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Kudos to GM
After years of being able to use GM as a prime example of what not to do, they buck a trend and announce that they are revisiting their entire spend on Facebook.
My favorite quote from the story: “The sources said GM executives found the paid ads had little impact on car buying.”
How about that. GM, one of the kings of advertising, finally learning that paying for ads, especially on social sites, has little impact on car buying.
GM is not giving up on Facebook altogether, as they find that can be an effective way to engage with their consumers and share content. GM spends $40 million on Facebook, and I for one am quite confident that if they take that $40 million and reinvest in sincere, authentic approaches that, as my friend and client Steve Randazzo says, create deep emotional connections, they’ll find far greater returns.
I love the fact that GM is finally looking at results and not just process. Maybe there is a rebirth in Detroit after all. (I know, I know…don’t get carried away.)
Here’s the other quote I love. It’s from Steve Goldner, a senior director at digital-media agency MediaWhiz. He says this move “reflects that GM does not know how to integrate social-media into a winning marketing play.”
Well, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that paid advertising doesn’t actually drive behavior. Maybe there are more effective marketing “plays” that make a bigger difference. As I share with my clients, just because something is popular doesn’t mean that it works.
For too long, marketing agencies and consultants have been making the marketing process and complex and trendy as possible to enable them to justify exorbitant fees and to hide from accountability.
I congratulate GM for stepping up. I hope they follow through. Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll be sharing other examples of GM is doing that should emulated.
7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
The trends are not good when judging the effectiveness of small and mid-market B2B sales efforts.
- According to recent purchasing surveys, as many as 40% of organizational buying processes are ending in a “no decision.”
- A recent research project done by the Wall Street Journal demonstrated that on 37% of salespeople were actually effective, and a comprehensive research project done by The Sales Research Council shows number worse than that.
- Margin and pricing pressure continues to mount on businesses, even as we emerge from deep recession.
- Finding good salespeople is tougher than ever.
Most companies continue to struggle to find a successful growth formula that will work in the short-, mid-, and long-term. There are, however, a few businesses that have transformed the challenges before them into a significant advantage over their competition. They’ve developed new ways to shorten the sales cycle, bypass competition and grow margins.
These companies understand that their sales process is the most powerful leverage point available to their business. Companies that are able to materially shorten the sales cycle enjoy huge advantages over their competitors.
- They need less money or capital to grow.
- They are able to capture more revenue without adding people.
- They enjoy a significant cost advantage.
- They’re margins and profits are substantially higher.
Shortening the sales cycle should be a key objective for every growing company. Yet, only about 5 – 10% of small and mid-market B2B companies are able to do so consistently.
Make sure you’re one of them!
Join us on May 23rd at 2pm EDT, as we share the secrets to shortening your sales cycle in our latest webinar.
7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
May 23, 2012
2pm EDT
What .1% Performance Looks Like
I’m a fan of top performers. I love learning about them, figuring out what makes them tick and translating that into actionable ideas that can allow others to achieve top performance. I call this .1% Performance.
I remember learning about this concept from an ex-Blue Angels pilot, who shared the amazing things he learned and did as a Blue Angel. When you think about it, to be a Blue Angels pilot you have to be the best of the best…the top 1% of the top 10%. The same is true if you want to make it to “the show” in professional sports, or virtually any endeavor.
A while back, I was talking with a client/business owner about the need for salespeople to master the new paradigms of business. He asked me, “Just how important is it, really, to master it to the level your talking about?” My response to him, was that it depends on what game he wanted to play.
The challenge I’ve always had, is demonstrating visually what .1% Performance requires. I can easily point to the results of it, I just couldn’t articulate and show the real effort required to attain it. Until now.
My top sales coach, David Fletcher, shared this video with me. It comes from TCU’s baseball program. Every time I watch I get motivated. I think you’ll agree the attitude and effort shown here applies to more than just sports. My two favorites lines from the video:
- What is each day but a series of conflicts between the right way and the easy way?
- Just make sure [your goal] is something you want, because the easy way out will always be there, ready to wash you away.
