Flickr photo courtesy of H.Kopp Delaney

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WHAT’S INTERESTING?

J.D.’s approach to finalizing and publishing the book.

He’s sharing the HTML version of the book, “Getting Results the Agile Way” (htpp://gettingresults.com/wiki/Main_Page), and asking for your feedback to help improve it before finalizing the PDF and print versions. If you read nothing else, read the one-page guide and then take a tour of the Motivation chapter.

THE BUZZ

“Agile Results delivers know-what, know-why and know-how for anyone who understands the value of momentum in making your moments count.” — Dr. Rick Kirschner, bestselling author

QUICK OVERVIEW OF GETTING RESULTS THE AGILE WAY

Agile Results is a way to make the most out of work and life. It’s a simple system for getting results that combines some of the best methods for improving your thinking, feeling, and doing.

WHAT

Agile Results is a simple system for getting meaningful results. It’s a systematic way to achieve both short- and long-term results that works for all aspects of your life. The key to achieving great results in an ever-changing world is learning and responding to change. Existing methods of planning and goal setting are heavy and static, and they just aren’t working anymore. Agile Results provides fresh starts for you day, week, month, and year, to get back on your horse, and version your results, while improving over time.

WHY

Getting results in today’s landscape is tough. Our world changes faster than we can keep up. Worse, we don’t necessarily learn the right skills we need such as time management, focus, or simple productivity.

I created this system as a way to help you.

HOW

By using three stories to drive your day, your week, and your year you take charge of your life and you learn to live life on your terms. By spending your time on the right things, with the right energy, at the right time, with the right approach, you learn to unleash your best. As you learn and respond, you build momentum. This momentum carries you, supporting everything you do.

So please visit “Getting Results the Agile Way,”

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KNOW IT ALL’S VS THINK THEY KNOW IT ALL’S

In my training program and coaching work on Dealing With People You Can’t Stand, I use the label ‘Think-They-Know-It-All’ as shorthand for a person demonstrating this trait or behavior.  Where the Know It All actually knows a lot, the Think They Know It All knows just enough to be dangerous.

Because I know that so many people who don’t know but think they do are just doing what people so often do, my first advice in dealing with them, whether it’s their chronic behavior or it’s become acutely unpleasant,  is to do what may seem unthinkable to you at the time.

GIVE THEM A BREAK

If you ever find yourself dealing with a person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, try this.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.  The way you do it is you make excuses for them. ”I guess you didn’t see the research that came out on this last month,” or “You were probably busy with something else when they studied this and drew a very different conclusion.” or “You may be as surprised as I was to find out that (that) turns out not to be exactly what happened.”  Instead of contradicting them straight out, invent a reason for their not knowing what you know.  They were busy.  They must not have seen.  Nobody must have told them.  This just came in.  Something.  Anything.  Helping them save face helps them face the facts that you’re about to give them.  Giving them an alternative to having to defend themselves keeps them from becoming defensive.

TELL IT LIKE IT IS

If you have data and sources, put it out there.  As my instructors in school used to say, ‘Show me your sources.’ Or as my grandfather might put it, “So where is it written?”   The nice thing about providing evidence is that, even if people don’t follow up to check it out, it adds authority and credibility to what you have to say.  Of course, a person may disagree with your source, but that’s a deeper level of conversation, and at least reality is a way in.

USE JUNK O’ LOGIC

Don’t know your source but know there is one?

Dealing with someone who is intractably determined to keep their foot in their mouth?

Another great escape that you can utilize to great effect  is the old advertising principle of Junk O’ Logic.  This is an advertising principle discovered in the 1950’s, that says you can give most people two unrelated ideas as if they are one idea, and if you congruently present them as if they are one idea, people are usually inclined to make sense of it.  This principle has been used to great effect  in cigarette, beer and auto advertising, and just about everything else besides.   Turn on the TV, open a magazine, look at a billboard, and chances are you’ll be seeing an image that has nothing to do with the product.

HOW TO USE THIS?

Simply take the errant information and hook it together with your information, and act like they are somehow related. This creates a sense of confusion, sends the person on a  trans-derivational search for meaning that will keep them occupied long enough to stop pressing ahead on a road to nowhere.

“Thanks for bringing that up!   You reminded me of an article I read in which…(and provide the new information)”

If your data is compelling, or you sound more authoritative, the person may realize they are out of their information league, and will take the life saver you’ve thrown them.

This works because when people don’t know what they’re talking about, they are less likely to be attached to it.  That’s not always true, particularly in matters of politics and religion.  But in most other areas, it gives you and them a way away from what isn’t so to something that is.  Give people a way to go along with you, chances are they will jump on your bandwagon.

This approach has long-range ramifications too. If people learn through time and consistency that  you do know what you are talking about, they will be less inclined to challenge you.

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If you’re doing tasks such as search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising so you can build a steady stream of traffic on your own, you’re in for a long, hard uphill climb.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to get loads of traffic very quickly – and for free. All you have to do is leverage other people’s traffic and resources.

Here’s how…

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A key consideration for any technology solution revolves around four key pillars. It must provide HIGH business VALUE; have LOW COST relative to the expected business value; generate a RAPID ROI to payback the stakeholder’s investment in the project and carry with it a LOW RISK of failure.

What follows are some ways to best overcome challenges in terms of IT and business executives collaborating on technology projects. Understanding how to empower both IT and business decision makers to collaborate is key to maintaining your competitive advantage.

Why Collaborate?

Collaboration is the key to the long-term success and while it might be difficult at first to implement, IT purchasing decisions should not rest only on the recommendations of the IT department, but rather be an engaged, invested and empowering decision process between business solution users and the IT department who supports them.

Using a race car analogy, you would view the IT people as the very necessary pit crew who know everything about how the car is put together and how it should run. The crew chief is responsible for making sure the pit crew works together to keep the engine in top-performing condition but he’s still not the one driving the car. That’s for the driver and in terms of business it’s the business executives leading the race to get their product to market more expediently and smoothly than their competitors.

The driver has to be able to make split-second decisions and help the car respond proactively to any challenges on the track. But the key is that one cannot win without the other. The pit crew needs the driver and the driver needs the pit crew in order to have a successful team and win the race.

IT and Business Execs Who Focus on Collaboration Succeed

As companies face global competitive challenges it’s vital for them to have both the IT (pit crew) and the business executive (driver) collaborating to beat the competitors in the marketplace (track).

The IT and the business-side have to understand that long-term it’s going to ease everyone’s pain points to work closely together. No longer will all the blame lie in the IT department’s lap. On the business-side this type of collaboration empowers the business executive’s usage of all the tools available to him.

In this race for global market share, IT provides the technical expertise to verify the solution will work in the existing environment while the business unit builds ownership for the product in terms of using the application to its desired end.

A collaborative effort boosts the speed and power of a business’ ability to get products to market. Businesses need to get new products out to the market faster and faster to win their competitive race. The more complex your product – such as industrial equipment or commercial insurance – the more difficult this can be. Providing product information to sales teams, dealers and other channels on their desktop can speed this process. But relying solely on IT to convert the product needs for the business units into a software solution can significantly slow their market response in a time when businesses must be very agile.

Oftentimes companies will throw a decision over the wall to IT and say, “Give me the application that’s going to solve my problem.” However, the real challenge lies in ensuring that both IT and the business-side work together to find the best solution.

Planting the Seed for Collaboration (Who Does What?)

Companies must start by planting a seed in terms of germinating successful collaboration. First plant the seed and assist both sides to understand the benefits of collaboration, because there are two very different objectives that have to come together for success.

On the business unit side, IT’s job is to implement the product knowledge. This includes all the product data, user experience and user interface which impacts how the company sells in the marketplace. All the solutions and the collaboration have to be market-driven and the product side has to deliver what the market wants.

In the past, while it has served companies to develop their own solutions or configurations, it only serves them well in the short term. In the long run, it costs companies more time and money to keep these internal non-collaborative solutions meeting the needs of either constituent.

Take the case of a leading manufacturer of ventilation equipment, with sales of excess in $475 million annually. For this company, it was especially challenging because the business units were trying not only to build a current product but also to introduce new products concurrently. Getting the product knowledge implemented into their sales tool was time-consuming for this company.

Bottlenecks and IT Resolution

Companies frequently incur a bottleneck in the IT department. IT is often tasked to translate product knowledge gathered from different business units and implement it into the sales tool. This can lead to many product errors which have to be tested, reconfigured and solved. It also can cause significant additional added costs due to confusing work instructions, lost time and rework. One of the most significant exposures of incorrect product information is an unhappy customer and the loss of future business from that customer forever.

