I'm great at "discovering" new things many years after other people have found them. For example, not long ago I "discovered" Green Day, a 90s punk band that reinvented themselves in the noughties (or whatever you call the last decade) to create a fabulous Grammy winning album, "American Idiot" that has rocketed into my list of top 10 albums.
What's that got to do with sales and marketing?
Not much, except a recurring theme in the album is "Nobody cares." And it's a vital lesson for anyone trying to sell or market anything - because it's true, nobody does care, at least not at first.
If prospects don't know who you are or don't think they have a need for what you sell they don't care one hoot. They don't care about you, your product or service, your people, your awards, your new office, the fact you won a new contract, your existing customers, your product specs, how experienced your people are .... nothing.
What do they care about? Themselves. And, just maybe, what you can do for them.
But what do the great majority of web sites, marketing emails, direct mails, brochures, sales calls and adverisements talk about? Usually all the things that your potential customers DON'T care about.
Don't get me wrong, if you can show a potential customer what's in it for them, and it is something they really want, then they will care. They'll care a lot. If they think you have something they want, only then will they want to know "can I trust these people, are they kosher?"
That's when awards, customer references, product specs, white papers, testimonials, etc become important, to establish credibility - after you have shown them what's in it for them.
So, if your marketing collateral is trying to get someone's attention and make them care, don't talk about yourself, talk about your client, their problems, their needs, their desires. Then, once they are interested, establish credibility.
Remember, the thought process that you, your client and anyone else goes through when they buy something is more or less this;
What is it?
What does it do for me?
Do I need/want it?
How does it do it?
Is it good value?
Can I trust the person selling it to me?
Can I afford it?
If you can answer those questions, in that order, your sales and marketing collateral will be doing better than most. And unlike the Green Day song you won't be walking on the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
Monday, May 27, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Time doesn't fly when you're not having fun
The longest 90 minutes of my life was from 9am to 10.30am on Saturday 15th March 1969. It was a double Physics lesson (i.e. two 45 minute periods back to back) and at 10.30am my classmates and I had permission to leave school early and traverse the 60 miles to Wembley Stadium to watch our local team, third division Swindon Town, face the mighty Arsenal in the League Cup Final.
Those 90 minutes seemed interminable and I can state without a doubt that I learned not one iota that morning.
Even without a football match to distract me, double periods (particularly double Latin), always dragged – due to a combination of learning fatigue, low attention span and boredom.
Back then, as a teenager, I soaked up knowledge - when it was fed to me in digestible chunks 45 minutes at a time. But after an hour my brain got full and my learning capacity dropped off sharply.
So why, as adults, when psychologists tell us our learning capacity is diminished compared to our younger years, do we try to train people in large chunks of complex information in long concentrated bursts? Why do we think we can teach sales skills through a standard course, over one or more extended (and often boring) days, with no follow up?
When I sat my “A” level Chemistry exam (HSC equivalent) I’d spent two years learning in regular 45 minute bursts, with a mixture of listening and hands on practice. I studied my notes, I read the prescribed texts and I performed countless practical experiments. I had access to teachers who could answer questions and coach me when I was stuck.
And I did quite well – but I’m not so sure I would have done nearly as well if I had attended a three day intensive Chemistry course and then been left to my own devices.
But that’s how we often try to impart sales skills. We choose a sales training organisation, we get them to run their standard course that isn’t even tailored to what we sell, we begrudgingly take our salespeople out of the field for three days or so and then we expect them to absorb and learn everything in the course.
What’s even more puzzling is that we expect their behaviour to change.
I’ll let you into a secret. It won’t. It takes much more than that.
Of course, the top performers, the ones who really care, who really want to improve will probably review the materials in their spare time. They will practice what they've learned and they will get some benefit. But they are the ones who would do well anyway - and even then they will only use a small percentage of what they have been “taught”.
But the 80% (or more) who aren’t exceptional will get very little out of most sales training courses conducted in that matter.
