrum of machinery, he realizes, because there are hardly any machines. What we miss when we wax nostalgic about a time when things were made by hand, he says, is that "There are more handmade things now than there have ever been."

I write this on an iMac. I love Mac products. Reliable, smart, easy to navigate, fast, safe, secure as compared to PCs.  Ok, the reflective screen on the Macbook is ...an interesting choice. Nobody's perfect.

But under Apple's business model it is an either/or choice. Bestest, fastest, coolest gadgets and rising profits, Apple Surges on Net Income Doubling ....or....not.

It's not an either/or choice: Profits or Lives. That's a false dichotomy. That dichotomy leads to radically unequal wealth distribution, unmotivated workers...What's the point, there is no place to get ahead...you mean a bigger dorm room? Awesome...

Eventually social unrest.

Isn't the real choice the choice of how to make profits and grow lives? That's sustainable. Your profits grows as do your people. I guarantee your profits cannot continue grow as the numbers of workers per dorm room grow, or the number of biscuits and cups of tea per employee decline. Your company grows as do the people engaged in creating that company. No engagement, no growth.

Update from ProPublica, By the Numbers: Life and Death at FoxConn. Here's a few:

70: number of psychiatrists employed by Foxconn to prevent suicides, according to a 2010 announcement by CEO Terry Gou.

100: Estimated number of employees at a Foxconn factory in Wuhan who stood on the roof of a factory building this month to protest working conditions and wages. Several threatened to commit suicide, according to the New York Times.

20: number of employees sometimes packed into a three-room apartment.

200: Reported number of police officers who responded to a Foxconn dormitory riot.

Do You Know Your Company's Already Transparent?

“You can’t be the best place to buy, if you’re not the best place to work.” - Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question Survey.

Exactly.

Is it possible for a company to be particularly and disproportionately good at social media and external-facing social business first, and then shore up their culture and employee focus second?

In a word, in the only word....No.

Oh sure, take a snapshot of time and you can fool some of your stakeholders, customer and employees, some of the time. But truth always triumphs, as hard as it is to say that in these day, and social media and its power to share experiences honestly, openly, transparently with no filters or permission needed from management, PR firms or spin doctors is the hammer of truth.  

Can you make your customers happy without having happy employees first?

In a word, in the only word....No.

C'mon, think about it. Can the employee made miserable today, desperate and depressed and denied, bring happiness to their colleagues today...or customers tomorrow? A headache starts as I write that question. It's the headache of cognitive dissonance. I can wrap my head around a lot of things, things that even scare me (President Newt Gingrich...yeah, that scared you, too.). But I can't wrap my head around this idea that unhappy, disenfranchised, disengaged employees can create anything but a mirror of themselves in their customers: unhappy, disengaged, indifferent.

Back to the title of this post. Your business, its brand and message and promises,  is already transparent. As a business leader, you created it then, you create it now. You may be opaque about it, as you hide behind reports or customer service scripts or customer return policies or infantile HR policies and manuals.  But that is wiped clean when your phone rings or email bongs with a customer who wants your promised offer.

And this is so easy to understand, so seamless in its execution, I have a hard time understanding why so many companies led by truly smart, well-educated, folks pretend to not grasp its power. 

This riff was inspired by a great post by Jay Baer at his site Convince and Convert. They post is titled Comparison of 100 Top Companies on Social Business and Corporate Culture. (Sounds kinda academic. It's not. Very readable, very useful. ) All three quotes above are pulled from that great post.

Interview with Richard B. Sanford: Author of Success by Design, Part Two

Richard B. Sanford launched eleven successful small enterprises over a 40+ year career, creating 11 successful companies during that time.

He joined the show recently to talk about how he accomplished this and his new book: SUCCESS BY DESIGN: How to Create Ever-Increasing Income, Profit & Wealth in the World of Small Business.

You can listen here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

In his book, Richard compiled what principles, steps, tip and practices brought him this success over 40 years. His book shows the reader how to think and use "SIMPLIFIED STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING" to generate ever increasing income, profits and wealth in the world of small business.

One of the reasons I love your book is you wrote

There are many things out of our control. Customer Service is not one of them.

Dumb question, but it seems no one answers it well: why do so many companies either ignore customer service or control it by minimizing it?

They don’t have a strategic plan. And, in the strategic plan you address an objective about how are we going to treat the people who buy from us, the people we want to buy from us.

How will we consider them?

Why is it important to nurture them and in nurturing them does service play animportant part? Yes.

How will we define our service?

So, in reading these annual reports, it’s so interesting to read them not only in bug business, stock company’s annual reports but in small business. Look at the cars and trucks driving around the advertisements and they talk about service. And most, usually, it’s a joke.

“We’re the best in the valley!”

These big fat claims that are all subjective and not objective. You can’t evaluate them. how do you hold a business accountable, if you’re the customer and you’re buying pool services, which I did this week. And I needed a new pool service company because the company I’m using isn’t getting the job done. And so, I looked at the ads and I finally made a selection.

And I asked them how do you rate your service. And they said:

“Well, we give the best.”

“ I don’t know what best means. Could you define it for me? “

Several of the company stumbled all over themselves. They couldn’t define it. I want an objective statement.

About 25 years ago, I started working on that. I was preparing some sales and marketing materials about our service, which was incredibly outstanding. Finally, I came to the conclusion that you have to make the service statement quantifiable, so it can be measured by the customer. And I came up with a 3-part statement on our service.

And that reflected on my strategic plan about how I would manage effective service in the company. And it worked like magic. And I share that in my book as well. I give it to the world.

That’s such a great answer, especially the quantifiable answer. I see the same stock stuff of world class customer service.

Yeah, how can you hold them accountable for doing that? You say:

“You didn’t give me world-class customer service!”

“Well, what do you mean...?”

“It’s your statement. Define it for me.”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“ What value is it?”

And right there is an integrity issue.

Your next step is the Action Plan and the Action Planning Process. What are the 5 steps with the Action Planning Process?

Well, first of all, that would be skipping over the next step in strategic planning. It goes Mission to Purpose and then doing your research and development and establishing objectives. And I establish objectives in the 5 or 6 or 7 areas of business function.

What will finance and accounting objective be, our personnel objectives be, our sales objectives be, our marketing and promotions objectives be, our manufacturing process objectives be?

Because in each of those functions of your business needs a values statement or objective. For instance, Finance and Accounting. An objective is:

“Never spend more than we take in.”

Sound pretty simple?

Pretty straight forward.

Secondly:

“Never fail to report every penny of income.”

Why is that important? Well, if you fail to report a penny of income you are defrauding the government. And there’s some pretty severe penalties for that.

Now, on the expense side, Thurgood Marshall - a Supreme Court Justice - wrote a treatise on the fact that you take every business expense you can then you can argue with the IRS is legitimate or not. And that is not breaking the law.

You report every penny of revenue otherwise there are serious penalties for defrauding the government.

And there are others. So, you set up these objectives.

And once you have your objectives then you say, the question comes:

“How will we do it?”

And there in lies your strategies and action plans.

Listening to you talk about the need to report every penny of income, there’s an adage that if you’re going to defraud the IRS on that level then you are likely to defraud your self or your partners on another level.

Exactly. It’s a value.

And that’s going to manifest into defrauding your employees, your customers, your investors.

I had to laugh when you pointed out what I overlooked. I tend to be impulsive and quickly assess what needs to be done and just jump ahead to the action plan.

Yeah. Most entrepreneurs do that.

“Let’s get in there and do some action.”

“Ok. What kind of action? How are you going to measure it? What do you do if it doesn’t work? ”

So, once you have your values in place, your values of business, meaning your objectives, in each of those elements then you can measure your action plan. That starts with a strategy, that’s followed up by the tasks and tactics and the timelines and who’s going to do that.

You have a strateguy. And that is to say Expand our marketing budget and reach this new market. That’s a strategy.

Well, what’s the task involved? Well, Charlie needs to sit down and create some new sales material. And then we need to decide which advertising medium we’re going to use. And what frequency and how will we measure it? And once that’s done, we let the contract. And, our timeline to complete this is 3.5 weeks by this date. And Charlie’s involved in making this happen.

There’s one unit of strategic action. And you write it down.

Well, why do you do that? Because next week you have a business meeting with your leaders or managers and you ask Charlie:

“What’s our progress? Show me.”

Simple.

Does that mean you always make your timelines? No. But at least you know you have to adjust them.

If you have a timeline then everyone can organize and prioritize their day to stay up with it.

Exactly. It stays in the entrepreneur’s head. And then you have people say

“Well, I didn’t know you had to have it done by March 1st. It will take longer than that.”

Then there’s always the discussion of why isn’t it done?

If you lock up the ideas in the entrepreneur’s head and don’t write it down, how can you expect anyone to perform? It gives manager’s confidence. Yeah, it puts them under pressure, but we’re all under pressure. But it gives them exactly what’s expected of them. And then if you have a personnel problem, then you can go back to your plan and ask what our objectives in the human resources area?

"Well, Number One is that we respect each employee.
We expect each employee to respect the responsibilities of the job.
Number three, failure to do so then we are obligated to help them find a job where they can perform, either inside or outside the company."

Where in your 40 years of business experience, where does this process usually break down?

One area where this process breaks down is when an entrepreneur is frightened to share their ideas and their plans for fear that someone is going to steal them and go into competition with them.

What that does is severely limit an entrepreneur’s ability to grow. And I discuss that in the book. Planning meetings where the entrepreneur finally has to say:

You know, if I treat my people right and I reward them for success, I’m not greedy, probably 75-80% of them will stay with me. And those that don’t often become the 80% that fail if they try to go into competition because they don’t pay the price. They’re the short-cutters. Not all of them...

I helped develop managers and several of them I helped go into competition with me in slightly different markets because I wanted the reputation in the company that

“ Work for Dick Sanford and his company. They do a great job, they do it right. They grow. He’s tough as nails sometimes; he expects performance. But boy I sure like making the money and the security of the job. “

That’s the kind of reputation I want.