The challenge lies in effectively explaining to IT the product knowledge so they can get it implemented correctly. In the ventilation equipment company’s case, the product experts were in the business units – not the IT department – so many wasted hours could have been avoided with proactive collaboration on both sides.

If you have IT responsible for everything, then you’re going to have them on the hot seat all the time, and business units won’t always (if ever) truly get the resolution they need. This type of pressure builds a dysfunctional relationship and costs a fortune to the company in terms of productivity and improved business processes.

Instead, a collaborative engagement between both sides offers immediate benefits: it allows IT to control the framework of an application, and allows business units to control the business application itself. This includes having the capability to control the rules, knowledge, and customization of the solution for their specific needs.

Enabling this control lets businesses take ownership and react with speed when new features or functions are required. This is an improvement over describing what you need to IT and hoping they understand and can create the right fit for business units.

Everyone Has a Stake in the Race

Giving the business-side a stake in the process lets them incorporate necessary knowledge including: product rules, product data, how they sell their product, and how they position themselves in the market and with customers.

The most compelling benefit to dual collaboration is that it enables businesses to go to market faster, and be proactively responsive to customer demands.

When companies choose to collaborate, the results can be seen very quickly not only in terms of the whole teams working for the greater good of the customer, but also in terms of exceeding sales and being able to compete more adeptly in the market.

As in NASCAR, it is so in business, collaboration must come from the top down and everyone needs to have a stake in it being successful.

Once everyone takes ownership for their part and knows their roles, all the units can move forward together instead of in a dysfunctional fashion.

Now that’s the way to speed past the checkered flag and win the race in business.

Images sources:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/3855375117/

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Flickr photo courtesy of Reno Lauren

1. Develop a succession plan for your company.

This means get committed to a process or structure of internal management and talent development.

2. Identify individuals within the organization who have the potential to move into leadership positions.

You should be identifying multiple candidates for each position. Don’t be afraid to take some risks in candidate identification. Not all high potential candidates initially present an outgoing and aggressive demeanor (and remember these qualities do not necessarily ensure a good manager.)

3. Provide the identified individuals with opportunities to take on additional projects to demonstrate their skills as well as their ability to learn and grow.

The projects should create the opportunity for the candidates to “live” with the consequences and take responsibility for their actions and decisions.

4. Provide new managers with an internal mentor and an external coach to insure support during the transition process.

This support should be for at least six months to one year. This process is referred to as: transition integration”.

5. Give all new managers a personality and job performance assessment.

This is a valuable tool in identifying emerging leader attributes and potential risk areas. Now you will be able to enable early intervention and prevention and give the most effective support to the new manager.  This is better than the”sink or swim” approach to learning that new managers are often thrown into.

6. Provide all candidates with self-assessment tools and learning opportunities.

Do this both within the organization in the form of added responsibilities and through outside learning opportunities such as conferences and executive education programs, professional memberships.

7. Monitor your new manager’s progress (through the supervisor and mentoring and coaching support) and review your succession plan each year.

Evaluate the success of the current program and the individuals in the program. Improve where necessary and identify and support new leadership candidates.

Be aware that some candidates simply may not be interested in this protracted performance-based approach. They may feel threatened or choose to leave. That’s OK too. The risk of promoting too quicklyand the derailment that could occur is not worth the harm an unprepared manager can bring to the organization.

Talent is to be developed, not anointed.

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Flickr photo courtesy of Empirical Perception

That’s the attitude of many employees these days, or so it would seem from their behavior. Advertising campaigns would have you believe that customers are “kings,” “queens” or the “reason for our existence.” If this were true, why are so many customers angry, irritated or cranky? Customer dissatisfaction is running high and the Internet has given it an outlet for expression.

In today’s world, negative customer experiences seem to outnumber positive ones at an alarming ratio. Customers who have bad experiences become “detractors” in the marketplace. They are highly likely to say something negative to a friend or colleague about their interaction. And if the experiences they have with a company become too difficult or don’t provide enough value for them, the company loses them as a customer and as a potential advocate.

Companies usually lose between 10% to 30% of their customers annually, and even more in the online world.

In this recession economy—with so many people not buying—that number is higher than it’s ever been.  That’s a crisis in almost any company—not enough customers to buy and there is no reason for the company to exist.

Customers leave for many reasons. Some move, some die, some go out of business,  some are wooed away by the competition, but overwhelmingly customers  leave because they simply feel you don’t care enough about them or their business. You may care, but if they perceive you don’t, well then, in their minds—you don’t.

The financial reality is that it takes several interactions with a customer before you’ve even made back the cost of acquiring them. Many customers quit you after only the first or second interaction. It’s impossible to understand the cost of losing a customer without looking carefully at the cost of getting a customer in the first place.

Most companies use a variety of methods to acquire customers, all at a different expense. The cost of an email interaction, a direct mail piece, an advertisement, a phone call, a visit from a salesperson all need to be understood to determine exactly how much that customer costs you to acquire. While individual departments usually have a good understanding of their budgets, it’s rare to find a company that has aggregated its information in a way that gives a good picture of the cost of bringing the customer to the door and getting him or her to buy.

Companies that typically begin the investigation of customer cost find that the number is much higher than they would have guessed. In calculating the cost of getting a customer, remember to include, along with the hard costs of things like mailing and expense accounts, the related softer costs like sales training and meetings, strategy sessions and research.

Add the costs of your time and energy as well, and you could be shocked to discover the total investment of resources involved to get that customer to say “yes” the very first time. Use the newfound knowledge of your “Cost of Acquisition” to determine how much money you simply waste if customers leave before they pay you back for your investment. In most companies, it’s a BIG number.

Let’s take a look at how one financial institution used their “Cost of Acquisition” number to set into action changes that helped them keep more of their customers.

Using as much data as we could get, we helped them determine that it cost approximately $500 to get a new customer to walk in the door. With that $500 as our starting point we then assembled other data that would help us further understand when the new customer actually became financially valuable to the company.

We discovered that an average new customer didn’t become profitable until their second year of doing business with the firm, so we set out to see how many customers got past the point of profitability and grew the relationship and how many closed their accounts and left before that point. We were shocked to find that 22% didn’t even make it through the first year, let alone through the break-even mark, which we determined to be somewhere between 18- 22 months.

Not only was their $500 investment lost but each and every time that customer was serviced, the cost of that activity was lost as well. The next part of our customer-retention project became clear, we had to find a way to help them keep more customers. We asked the question, “What could individual branch managers do to keep the customers long enough for them to get profitable?”

In highly customized workshops, that actually included 10-12 customer “guests,” we began to encourage creative thinking at the local, neighborhood level. We encouraged our traditional branch managers to shift from thinking “risk management” and start thinking “relationship management.” We started by revealing what we had discovered and putting some financial projections together based on an increase of only 5% in their retention rate. The evidence was stunning. Keeping even a small number of the profitable customers they were losing now would boost their bottom-line profits substantially. It didn’t take much more than that to get them to look at their business differently.

We helped them focus their attention, and that of their staffs, on the individual moments of truth and opportunity that occurred thousands of times a day. A “moment of truth” is any time a customer has the opportunity to make a judgment about the quality of the service you are delivering. It’s at that moment that a service giver can choose to pay attention, be present, smile and be genuinely welcoming to the customer. It’s at the moment of truth that we can create the “Wow” experience customers remember, and reinforce the company’s brand in a very visceral way over and over again.

Not all customers are profitable, but the likelihood for profitability increased with the number of products the customer used. The more positive the experience, the more likely the customer was willing to discuss deepening their relationship with the company.

Little by little, moment by moment, month by month we progressed. With attention to building trust, showing respect, expressing appreciation, being competent as well as courteous, we watched as our clients created more relationships that flourished, took root and moved into the profitable zone. Their investment in understanding the true cost of losing so many customers was paying off. Their new attitudes and behaviors paid off in real dollars.

It takes dollars to get a customer in some industries, tens of thousands of dollars in others. Common wisdom these days estimates that the cost of getting a customer is between six and 30 times more than it is to keep one. Do you know what’s it’s costing you?

Do the math.

What does it cost you to get a customer, and what does it cost to keep them?

How long does it take you to break even on the cost of your sales and marketing investments before they become profitable?

If you could keep just a small percentage of the customers you are now losing, what would it mean in real dollars to your company?