Creating Business Equity Value
It’s the dream of many entrepreneurs. Coming up with that big idea, starting a business, growing it and ultimately selling for a sum of money that allows them to relax for the rest of their life.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve learned that there are, fundamentally, two types of business owners: those that have no desire to sell their business and are just looking to earn a nice (or substantial) income doing things they love to do; while others desire to sell their business, often viewing their business as the primary asset in their wealth creation efforts.
What I find interesting is that only about 10% of those owners that desire to sell in the future ever really stop to understand what really drives the equity value of a business. Unfortunately, the failure to consider this typically results in a business that fails to deliver either on its income or wealth creation potential.
In my experience, there is a major driver of equity value that is often overlooked, and yet it is the primary driver in the enhancing the long-term valuation of a business.
The ability to systematically, independently, predictably and consistently generate new customers, while protecting your margins is crucial to unlock the equity value of any business.
I will be writing more about this in the future here, but for now suffice it to say that if selling your business in the future, whether to an outsider, to your employees, or to your kids, it is critical that you develop a well articulated, consistent, predictable approach to the development of new customers. This ability will enable you to unlock the max value of your business, while also enhancing the profitability and income your enjoy in the meantime.
I Hate Losing
As many readers know, I coach college baseball. Last week the coaching staff got together because our team had hit little bit of a slump. We were trying to figure out why we had so much talent, but that talent wasn’t translating into the results that we expected on the field.
As the conversation progressed, I couldn’t help but get the déjà vu feeling that I had this conversation before, in the sales management arena. So often, too often for many small and mid-market companies, sales people who have talent and core ability to be extremely successful, yet they never meet their potential. This is a riddle that has confounded managers, trainers and consultants for years.
As we discussed the issue about the team, we came to the realization that not enough of the players truly hate to lose. And when I say hate to lose I don’t just mean that they don’t like losing, I mean hating to lose more than you enjoy winning.
Top performers in virtually any endeavor, share a common attribute – they loathe losing. Be it basketball, football, baseball, business or sales, top performers work hard, pay attention to the little things, learn and constantly improve because the feeling of a loss is simply detestable.
Everybody enjoys winning, and there are few people that I’ve met that dislike losing. The question to ask when assessing your salespeople is just how much, and what, are they willing to do to stay out of the loss column.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how losing is part of the growth and success process. Since that post, I’ve received a lot of feedback. The vast majority of it has been absolutely on point and I’ve been excited to hear some of the stories that have been shared with me.
The post, however, is not an excuse to accept losing. When interviewing, managing and motivating salespeople, be on the look out to determine which camp they fall in – the ones who just enjoy winning or the ones that abhor
Is It Too Late To Save BlackBerry?
In January 2010, I wrote a blog post asking if BlackBerry was a dead product walking. In the post I put forth the theory that BlackBerry’s envy of Apple’s customers was one of the primary reasons for the decreasing performance of the company.
In the last year the story of BlackBerry’s failure is well known. The failure led to management shakeup where the co-CEOs and founders left the company and a new CEO was put in charge. Yesterday, he announced that BlackBerry, for all practical purposes, is giving up the consumer market and is focusing on their more traditional markets of businesses and enterprises.
While this was certainly the primary recommendation I made almost 15 months ago, my question now is, “Is it too late?”
Apple, Android and others have all continued to advance their technology, build deep emotional connections with their customers and to exploit the Blackberry’s missteps. I certainly hope RIM’s decision, and the implementation/execution of the strategy works for BlackBerry.
I think it’s good for the world that there is a strong BlackBerry out there to provide competition for the Apples of the world.
The lesson for fast growth executives is to remember to stay true to your core, don’t lose your plot and always stay focused on who you are trying to serve and how you can be the best.
Effortless Results
Yesterday I was working with one of the players on our college baseball team in the batting cage. He was working on an adjustment that would improve his consistency and effectiveness. As we were making adjustments (and I was seeing improved swings), I asked him how it felt.