And that’s another objective I want to have in human resources. We want to create an environment where we’re the best place to work. So, then, talent comes to you. Your employees recommend people to you. We never had a shortage of talent. And if we had a misplaced person, not at the clerical or primary function level, but in the supervisor level...not everybody is capable of performing at the supervisory and management level.

Who’s fault is that? Is that the person’s responsibility because they wanted more responsibility and money? No. It was my fault or one of my executive’s fault.

So, what are we going to do to help this person. Turn ‘em out into the community so they can hate us and say bad things about us? No, no. You call the manager in and ask them:

" Are you happy? Are you happy where you’re at? Because you’re not achieving..."

And they’ll blame everybody else but themselves but finally they’ll come:

“No, I’m not happy. It doesn’t fit here. ”

And you say:

“Well, what can we do? Can we change the job, the responsibilities, maybe outside the company?

They’ll say:

“Oh. You’re trying to fire me.”

“No. Not at all. If you need a job that we can’t fulfill in the company then start looking. I’ll pay. Go look. And we’ll give you a good recommendation.”

And it worked!

So simple. So clear.

I like your Chapter Six. Introducing Your Strategic Action Plan. And in bold you wrote:

You Cannot Do it ALL!

That's a big challenge sometimes for entrepreneurs. Letting go, letting others.

You can’t do it all. You become tired and stressed. Make bad decisions.

Run off the good talent.

Exactly.

He’ll say:

“Dammit. He won’t let me do it. I’ve got a better idea.”

Well, better ideas come out in the strategic planning, in the process. I show them how to do that. HOW. How to think. How to plan. How to execute. And that’s what’s missing out in the marketplace.

That’s what I’ve seen in my research. SUCCESS by DESIGN is the only entrepreneur book on how to do it that’s available.

Chapter 7 is all about the important of reviewing results. This next question may seem like a dumb question, but what’s the importance of frequent reviews?

A lot of our citizens in this country are church-going members. Possibly, you, yourself are.

Why do you go every week? Why do you hear the dogma every week? Why do you say The Lord’s Prayer every week? Why is that?

Why do we pledge allegiance in school frequently? Why do we sing the Star Spangled Banner?

Why?

To remind us of who we are, and where we are, and what we’re doing. Which means just saying it once, let’s say you have a strategic planning meeting and you’re woriking on the mission and you create the mission for a profit-making company I recommend - create ever-increasing wealth- why would we repeat it?

Because you forget it!

Ok, we’re going into strategic planning session. Let’s recite the mission.

Oh, we’ve done it.

No. Let’s recite the mission so the thinking that came up with it can be evaluated.

You come up with an idea...is that going to increase our income? No? Well, then we just don’t do it.

Or, we create increasing income but it won’t create any profit; it creates losses. Oh. So that’s the acid test right up front, isn’t it?

So, you repeat it and repeat it and you have them repeat it to their staff.

But you can’t ever let up or bad stuff comes in and blind-sides you.

I’ve had that happen. Things come in the back door and before we know it we’re losing money.

How did that happen?

Well, we never measured it against our mission. It just wasn’t designed to do that. What a stupid mistake! Not stupid, we’re all human.

Why do you tell people you love them? We need to be reminded every single day, the older you get. Why? You don’t want to forget and you don’t want them to forget.

Calvin Coolidge’s advice on persistence I value:

Persistence. Every day in every way, persevere.

Same way with your values, with your strategic plan. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Polish, improve. Repeat.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published Tuesday, November 22.

Ray Schwemmer, Co-Author of Dynamic Collaboration: Part 2

RAY SCHWEMMER is the president, CEO, and co-founder of CollabraSpace, a software company that has focused on secure collaboration solutions for industry and government customers since 1998.

He just co-authored an excellent book for anyone who now considers how to unleash the power of collaboration within their organization and on a secure basis. His book is Dynamic Collaboration: How to Share Information, Solve Problems, and Increase Productivity without Compromising Security.

He joined the show recently to talk about his book, his company's solutions and the changing dynamics and expectations in the collaboration conversation.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

Chapter 2 is about plugging into your existing infrastructure and chapter three is about existing architecture. When I think about the first steps of dynamic collaborative tolls and resources, particularly the first challenges, it's not the external infrastructure or architecture, it's the internal. The users and their psychology of trust and their emotions and willingness to learn new ways to trust, accept change and failure.

You’re right there.

You’re not going to put a collaborative tool in an organization and everyone’s going to suddenly start trusting each other. Trust has to come from within the organization.

Now, within the organization, they have to set up the principles by which people share data and trust each other. Collaborative environments just makes it more efficient.

But, within a collaborative environment, if a company does set up those trust principles so that I’m sharing data with others and I trust others who are not going to share it any further or keep it within the confines it’s supposed to be in. And that’s usually guided by corporate principles, corporate rules on who shares what data with each other.

But, corporations should, and we’ve seen this too, where they don’t want to share. They need to go out of their way to make rules or encourage people to share by who is sharing, rewarding those who do and are basically collaborating and being efficient.

And you’ll see as collaborative environments go on, teams will form and they’ll solve problems better, faster, than other people. And if those people get rewarded, and it’s reminded back to the employees that:

“These people collaborated and here’s how they did it.”

That’s a good lesson learned for the rest of the organization. So, you can help build that trust in the collaborative environment that way.

But again, if the organization doesn’t have trust to start with then bringing in collaborative tools is just not going to bring that trust in.

Excellent point there.

Staying in this soft, squishy content, you talk about the importance in understanding that collaboration is a service and not a product. And services are experienced. Why is that distinction so commonly not understood and why is it important to understand it.

If you go in a lot of organizations, you know the IT shop, the accounting department needs an accounting system so they stand that up for them. And they acquire a product and install it and everybody in accounting uses it. They go to HR, the same thing. They work their way around the organization.

There are certain sets of tools that the entire organization needs to use. And collaboration is one of them. So, if you go out and get one tool and plop it down in there. Now, first of all you got to get all these different organizations to use the right tool. And that’s a problem right there. If I’m the HR guy, I may or may not go to this collaborative tool. And accounting department’s the same way and legal, so on through the organization.

IT departments have looked at bringing those tools where they are needed across the organization. A great example for that is a single sign-on solution. So, that when you log in to one application you log in once every day and you log in to every application.

There used to be a time where every application you logged into you had to have a separate password for. Organizations have stood up a solution for that.

Our argument for that is that collaboration should be at that same layer because it is across the organization. Just like that same way with that package you bought that integrated a single sign-on tool, you should be able to do that with collaboration. So, I sign-on and I can see everyone who’s logged in. Same thing with the accounting tool. If I’m in HR and I need to talk to someone in the accounting department I can see if they’re online and click on them and suddenly we’re away collaborating.

So, thats why we stress this idea of a service. It’s been proven in other areas where services that need to be used across the organization and as opposed to a product that’s used in one organization.

At the tip of the collaboration experience is the Presence Awareness Tool. Such a simple thing, but so critical. Why is the Presence Awareness Tool so critical?

The easiest thing is if you went on Facebook and nobody was there, what would you do? If you log in, it’s all about the people. You want to see who else is online and I can reach out to and collaborate with.

I have a problem and I need an answer so who’s online. Without that, it’s like shooting darts in the dark. If I could just see someone from HR is online then I could just reach out to them. Maybe the system can tell me their skillsets and that’s a good match for me. Maybe the system’s smart enough to say:

“Hey search for someone with these skills.”

So, you type in you need someone who handles these types of things with HR and it pops back 3 people and tells me that 2 of them are online. Well, now i can click on one and be engaged with them. If I don’t know who’s online then what’s the point of my collaborating - I don’t know who to collaborate with.

That’s excellent. That’s a great description, too.

Back in the day I ran a conference call company. And this Presence Awareness Tool was just coming out with some of the web conference services, 7-8 years ago. And the first reaction was fear.

Why do people need to know if I'm at my computer or 'available'. Won't that add to my work or encourage interruptions?

What has driven this change in thinking from fear to cool?

Um, that’s a good question.

Part of it’s probably generational. Younger people today, you know people who grew up with these kinds of technologies, they’re used to being online 24 x 7 and being contacted. you bring them to a 2-day conference and tell them they’ll have to leave their cellphones at the door they’ll probably have a heart attack on ya.

Part of the workforce today is just so used to being connected. The other part of the workforce, maybe some of the people who’ve resisted it 7-8 years ago, they probably have seen some of the successes of it.

“Hey, if I use some of these tools, you know, it will help me perform my job well.”

That’s a great motivator right there. If they see someone having some successes with it, then they’re going to get over their fear pretty quick.

I think people also realize that they could send you a chat message right now and you don’t have to answer even though you’re online. I could call your cellphone right now. How many times have you et a call go to voicemail?

I think people have become accustomed to:

“I’m online right now, but I’m not going to talk to you right now.”

And some of the tools today will allow you to say,

“Hey, I’m online right now. But, I’m busy.”

Some of the tools allow you to say:

“Hey, I'm in a conference right now. If you send me a chat, I’m not going to get back to you.”

It’s probably wrapped up in there somewhere.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in 7 or 8 years, isn’t it?

It is.

As we spoke at the beginning, you currently are CEO and founder of CollabraSpace, working with private and government clients on collaboration solutions since 1998.  Within your clients and prospects, who drives the decision to contact you: employees or executives?

I think both. Maybe the executives are looking at trying to plan a collaborative environment. Sometimes they push it down a couple of layers to actually implement it. Then you get the people who are implementing contacting us and asking us our opinions.

And then sometimes you even get a corporate environment that has a collaborative tool ready, but it’s not being used or it doesn’t integrate into what a project is doing. So, we’re also seeing some projects where they’re saying this type of thing where:

“I’m building this kind of capability for a group of users and it would be cool if all the users could collaborate with each other while they’re using the tool.”

They’ll contact us.

But, it’s pretty much at both levels I guess.

This leads us to the next question. One of my favorite topics is employee engagement, particularly its positive impact on a company's bottomline. Do you see dynamic collaboration as a key experience increasing levels of employee engagement?

Absolutely. If you set up a collaborative environment properly and your employees are motivated to use it, we talked about trust and that kind of stuff earlier, so you got those pieces in place, being able to have a problem and reach out and find a team to have you work on it, is a great enabler for people.