It’s well publicized that an increase of only 5% in your customer retention could mean a boost of 25% to 100% on your bottom line. The yield in your business depends on your fixed costs—the higher the fixed cost the higher the boost in profitability. I encourage you to do the math and discover the cost yourself.

What real-dollar advantage will you get from keeping customers happy? What’s the value of a customer’s relationship with you over the potential lifetime of that relationship?

While you are at it, take a look at how many more referrals you’ll get a year if you keep more customers. How much more positive word of mouth will be put out into the market place when you make customers happier? What’s the true lifetime value of a happy customer?

There are hard and soft, tangible and intangible results of losing vs. keeping customers. The company that loses customers has a high customer churn rate and therefore a less-stable customer base. If you are losing 30% a year and replacing 30% a year there are other hidden costs. There is a cost of “training” the customer in your system of doing business; they need more help to do business with you. There is a smaller stable base, only 40%, to use for research, development and forecasting.

Companies that lose a lot of customers spend a lot of money on sales and marketing to replace the ones they lose. That diverts budgets from service and the growing needs of employees. Let’s face it, when you have to worry about replacing customers, you are not worrying about replacing the worn-out chairs in the cafeteria or brightening the office with new paint.

These days when employees see that you don’t invest money on their behalf to make their environment more comfortable and more inviting, they spend your time online browsing the available jobs at other companies. And when they find one, they leave, taking with them valuable knowledge and competitive secrets.  Don’t be fooled. The recession has people staying put longer, but it hasn’t made them any more loyal. It’s incumbent on leadership to create a great place to work if they want employees to go the extra mile for the customer.

It’s important to recognize and remember that a “satisfied” customer is not good enough—up to 80% of the customers who told you they were satisfied on your last survey are just as likely to defect as those who weren’t. Without the “wow” to make the experiences positive, memorable and worthwhile, your future success hangs on the whim of the customer because they have not formed an emotional attachment to you and so they are easy prey for your competitor coming along with a great deal.

The more customers you lose the harder it is on your staff. Morale suffers when customers leave and the new ones require more patience and more time. Companies that lose a lot of customers also tend to lose a lot of employees. There is a direct correlation between customer happiness and employee happiness, customer unhappiness and employee unhappiness. Losing customers impacts every area of your business, especially your ability to grow.

So, have I convinced you that the cost of losing customers (and the advantage of keeping them happy) is high enough to get Executive attention? I certainly hope so. My experience dealing with C-level execs for over a dozen years tells me that most don’t have a good grasp on the impact of customer loss on their ability to grow. Most relegate “customer service” to a department where people get paid less than many others in the company and never spend any time there themselves to understand what goes on. (Although that’s changing, it’s not fast enough.)

There’s never been a time when it’s been more critical for leaders to tackle the “customer-keeping” issues in the business.

This means understanding how to attract the most potentially profitable customers for your business, how to retain those customers by providing more value than they expected and how to nourish and grow the relationships by engaging the customers so you can anticipate their future needs. There’s a huge payback when you focus your attention on how these activities work in your business. Customers who feel valued and appreciated are willing to spend more and to refer others, they say nice things about your company, which gives you more credibility in the eyes of potentially new customers. Win, win, win. (And it stands to reason that employees who feel valued and appreciated are going to be the ones to engage the customers in becoming your raving fans. Another win.)

Most execs don’t know the actual costs of getting or losing customers and so focus their attention on cutting costs rather than creating more value.

Most don’t understand the connection between employee happiness and customer happiness and a company’s ability to grow. Most dismiss “soft skills” as less valuable than technical skills. That’s a big mistake. The more “positive leaders” we train the more the evidence is mounting that by discovering and building on people’s strengths, focusing on what’s right and creating an environment of trust, respect and appreciation, employees respond by bringing their best selves to work. Soft skills yield hard, measurable results.

So here are a few suggestions to rise above what most are doing and help your company keep more customers and keep them happy enough to become your “promoters” in the marketplace.

Broaden your vision.

Stop thinking that “servicing” customers is something you need to do. Start thinking about building customer loyalty. Loyalty is an emotional attachment a customer makes to your company when they feel good about doing business with you. They perceive that you have delivered value in the way they needed it—and that you do it consistently over time.

Know your numbers.

Make sure you develop an ongoing system for tracking the actual cost of getting and keeping customers. Know your breakeven points and put your attention on what it takes to keep more customers profitable.  Really understand the dollar value of taking better care of the customers you have. Pay close attention to spot changing patterns.

Bring it to the C-level.

Make sure that customer loyalty becomes a C-level strategic concern. Develop a strategic plan to build loyalty and affection in both your customer and employee bases. You can’t separate the two. How an employee feels at work impacts their ability (and their choice) to treat customers well. Some companies have begun to appoint “CCO’s” or “CXO’s.” (Chief Customer Officer; Chief Experience Officer).

Get the word out.

Once you have the numbers and the plan, let everyone know what the customer’s lifetime value is, how much it cost to get them and how much it takes to make back the cost of the investment you made. That consciousness alone changes people’s behaviors. Train everyone in the company that the role they play is creating value for the customer. Make sure that the continuous improvement of the customer’s experience is happening everywhere in the company every day. Help everyone get smart about the customer.

Recognize that soft skills yield hard, bankable results.

Too many companies dismiss the real value of good relationship skills. In today’s crowded marketplace, relationship skills—like trust and respect—are a real competitive advantage. Teach people all over the company to master relationship skills.  Ongoing training and learning activities are a must. They’re all customers of each other.

Put your money where your mouth is.

While everyone says the customer is important, only a few savvy, smart companies invest the time, effort and financial resources to do what needs to be done to build a more loyal customer base. Executing a loyalty strategy takes a true understanding of what it takes to create the kinds of experiences the customer will come back for, and tell their friends about. It takes the time and commitment to get educated, a willingness to do business differently and the discipline to break old mindsets and habits. A loyalty strategy takes a real shift in the executive focus from short-term gain to long-term value.

Companies that are courageous enough to challenge their old ways of looking at business and embrace a value creation mindset will grow stronger than those who don’t. The power has shifted from those who sell to those who buy. Keep them happy; they’ll keep you happy.

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A purchasing department is nothing more than a group of individuals assembled for the sole purpose of trying to save money for their company.  The key for you as the salesperson to remember is that even though the purchasing department’s number-one objective is to save money, this doesn’t mean they are out to attack you on price.

Purchasing departments view their role as the supply-chain managers. It is their job to ensure the company does what it is supposed to do in an efficient manner that requires as little capital as possible.  What this means is very simple: The purchasing department’s job is much more than beating up salespeople.  Granted, many purchasing agents do enjoy the thrill of securing a lower price, but that’s no different than you. As a salesperson, you enjoy the thrill of securing a new sale.  Accept the fact that the purchasing agent is doing nothing more than what they are supposed to do.

A few vital points to keep in mind when dealing with a purchasing department:

• Low price may appear to be what they are after, but if they buy something that’s cheap but doesn’t work, then it’s suddenly anything but a “cheap” item.  If it doesn’t work, they now have to replace it. In doing so, they are stuck with a double-cost.  Low price is really secondary to the performance of the item they are buying.
• Rarely does the purchasing department have huge amounts of power in a company. This means they’re not at the top of the food chain. As a result, they can’t afford to upset those above them.  Although they may harass you to lower your price, the last thing they want to do is be harassed by others in the company for not buying what those people wanted them to buy in the first place. In other words, purchasing agents will put up a good fight on the surface, but in the end, they can’t afford to upset anyone in the company—regardless of how much money they think they can save.
• Purchasing agents may say they must have a lower price, but in reality their goal is really to save “x” amount of money—and it doesn’t necessarily have to come from you.  Purchasing agents will always pick on the salespeople who appear to be the weakest and most vulnerable.  This only makes sense, as they are simply trying to manage their time. Therefore, they will secure the savings they need from whomever they believe will give it to them with the least amount of hassle.

Don’t hesitate to call a purchasing agent’s bluff.

Purchasing agents love to posture themselves with salespeople as if they control the salesperson’s career.  All they are really doing is seeing how far they can push you. Until you stand up to them and push back, they’ll keep pushing you to get additional benefits and lower prices.

When a purchasing agent demands a lower price, the only thing they’re doing is going with the demand they know works the best since they know there is almost always flexibility in pricing.  It’s  the strength and confidence of you the salesperson that is going to be the best indicator as to whether or not they’ll be successful in pushing you to lower your price.