His first response was a hesitant, “Yeah, it feels a little better.” Knowing that every player will say whatever it takes to appease his coach, I followed up by asking him if it really felt better. With a quizzical look he replied, “Well, yeah it does. It just feels like I’m not even putting any effort out.”
I told him what I tell every salesperson or business executive that I advise, “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.” I’ve always said, “If you feel like you’re selling, you’re doing something wrong.”
Talking with him reminded me of how, when we want something, we all press a little bit. The more we want it, the more we like to press, get tense and “try harder.”
What’s funny is that we also all get our best results when we’re not even trying. Athletes call it “the zone,” other call it “flow.” It occurs we our minds, bodies and actions are in complete alignment. We’re relaxed. We don’t have to think. We just act.
We you try too hard, you tense up. Your muscles – both physical and mental – contract. You get slow and you fall out of synch.
I think it’s important that we all remember that you don’t get into a state of flow by trying too hard. When the stakes are high, and the conditions are tough remember to go against your natural instinct of pressing, and instead relax and let it happen.
Taking Away The Myths of Content
Anyone who’s a reader of this blog knows that I’m a radical believer in the importance of content. As I’ve written before, content is critical to growing any business successfully.
Whenever I talk with companies or executives about developing content, it’s often greeted with a response like, “Yeah, I know it will work, but it just seems to difficult.” While I’ve done much to help executives overcome these obstacles, I think this blog post by content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi shines some light on some very important myths on why content is critical and how to do it effectively.
The Results Chasm
There is a critical, often overlooked, space between insight and execution. It’s a space that is uniquely frustrating to entrepreneurs and salespeople, and causes more great ideas to fail than anything else.
It’s a space filled with trade-offs. It’s fraught with ambiguity and filled with complexity. Most small and mid-sized business (SME) executives either ignore the space completely or get paralyzed by it and fail to act. I call this space The Results Chasm™.
This reaction is understandable. We’re all searching for clear answers to questions like will it work or won’t it? Should we do it or not? How will we know?
Confronting The Results Chasm™ induces headaches, and who wants those? It’s far easier to either ignore the complexity or jump to the next endorphin creating idea.
We’ve all seen the success stories that allowed someone to make billions without confronting the chasm. Who doesn’t want to be the next YouTube? And look, if you’ve got the idea that will work, I say go for it.
However, if you’re like most SME’s and you can’t count on luck, you need to embrace the chasm. Simplicity and success lies on the other side of complexity. Your job is to manage the complexity, don’t ignore it.
Losing Is Part of Progress
I’ll never forget the defining moment of my sales career. I had experienced some nice success in my early sales career. I made more than my share of awards clubs, I was making good money and, frankly, I was having a lot of fun.
I also knew, intuitively, that, while I was doing well, what I was doing wasn’t going to get me the results I wanted over the long run. So, in the midst of a successful career, I decided to radically change my approach to selling.
I decided that being a closer wasn’t enough. While I didn’t use these words at the time, I realized that I needed to become a businessperson who sells. I needed to earn “a seat at the executive table.” And to do this, I knew that I would have to develop new skills, new systems and new disciplines.
The first steps of the journey were very exciting for me. I felt great about what I was doing. I got to laugh at all the closes I had memorized, and I dreamed of winning big deals, and of hanging out with the movers and shakers of business.
Making the change was tough. I had to work hard. I’d constantly fall back on old behaviors and found myself pulling out my power closes even when I didn’t want to. But I was making good progress. I was entering new, better opportunities. I was going against tougher competition – a clear sign that my business was growing they way I needed it to.
And then, all of the sudden, I got to face frustration head on. I was losing opportunities. Suddenly, I found myself losing more deals in a month than I had in a quarter or even a year. Clearly something was wrong, and I thought seriously about whether my quest for a better form of selling was a mistake.
When I sat down to assess what wasn’t working, I realized that, while I was losing more opportunities, I was also winning more good, high-profit deals. I realized that while my skills were improving, I hadn’t mastered them yet. I was good enough to get in the door with the right people and the right opportunities, but I wasn’t yet good enough to win the business.