If I can go in and just say:

“I have this kind of problem and I need it solved today.”

Then I can search and see that these 3 people may have worked on something similar to that or may even have the answer to my question, it enables me so much more as an employee to product results.

I think it is definitely a key.

It seems obvious. But sometimes I think our listeners may not have the time to make the connections.

And dynamic collaboration is key to creating customer evangelists, a loyal volunteer sales force as Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba called them. How do companies create a secure collaborative environment and at the same time open the door for their customers to join them?

That’s a very good question. So, let’s assume that you have this collaborative environment stood up internally in your organization. And it’s secure. So, I would argue that as part of that security piece you can segment off who has information to what pieces of this virtual environment.

I could create a space, a virtual space, where customers can come in and interact with my employees. I could set it up so they could only see employees from the sales organization. I don’t want them to see my accounting and HR people. When they log in, they’ll basically get the capability to look at whose online from the sales team or maybe only their particular sales people are logged on and if so then they can collaborate with them.

It gets a little trickier trying to figure out now where are you giving people access to. Are you giving them access to something that’s on your intranet? And how do they traverse your firewall and things like that. So, you may need to stand up a 2nd server...where external users can log into and your internal users can log in as well and collaborate with them.

That gets a little trickier. But it’s all possible. And it’s based on what level of security do you want in your system.

But, bringing your customers in and allowing them to engage with people online is a great step for companies to take.

I’m not an IT guy but when you mentioned the separate server for this collaborative environment where you could partition off certain data, that sounded like a great idea.

Do you have an example of a client who did this, obviously keeping client information confidential ?

Yeah. I’m trying to think. I believe we’ve done it for one or two customers. And I think we basically set something up in a DMZ so that external customers would not get inside the company firewalls for some fear they had there. And what happened was you basically end up with 2 different collaboration servers, which are talking to each other through the firewalls. And the entry to one internally let’s them see the external people and they can in essence go to that external server and collaborate with them there.

That’s a little more technically difficult, but it is possible.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published tomorrow, Saturday, October 22.

Jim Clifton, Author of The Coming Jobs War, Interview: Part 2

From the site The Coming Jobs War:

What everyone in the world wants is a good job.

Today, this statement makes vivid sense.

In a provocative book for business and government leaders, Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton describes how this undeniable fact will affect all leadership decisions as countries wage war to produce the best jobs.

Under Clifton's leadership, Gallup has expanded from to a worldwide organization with 40 offices in 30 countries and regions.

Clifton is also the creator of The Gallup Path, a metric-based economic model that establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement, and business outcomes. This model is used in performance management systems in more than 500 companies worldwide.

Mr. Clifton joined the show recently to talk about the book, his book, and what it means for us. You can listen here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

So, in some respects the coming jobs war is the coming small business war.

Yes.

The country where small business can survive and thrive is the country that wins the coming jobs war.

If that war started today, and in some respects it already has, what country would win?

Well, I’m very very optimistic. I am very confident that the US will get back on track. We are so far off track right now.

China has a big advantage now because Deng Xiaoping and whoever else is running it now has done a great job of creating some kind of market-based communism. They’ve done a far better job than India or Brasil; they’re really booming. So, people are putting their bets on that horse. China has huge, huge, barriers coming up that they have to get through.

I think that the US, a lot of it has to do with the feeling of freedom. You have to have a feeling of great independence before people will start these companies. We’re losing a little bit of that just because of the economic situation, a lot of the policies. There’s a wet-blanket over small and medium-sized businesses because they have lost their confidence. Boy, when you lose your confidence, the turtle puts its head back in the shell, and nothing’s going to cause that head to come back out until they have confidence in the future of economics in their country.

But I think we will win the coming jobs war. But, we are, you have to have a lot of optimism to believe America is going to come back because the numbers are not good.

Now, as dire as you write, and your research shows and other studies show as well...we, here in the US, have been here before. Describe that time.

Yes. I turned 60 here in August. And it was about 35 years ago and I was watching TV and they had liberal and conservative economists on. And they all talked about how America’s GDP would fall to 3rd in the GDP race.

Now, remember that GDP is just everything. They give you money to afford militaries and all kinds of development and equity and things. But, anyway, because of Japan’s superior production thing and Germany’s, we would fall to 3rd in 30 years. Our demise was, this is “deja vu all over again” as Yogi Berra said.

And, so, they said that Japan would be at about $5 trillion right now and Germany would be at about $4 or $4.5 trillion; they would have overtaken us. They hit Japan and Germany accurately. But we bowed clear up to $15 trillion. We had, we outperformed expectations by $10 trillion which is really one of the great moments in the evolution of humankind. They don’t really write books about it or anything; I don’t understand why.

So, yeah, we’ve been right here before. Everybody counting us out. And, so, yeah that that history can give us confidence.

What's the potential secret weapon in this coming jobs war?

Well, I think there are a couple of secret weapons.

Secret weapons are unusual entrepreneurs. They can be any age. But, they’re probably created differently. They have an unusual amount of optimism and determination. They were blessed with that. And the secret weapon is to find as many of those as we can and we get mentors around them, development around them, good bankers around them and make sure that they grow. That’s one secret weapon.

Another secret weapon the US has is that we tend to attract the best talent in the world. If you look at the really colossal technology built in the last 10 years, where the genesis of that is San Francisco. Another guy and I counted back and there’s only about 1000 people that made that whole miracle come about out there and that’s even stretching it.

If you look at who the people were, more than half of them weren’t Americans; or they weren’t before. And most of the 600 were Indians. What happens for most reasons is the US is a beacon for entrepreneurs and innovators from the world. That’s been, that’s probably the secret weapon over the last 30 years and we rose up.

If that was a football game then we won 80 to nothing.

But, it probably was because we attracted unusually talented people from around the world to the US. And especially to San Francisco, NY, Boston, Austin. But, those secret weapons in this war are people and they are unusually talented and gifted entrepreneurs.

We’ve been trying to study this and it’s really hard to study. It looks to us, it’s kinda like a LeBron James in basketball, he’s not that good of an example anymore. Michael Jordan. For these rare entrepreneurs, it looks to us like it’s 3 in a thousand.

You know, it’s always interesting to me that if you have 1000 kids in an auditorium...high school kids or college graduates, you can bring in an educational psychologist and they can perfectly rank them in order by IQ. Somebody’s smartest, somebody’s dumbest. They can rank them in perfect order. But, if you say:

“Hey, would you rank and order them by their ability, their talents, as entrepreneurs. “

Then it’s a great big argument. Someone will say it’s untrainable and someone will say it’s as easy to change as changing your oil. But we gotta get better at figuring out who these stars are.

Let’s talk a little bit more about the solution. You write that the spawning ground for this next and necessary wave of innovative, entrepreneurial, breakthroughs will be a combination of three forces. What are they? Which one is the most important?

Well, one really important thing and I hope this makes as much sense to everybody out there as it does to me; I just don’t know. But these forces lie within cities, not nationally. If you look at where the variation is in GDP growth and success is in this country. Like unemployment and GDP growth, the variation among cities is just huge.

And so, if you take, take Detroit. Detroit was one of the world’s greatest cities 40 years ago. It might have been the highest per capita income 40 years ago. Huge center of all kinds of arts, sciences, music, not just Motown. It was the best city in the world. Now, it’s turned into the city from hell.

As rugged as that city is, let me look out to San Francisco and the Valley, Silicon Valley and San Jose and all that. The variation is unbelievable. Look at Austin, Texas and Albany, New York. Those are kind of twin cities. Big states, no strategic location at all, no seaports, no beautiful weather, no beaches, no nothing. And Albany is a troubled city. And Austin just doesn’t stop growing.

Out there where you are, Zane, if you look at Sioux City and Sioux Falls. Those are like twin cities separated at birth. Researchers love that. Sioux City is struggling. I mean casinos and slaughter houses and whatever, that just hasn’t worked. But up the river in Sioux Falls, the town even has about the same name. That’s like a little Austin, Texas up there. Big breakthroughs in healthcare and things are popping.

One of the most important pieces is cities have to take responsibility for GDP growth. They shouldn’t look to Washington.

The next thing is, when you follow these great inventions back, boy so many of them have roots back to universities. All of these cities have universities. That’s sort of the petri dish. You have professors and students, there. But, you have bank presidents coming over and the local CEOs. The 2nd is universities.

The 3rd one is these great American cities, all of them have what I call ‘shadow governments’ and ‘local tribal chiefs’. They’re not the mayor. They are the legacy wealth city fathers and mothers. If they’re not involved, your city tanks. They’ve gotta look and say:

“It’s up to us.”

The local tribal chiefs, those men and women, typically have a lot of financial resources. They have networks to other players. There’s usually more talents rolling around in that than city councils and state governments, with all due respects. It’s really up to them. I would say that’s the 3rd one.

So, the top 100 cities, I would say the local universities and then the 10 -20-30, depends upon the size of the city, of the local chieftains, sorta behind the scenes and make things happen. Those are good people. And boy do they care a lot about their cities.

I think the fix to America lies city by city, not national solutions, democrats and republicans.

That’s a long answer. But that’s what our research shows.

It’s a long answer and it’s a great answer. Thank you so much.

You also talk about Super Mentors. And I loved your first example. That was your dad. Would you share that story of your dad, as all dads should be, as a super mentor?

Well, he was teaching at the University of Nebraska and he was doing research. He had a tweed coat and soft rubber shoes as professors tend to do, professor glasses. But what he’d done is he’d made a discovery about selecting talent and he could select ROTC students and predict which ones would be good team leaders. You know, future generals and those that couldn’t lead, they were too individualist. That was an assignment and he really loved doing it.

But the Chancellor of the university, his name was Cliff Hardin, he was a huge hero was watching his work. He said to him:

“Could you select salesmen and sales managers?”

And my dad said:

“Well, I guess I could.”

And the Chancellor said:

“Well, if you could then you could start a company.”

And Dad, I always asked him what was the thing that was the trigger. It said it was the Chancellor, a very powerful person in his life saying:

“You could start a company.”

Excellent. He went on to start a very successful company.

Yes, he did.