Purchasing agents love to bluff people by saying they will buy from one of your competitors if you don’t lower your price.  This actually happens far less than salespeople realize. Upon hearing the threat of going to another supplier, most salespeople will cower and give the purchasing agent what they are after.  Too bad the only thing the salesperson has done is give up profit.   It’s this type of a response that gives salespeople a bad reputation. The entire time the purchasing manager is demanding you lower the price or they will switch, they know full well how expensive switching to a new supplier can be.

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Bill is also President and Chief Creative Officer of international branding firm, davidID (http://www.davidid.com/) and an avid skydiver. In this interview, Bill talks about skydiving, why five words are more important than five thousand and why everyone needs to know the micro-script rules.

Nettie: Bill, tell us a bit about your background.

Bill Schley: I started as a copywriter at Ted Bates back in the 80’s and got into advertising because I thought I was going to make funny dog-food commercials. What I learned was the unique selling proposition from the guys who invented it (Rosser Reeves and Ted Bates), and that changed my life. The unique selling proposition later became the “dominant selling idea.”

That made me realize how important a big idea at the center of any brand communication was paramount—that a big idea could move mountains and move markets.

Nettie: Did you get all your ideas while you were skydiving?

Bill Schley: (Laughs.) I got the biggest idea while I was skydiving, and that idea was that the hardest thing to do in branding was to commit to that one big idea. Committing to one big idea instead of throwing out all 20 features and benefits is as hard as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. That lack of commitment is why Johnny Can’t Brand.  Whereas if you close your eyes and you jump, you’re more committed than you’ve ever been in your life, and an amazing thing happens. You get a focus, clarity, creativity and simplicity that are brand-changing. It’s the universal paradox that the narrower you focus, the wider, farther and deeper your message goes.

Nettie: Can you define heuristics as it relates to marketing?

Bill Schley: A rule of thumb and when human beings are forced with some kind of stressful event or mortal danger, we go right to unconscious thinking that is super fast and gets to the heart of the matter in nanoseconds. That’s the thinking without thinking that’s the unconscious intelligence that cognitive psychologists have been studying for years.

Psychologists tell us that in moments of crisis, we shift to intuition. It’s remarkably fast and accurate—unconscious intelligence that acts before we even have time to think.

The intuition is based on heuristics or rules of thumb, which are just built-in instructions that tell our brain how to act instantly without analyzing a bunch of facts.

Nettie: What are the rules of thumb revealing to us?

Bill Schley: What they’re showing us is the heart of the matter—the real bottom line by telling us to do the opposite of what we’ve always been taught. They make us discard information not collect more of it, to make ourselves smarter. Too much data makes us dumber. The simplest message always wins, because our brains love it that way.

For a hundred years, people have said KISS—keep it simple stupid. We pay lip service to it, but we never do it. And in this hyper-connected world, it is “survival of the simplest.”

Nettie: Can you also talk about how your term “micro-scripts” relates to this?

Bill Schley: I can, and give you the four micro-script rules:

1. It’s no longer important what you say or what people hear.

The only thing that matters is what people repeat after you’ve said it. They won’t repeat anything because you tell them to. They’ll repeat it because they like saying it, and they gain from saying it.  They say it two places: first to themselves, and then to their community.

2. Every screen’s a word-of-mouth machine.

In the old days, there were three mediums, now there is only one, and it’s not the Internet or social networking—those are just mechanical. It’s a brand-new, 50,000-year-old medium called word-of-mouth. We need to position and reframe what word-of-mouth is.

The fact is, people need to realize that all the digital machines in their pockets or palms are just 21^st-century, word-of-mouth machines. Word-of-mouth never went away—it’s just sort of hid for 80 years because TV/radio only went one way. Now that technology goes both ways, it’s caught up to word-of-mouth.  The ultimate equity in marketing is trust. Word-of-mouth flips the relationship with trust on its head. It puts trust at the beginning of the interaction instead of the end.

With word-of-mouth, either trust comes first or there won’t be a relationship.

So to rule #3, where we answer, “What kind of messages do they want to repeat?”

3. The answer is (the rule) they want to repeat “micro-scripts.” Here are some examples.  Remember “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” or “the bridge to nowhere”? These are micro-scripts. It’s any set of words, from one word to a sentence or two—no more than you can fit on a Blackberry screen—that uses metaphors, vivid language or just rhythmic words to verbalize your idea in a way that people like to repeat it.

Micro-scripts are like magic words that have been used by master communicators since time immemorial. Their messages verbalize in a way that’s optimized for our heuristic brains. The truth is we’ve always had them; they’re just more important today than ever.

You might ask, isn’t a micro-script just a catchphrase or a sound bite? I say, yeah, but it’s a very special kind of sound bite. It’s an “idea-bite.” It either tells a whole story or provides a piece of a story that’s already running in my brain.

It’s just enough information to persuade people to act.

Here are more examples: “It’s made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar,” “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” “Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire” and “Airborne works because it was invented by a second-grade teacher.”

The last rule answers the questions,  “What’s the subject of your MS?  What should it be about?”

4. Your micro-script has to be built on a dominant selling idea. The ultimate idea at the center of your communication—the idea of a difference you’re trying to communicate. It’s the ultimate value, the one big advantage you can claim that others can’t. Your single best differentiating attribute.

In marketing terms, it’s your brand positioning, brought to its sharpest edge.

If I was going to apply one big idea to skydiving, it would be, “It’s not like falling it’s like flying.” In micro-scripts I would say, “If you want to fly like Superman, then put on a parachute and take a jump.”

Nettie: Any last tips?

Bill Schley: It all comes down to this. The right FIVE words are more powerful than five thousand. It’s more important than ever to tell your story—you just have to say it in a couple sentences or less.

If you’re branding, it’s more important to work from the ground up—from something incredibly simple—than from 50,000 feet down, even if you have a parachute.

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Responsiveness is the new black and trust is the new currency.

Brands are laid bare in front of millions daily. It doesn’t take long for just one customer to make a major statement about how they feel about a brand and make a major impact on sales too.  Using Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, blogs or YouTube, customers can make their voice heard immediately.  United Airlines’ wake-up call last year is a case in point as is the recent controversy Southwest Airlines faced.

So Many Social Networks and So Little Time

With so many powerful social networking platforms, applications and tools available why are marketers still not getting to their lead generation and sales goals?

Why do companies who have such a strong passion for their customers lose their way to delivering exceptional experiences?

Why does their sales collateral promise so much and at times fail to deliver?

Because product marketing, product management and marketing teams fall into the trap of believing you have to inundate the prospect with features, in-depth data and tons of documents to prove you know what you’re doing.  Carpet bombing prospect’s in-boxes with e-mails to send the message you know what you are doing is ironically proving fatal.

Why?  Because you and I respect people so much more when they listen to us and talk with us instead of talking at us. Too much technology marketing, specifically in software, talks at the prospect, instead of with them.  That is the heart of the potential of social networks – to engage and talk with prospects instead of at them.  And it takes hard work to make relationships count. You can’t earn sales through a deluge of content; it has to come from being genuinely interested in helping a prospect over a major problem.

The First Step: Find the Passion of your Company

There are dozens of excellent software applications out there for managing lead generation and follow-up but unless it reflects the soul – the passion of a company – it is meaningless. What makes all these lead generation apps really work?  It amplifies, projects, makes more visible the passion a company has for owning a problem prospects and customers have.

No software application can compensate for a company that has not decided what it is passionate about.

But for those companies who have chosen a mission – a vision of what problem they will own for any prospect or customer – then lead generation becomes real for them.  Companies struggling to produce leads may not have a software problem; they may have a passion problem.  Defining that passion for service will go a long way to finding good leads, not those captured through attrition from lists. How much more powerful passion is for solving a problem over just endlessly listing off features and data.  Passion puts all that intelligence into motion and makes it relevant.

Lessons Learned

Social networks and the customer immediacy they provide make it imperative that marketing focus on what they have a passion for and what a company can deliver in terms of products and services.  From that vantage point consider these lessons learned:

Sales collateral, both in-print and online, must have a very clear customer it is aimed at.  Surprisingly so much is produced aimed at the “enterprise buyer of IT solutions”.  I have never met anyone who called themselves that.  Get real and if you can’t define the customer, consider cancelling the collateral.

Urgency to own the customer’s pain now and provide a proven solution. Marketers who are making social networks generate leads get this and get their company’s passion for owning the problem out loud and clear.  Features matrices don’t come close; re-think that strategy and go own a problem to gain leads and sales.

What is the collateral’s goal and how does it fit into the marketing strategy?  An excellent question to ask when there are many, many open projects in a marketing department and there seems to be little shared messaging.  Collateral, both online and offline needs to resonate the passion a company has to serve.  It has to be so strong that there is no doubt your company intends to be the global leader in solving the problems and pains you target.