What was also fascinating was how much I was learning; both about selling better and about delivering a compelling proposition. The no’s I was getting were making my company’s offerings better.
I realized that losing was a clear sign of progress and a learning opportunity. As you grow your company, please don’t forget that, to get where you want to go, you’ll encounter very similar experiences.
If you’ve got a growth story, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.
The Fast Growth Blog Wins Best Blog Award
On February 10th, 
The Baltimore Business Journal announced their Best In Social Media Awards. I was honored that The Fast Growth Blog won Best Blog.
It’s funny, I started writing this blog seven years ago simply because I felt like I had something to say and I was hoping there were people out there who wanted to listen. I had no idea the impact blogging would have on me, my business, or the readers of this blog.
I remember talking to my brother when I first started the blog. He said to me, “We’ll see if you still have something worth saying a year from now.” Well, so far, so good.
While it’s trite to say that the quality of this blog is what it is because of its readers, it’s also very true. The feedback I get online, offline and in conversations has provided the motivation and inspiration to share my insights and experience.
So thank you for making this blog a delight for me.
Successfully Hiring Salespeople
For 25 years the most frequent question I’ve gotten about sales efforts deals with successfully hiring salespeople. For small and mid-market companies (SME), hiring salespeople is the single, toughest and highest risk hire you can make. It’s what led me to write The 10 Most Common Mistakes Made When Hiring Salespeople.
Studies show that the mis-hire rate is as high as 75%, and that the total cost of a mis-hire is between 10 & 20 times the expected compensation rate.
My philosophy has always been that I’d rather have a bad salesperson than a good salesperson.
- When a salesperson is bad, letting them go is an easy decision and doing so minimizes the risk and cost implications.
- When they’re good, it’s almost (key word – almost) impossible to let them go. You constantly see the potential they have. Plus, there’s the feeling that having someone out there is better than having no one.
The problem is that good salespeople is that they commoditize your offerings. They never achieve that trusted advisor status that makes customers, clients and prospect truly value the salesperson or your company. The opportunity cost with good is huge.
The reality is that SMEs need great salespeople to grow and thrive. The problem is that most SMEs are not positioned to attract, recruit or retain great salespeople.
It is for this reason that I’ve put together my best thoughts, experiences and process that I’ve developed over the last 25 years.
I’ll be sharing my insights in our March 27th webinar: The Secrets to Successfully Hiring Salespeople.
I’ll be sharing:
- The 5 deadly myths that destroy your ability to hire salespeople successfully.
- The 4 sales roles, and how understanding those roles will multiply the effectiveness of your sales hiring.
- How to develop a system that will make you company a manufacturer of great salespeople.
- Develop effective measurements and metrics to ensure the wrong person doesn’t stay.
So join me on March 27th at 2 pm EST, and learn how to make the sales hiring process successful and predictable.
A Crucial Decision to Drive Your Profit Formula
I often talk about how salespeople and companies can Move Beyond Price to put the focus on what your products/services are worth instead of what they will cost. As part of the process, I explain that price is really a signal, telling both buyer and seller how the other values of the proposition being put forth.
The implications of The Drought we find ourselves in as we continue to emerge from the deep recession puts more pressure on sellers to justify their prices and margins. Sellers must be able to answer a very simple, clear question: Why should a buying organization give your products/services a favored status, allowing you to earn higher prices and margins?
Increasingly sellers are failing to have compelling answers to this question. In my experience, the underlying reason for this is because sellers are either unwilling to put forth the effort to offer propositions that are truly different and better than others, or sellers are merely afraid to make a compelling promise.
Companies have a crucial decision they must make:
- Do they want to focus their profit formula on enhancing and growing margin? or
- Do they want to focus their profit formula on growing volume faster than anyone else?
Companies that choose the former must go further and ensure that their value proposition connects more deeply with their customer’s businesses. They must find and/or enhance their ability to make their customers more efficient and effective.
Companies that choose the latter must aggressively eliminate costs within their organizations so they can continue to deliver their products and services faster, cheaper and better than their competition.
Either road is difficult, but today, more than ever, you must make a choice. Straddling these two approaches is simply becoming too precarious and risky to sustain.