Let’s talk about innovation and entrepreneurship. You wrote what for me was a psychic head butt. You wrote that Innovation is not rare in America; neither is creativity.

Now, if innovation is not rare then why are we declining in global rankings for innovation?

Well, if you look at global innovation, you can find them in the annual almanac. If you look at them over the last 200 years, America gets half of all the global innovations. Maybe, it’s 1/3. We’ve done real well with that.

But you have to remember that’s probably what helped us build 25% market share for all business in the world. We’re obviously way better in the world in innovation.

What is causing us to decline in global rankings for innovation?

Well, there’s a couple of things.

The rankings for global innovations? I don’t believe in them. Because I don’t really count innovation as innovation until it has a customer standing next to it. And so, there’s all kinds of rankings for innovation. I was just quoting where we get 20-30% of them.

I’m talking about inventions like the telephone, the airplane, the transistor, the satellite; those kinds of things. So, we still lead the world in innovation where it actually has a business around it and customers.

So, that leads us to my next question. I agree that innovation is in abundance here in the US. But, what’s missing from companies in our economy to take advantage of this innovation?

I think that we have the cart before the horse on this innovation. And I’m sure that this is right. We keep pushing all of our chips into innovation.

“Oh my gosh. We don’t have enough jobs. Push more to innovation. Push more to innovation!”

Has anybody ever considered that we might have an oversupply of innovation and an undersupply of entrepreneurship? That’s my point.

If you’re having an innovation, let’s say you’ve invented some incredibly imaginative fantastic thing. So you don’t have any entrepreneurial talent or so you need somebody like Bob or Sally to come over and make a business model and imagine a customer. So, even if you have a great invention, it is a long way from being a company.

I’ve been CEO for Gallup for 23 years and I can tell you I always have more innovations swirling around, big ideas, in the company, than we can ever deal with. People come in and say:

“Hey, why don’t we do this?”

It is a great idea, I’ll tell them. There’s no question. But who’s going to make it work? Who has the determination? There’s going to be times when it will crash and the entrepreneur will keep thinking through that. Entrepreneurs tend to be open-field runners, not planners. You know they can make it up on the fly. They’re probably wired differently.

What we should probably do is rather than look for more entrepreneurs and business models is spend billions and billions on innovation. Innovation has no value at all without a customer standing next to it.

Where do we create more entrepreneurs?

I don’t think we have a national excitement about them.

You know I was down in Texas at dinner. And I’ll make this short. I was sitting with a very sophisticated guy, our CFO and he was talking about a football player he thought would play for the Dallas Cowboys and his upper body strength and his 40-yard speed. It was getting kind of annoying because we wanted to talk about making an acquisition. I could tell it was a really unusual player.

He was talking about a guy that was in 7th grade. Because down in Texas they are so excited about finding a good quarterback, the whole place is hunting for them.

But imagine if we looked for entrepreneurs the way they hunt for quarterbacks. You know in Canada, they can spot the hockey players, the high potentials when they are 7 years old.

Entrepreneurs start so early. They’ll start mowing yards and another yard. Pretty soon, in the modern world they’ll start figuring out how to sell things over the internet.

The trick has got to be that somebody has got to be excited finding them. They also oughta have more or equal status as finding a good quarterback or a good point guard.

That’s such a great example. I’m a big fan of college basketball. I follow all the recruiting. I’m thinking what if there was a whole recruiting program and a website that tracked entrepreneurs that tracked them from high school through college.

What you just said, if we could pull that off, build it systematically, I think that what the US... if we could make the development of entrepreneurs as systematic as we do football or as we do just regular intellectual growth. We can really spot, even in poor communities, those people who test well and how they’ll end up in University of Chicago or Yale or Stanford or whatever.

If we had that same kind of a thing for entrepreneurs; so, it’s intentional.

What we have now with the development of athletes and intellectual strengths is intentional but entrepreneurship is not.

It’s all a matter of intention.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published Friday, September 30.

Conversation with @JulieSteelman, Author of The Effortless Yes! - Part 3

Julie Steelman joined the show this week.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read the first part of our conversation here.

You can read Part Two of our conversation here.

Julie is the author of The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process and discover:

• Your selling archetype
• Your natural asking style
• Your bankability

I wrote this in Parts One and Two:

After our conversation and reading her book, I am not sure that the copy on her website does her justice; it may be understated.

I stand behind that, still. Great book, great solution. Get it, read it, do it.

PART THREE:

Cold calling. I get shivers just saying it. That’s the trial by fire of all sales people. You say The good news today is you can nix it.

If companies nix cold-calling, what will they do instead?

Yeah, this whole idea of cold-calling...I had a friend once who worked at a, he was a professional football player and he went to work at a financial services company. And he said his first day on the job, they were all:

“We’re going to pay you big, fancy suits...”

As soon as he took the job, they threw him in a cubicle and gave him a phone book and said:

“There ya go. Find a million bucks. ”

And I’m going:

“ Are you kidding me?”

And he was like:

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

So, again, companies get so greedy, so hungry and so desperate for cash-flow that they actually resort to tactics like this.

That’s why I said at the beginning that my hope and aspiration is that we can change this whole conversation and really put reverence and humanity back into the business transaction. Because, this doesn’t work.

Here’s why it doesn’t work. You’re cold when you’re doing. It’s about you when you’re doing it; it’s not about the customer. And, every single person in the United States has been the recipient of a crappy cold-call. Guess what? They’re too smart to do it again. You’ve got three strikes you if you do this. You’re wasting your time.

So, here’s what you can do instead. And I call it warming it up. To me this was the obvious thing to do. I’m not sure why people don’t do this.

• Pick your customer.

• Go do a bit of research.

• Find that hook or that moment where you have something in common.

Either, they have a cause or a mission that your company has in common. Or they have something they aspire to you that your company or product has in common. Or you like the way they do something and you want to compliment them on that.

Because the first way you should introduce yourself to someone and leave a good impression on them is to make it about them.

This is the thing. If companies would make all of their sales efforts about the customer and less about them as a customer they would radically improve their sales.

So, if I could, I’ll give you an example.

I had a woman come to me and she made these organic t-shirts. And she said:

“I’m just not getting through.”

And she wasn’t even calling people. She was just getting the names of buyers at high-end spas and sending them emails. And I’m like:

“This is so not working.”

And she said:

“Yeah, it’s not working.”

So, we went to pick her biggest customer. And we went to her website. Turns out for every t-shirt she sells, she plants a tree. She sends this company $5 and they plant a tree.

Well, this spa she wanted to get into, turns out they’re in Mexico and the woman bought the property because she wanted to preserve this one piece of land that has a natural spring on it and its gorgeous garden. And every time she has a customer stay there, she plants a tree somewhere else.

And I say:

“Ok, so there’s your bond!”

She writes this email and we craft it.

“ I notice we have something in common. For every t-shirt I sell, I plant a tree. For every customer you get, you plant a tree. It seems like we have a common bond. I would actually love to talk to you about creating a custom line of t-shirts using my product in your spa and then we can both plant a tree every time your customers buys a t-shirt.”

She got a response in 5 minutes flat. She got into that spa and now it’s one of her biggest customers.

That’s the difference about making it about them and introducing yourself in a way that shows you care about their business.

That is so great! That’s such a great story!

Joseph Campbell talks about archetypes and how they’re found in stories of wisdom and heroes. You talk about signature selling archetypes. What is a signature selling archetype?

I love the whole idea of archetype. It’s sort of an energetic embodiment, if you will. Said another way, it’s kind of like an alter-ego you can adopt.

What it does is it gives you a context or framework to bring out your natural strengths as someone who’s enthusiastic, charismatic and influential. And use those as a way to sell graciously, instead of through force.

Whew! You’re just so clear. I’m trying to scribble your answers. I’m going to come back and transcribe this, but I was not expecting that answer. That was excellent.

Can you say that again?

No!(Laughing.)

The archetype...some people say:

“That whole archetype thing is woo-woo. I don’t want to play.”

Ok. So let me talk to you for a second. The definition of an archetype is extremely simple. And that is, it’s an original mold or model for something. And that’s all they are. They are a way of explaining a context or a framework that enhances your natural strengths and pulls out your natural influential style so you can sell in a way that feels good to you and get through to your customer. And wins business more effectively than all the other ways of doing it.

Excellent! Excellent, again!

Now, you define several different signature selling archetypes. How many do you define?

When I did my research I discovered that there’s about 12 different common ones. And while it’s fun to know what this is, I want to encourage people to not get hung up on it. Because the real point of knowing what your archetype is is to understand what your strengths are more clearly so you can use them more effectively. But, to also understand where by nature you get hung up on the selling process.

None of us came in with our salesperson of the millenium chip already filled up with knowledge and know-how. We weren’t born with that DNA. There’s a few people on the planet . Bill Clinton was one of the most charismatic, magnetic, type of people. He could say:

“ No. You need to vote for me even though I had an affair; Don’t worry about. It’s all good.”

Right? He’s just kind of got that magnetism and charisma. Most of us need a little help in that department to bring that stuff forward. But you also understand where you trip over the selling process. We can change that so that doesn’t have to be such a hardship.

That’s really why I created them.

I think it’s great. I like that you created a pretty detailed process to discover our individual selling archetype.

You list a very detailed process to discovery this for ourselves. What is the most important step in this process?

I think the most important step to understand is where your shortchange yourself, where you limit yourself, in the selling process.

Fantastic!

Discovering our selling archetype leads us to the key step: Asking for the business and perfecting our natural asking style.

Now, what you've shared here and in our discussion and in more scope and detail in your book is the key to the effortless yes. Why is that step, perfecting the natural asking the key to being bankable?

Let me start with the definition of “bankable”. The definition of “being bankable” is to create certain success and profit. Right? It’s really clear. Look it up in the dictionary; that’s what it says. I love it!

An example is...Hollywood stars is the quickest, simplest example I can think of. Notable because they could be bankable. Right? As soon as they are be cast in a movie, that movie is pretty certain to have success and make a profit.

We all kind of want everything that we do in business to provide certain success and profit. I mean why not? There’s nothing wrong with that as long as we’re not trying to be pushy or forceful with our customers.