Of course, they “should”. They should make more of an effort, they should work harder, they should study in their own time, they should pay more attention, they should take responsibility for their own career, they should shape up or ship out. But they won’t.
When the course finishes, if it’s interesting and grabs their imagination they will truly intend to use everything they have learned - and for a while they might. But their attention will soon be drawn to other things – family, friends, girls, socialising, sport, hobbies – just like my attention was focused on that fabulous League Cup Final on that Saturday long ago.
So how do we help our sales people perform better? Does this mean there is no place for sales training? Not at all. We just need to make it work the way people work. Here’s my recipe for successful sales training.
1. Identify what training each individual needs
If “one size fits all” doesn’t work for socks – how can it possibly work for people? Different people need different training. It’s as much of a waste of time giving training that’s too advanced as it is giving training that’s too basic. More, in fact, because we tend to forget the basics unless we occasionally review them.
To extend the football analogy, while they all play as a team and have some common skills, goalkeepers need different coaching to defenders and midfielders need different training to strikers. Similarly business development managers, account managers, telephone sales people, sales managers, people who sell to banks and people who sell to government have some common needs and some very specific ones.
2. Customise your training to be relevant to what you sell, and to whom
When I attended a two day Tom Hopkins seminar I learned some useful tricks, but examples of how to sell more cars by sending customers birthday cards weren’t terribly relevant to my own job, which was selling high value (i.e. over $500K) software to large corporations. You need to customise training to use your team's own products, services, industry and customers as examples.
3. Run bite sized training
Rather than try to cram everything into a three day course, run regular one or two hour training sessions. Not only is it more time efficient, people will learn more effectively and they will get a chance to…….
4. … DO it as well as learn it.
Which would you rather have had as a teenager – sex education or sex practice? You’d certainly learn more from the latter and it would be a lot more fun. You’d probably even look forward to double lessons.
We learn more by doing than by hearing or seeing. By running regular small sessions your salespeople can practice what they have learned, one thing at a time, especially if they…
5. ...Have a coach
The most famous and best paid people in the world have coaches. When Russell Crowe takes on a new role he has an acting coach, a voice coach, a training coach. Football teams have attacking coaches and defensive coaches, politicians have deportment and presentation coaches.
If you want your salespeople to sell more effectively, they need a coach. This can be their sales manager or it can be an external sales coach. If it is their sales manager then…..
6. ...Get your sales managers to manage and coach, not count and report
Too many sales managers manage numbers, plans, reports and activities. Effective sales managers manage behaviour and teams. They coach and motivate their people.
If your sales managers can do this – great. If not, you need someone who can do this for you.
7. Make it fun
I don’t remember a single thing about that double physics lesson, other than the fact that time doesn’t fly when you’re not having fun.
But I remember the name of every single player on that Swindon Town team that humbled the mighty Arsenal 3-1 that day – appropriately the Ides of March.
I can’t remember the Schroedinger wave equation or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle particularly well, but I know the lyrics to hundreds of songs by heart.
We remember things that make us feel good and we use things we enjoy using. If we make sales training and coaching fun our people will be happier and stay with us much longer – and they will sell like you wouldn’t believe.
Those 90 minutes seemed interminable and I can state without a doubt that I learned not one iota that morning.
Even without a football match to distract me, double periods (particularly double Latin), always dragged – due to a combination of learning fatigue, low attention span and boredom.
Back then, as a teenager, I soaked up knowledge - when it was fed to me in digestible chunks 45 minutes at a time. But after an hour my brain got full and my learning capacity dropped off sharply.
So why, as adults, when psychologists tell us our learning capacity is diminished compared to our younger years, do we try to train people in large chunks of complex information in long concentrated bursts? Why do we think we can teach sales skills through a standard course, over one or more extended (and often boring) days, with no follow up?
When I sat my “A” level Chemistry exam (HSC equivalent) I’d spent two years learning in regular 45 minute bursts, with a mixture of listening and hands on practice. I studied my notes, I read the prescribed texts and I performed countless practical experiments. I had access to teachers who could answer questions and coach me when I was stuck.
