The Forgotten Sales Team

Often, as companies try to pump up their sales volume, they forget to turn toward one of the most valuable and cost effective sales tools they have, their employees. By making sure your staff is engaged and interested in the company's operations and goals, you activate a powerful tool in your sales tool belt. There are a couple of reasons that this helps your sales efforts.

First, an engaged and motivated workforce tends to do a better job. They care more about the job they are doing because they better understand their role in the overall success of the organization. This always translates into fewer mistakes and more delighted customers. That translates into positive word of mouth, the holy grail of marketing.

Second, a staff that knows and understands the companies goals, can articulate those when they engage with others. When a customer or a prospect hears about the benefits of a product or services line from everyone she interacts with, and not just the sales manager, she is much more likely to accept the message and act on it.

So engage your entire workforce to get the most out of your sales efforts!

5 Things That Have Not Changed in Marketing

With the explosion of mobile marketing, the popularity of social media, the apparent decline of traditional media, and the growing cynicism of the public toward overt marketing messages, it seems as if marketing has totally changed.  Today, I want to remind you of a few things that haven't.

• Relationships Rule.  While you may have different tools to work with, the value of building a relationship with your customers remains highly important.  In many ways, building relationships with your customers is all that matters.

• Quality wins.  A high quality product still beats out an inferior product, all other things being equal.  Quality copy has more impact.  Quality products and services generate positive word of mouth.  Quality is sometimes the best marketing. 

• Content Matters.  Period.  And Exclamation Point!

• We are Still Talking About Value.  In marketing we are still promoting the intersection of price and product or service features.   We are still promoting the Value Proposition.

• Only One Measure Matters.  It doesn't really matter how many likes, tweets, views or readers you have, just like it doesn't really matter what your Neilson or Arbitron rating is.  What matters is how many sales you have.  It is the only number that counts.

Digital Snake Oil Salesmen

I have noticed lately that just about any problem you have can be solved by way of some sort of electronic communications.  You can get rich via webinar, loose weight from a blog, and repair your love life with an online conference with a the company's registered Lothario.  You can do even better if you also purchase the e-book.

Or so they say.

It has been the history of each new media that the earliest adapters are the purveyors of porn and magical remedies for all that ails you.  The snake oil salesmen.  The internet and social media are no different.

What is different is the democratic nature of the internet.  An ad for Rolls Royce gets largely the same treatment as the con man selling magic pills.  In print media, there are expensive, high status publications in which the cost of entry is enough to keep out at least the most questionable of advertisers.  The same thing for television and radio.  Not so much with the internet.

The same open qualities of the internet that allow a young musician to post her new songs on You Tube and find an audience and an entrepreneur to find a disperse but loyal customer base, make it ripe territory for other, less desirable uses.  I don't think we can, or should, try to prevent these uses.  I do think that we need to learn to be smart consumers.

Also, I think it is important for reputable businesses to embrace the possibilities of internet media options.   As has happened time and time again, when reputable companies step up and establish a strong presence in a media, the snake oil salesmen tend to get pushed to the side.  Which is a better place for them!

Or else

I had a boss once who would ask "Is this the best you can do?" whenever you handed him some work.  If you answered no, he handed the work back without waiting for excuses.  If you answered yes, you knew that it had better be your best work.  The "or else" was never spoken of, articulated or, honestly, thought a lot about.  He was just the type of guy that you knew there would be an "or else" that you wouldn't like.

Sometimes, when I am experiencing exceptionally bad customer service, I think that the person delivering that service must not be thinking about the "or else."

The "or else's" for bad customer service are many:

• the sale could be lost
• the customer could never come back
• the former customer could tell others about the bad service she got and convince others not to come back
• other employees could see that bad service is tolerated and some of them may start taking the easy way out (good customer service usually takes a little effort and initiative)
• The customers of those employees could stop coming back and stop making purchases
• The business, facing declining sales and lowering public perception, could be forced to cut expenses
• The sales person who started this all could lose their job.
• The company is forced to close because the smaller sales force makes it impossible to be responsive to customer needs
• The industry is struck with rumors of decline, sending stock prices plummeting and closing more businesses
• The economy, facing a sudden and unpredicted business sector collapse goes into a tailspin, and then..
• Well...you get the idea.

I am not seriously suggesting some sort of customer service butterfly effect (where a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world and creates a hurricane elsewhere in the world).  I am proposing that customer service, good and bad, DOES have ripple effects that are difficult to predict.  I am saying that the small gestures, like a smile or a courtesy to a customer, CAN come back to you multiplied many times over.  I am suggesting that we would be a lot better off if we each asked ourselves if this was the best we could do.  

I am also recommending that we consider the "or else."

Related articles

• The Art of Customer Service
• The Many P's of Marketing: People

Know Your Stuff

I once had a salesperson make an appointment with my boss and myself to tell us about his company and the product that he felt we could use.

He was on time, well dressed and did the required small talk very well.  But when it came time to give the presentation, he couldn't get the PowerPoint presentation on his laptop to work.  After watching him struggle with trying to get things to work for 10 minutes or so, it was clear that he couldn't give the presentation without the PowerPoint crutch.  He asked if he could reschedule the meeting.  We declined.

If you are going on a sales call or making a presentation, know your stuff.  Things happen with technology.  If you aren't prepared to move forward without laptop assistance, you aren't prepared. Be prepared!

After Midnight

The thing is our expectations have changed.

We have gotten used to an Internet that is always there, McDonald's that are always open, and banks (a few) that answer the phone with a live person 24/7.

So when I encounter the dreaded "office hours" message, indicating that the organization I am trying to do business with isn't there because it is after their "normal business hours" I get wanderlust.  I don't know that I want to wait until 8 am Eastern on Monday to do business with company A, when Company B will let me spend my money with them after midnight on Sunday.

"No!"

"No!" to any good salesman is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.

If you are a marketer or a communicator, someone saying "No!" should make you salivate a bit.  "No!" followed up with the question "Why?" can often help you better understand the thoughts and motivations of a prospective customer.

A person who says "No!" or who complains to you (vs. the person who never picks up the phone or answers the door) is doing you the favor of providing feedback.

And that should make you say "Yes!"