The reason it’s so important to ask for the business or ask for the money, which is the most uncomfortable part of the selling process for everybody, because the customer actually expects us to.

Here’s why. The customer wants to be led to a conclusion or a final end. They expect us to do that job. When we ask them for the business or the money we’re actually prompting them or signaling that this part of the relationship is ready for and time for to move into the:

“How do we work together, how do we make this happen” phase.

And how do we resolve those things that are unresolved to get to ‘yes’. It is a very critical and important part of the conversation.

I would say 85% of people who are selling something don’t do this. And guess what? You might have a crystal-clear buyer when they show up. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to leave them ruminating. And they’re going to say:

“I’m too confused to do business with you. I’m going to say ‘no.”

What the archetype does is, because you’re clear about what you’re strong at and what you’re not so good at,  it leads you to be paired up with a natural way to ask for the business.

There’s actually 15 of those natural asking styles in the book. When you know what your archetype is then you know what your natural asking style is. Because I created the template for you of what to say that plays to your strengths and easily and graciously helps you overcome your hurdle with asking for the business. And really simplify this and make it easy to do.

Because then you stay in the natural confidence state and so does your customer. That’s the whole point of putting these two things together and giving you the ways to do this so you don’t have to figure it out yourself.

Over time, as you use your natural asking style, there’s a little template for exactly what to say based on the archetype in the book, you’ll start to add to it and modify it and use it in your own way. But at least it gives you a place to start.

That’s so fantastic. You know, I had a rhetorical question:

What's so scary about that?

Because that moment where you ask for the order, where you ask if you’re ready to move ahead with it, too often is the most scary moment in the sales process. And perfecting the natural selling process is the key to eliminating that fear.

See? That’s what’s effortless about that. If you stay in the confident state...because here’s the deal. If a customer has never done business with you before, there’s a point at which they have to trust their gut reaction. And if you go messing with that gut reaction and you get all weird and squirrely or you don’t demonstrate leadership by not asking for the money and feeling confident enough in the believing of what you’re offering enough to ask for the money, then you just created fear and doubt inside them.

So true. So true.

I’m looking at the clock and we’re coming to the end of our hour. I so appreciate you taking the time to get up so early in the morning and do the show and be so clear in all of your answers.

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has a few moments. He’s found your book. He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.

Julie, he says, because he's the President.

We can't seem to get companies to say, effortlessly or not, to buying into our economy. And they're not getting customers to say yes, in any way, to buying. What do I need to do to entice you to leave Eden and come to DC, an eden of its own sort, I guess.

We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can take to find a way to demystify our selling process, find our selling archetype and get the sale we want, we need and grow our economy as fast as we'll ever need.

What do you say to him?

Well, there’s no big question there!

I’m actually going to refer to something you said Mr. Obama that was in your inaugural speech. You said:

Our society was founded on the idea that our products and services as businesses would serve the common good.

And what I’m going to tell you Mr. Obama is we have forgotten about that.

The first thing we could do to fix it is to shift from putting profit over purpose. And instead put purpose over profit.

• You’re going to make your profit. Don’t worry.

• The companies are going to grow. Don’t worry.

But what we’ve done is create a society of overly skeptical consumers and they’re not willing to buy and do business with companies that they don’t trust any more.

That’s the first thing.

The 2nd thing is we need to find a way to have CEOs paid really well, but no longer take salaries and have golden parachutes when companies are not making a profit. That can't be the way it works anymore. Sorry, everybody. Do you trust a CEO that does that? I don’t think so.

The 3rd thing we need to do is invest in putting our workforce back to work. The whole crux around the 3 things I’m going to tell you to do Mr. Obama are instilling trust back in corporate America because there isn’t any. Financially, products or services or customer service. I’d rather buy a Mercedes than Cadillac. You’ve got to get our products back up to snuff.

We need to put, I think we’ve sold off too much of our industrial abilities and we need to bring it back here.

That was too much. I know I gave you more than 3 things. But, that would be my answer, Mr. Obama.

Thank you. I love all of them. Thank you for the 4th one, too.

Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. You're a leader. What are you reading in all your free time?

You know, I kind of go back and forth.

Right now, I gotta tell you I just read my first Stieg Larson book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. So, I love really good rich fiction.

My favorite business book is The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And that’s about mastering the inner game. And he teases me all the time.

“ It’s not a business book!”

But it should be. It’s a really good mastering the inner game book.

Julie, leave us with a quote on  The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process?

Ok. Here you go:

“In order for your business to grow, you must grow.”

Whew! That’s so great. So crisp, so concise. I’m going to rave on it about 8 times longer than it was. What was it? 8 words? That’s a great quote.

Thank you.

A lot of companies could use that. It’s so simple. Have it around the company. Put up in the conference room; put it up on the walls in the cafeteria.

Thank you. It’s been a great conversation. I loved your book. Your answers were so crisp and concise.

**********

Next Week’s Guest: Jim Clifton, Chairman of the Gallup organization and author of a wonderful, fascinating, blunt, discussion of The Coming Jobs War. That’s the title of his book. And it is a great book, a timely book, a book everyone should read. I’d say that even if he wasn’t coming on the show. We have a special day for this show. It is Tuesday September 20 at 9:30 AM, Central. You can listen here.

Conversation with @JulieSteelman, Author of The Effortless Yes! - Part 2

Julie Steelman joined the show this week.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read the first part of our conversation here.

From her website:

Julie is the author of The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process and discover:

• Your selling archetype
• Your natural asking style
• Your bankability

After our conversation and reading her book, I am not sure that the copy on her website does her justice; it may be understated.

We talked about her book, her solutions and how those solutions can help you get to that Effortless Yes!

PART TWO:

You write, and I love it: 

Hope gives us a false sense of forward movement while allowing us room to bail in case we sense failure approaching.

I had to read that a couple of times. At first blush, I thought:

What’s wrong with having hope? Sometimes it’s all we got.

Don't you have to have hope to keep moving forward?

Ok. I’m a word-nerd. And this is where I get a little sticky about semantics. I would say you have to have belief and faith to keep moving forward. And belief and faith in what you are offering, that you’re doing a good job, that you’re gonna break through and somehow someday it’s going to get heard. And you’re going to step to a new level.

And hope is different. In a medical situation it may be more applicable. In the business situation, hope is one of those things that kinda has you with your fingers crossed behind your back wishing-wanting-waiting for the windfall to happen. By the very definition of hope it keeps you from taking action.

Belief and faith actually have you take action. This is where I’m a little word-nerdy about it. But I think the definitions of them create a different momentum for you.

I like it a lot. I like that you’re a word-nerd and you’re get very disciminating about your choice of terms. I like a clear writer. And that distinction between those terms is so clear.

And hope as you describe it is sorta hoping that the broom of God will sweep us along to our destiny. And belief and faith, we believe and have faith that what we’re doing were going to reach our goal, people will recognize us and appreciate us and begin to partner with us.

Thank you.

Where does hope end and unbridled enthusiasm begin?

Well, so remember I had you use faith and belief instead of hope? So, hope ends when you actually believe that what you are offering, as a product or service, has such a value to aid, enhance and assist your customer that you use that as your motivating and driving force. You get excited about it. You really believe it with every fiber of your being then you move into a state of confidence that you didn’t have prior to that. And unbridled enthusiasm shows up and you’re going from:

“I have to call this customer because I have to make my boss happy and tick off one more number on my sheet.”

to

“ I want to call this customer because I can’t wait to for the them to have the change they’re looking for. “

Totally different experience.

Now, all of this is about our moxie and how we can dust it off and make it shine.

What are your 6 ways to do just that: dust off our moxie and make it shine?

Ok. So, the first thing is dusting off our moxie is all about moving out of hope and into making a decision that what you have to offer is of value and you get out there and you are excited to share it with people. I don’t mean faking it. I mean you really gotta believe in it.

Some of the 6 steps you can take is you write down stuff like why you care that your customer resolves their challenge or how what you offer alleviates pain or struggle or your customer gets more of what they want. Because you have got to understand and believe so you can get into that unbridled enthusiasm.

And then the 2nd thing you can do is based on what you wrote down, write a clear statement about that captures the heart of why you’re selling your products or services.

So, there’s why you care and then there’s why are you doing this. What’s your motivation?

• Baby needs new shoes;

• Kids need to get through college.

• It doesn’t matter; You know, it’s ok.

Your why matters to you because that’s where you’re going to find your motivation.

Now, the 3rd thing you can do is post that statement where you can see it often. Recite it frequently because it’s going to become your mantra.

And the next time you start to hear ‘no’ or ‘not right now’ or ‘we don’t have the budget’...recite the mantra and remind yourself why you care and why you’re doing this. Because it will allow you to keep going.

And then the next thing you need to do is answer a couple of question honestly.

• Have I been hoping to make sales?

• Have I been waiting for something to happen?

• Have I believed my own excuses or societal stories about why it’s hard to make a sale?

If the answer to any of that is "yes", then you have slipped into "hope". You’ve moved out of deciding and believing in what you’re doing. Because if you believed in it you would actually be taking action and say

“ I don’t care that CNN talks about, you know, Wall Street crisis every nano- second. I know that someone out there that has money, that there’s someone out there that has money, and there’s someone out there that needs what I got.”

And if you’re in a big organization working for a sales manager, they’re never going to let you not make your number because CNN says you can’t. That’s not going to fly. And it shouldn’t fly. Because there’s always someone out there that needs what you got.

I want you to remember that.

The next thing I want you to do is determine that moment in working with your customer that gives you the most juice. So, there’s always that thing that as someone who’s selling something you get really excited about when the lightbulb goes on with that customer. What is that moment? Identify it. List 5 ways you can start creating more of those moments.

It will make a really big difference in your forward momentum. We all need those little signs, that acknowledgement, that we’re getting through and that we’re making a difference. So, what is that moment for you? Really take the time to identify this because it will give you forward momentum like nothing else will.

So, the last thing you can do is decide right now that you’re going to take responsibility for making sales and exceeding your number. Just decide clearly and firmly that you’re going to let go of hoping and wishing you’re going to make sales.

And I actually encourage you to do all this in a journal or a piece of paper and keep it around you.