Answers the question of how your products and services are different and proven. Differentiating at the benefits level, not at the speeds and feeds or features level is critical. What odes your company’s passion make it especially good at?  That is the most powerful differentiator there is.

Does your collateral teach or preach?

Go after teaching, and share your insight and intelligence freely as a company to gain thought leadership over time.  Your company will get what it gives when it comes to sharing insight, intelligence and knowledge.  Blog regularly. Give away insights from studies free.  Be open.  All of these tie back to a passion to own a customers’ problem.

Is your collateral evangelist-compatible?

Consider that if you are selling a complex system or service that your sales cycles often involve dozens of people in a variety of roles.

Is your collateral designed to make it easy for those championing you inside a company to carry forward what makes you unique?

Can the online collateral move quickly through social networks?

These are all relevant questions to this point and to evaluate your collateral on.

Design to Inspire and Educate.

The simplicity and clean layouts of social networks are the result of years of usability testing in some cases.  Make sure your offline and online collateral reflects these design criteria.

Bottom line:

Social networks are making companies confront what they really stand for and what they are the most passionate about. It’s best to start thinking about these issues and make your collateral all coordinate to what your company truly stands for.  Owning a problem and being passionate about it will generate far more leads than any other strategy.

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Flickr photo courtesy of the Traveling Librarian

I go to Google. I type in a phrase describing my problem, or perhaps a phrase describing my imagined best solution. I may remember hearing something specific about the best solution—such as a company name, a product name or even a model number. I know that the more specific I am, the faster I will find my best solution, and the faster I can buy the thing, and then go on to do all the other things I have do today.

The search results appear. I scan the listings quickly. If it looks like my best solution is right near the top of the left-hand search results, I don’t bother to look at the paid ads on the right. If my best solution isn’t obviously on top, I scroll down the page a ways. Not too far, but far enough to see if anything obvious jumps out at me.

[Does your web site appear in these results? The ones that appear when the customer types HIS FIRST search phrase into Google?]

I still haven’t studied the ads on the right side of the page, but as I scroll back up, I glance at them, just in case.  Nothing jumps out at me.

I’m not really happy with my search yet. I see that I am getting too many irrelevant results. So I tweak my search phrase slightly. I add one word.

This time, I’m happy with the results. Several sites on the first page look promising, and I start clicking through to them.

The first site I come to is cluttered and confusing. I thought they’d have my solution, but it’s certainly not obvious—and it looks like I’d have to do a lot of digging to find it. I hit the back button.

[Did I just leave your web site?]

I click on the next promising-looking result. This site is better—at least the left navigation panel has categories, and one of the categories looks like it might have my best solution. The rest of the home page, however, isn’t encouraging.  The stuff they’re emphasizing doesn’t matter to me at all.

I click on the category, but the next page is not helpful. There are more categories, and I’m not sure where my best solution might be hiding. I’m beginning to think it isn’t even there. I’m getting a bit discouraged now.

Because I thought my best solution might be here, I type my solution phrase into the search box on the web site.

Zero results are returned. I click away, back to the Google results.

[Is this your web site that I just left?]

I could go on with the buying process, but you get the picture. Customer goes looking, customer gets frustrated. Customer visits your site (assuming you come up in the early phase of his search) and doesn’t find what he’s looking for.  Customer leaves.

What you have just witnessed is the big, fat, web site disconnect.

The disconnect is the gap between what your customer is looking for and what your web site is offering up. The gap is created by what you emphasize, how it’s organized and how the content and tools work for the customer.

My interviews of thousands of customers, and the research conducted by “top task” guru Gerry McGovern, have convinced us that this big, fat, web site disconnect is REAL, you are more than likely participating and it’s costing you sales.

Gerry’s research method is to present dozens of tasks to customers in a carefully designed survey, and to ask those customers to pick their top five tasks. Two things always happen. First, all of the customers surveyed—whether there are 400 or 700—all pick the same top five tasks. Second, the top five tasks they pick are NEVER the same as those the company thinks are important.

I have had the exact same experience, using my qualitative, conversational customer interviewing method. In my case, I’m always looking at the whole picture—including the website. So customers tell me what they think is important in a variety of areas—the web site navigation and content, the product (design, functions, documentation, price), the company’s service, the decisions managers are making (your customers know a lot more about this than you imagine), the salespeople and how they behaved during the buying process, the competition and even the company’s chances for survival.

Before I make these calls, the top managers in the company always tell me what they think the customer thinks is important. Then I interview customers. Again, the list of what they think is important is NEVER the same as my client’s list. So not only is there a big, fat disconnect on the web, but also in many other areas of the company.

Fortunately, once I have the customer data, there are always straightforward solutions that will remove the disconnects—wherever they are. This is true for Gerry, also. When you know what customers want to do on your web site, and you let that drive your decisions, everything starts to work better. Your web site turns into the revenue-generation machine that you always hoped it would be.

We all know why there’s a big, fat disconnect. The customers’ thinking isn’t driving the decisions that are being made by all the company’s decision-makers. The decisions being made are being made for all the wrong reasons.

In large companies, in particular, the navigation is driven by “the hot product” or “the company’s most recent strategic initiative.” This is true on customer sites and on portals created for business partners.

Imagine the business partner, on the phone with a hot customer. The customer has said, “If you can just answer this one question about the really big, expensive program, I’ll give you an order right now.” The business partner does not know the answer to the question; the really big, expensive program is one of 300 or so products that he sells.

He knows that the customer has already tried to find the answer on the really big, expensive program company web site, so he doesn’t bother going there. He goes to the business partner portal and hopefully (and frantically) starts searching for the answer to the question, while he tries to keep the prospect on the phone with boilerplate small talk.

But the navigation is not organized by product. It’s organized according to the “packages” that the company selling the really big, expensive program has created, some of which include the really big, expensive program. Worse, when he first comes in, he sees that the site is now dominated by the latest go-green initiative.

Still stalling for time, he resorts to asking the customer questions while furiously typing and mousing.  The Partner types really big, expensive program and a word that relates to the customer’s question into the search box.

He gets 1,299 results, and a quick scan shows him that he’s not going to find his answer anytime soon.

By now he’s run out of small talk, and he and the customer both know that he doesn’t have the answer and he hasn’t found the answer. (Customers can always tell when salespeople are trying to find the answer— or doing their email— while they are supposedly talking to them).

The business partner knows that he is losing a major opportunity, because that customer will call a different business partner the minute he hangs up, and if that business partner has the answer, that business partner will get the sale.

Answers matter.

Answers are where sales come from.

Tasks matter.

Tasks are how people get to the answers, and answers turn into sales.

The only way to remove the big, fat disconnect—on your web site, and between the buyer and those who sell for you—is to know what your customer cares about, the questions she has, and what she wants to do on your web site. Your customers are the only people who can give you that knowledge.

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Flickr photo courtesy of Eddi 07

“Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.” Disraeli

Is there Music in Your Life?

As a counselor and caregiver, I am suggesting that finding “music” for yourself will renew and reenergize your spirits, as well as create a bridge to connect more comfortably with your clients and the persons they or you are now responsible for.

“Keep the music playing” is a phrase I often say signing off to friends in email or conversation. Taking this opportunity to consider how music can make a positive difference in attitudes and results, I decided to ask others what it meant to them.

“A metaphor for keeping all of the wonderful colorful parts of your life moving forward” said Susan Muscarella, smiling at the thought and not minding the interruption. As executive director of the Jazz School in Berkeley (http://jazzschool.com/) perhaps you might expect such insight. However, delighting in what she so easily articulated, I became energized at considering the positive difference “music” – whatever shape it might take, in “life moving forward.”

As a career counselor, I learned early on that the presenting problem might be masking the real issue and what a client doesn’t tell you may actually be key to getting “unstuck.” Client LeeEllen Shoemaker, middle aged, frustrated and hating her work, scared she would have to do it forever, didn’t reveal what she secretly wished until I quietly asked near the end of our session:   “LeeEllen, what is your passion?”  Searching my face and reluctant to tell me, she finally said,  “I am a tunnel singer.” That moment changed both our lives. She expected me to say: “What’s that?”, but somehow I “got it” and excitedly blurted all the things I could imagine her doing in the future, singing and playing her Tibetan singing bowl in tunnels all over the world, making interesting CDs and more. To start, I suggested that she simply request to restructure her current job so she could sing in various locations early in the morning. She was most surprised that her bosses agreed. Neither of us could have imagined at that moment that she would soon be singing in tunnels in Golden Gate park, the Marin Headlands, Santa Cruz, creating a website, cutting CD’s and sought after for nightclub spots and interviews on TV and radio. Now suffering from a life changing neurological voice disorder, Spasmodic Dysphonia (http://www.dysphonia.org/\), she has developed computer skills to create music and digital storytelling  to remake her second career into a successful third one that continues to nurture herself and others.