To get you started, here are two articles I just read that show how other companies are meeting this challenge.
- USAToday shares insights into how FedEx and UPS are deepening the value proposition and building adjacent business to drive their growth.
- In the recent filing for Facebook’s public offering, founder Mark Zuckerburg shares the Facebook philosophy with what he calls The Hacker’s Way. Every entrepreneur should read this (regardless of how you feel about Facebook or Zuckerburg). My favorite quote in the piece: We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.
What choice are you going to make?
To Break Your Growth Barrier – Sell Through Capacity
Having owned and run multiple small businesses, I know, firsthand, that managing capacity is one of the most difficult challenges facing owners and executives. It’s taken me years of trial and error to learn an important lesson to consistently growing a business – you must sell through capacity.
I’ve learned that capacity is often an illusion at best and an excuse at worst. When small and mid-size companies start thinking about capacity, they take their foot off the proverbial gas pedal.
Two negative things occur when that happens:
- You eliminate your margin for error by doing this. In my experience, executives and (especially) owners tend to see capacity problems before they’re actually there. Then, if by some chance you fail to capitalize on the opportunities before you, you’re suddenly dealing with excess capacity (and possibly higher expenses) and a dead pipeline.
- Even if you are right and you capture your opportunities and get to capacity – you kill your momentum. Once you’re ready to grow again, you have to start all over again with lower margins for error.
Is there danger when you sell through capacity? Absolutely! Frankly, every time I deal with it, it scares the, well, you know what out of me. However, it’s a problem you must deal with if you want to break through your growth barriers.
Is Your Business Ready For Growth?
11 months ago I released my eBook, Successfully Growing In A Recovery. I announced the release of the book with a blog post titled, The Great Recovery. The post turned out to be somewhat controversial, as many readers and business executives expressed their belief that I was, at best, premature in my call.
I tried to remind these executives that, too often, we confuse “recovery” with “expansion.” Recoveries are very bumpy and are quite treacherous. As I share in the book, recoveries can be even more dangerous than recessions if not handled properly.
The main thought I shared was that great companies move before everything is clear. This is the great advantage of a recovery – while most people still see fear and confusion, a few companies will see through that fear and act.
Happily, there were many companies that downloaded the ebook and many of them recorded record-breaking years.
The point of this post is not to congratulate myself for my call. Rather, it’s to point out that the advanced mover advantage is still there, but probably won’t be here for much longer. For those of you that wanted to see more proof of recovery before moving, I’ve got some very good news for you.
The news about the economy is as good as it’s been in five years. Don’t get me wrong, there are still big challenges and barriers facing us; but the opportunities for small and mid-market businesses are plenty.
For those who want some data to back up this claim, here you go:
- David Wessel, economic columnist for The Wall Street Journal, says, “The data is encouraging. Unemployment claims are down to their lowest level in more than three years. Housing starts are up. The stock market is bouncing back. Europe’s last round of bond sales wasn’t a complete disaster.”
- There’s early, encouraging belief that even the housing market is poised for long-term recovery. Gregory Zuckerman, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, shares, “big money is starting to wager on housing. Hedge funds have been buying housing-related investments, betting on a rebound.”
- 2011 finished with a three and a half year low in unemployment claims, and home sales agreements were up 7.3%. Both of these are clear signs of recovery.
- Just yesterday, The Institute for Trend Research (one of the best group of economists I’ve come across) share this observation, “The Purchasing Managers Index 1/12 rate of change rose in December, a positive sign for the economy. Since the October 2011 tentative low is holding, this indicator is providing further evidence that we will likely see growth in US Industrial Production in the latter half of 2012.”
Bear in mind, recoveries are not all rosy (of course, neither are expansions). As I said earlier, there are still many challenges and barriers that could hold back economic growth. Waiting for the “all clear sign,” however, is a guarantee strategy for failure.
Remember, the companies that gain the advantage and enjoy the rewards are the ones that move forward before the herd. It’s not too late to gain that advantage, but time is running out.
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Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