And those are the 6 things you can do to dust off your moxie and get back into an active state.

Don’t become that skeptic that we talked about. Don’t become a "Ruminating Salesperson" who’s unsure about what they’re selling because of all of these outside societal forces. Because as soon as you’re unclear then you’re customer is unclear.

So true.

We've all heard of an unique selling proposition and an unique value proposition. You talk about a Unique Payoff Proposition? What’s that?

So, this is one of the shifts again we talk about. When you talk about a unique selling proposition and a unique value proposition, we’re talking about ourselves. So, in most selling situations that are more customer-focused and more heart-centered we need to talk about the customer.

I say switch this formula up a little bit and talk about the unique payoff proposition. The payoff is about the customer. It’s about what they’re going to get doing business with you.

Again, here I am switching languaging because I get a little picky about this. But, when you switch it to what’s the unique payout proposition, you’re talking about the value, the benefit, what’s going to be different after the customer does business with you. They need to do that before they do business with you.

So, you know, if you say:

“ We’ve been really known to blah-blah-blah and that’s our unique selling proposition...”

instead of

“Well, when people work with us, we always deliver and people get X-Y-Z.”

All of a sudden it’s about them. They can picture themselves having that. And you shift the conversation from what’s great about you to what’s going to be great about them.

And that was one of the very thing to trip the ‘yes’ switch to make a decision to buy from you.

Great answer.

Let's go back to that moxie thing. I think you’ve already answered it but I still think it’s important, these points you keep bring up. Can you sell yourself without moxie? Can you be audacious without moxie?

I kinda think they go together.

Yeah.

I kinda think they go together. It’s really...what I want to say about this is whether you resonate with “moxie” or whether you resonate with “ audacious ”...you know “audacious” is one of those funny words people think:

“Oh wow, I’m being very ego-centric; I’m being very me-centered.”

What I mean when I say this is that believe in what you do enough and get excited about the payout that your customer gets that you actually get, you’re out there enrolling people in that vision that is very exciting. Because it’s going to move them to action.

These two things together are what get you to give off a vibe that gets other people excited about a decision to reach a decision to go find the budget, to convince the boss; it’s what gets them motivated. That’s why I like the pair together.

We hear all about social media, social networks, and you write about social selling and its 5 selling styles. What are those 5?

Yeah. It’s really important. People are spending a lot of time on social media but they’re socializing and that’s ok.

But if you’re in a business and you’re using it for business purposes then you need to figure out or understand how to switch from socializing into selling in a way that’s actually serving your customers.

There are 5 Social or what I call “Posting” types.

The first one is “Ghosting”. That’s someone who posts inconsistently and uses automated tools. Frequently, there’s no human element or realness to the messages.

The 2nd type is “Posting and Coasting”. This is when your posts are there but you repeat messages over and over. You don’t interact with people. You don’t develop relationships. You post or re-post other people’s materials.

A lot of people on twitter post a lot of quotes. That’s great! But, add a little comment to it to add some personality to it. If you just post a quote and put it out there, that’s nice. But it doesn’t associate it with you or anything about you. Why do that? You’re just spending time.

“ Posters and Coasters” tend to post other people’s content and they don’t talk about it. Like:

“ I read this article and I had this ‘aha’ moment in paragraph number 14 because it’s going to change my business and I hope it’s going to change yours.”

That’s different than: 

“Great article. Here’s the link.”

The third type is not my favorite. It’s “Boasting”. And I know some people out there who do this. This is someone who’s very focused on themselves and make outlandish claims about their business and they talk abut themselves incessantly. So...

“ Hey, I just landed my new customer for $2.5 million. Boy, I tell you I’m such a good salesperson. It was so great.”

Now, there’s not too many people that are going to do it just like that. But one thing that I do see “ Boasters “ do is take credit for other people’s accomplishments. You want to be careful about doing that kind of thing.

There’s a great way, and gracious way, to put out really good information about

“Using my selling system, my customer just had a $20,000 week.”

Actually I just got that email yesterday. And I did post about it. But what I’m saying is:

“Here’s a way you can have a $20,000 week.”

So, I didn’t make the $20,000 about me. She did it because I told her about it; so it’s my $20,000. Don’t do it. That’s a boasting way and it turns people off.

Style number 4 is one of the effective styles. And, what a “Hoster” does is put intelligent information out there and asks people to think. Because it invokes dialogue and it gets people talking. And you start seeing this conversation go back and forth and start talking and getting a dialogue going.

Here’s what’s cool about this. Your customers are going to start revealing some of their trials, tribulations and struggles. And guess what? Now you know what some of them are and you can use that information to ask them to take a conversation offline or to get in touch with them in another way and say:

“ Hey. I saw you had a problem with such and such. We know how to solve that. Lemme give you a little information.”

And they start talking and you figure out how to serve.

Number five is one of the most effective styles and it’s called “Toasting”. You invoke dialogue like a “Hoster” but you invoke dialogue in a celebratory way. A “ Toaster ” is really someone who shares their customers experiences, businesses, benefits and accolades with the rest of their tribe. So, they’re really about creating this community about this celebratory experience of them doing business together.

A “ Toaster ” is the most effective. Again, what I love about the “Hoster”and “ Toaster ” style is there’s a thing called the witnessing factor. And a lot of people in social media don’t talk about this and I don’t know why; but I found it to be true. And that is people may not click “ like “ on your Facebook post. they may not write a comment. They may not respond to your Tweet. But what you don’t know is how many people are reading or watching or what we call “lurking” this conversation. Right?

They’re watching you and it’s almost like if you were in a hospital and you get to look through the glass window and see all the babies. There’s people out there looking through the glass window watching how you behave, how you provide value, how you give customer support ...through all of these posts. They’re watching because they’re very interested and it’s likely they could turn into a customer.

So, don’t underestimate the power of that factor.

I’ll give you a quick story if I could. Do you have time?

Yeah. That would be great.

So, I live in Hawaii. And I started to posting about doing our morning swim for exercise. Now and then we get blessed with the dolphins that come swim, too. And I’ll take a video of it and post it on Facebook.

So, there’s this woman who we were ‘friends’ in the Facebook world but I never talked to her; we’ve never exchanged posts; nothing. time goes by and I post this video about dolphins and talk about selling and blah-blah-blah.

So about 6 months go by since I posted that message and she sends me a private message that says:

“ You don’t know me but I’ve been watching. How cool is that there’s a woman out there who wants to help us break through and sell and you get to swim with dolphins.”

Where would you get to put those two things in the same sentence?

She goes on to say:

“ I need to talk with you because I really like the way you are and I want to live the life you do and you’re the real deal and you did it and you sold your way out and you live in Hawaii and you swim with dolphins. I need to talk to you because I know you can help me. “

So, where would you put those two things together?

That’s the power of using social media in a way that’s extremely effective.

That’s a great story! You know, when you said she contacted you and said:

You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you....

I’m thinking:

This is going to get weird.

But it turned into such a great story and such a great example of how you use it to combine the two worlds.

Pushing forward with this social selling you write about engaging graciously. Grace, living graciously, to me involves patience and listening and tolerance. It seems many companies are too impatient to do that. What are they missing?

Well, we go back to the classic thing about putting their agenda above the customer relationship. And that’s the short answer. Right?

I’ll give you an example. I’m a salesperson and let’s say I follow up because I have to and I have to put in my Salesforce and I have to cut and paste the email I sent so my manager will know I did it.

When you’re doing it in the spirit checking something off YOUR agenda list instead of doing it in the spirit of checking off something off your client’s list.

Yeah. We need to follow up. I’m not saying don’t do it. We gotta make your managers happy; I know that.

Just shift the focus to following up about your customer and that’s the right thing to do to honor the relationship.

In that conversation, that email or phone call, it changes in tone and content as well.

Exactly. Exactly.

Again, we’ve gotta go back to being focused on the customer. Because following up, when you engage graciously everything you engage about is about helping that customer solve their problem; it’s not about you and how you’re so great and they need to buy yesterday because you need to get the albatross of the boss off your shoulder.

If you’re doing things from that place, there’s a good chance it shows through. And your customer is ignoring you and going to make that whole ‘get-your-boss-off-your-shoulder’ experience worse.

Like, it’s I know we have to do both things. But explain to your boss about why you’re doing what you’re doing. Give them the business reason behind it and they’ll back off you so fast, you’ll be like:

“ Whoa. I wish I had done that sooner. “

And you need to give them the information they need and do that.

But when you send the email to your customer, make it about your customer. Otherwise, you’re wasting their time.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published on Monday, September 19.

Conversation with @JulieSteelman, Author of The Effortless Yes! - Part 1

Julie Steelman joined the show this week. You can listen to our conversation here.

From her website:

Julie Steelman’s credits read like a Who’s Who of big-name corporate giants with Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, CBS, Sony Studios and Universal Pictures in her rolodex. She has generated over $100+ million in sales during her 30 year sales career. Julie is known as The Entrepreneur’s Selling Mentor.

Her heart-centered selling strategies make her the go-to guru for entrepreneurial business owners who want to master the art of selling and maximize their bankability. While selling with sincerity may not be the norm in Corporate America, it’s standard practice for this maverick.

Now retired to her personal paradise in Hawaii, living debt-free, Julie developed the easy-to-master “Effortless YES! Selling System”™. She spends her time helping business owners overcome their aversion to selling in an honest, transformational and interactive style.

Julie is the author of The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process and discover:

• Your selling archetype
• Your natural asking style
• Your bankability

After our conversation and reading her book, I am not sure that the copy on her website does her justice; it may be understated.

We talked about her book, her solutions and how those solutions can help you get to that Effortless Yes!

Julie, thank you for being up so early this morning to talk with us!

Absolutely. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Thank you for writing a great book. I take it that this is your first book.

Thank you for saying that. I appreciate and value that acknowledgement.

I’ve wanted to write a book now for a very long time. But, I needed sorta the time and space to do it. This is what I did for so many years. This is what I wanted to write about.

Fantastic!

Now, you're living in Hawaii...

Yessir!

...a veritable eden, I’ve heard. Life is good. But you decided to write a book! Who were you writing for when you wrote this book? Describe the reader you had in mind.