A reviewer of her latest CD, Cenote, said: “a stunningly beautiful environment for the listener to immerse themselves in, an environment that she creates with only her voice and the space itself – a truly wonderful and beautiful sound, the sound of realization and connection and epiphany…(Shoemaker, http://www.tunnelsinger.com/)”.

My “keep the music playing” inquiry brought similar responses from a very diverse group of individuals.

• “To me it means keep trying, never give up, go with the flow and keep your focus.” M. H., educator, philanthropist, sought after board member, caring valiantly for her terminally ill husband with a rare pancreatic cancer.

• “Keep the juices flowing! Keep your courage up! Keep goals in front of you, unhappiness behind you. Remember there are only two lessons in life: Love and Fear! Choose love, and keep the music playing! ” – W.S., management consultant living in Lithuania far away from family and friends.

• “Forget the bad times, remember the good times even if just for a little while…music provides a wonderful release and escape -  a very healing force.” – J. G., a musician, striving to support himself with what he loves most.

• “Whatever music inspires people to do, it means “Do it”, “Be alive!”; “Be happy!”; “Be energetic!,”” – T. B., an IT professional balancing difficult relationships, a full time job, and playing with a band.

• “Keep the inspiration going in your life. Keep doing at least a little of what you care about most.” – D. S., a client who later disclosed that he played guitar and created political songs which he has used at work functions – now considering how it might still be fun but also profitable.

• “Music embraces us in an aura of hope and security. Even if heard during not too pleasant times, it evokes sweet melancholy rather than pain. ” – E. L., an educator, early retired to take care of her gravely ill mother full time.

After much introspection, a highly respected career professional, Judith Grutter, shared her special insights as caregiver to her beloved husband dying from cancer. Metaphorically, using her strengths to research options and pull together resources was what she knew she could do to “keep the music playing.” Interestingly, although an accomplished musician herself, she thought her accomplishments primarily an intellectual exercise. She clearly identified her husband as the one who thrived on music. Often preferring National Public Radio to music myself, I understood when she wrote in her e-mail, “I think I get from listening to ideas what Bill got from listening to music. I can listen to NPR and watch public television indefinitely, and just enjoy the words I’m hearing and the ideas they represent. I live with the memory of joy in music, and constantly find music in how people express themselves around what they believe in” (Grutter, http://www.gsconsultants.net.)

The expression, “Keep the music playing!” was undoubtedly inspired by the first line from the song, How Do You Keep the Music Playing? (Bergman). “How do you keep the music playing?, how do you make it last?, how do you keep the song from fading too fast?” When I am driving with enough time to reflect, tears will sometimes well up from nowhere – related to music somehow. Trying to understand this powerful connection, I remember my musical mother and father who often dealt with their stress as young parents by “playing a tune” or inviting a “jam session” with a couple of friends for evening entertainment and diversion. Their lives were cut short when they were in their early 40’s by a head-on collision. I have kept them “alive” and fresh in memory, through the music of the 30’s and 40’s they enjoyed most.

I learned early that music could bring comfort to uncertain and difficult moments. As a baby during the WWII blackouts in downtown Los Angeles, I can actually recall my parents playing piano and clarinet throughout the night as planes overhead reflected the uncertainty of an enemy attack. Through the years, I would hear my traveling salesman father, who never got to pursue music as a career, say after a long hard day, “Ruth, let’s play a little tune.” At his untimely death, without words, my 40-year-old mother, who barely survived the accident for three more years, would play the piano, soothing her fears and sadness with tunes like I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues (Arlen). From her example, when my husband barely survived a massive heart attack, still facing the possibility of losing him, the same tunes came to my head and the fingers seemed to express on the piano what needed to be released even as the roof was leaking and he was still hospitalized in grave danger. Playing Here’s that Rainy Day (Burke) became an instant comfort.  Imagining 80-year-old parents playing music along with my bass sax-playing husband has brought a certain amount of joy that replaces sadness at their early passing.

As a counselor and caregiver, I suggest that finding “music” for yourself will renew and reenergize your spirits, as well as create a bridge to connect more comfortably with your clients and the persons they or you are now responsible for.

The ideas presented here began only as a whim after I was listening on NPR to Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain (date) describe some of his patients and what the brain does with music. From his book, I was reminded that “all of us, with few exceptions, can perceive music, tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic contours, harmony, and perhaps most elementally, rhythm (Sacks: p xi).” I also learned that “Musical therapy is often possible because musical perception, musical sensibility, musical emotion, and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory have disappeared (Elliott Ross, quoted in Sacks, p337.).”   “Music of the right kind can serve to orient and anchor a patient when almost nothing can (Sacks, p.337).”

What the experts say:

The idea is not for you to become a music therapist. Those professionals who can be accessed through their professional association, http://www.musictherapy.org/, can often be reimbursed when medically prescribed.

Intellectually, it makes sense that music is effective for the caregiver as well as the one being cared for. Music therapists often use music with the elderly to increase or maintain their level of physical, mental and social/emotional functioning. The sensory and intellectual stimulation of music can help maintain a person’s quality of life.

Therapists tell us:

• Music provides a structure; it organizes our actions and thoughts.
• Music provides sensory stimulation, it is highly motivating and optimizes our attention.
• Music is pleasurable: it provides a sense of success and enhances mood.
• Music is processed in both hemispheres of the brain; it stimulates cognitive functioning and facilitates the development of language skills.
• Music is easily adaptable to individual differences in preference and ability.
• Musical competence can be intact even when other competences are lost or poorly developed.
• Music connects us to our inner strengths and the world around us.
• Music enables us to connect with parts of ourselves we might not often access and to connect with other people without using language ( http://redwoodmusictherapy.com/) .

Working with autistic individuals and those with Alzheimer’s, it is helpful to consider the following therapeutic characteristics:

• Music is easily adapted to, and can be reflective of, a person’s abilities.
• Music captivates and maintains attention – it stimulates and utilizes many parts of the brain.
• Music structures time in a way that we can understand (“that’s the last verse – my exercise session is almost over!”).
• Music provides a meaningful, enjoyable context for repetition.
• Music provides a social context — it sets up a safe, structured setting for verbal and nonverbal communication.
• Music is an effective memory aid.
• Music supports and encourages movement.
• Music taps into memories and emotions.
• Music — and the silences within it — provide nonverbal, immediate feedback.
• Music is success-oriented — people of all ability levels can participate. (http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/musictherapy.php).

Research has revealed that:

• Music therapy reduces depression among older adults.
• Music experiences can be structured to enhance social/emotional skills, assist in recall and language skills and decrease problem behaviors.
• Music tasks can be used to assess cognitive ability in people with Alzheimer’s Disease.
• Music is effective in decreasing the frequency of agitated and aggressive behaviors for individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias.

• Individuals in the late stages of dementia respond to and interact with music. (http://www.musictherapy.org/factsheets/MT%20Alzheimers%202006.pdf).

I have heard it suggested that perhaps we respond to soothing music at various stages in life because we were influenced by our mother’s heartbeat in the safe and protective environment of the womb. For sure, music is a significant mood-changer and reliever of stress, and can work on many levels at once.  Of course, forcing yourself to listen to music you don’t like might create more stress instead of alleviate it.

Activities:

Here are some ideas on how you or a client can use music as a way to connect with the person for whom you are caring.