And I did quite well – but I’m not so sure I would have done nearly as well if I had attended a three day intensive Chemistry course and then been left to my own devices.
But that’s how we often try to impart sales skills. We choose a sales training organisation, we get them to run their standard course that isn’t even tailored to what we sell, we begrudgingly take our salespeople out of the field for three days or so and then we expect them to absorb and learn everything in the course.
What’s even more puzzling is that we expect their behaviour to change.
I’ll let you into a secret. It won’t. It takes much more than that.
Of course, the top performers, the ones who really care, who really want to improve will probably review the materials in their spare time. They will practice what they've learned and they will get some benefit. But they are the ones who would do well anyway - and even then they will only use a small percentage of what they have been “taught”.
But the 80% (or more) who aren’t exceptional will get very little out of most sales training courses conducted in that matter.
Of course, they “should”. They should make more of an effort, they should work harder, they should study in their own time, they should pay more attention, they should take responsibility for their own career, they should shape up or ship out. But they won’t.
When the course finishes, if it’s interesting and grabs their imagination they will truly intend to use everything they have learned - and for a while they might. But their attention will soon be drawn to other things – family, friends, girls, socialising, sport, hobbies – just like my attention was focused on that fabulous League Cup Final on that Saturday long ago.
So how do we help our sales people perform better? Does this mean there is no place for sales training? Not at all. We just need to make it work the way people work. Here’s my recipe for successful sales training.
1. Identify what training each individual needs
If “one size fits all” doesn’t work for socks – how can it possibly work for people? Different people need different training. It’s as much of a waste of time giving training that’s too advanced as it is giving training that’s too basic. More, in fact, because we tend to forget the basics unless we occasionally review them.
To extend the football analogy, while they all play as a team and have some common skills, goalkeepers need different coaching to defenders and midfielders need different training to strikers. Similarly business development managers, account managers, telephone sales people, sales managers, people who sell to banks and people who sell to government have some common needs and some very specific ones.
2. Customise your training to be relevant to what you sell, and to whom
When I attended a two day Tom Hopkins seminar I learned some useful tricks, but examples of how to sell more cars by sending customers birthday cards weren’t terribly relevant to my own job, which was selling high value (i.e. over $500K) software to large corporations. You need to customise training to use your team's own products, services, industry and customers as examples.
3. Run bite sized training
Rather than try to cram everything into a three day course, run regular one or two hour training sessions. Not only is it more time efficient, people will learn more effectively and they will get a chance to…….
4. … DO it as well as learn it.
Which would you rather have had as a teenager – sex education or sex practice? You’d certainly learn more from the latter and it would be a lot more fun. You’d probably even look forward to double lessons.
We learn more by doing than by hearing or seeing. By running regular small sessions your salespeople can practice what they have learned, one thing at a time, especially if they…
5. ...Have a coach
The most famous and best paid people in the world have coaches. When Russell Crowe takes on a new role he has an acting coach, a voice coach, a training coach. Football teams have attacking coaches and defensive coaches, politicians have deportment and presentation coaches.
If you want your salespeople to sell more effectively, they need a coach. This can be their sales manager or it can be an external sales coach. If it is their sales manager then…..
6. ...Get your sales managers to manage and coach, not count and report
Too many sales managers manage numbers, plans, reports and activities. Effective sales managers manage behaviour and teams. They coach and motivate their people.
If your sales managers can do this – great. If not, you need someone who can do this for you.
7. Make it fun
I don’t remember a single thing about that double physics lesson, other than the fact that time doesn’t fly when you’re not having fun.
But I remember the name of every single player on that Swindon Town team that humbled the mighty Arsenal 3-1 that day – appropriately the Ides of March.
I can’t remember the Schroedinger wave equation or the Heisenberg uncertainty principle particularly well, but I know the lyrics to hundreds of songs by heart.
We remember things that make us feel good and we use things we enjoy using. If we make sales training and coaching fun our people will be happier and stay with us much longer – and they will sell like you wouldn’t believe.
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