I’m really writing the book for, mostly, women. There’s an incredible amount of men who have gotten a lot of value out of it as well. But, the person who doesn’t have the opportunity to get really good, thorough, sales training from the some of the top-notch experts. The person who is extremely passinate about their business or cares very much about the product or service and how it helps the customer and to help them succeed at business...

You know, when I left corporate American and I retired, I thought:

“All these entrepreneurs with these incredible inventions and ideas including small business owners and some of them are still my clients today. And it’s like they struggled with the selling process because they just really didn’t have the bandwidth to understand the power of the opportunity that was available to them. I wanted to give them a little leg up. I wanted to stop seeing these really smart, talented, people fail. "

That’s excellent. I think, again, in your book you have done that. So, again thank you so much.

My friend, Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. Her phrase is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And she asks:

What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?

Now you’re digging into the secret!

You know as much as I enjoyed my career in corporate America, there  were times I didn’t love the experience. My hoped-for future is the small businesses of today, the entrepreneurs of today, the artists and artisans of today, the passionate heart-centered people of today will become the leaders of the future big business and corporate America.

It’s really that simple.

That’s fantastic!

Being a good salesperson, I know you’re familiar with metrics to measure your success. What are some of the key metrics you’ll use to measure your success?

One of them is to watch the business owners that I have insight into. One of the key metrics would be to see the number of small entrepreneurial women-led businesses failing...decrease significantly. Right? Like, I can’t change that by myself. That would be one metric.

The other metric would be to watch a significantly higher number of people get into the 6-figures, get into the 7-figures, with their business.

Another metric would be... you know I think that would be the two metrics I would look at in terms of a global metric.

Excellent. Thank you.

I think the foundation for your book was what you wrote on page 23:

The relationship between buyer and seller is sacred and precious. It deserves to be nurtured and held in high regard. Leading with your heart when selling is acting with honor and respect, never forcing another individual to do anything.

I love it. It rings true. On the other hand, I know a lot of people, maybe a lot of sales managers, who would ask:

Where did you get such a crazy idea?

So, where did you get this idea and what does a noodle have to do with it?

Oh. You’re going to ask me the noodle question.

For many years I tried it the other way. I tried this:

“I’m a smart sales person, I got all the information, let me tell you all the benefits, don’t you want to buy.”

It worked.

But it wasn’t as effective. And I was utilizing a lot of time and energy and not having the same result when I later discovered that if I would actually sit down and I wasn’t on this side of the fence and trying to get you to do something. Because then there’s an immediate defense in there. You know it’s like a football teams at the 50-yard line and I’m going to beat you and you’re going to beat me and let’s see who’s going to beat whom.

That’s a different sort of vibe you put out. The buyer has defenses vs when you actually sit down with your customer, side-by-side, elbow-to-elbow, and you listen to them. And you hear more clearly qhat their need is and your more able to tell a story of how what you offer solves the need in the context for how they would use it.

The whole thing changes. Especially in a tough economy. Buyers are especially skeptical. There are too many messages about the lack of money so people withdraw and pull up tight. Businesses start cutting budgets, don’t want to spend as much or they are very difficult to make a decision.

That’s how you create that endearing bond with people. It is:

“I’m putting what you need over...it’s more important you get what you need than I close a sale. “

That shifts the relationship. And it’s much more of a heart-centered approach.

So, what does it have to do with a noodle?

Yeah.

I had been looking for a job and I had been told about this really great recruiter. This was in LA. She’s from New York. She used to work for Helen Gurley Brown and she’s a top sales person for Cosmopolitan magazine and she has all this high-fashion on. And I’m thinking:

“ I’m so not in this woman’s league. “

And she starts talking to me and we’re talking about sales. She says to me:

“ Julie you never, ever, push a noodle; you pull a noodle.”

And I said:

“ Huh? “

And she said:

“ I’m not going to try to explain it to you what that means.”

What she means is you need to be kind of inviting and enrolling and have this conversation, like we just described with that customer, that pulls them in, that attracts them to you, that endears them to you, because you’re solving their problems and they lower your defenses and they like you and they respect you. And you do that by showing up as someone who cares about them more than you care about making the sale.

The difference is when you push a noodle. That’s by force. That’s that manipulative stuff. That’s the scripted, psychological, “I’m going to let you wait, time’s running out, the price is going up in the next minute...” like all that kind of stuff puts pressure and force on people. That would be pushing the noodle. Sometimes it works. But it’s very exhausting.

The pulling the noodle works much more effectively especially in this type of economy.

Excellent. That ties into our next question.

Some sales managers will say: 

Demystifying the sales process is really no mystery. Just make
more calls. It's all a numbers game.

What are these managers missing?

I used to be one of those managers that was told:

“Well, it is just a numbers game.”

At the end of the day, it is how many people that you talk to. But, I’m more interested in effectiveness. I’m more interested in, and I think this goes back to sort of a more heart-centered approach, I’m more interested in that you talk to 5 people and you are super-effective, than you talk to 25 people and you’re 10% effective.

Because we’re going to have better customers and we’re going to have repeat customers.

So, I think a manager that says "it’s all about the numbers" doesn’t really know how to manage. And I’m sorry to say that and I hope I’m not insulting anybody.

But, I think it’s about more than that. I think it’s really about understanding what the customer needs and how you can best deliver it. And making sure your team knows how to tell that story in a way that that customer can hear it. And it’s about much more warmth and caring.

When you go into the mode of "it’s just a numbers game-get on the phone-you need to make 10 more calls today or I’m going to have to fire you”, what you in effect did was put your closing ratio and percentage above your customer’s needs. And that’s when things get really hairy.

I don’t think it’s effective to use that type of strategy.

Thank you. Thank you for saying that and outlining what’s missed by taking that approach.

You describe 3 buying personalities. What are they?

Well, the first is a “Crystal-Clear Buyer”. It’s what it sounds like. Someone who’s done their research; they’re not going to tell you they’ve done their research. They’re savvy, they’re smart, they’re educated. They’re aware of what’s going on around them. And when they know they want something, they’re pretty quick to make a decisions. And then they’re going to go find the best solution for that.

The 2nd type is the “Ruminating Buyer”. And that’s someone who just doesn’t have an easy ability to make a decision. If it’s an individual, they may be that way because they’ve made a decision in the past and it didn’t turn out so well. So, they don’t trust their decisive abilities.

If they’re someone in a company, they may be influenced by or have to answer to someone that they’re not confident about that relationship so they don’t feel as clear about making that decision. Or they don’t feel empowered to make that decision.

This is someone who is just not as easy to make a decision. They need a lot of information. They need a lot of hand-holding. They kinda go back-and-forth. Their going back-and-forth is how they resolve the ability to make a decision. It’s how they resolve to a decision. And you'll know this person because they will take you on a roller-coaster of "yes-no-yes-no-well, maybe"; they’ll do all that kind of stuff.

The 3rd type is the Indecisive Buyer. They tend to rely on indecision as the way to guide them. They are very self-protective. It’s difficult for them to ever arrive at a decision.

Unlike the ruminating buyer, the ruminating buyer will eventually arrive at a decision.  The indecisive buyer?  You really have to walk them through that final phase to say "yes".They really need to do that, making that "yes" decision in partnership; they cannot do it by themselves.

Excellent. I’m just scribbling. Your descriptions are so clear I’m reminded of different people. Myself included.

Which personality is most ignored in today's selling processes?

I think the Ruminating Buyer is. I think more people who may have been Crystal-Clear Buyers are becoming Ruminating Buyers because of financial pressures on them and they just feel like they are at a time when they can’t afford to make a mistake. So, they’re going to be more thorough and do more research. And go back and forth, weigh lots of options, more than they used to.

I think the Ruminating Buyer gets most ignored because the sales person gets tired of being on the roller-coaster ride, and/or, they don’t know how to handle it and recognize this and they bail; they bail too early. If you work through this, if you work with A Ruminating Buyer and go on that ride with them and keep answering the questions they have and understanding where they get tripped up along the way, even if you have to do it 6-7 times, then you will have a loyal customer for life. It’s really worth the time investment to go back and forth with them.

I love how in the process of selling and addressing their concerns, many of them more emotional than possibly financial or product quality and features, then you develop that loyalty and trust which in turn translates into more referrals and more up-sells and more cross-sells.

Beautiful.

Yes. Absolutely.

I think their oversight of that personality arises from some misaligned element of their sales process. What would be a common misalignment in today’s sales force that would encourage them to ignore the ruminating sales person?

I think something like pressure from a manager that says:

“ You need to make more calls. It’s a numbers game.”

So, they would say you’re spending too much time with that person and it’s precluding you from getting to more people. So, you need to drop this person to get to more people.

Love it; love it!

Sorry, I’m just being frank.

No. I love it.

Your descriptions are so clear, I’m just having borderline flashbacks when I’ve worked with managers like that or seen sales teams built around both approaches. The teams with the highest sales was with the manager who took the time to encourage their sales staff to get to know the customer. And over time they generated the higher sales from referrals and word-of-mouth and up-sells and cross-sells.

You know it’s so true what you just said.

I built a reputation on never wasting someone’s time and not running my sales agenda when I walked into a meeting.

Let me tell you something. They all talk to each other. So, they’ll spread the word about you. And if someone’s had a hard time with you in a sales meeting, the word’s going to get out on the street and it is going to be a bit harder to get the next meeting.

I think that’s such a great point. Everybody talks. We all talk with each other.  Now with Twitter and Facebook, in an instant those doors can be opened or closed.

Absolutely!

Now, I think the answer for the next question is obvious. But it’s such a common problem, I want to belabor it a little bit.

How do companies correct this? How do companies correct this institutional bias against the Ruminating Buyer?

I think that they have to understand. I think that sales managers and companies do a really good job when they understand and they teach their teams that there are different types of decision-makers. And to look out for, recognize and understand the difference between those decision-makers and the different things you can do to handle those decision-makers.

You could call a Ruminating Buyer a skeptic. The woman I referred to earlier, the woman how told me the noodle story, she had what I called the “My Skeptic Emergency Kit” in her pocket.