For Yourself:

• To wash away stress, try taking a 20-minute “sound bath.” Put some relaxing music you enjoy on your stereo, then lie in a comfortable position on a couch or on the floor near the speakers. For a deeper experience, wear headphones to avoid distraction.
• Choose music with a slow rhythm – slower than the natural heartbeat which is about 72 beats per minute. Music that has repeating or cyclical pattern is found to be effective in most people.
• As the music plays, allow it to wash over you, rinsing off the stress from the day. Focus on your breathing, letting it deepen, slow and become regular. Concentrate on the silence between the notes in the music; this keeps you from analyzing the music and makes relaxation more complete.
• If you need stimulation after a day of work, go for a faster music rather than slow calming music.
• When going gets tough, go for a music you are familiar with – such as a childhood favorite or favorite oldies. Familiarity often breeds calmness.
• Take walks with your favorite music playing on the walkman. Inhale and exhale in tune with the music. Let the music takes you. This is a great stress reliever by combining exercise (brisk walk), imagery and music.
• Listening to the sounds of nature, such as ocean waves or the calm of a deep forest, can reduce stress  (Music Therapy, http://holisticonline.com/Stress/stress_music-therapy.htm).
• iTunes can be a way to use your computer to copy favorite CDs and create your own collection of CDs for your car or to download onto an IPod. It is remarkably easy to import your favorite CD’s. Consider becoming reacquainted with the instrument of your youth. Although not yet successful in being able to play, I have found delight in taking group jazz piano classes at the local community college and the Jazz School in Berkeley and am considering private lessons. Somehow I feel as if I am preparing for something I will need in the future to make my later years more joyful.

For dealing with the family member with Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Autism, etc.: Discover the songs that mean something to your loved one which becomes something to talk about, sing together, and relieve your own stress with their circumstances.  I marveled how aunt Rhoda with MS always smiled through the constant pain she endured for 15 years.  I found tapes of music she liked that she could listen to through headsets at night.  She said the music helped drown the pain.

For clients: Consider that music might be important in their lives. You might want to help them make a connection to using music, either to support what they are doing professionally, or to reduce stressful situations and people.

In Conclusion:

Keep the music playing!!!!!

REFERENCES

Arlan, H., (1932). I Got a Right to Sing the Blues, (also wrote Somewhere over the Rainbow).

American Music Therapy Association, Inc. Silver Spring, Maryland, retrieved 8/1/08 @ http://www.musictherapy.org/.

American Music Therapy Association, Inc., retrieved 8/26/08:  www.musictherapy.org/factsheets/MT%20Alzheimers%202006.pdf.

Bergman, A. and Bergman, M.(1982) How Do You Keep the Music Playing? Song lyrics, WB Music Corp, NY, NY.

Burke, J.; Van Heusen. J. (1953).  Here’s That Rainy Day.   Amsco Publications. (AM43175)

Redwood Music Therapy retrieved August 1, 2008:  http://redwoodmusictherapy.com/.

Grutter, J., Director of Training, GS Consultants, MBTI and Strong Interest Inventory qualifying training. South Lake Tahoe, CA.  Retrieved 8/29/08:  http://www.gsconsultants.net.

Music Therapy. Retrieved on 8/6/08: http://holisticonline.com/Stress/stress_music-therapy.htm.

Sacks, O. (2007) Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain.  Alfred A. Knopf , NY, (p xi;337).

Shoemaker, L., “The Tunnel Singer, Cenote” is her comeback disc after an absence of six years imposed by a throat condition that took away her ability to sing. Retrieved 8/29/08: http://www.tunnelsinger.com/

Additional resources:

Brotons, M. & Marti, P. (2003). Music therapy with Alzheimer’s patients and their family caregivers; a pilot project. Journal of Music Therapy 40(2), 138-150.

Gregory, D. (2002). Music listening for maintaining attention of older adults with cognitive impairments. Journal of Music Therapy 39 (4)244-264.

National Autism Association. Retrieved 8/2/08: http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/musictherapy.php.

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What are the characteristics that make copy effective? Why does one ad make a lasting impression and sell merchandise, while another falls flat and doesn’t generate enough revenue to pay its own cost? What’s the secret?

Virtually all persuasive copy contains the eight elements described in this article. The successful ad:

1. Gains attention
2. Focuses on the customer
3. Stresses benefits
4. Differentiates you from the competition
5. Proves its case
6. Establishes credibility
7. Builds value
8. Closes with a call to action

All ads do not have all eight characteristics in equal proportions. Depending on the product, some of these elements will be dominant in your ad; others subordinate.

Let’s take telephone service as an example. If you are AT&T, MCI, or Sprint, you have a long track record of success and a well-established reputation. Therefore, you will be naturally strong in elements five and six (proving your case and establishing your credibility).

A new telephone services provider, on the other hand, does not have a track record or reputation; therefore, these two elements will not be the dominant themes in the copy. Instead, the strongest element might be number three (benefits the service offers customers) or perhaps number four (differentiation in service resulting from superior technology).

Each product or service has natural strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are emphasized and the weaknesses de-emphasized. But all eight elements must be present to some degree, or the ad won’t work.

Here are the eight elements of persuasion discussed in a bit more detail, with examples of how to achieve each in your copy.

Element #1. Gain attention.
If an ad fails to gain attention, it fails totally. Unless you gain the prospect’s attention, he or she won’t read any of your copy. And if the prospect doesn’t read your copy, he or she won’t receive the persuasive message you’ve so carefully crafted.

There are numerous ways to gain attention. Sex certainly is one of them. Look at the number of products—abdominal exercises, health clubs, cars, Club Med, clothes, beer, soft drinks, chewing gum—that feature attractive bodies in their ads and commercials. It may be sexist or base, but it works.

Similarly, you can use visuals to get prospects to pay attention. Parents (and almost everyone else) are attracted to pictures of babies and young children. Puppies and kittens also strike a chord in our hearts. Appealing visuals can get your ad noticed.

Since so much advertising is vague and general, being specific in your copy sets it apart from other ads and creates interest. A letter promoting collection services to dental practices begins as follows:

“How we collected over $20 million in unpaid bills over the past 2 years for thousands of dentists nationwide”

Dear Dentist:

It’s true.

In the past 2 years alone, IC Systems has collected more than $20 million in outstanding debt for dental practices nationwide.

That’s $20 million these dentists might not otherwise have seen if they had not hired IC Systems to collect their past-due bills for them.

What gains your attention is the specific figure of $20 million dollars. Every collection agency promises to collect money. But saying that you have gotten $20 million in results is specific, credible, and memorable.

Featuring an offer that is free, low in price, or unusually attractive is also an effective attention-getter. A full-page newspaper ad from Guaranteed Term Life Insurance announces, “NOW… $1 a week buys Guaranteed Term Life Insurance for New Yorkers over 50.” Not only does the $1 offer draw you in, but the headline also gains attention by targeting a specific group of buyers (New Yorkers over 50).

You know that in public speaking, you can gain attention by shouting or talking loudly. This direct approach can work in copy, especially in retail advertising. An add for Lord & Taylor department store proclaims in large, bold type: STARTS TODAY… ADDITIONAL 40% OFF WINTER FASHIONS.” Not clever or fancy, but of interest to shoppers looking to save money.

Another method of engaging the prospect’s attention is to ask a provocative question. Bits & Pieces, a management magazine, begins its subscription mailing with this headline: “What do Japanese managers have that American managers sometimes lack?” Don’t you want to at least read the next sentence to find the answer.

A mailing for a book club has this headline on the outer envelope:

Why is the McGraw-Hill Chemical Engineers’ Book Club giving away—practically for FREE—this special 50th Anniversary Edition of PERRY’S CHEMICAL ENGINEERS’ HANDBOOK?

To chemical engineers, who know that Perry’s costs about $125 per copy, the fact that someone would give it away is indeed a curiosity—and engineers, being curious people, want to get the answer.

Injecting news into copy, or announcing something that is new or improved, is also a proven technique for getting attention. A mailing offering subscriptions to the newsletter Dr. Atkins’s Health Revelations has this headline on the cover:

“Here Are Astonishing Nutritional Therapies and Alternative Treatments You’ll Never Hear About From the Medical Establishment, the FDA, Drug Companies or Even Your Doctor…”

3 decades of medical research breakthroughs from the Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine… revealed at last!

The traditional Madison Avenue approach to copy—subtle word play and cleverness—often fails to get attention because many people reading the ad either don’t get it, or if they do get it, they don’t think it’s that funny (or they think it’s funny but that doesn’t compel them to read the ad or buy the product). A newspaper ad for New Jersey hospital, promoting its facilities for treating kidney stones without surgery (ultrasonic sound waves are used to painlessly break up and dissolve the stone), carried this headline:

The End of the Stone Age.

Clever? Yes. But as former kidney stone patients, we can tell you that having kidney stones is not a fun, playful subject, and this headline misses the mark. The kidney stone sufferer wants to know he can go to his local hospital, get fast treatment, avoid an operation and a hospital stay, have the procedure be painless, and get rid of the kidney stones that are causing his current discomfort. Therefore, the headline,

Get Rid of Painless Kidney Stones—Without Surgery!

while less clever, is more direct, and works better with this topic and this audience.