I thought this was a great idea and I want to pass it along. One of the easiest things a company can do is to create a fact-sheet with testimonials, facts, case-studies. When you get a Ruminating Buyer or someone who’s going back and forth, you whip out the fact sheet and you walk them through it and say:

“ Look, here’s some of the experiences our customers have when we get involved. Here’s the difference that gets made.”

And have what she calls her Emergency Skeptic Kit so you really have the answers to all the unasked questions they are not asking. And go look:

“I know it’s really hard to make a decision. It’s a tough economy; your boss is putting pressure on you; budgets are tightening up. But let me just walk you through the statistics.”

But what you are doing is giving them the reason, the sales points, to go convince other people on their team to go buy your products or services.

**********

Part Two of this conversation will be published Friday, September 16.

Part Three of this conversation will be published Monday, September 19.

Would you live with your customers?

What can’t be easily outsourced is knowledge of the customer. The intimate understanding of what the customer wants and needs depends upon on-the-ground familiarity with the world of the customer. (For instance, when Toyota was designing the Lexus, it had to bring its engineers to the USA to live with the customers for extended periods so that they would have some understanding of what the customers might need or want in a car.)

via www.forbes.com

Well, would you? That wasn't the only thing Toyota did while they built Lexus into a luxury brand.

On the other hand, sending members of your organization to live with customers is the habit of another thriving brand: P&G. As Dr. Hal Gregersen, co-author of The Innovator's DNA explained during a recent interview about P&G's observational skills and processes:

Let me give you a quick example from Proctor and Gamble. You know they are systematic about sending people out to observe. Just as Colgate Palmolive does. P&G, the average marketer spends 12.5 hours per month just observing consumers buy product or use product. That’s a day and half just watching people. And they better well come back and see some surprising things.

But even a day and a half doesn’t get you some surprises. And, so, they actually have live-ins and go live with family for 2-3-4 days and figure out what’s it like to really do what they do. Many of their employees are from middle and upper income levels. And they’ve always had the luxury of walking into a kitchen or walking into a bathroom and turning the tap and have water run in. When you’ve gotta carry water from the well to where you are living and you have this thing called Tide detergent and it has 7 rinse cycles, then water gets really heavy carrying it back and forth to get soap out of the clothes.

So. Here are two world-class global brands who spend time with their customers. They live, literally, with their customers.

Would you go live with your customers in order to better understand how they would use your product or service if your product or service better fit the needs of their lives?

No? What would you do? Would you even call them?

Even NFL players are living with their customers. Chad Ochocinco, now of the New England Patriots, recently announced:

"I'm going to do something different, I'm actually going to stay with a fan for the first two, three weeks of the season," he said Tuesday. "That should be fun, until I get myself acclimated and learn my way around."

So, again, would you go live with your customers in order to better understand how they would use your product or service if your product or service better fit the needs of their lives? 

Newspapers: Some Options to Outsourcing Your Soul

Joining the struggling industry's trend toward centralization, the Hartford paper announced plans this month to outsource all copy editing and design to Tribune Co.'s Chicago Tribune, eliminating 19 newsroom positions — about half related to the outsourcing — according to Rich Graziano, the Courant's CEO and publisher.

"It was a meaningful and significant cost savings," Graziano said.

The move to consolidate editing and design is gaining traction as newspaper groups search for ways to offset plummeting ad revenues.

via www.chicagotribune.com

Why?

No one ever sustained a company's growth by:

• outsourcing its original content
• outsourcing its unique voice
• outsourcing its relationships with its customers.

No one.

The shareholder's should ask:

• Where's the growth? After these costs have been cut, then what? How will this stock grow?

• Where is the innovation premium?

Why not, instead, cut costs on any operations that detract or distract from these papers connections and conversations and collaborations within their community?

Why not, instead, focus on finding the means and ways and resources to be a vital, vibrant, VIP member of that community?

Here in our community we have 1 daily newspaper (paid) and 1 sometimes active community site and 2 active free newspapers (1 weekly and 1 monthly). It always astonishes me that the editor and publisher of the daily paid newspaper...refuses (I've talked about it with him) to see how those free newspapers can cover their  and generate a sustainable income for their publishers.

What if...these papers focused on:

• investigative reporting. That once was a primary purpose for a newspaper....So few papers invest in investigative reporting now that this step alone would make it unique, interesting, controversial, bringing readers and word-of-mouth. That translates into customers and that brings advertising and subscription revenues.

What if....these papers organized:

• citizen corps of reporters Clay Shirky described this a bit in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing with Organizations. Before that, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba described it in their book: Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message. Only now it would be Citizen Reporters: When People are the Message...they Bring Their Message...and their friends and neighbors and businesses.

What if...these papers focused on:

• in-depth coverage of local stories

• city council,
• school board,
• events
• public resources: parks and museums
• businesses

• Paid bloggers for their coverage of these events. Look there...a lot of bloggers and citizens who would love the opportunity to be the point person on these local events.

• Organized, led, mentored by current investigative journalists. Hey guys, your job is saved. But you still need to add value. And you could see this group as a lead generator for your more in-depth articles.

• invited high school journalism students Right there you have a passionate engaged audience source: Parents, families, schools. The schools benefit from a workstudy/mentoring program. The papers benefit from free and enthusiastic beat reporters. And it helps solve the communication skills gap businesses and all of us need solved.

• elementary studentsBear with me. But what better time to develop good communication skills than in elementary school. Think about the foundation that could be built! And you have the high school students who could serve as mentors. I see readers being surprised by the clarity of these students in their writing, their ideas and their perspectives. And you also have a built-in audience: parents, family members, schools...

• Guest posts by school admin people, business people, city government.

• Interactive forums
  • use bloggers to organize and manage. You could incorporate the previous point into the source for creating these forums.

We want to participate, not be spoon-fed. We want to congregate and communicate, connect and collaborate. Newspapers once were a key resource in that experience. Give that, again, and you keep your newspaper alive and kicking.

 

Want More Customer Loyalty? Earn More Employee Loyalty, First

KILLER QUOTE

“I have yet to find a company that earned high levels of customer loyalty without first earning high levels of employee loyalty.”

- Frederick Reichheld | author, fellow at Bain & Company

via Cracker Jack Marketer

Frederick Reicheld is the author of The Ultimate Question Survey and the Net Promoter Score. He's also a great speaker.

Cracker Jack Marketer is the awesome resource from John Moore and Paul Williams whose goal with is to teach the world to sing in perfect retail harmony.

 

Want a 24% bump in your revenues?

A study commissioned by Tealeaf has found that UK companies are losing about £14 million – 24% of possible revenue - a year due to poor online customer services.

The study showed that the main problems faced by businesses were a lack of understanding of the online experience of customers and a lack of multichannel approach to help when problems occurred.

via www.thedrum.co.uk

24%. Left on the table or on the prospect's keyboard as it were.

It's just customer service, as one person said. Yeah, it's just customer service. And it's worth a possible 24% bump in your online revenues.

I like specifics. But I think the specifics of UK and online can be expanded to global and total. I shared a graphic that showed here& in the US businesses lose $83 billion from poor customer service and globally as much as $383 billion is lost from the same.

Jeanne Bliss shared this on her Twitter stream. Thanks, Jeanne!

She's the author of a great great book titled I Love You More Than My Dog! (Download a free copy of the first chapter. Then buy the whole thing. ).

We talked a bit about this book. You can listen here.

So, again, if you're looking at your revenue goals and see them a bit short...consider offering customer service that inspires, educates, makes happy, wows...Your competitors aren't.

6 Investments in Employee Engagement That Create A Sustainable Word-of-Mouth Marketing Machine.

Here’s 6 ways to invest in your employees and create a sustainable word-of-mouth marketing machine.

Hire A-Talent. Hire the best available talent. You get what you pay for applies to your employees, too. Your current employees will feel valued and inspired as you hire the best talent to help them continue to create, design, build and deliver products that add to their self-esteem and the customer’s happiness.

I’ve written a short ebook, The Collaborative Hiring Process, that’s free for you to download. It incorporates my experience using the Topgrading interview process for success 100% of the time.

Upgrade Your Talent. Invest in the necessary training, coaching, mentoring needed to grow them as your company grows. That creates a mutual value-added proposition.

And, find the new talent that will sustain your growth.

Give Them the Resources. Give them the resources they need to achieve their goals, sustain their passion, inspire them to grow more. That includes the right desks, comfortable chairs, lighting, dual monitors, clean offices, as well as the right technology (software, hardware).

Make It Simple. One purpose, one priority. A house divided cannot stand. More than one goal only serves to weaken the progress towards both. As CEO, we agreed that these were: make ‘em happy and answer their calls immediately. That meant make the customer and/or prospects happy, as they defined it. And that was made meaningful by answering their calls immediately.

Recognize and Reward. Say ‘thank you’. It’s so simple, so easy, so inexpensive to do. Its impact is so profound on the passion, the inspiration, the motivation of the recipient. Say it immediately as Tim Berry suggests. Say it front of their peers, as I suggest. Recognition by managers among your peers and recognition by your peers is a powerful reward and motivator. It’s also free. But judging from some parsimonious uses of this reward, two words in effect, among the business world you would think it was more expensive than our national debt. It’s not. It’s two words. Thank you. Say them, show them.

Listen. Your employees are your best source of knowledge of what they need, what they can deliver. Your customers depend on them for your solutions to their problems. You trust them with your company. Trust them with your heart and ears and mind. Listen to them.

Just 6 steps. Most require little to no additional financial expense. Any additional investment easily generates a positive ROI from:

• lower employee turnover,
• lower hiring costs (your employees’ will be your recruiters),
• higher conversion rates from word-of-mouth referrals,
• lower customer churn,
• increased cross and up-selling
• better cash-flows.

That last one makes you king.

Notice I mentioned wow and viral marketing, cartoons and videos, Twitter or Facebook or YouTube, in fact any social media....a total of 0 times. Word-of-mouth, sustainable word-of-mouth is created, delivered and sustained by those who create, deliver and sustain customer experiences: employees.

Wow your employees. They will do the rest. Trust me. Or don't. But trust them.

Disclaimer: I wrote this 2 years ago. It still seemed true today. I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. Do you?