Element #2: Focus on the customer.
When writing copy, start with the prospect, not with the product. Your prospects are interested primarily in themselves — their goals, their problems, their needs, their hopes, their fears, their dreams and aspirations. Your product or service is of secondary importance, the degree of concern being determined by the potential for the product or service to address one of the prospect’s wants or needs, or solve one of their problems.

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Author JoAnna Brandi, the "Customer Care Lady"

Another customer walks out of the door or hangs up the phone vowing never to return to your place of business again. What’s the big deal? You can’t please everyone, right? There’s more where they came from, right?

That’s the attitude of many employees these days, or so it would seem from their behavior. Advertising campaigns would have you believe that customers are “kings”, “queens” or the “reason for our existence.” If this were true, why are so many customers angry, irritated or cranky? Customer dissatisfaction is running high and the Internet has given it an outlet for expression.

In today’s world negative customer experiences seem to outnumber positive ones at an alarming ratio. Customers who have bad experiences become ‘detractors’ in the marketplace. They are highly likely to say something negative to a friend or colleague about their interaction. And if the experiences they have with a company become too difficult or don’t provide enough value for them, the company loses them as a customer and as a potential advocate.

Companies usually lose between 10% – 30% of their customers annually, and even more in the online world. In this recession economy – with so many people not buying – that number is higher than it’s ever been.  That’s a crisis in almost any company – not enough customers to buy and there is no reason for the company to exist.

Customers leave for many reasons. Some move, some die, some go out of business,  some are wooed away by the competition, but overwhelmingly customers  leave because they simply feel you don’t care enough about them or their business. You may care, but if they perceive you don’t, well then, in their minds – you don’t.

The financial reality is that it takes several interactions with a customer before you’ve even made back the cost of acquiring them. Many customers quit you after only the first or second interaction. It’s impossible to understand the cost of losing a customer without looking carefully at the cost of getting a customer in the first place.

Most companies use a variety of methods to acquire customers, all at a different expense. The cost of an email interaction, a direct mail piece, an advertisement, a phone call, a visit from a sales person all need to be understood to determine exactly how much that customer costs you to acquire. While individual departments usually have a good understanding of their budgets, it’s rare to find a company that has aggregated its information in a way that gives a good picture of the cost of bringing the customer to the door and getting him or her to buy.

Companies that typically begin the investigation of customer cost find that the number is much higher than they would have guessed. In calculating the cost of getting a customer remember to include, along with the hard costs of things like mailing and expense accounts, the related softer costs like sales training and meetings, strategy sessions and research.

Add the costs of your time and energy as well, and you could be shocked to discover the total investment of resources involved to get that customer to say “Yes” the very first time. Use the newfound knowledge of your “Cost of Acquisition” to determine how much money you simply waste if customers leave before they pay you back for your investment. In most companies, it’s a BIG number.

Let’s take a look at how one financial institution used their “Cost of Acquisition” number to set into action changes that helped them keep more of their customers.

Using as much data as we could get, we helped them determine that it cost approximately $500 to get a new customer to walk in the door. With that $500 as our starting point we then assembled other data that would help us further understand when the new customer actually became financially valuable to the company.

We discovered that an average new customer didn’t become profitable until their second year of doing business with the firm, so we set out to see how many customers got past the point of profitability and grew the relationship and how many closed their accounts and left before that point. We were shocked to find that 22% didn’t even make it through the first year, let alone through the break-even mark, which we determined to be somewhere between 18- 22 months.

Not only was their $500 investment lost but each and every time that customer was serviced, the cost of that activity was lost as well. The next part of our customer retention project became clear, we had to find a way to help them keep more customers. We asked the question, “What could individual branch managers do to keep the customers long enough for them to get profitable?”

In highly customized workshops, that actually included 10 – 12 customer “guests,” we began to encourage creative thinking at the local, neighborhood level. We encouraged our traditional branch managers to shift from thinking “risk management” and start thinking “relationship management.” We started by revealing what we had discovered and putting some financial projections together based on an increase of only 5% in their retention rate. The evidence was stunning. Keeping even a small number of the profitable customers they were losing now would boost their bottom line profits substantially. It didn’t take much more than that to get them to look at their business differently.

We helped them focus their attention, and that of their staffs, on the individual moments of truth and opportunity that occurred thousands of times a day. A ‘moment of truth’ is anytime a customer has the opportunity to make a judgment about the quality of the service you are delivering. It’s at that moment that a service giver can choose to pay attention, be present, smile and be genuinely welcoming to the customer. It’s at the moment of truth that we can create the “Wow” experience customers remember, and reinforce the company’s brand in a very visceral way over and over again.

Not all customers are profitable, but the likelihood for profitability increased with the number of products the customer used. The more positive the experience, the more likely the customer was willing to discuss deepening their relationship with the company.

Little by little, moment by moment, month by month we progressed. With attention to building trust, showing respect, expressing appreciation, being competent as well as courteous, we watched as our clients created more relationships that flourished, took root and moved into the profitable zone. Their investment in understanding the true cost of losing so many customers was paying off. Their new attitudes and behaviors paid off in real dollars.

It takes dollars to get a customer in some industries, tens of thousands of dollars in others. Common wisdom these days estimates that the cost of getting a customer is between six and thirty times more than it is to be to keep one.

Do you know what’s it’s costing you?

Do the math. What does it cost you to get a customer, and what does it cost to keep them?

• How long does it take you to break even on the cost of your sales and marketing investment before they become profitable?
• If you could keep just a small percentage of the customers you are now losing, what would it mean in real dollars to your company?

It’s well publicized that an increase of only 5% in your customer retention could mean a boost of 25% – 100% on your bottom line. The yield in your business depends on your fixed costs – the higher the fixed cost the higher the boost in profitability. I encourage you to do the math and discover the cost yourself.

What real dollar advantage will you get from keeping customers happy?

What’s the value of a customer’s relationship with you over the potential lifetime of that relationship?

While you are at it take a look at how many more referrals you’ll get a year if you keep more customers. How much more positive word of mouth will be put out into the market place when you make customers happier? What’s the true lifetime value of a happy customer?

There are hard and soft, tangible and intangible results of losing vs. keeping customers. The company that loses customers has a high customer churn rate and therefore a less stable customer base. If you are losing 30% a year and replacing 30% a year there are other hidden costs. There is a cost of ‘training’ the customer in your system of doing business; they need more help to do business with you. There is a smaller stable base, only 40%, to use for research, development, forecasting.

Companies that lose a lot of customers spend a lot of money on sales and marketing to replace the ones they lose. That diverts budgets from service and the growing needs of employees. Let’s face it, when you have to worry about replacing customers, you are not worrying about replacing the worn out chairs in the cafeteria, or brightening the office with new paint.

These days when employees see that you don’t invest money on their behalf to make their environment more comfortable and more inviting, they spend your time on line browsing the available jobs at other companies. And when they find one, they leave, taking with them valuable knowledge and competitive secrets.  Don’t be fooled. The recession has people staying put longer but it hasn’t made them any more loyal. It’s incumbent on leadership to create a great place to work if they want employees to go the extra mile for the customer.

It’s important to recognize and remember that a “satisfied” customer is not good enough – up to 80% of the customers who told you they were satisfied on your last survey are just as likely to defect as those who weren’t. Without the “Wow” to make the experiences positive, memorable and worthwhile your future success hangs on the whim of the customer because they have not formed an emotional attachment to you and so they are easy prey for your competitor coming along with a great deal.

The more customers you lose the harder it is on your staff. Morale suffers when customers leave and the new ones require more patience and more time. Companies that lose a lot of customers also tend to lose a lot of employees. There is a direct correlation between customer happiness and employee happiness, customer un-happiness and employee un-happiness. Losing customers impacts every area of your business, especially your ability to grow.

So, have I convinced you that the cost of losing customers (and the advantage of keeping them happy) is high enough to get Executive attention? I certainly hope so. My experience dealing with C-level execs for over a dozen years tells me that most don’t have a good grasp on the impact of customer loss on their ability to grow. Most relegate “customer service” to a department where people get paid less than many others in the company and never spend any time there themselves to understand what goes on. (Although that’s changing – it’s not fast enough.)

There’s never been a time when it’s been more critical for leaders to tackle the “customer-keeping” issues in the business.

This means understanding how to attract the most potentially profitable customers for your business, how to retain those customers by providing more value than they expected, how to nourish and grow the relationships by engaging the customers so you can anticipate their future needs. There’s a huge payback when you focus your attention on how these activities work in your business. Customers who feel valued and appreciated are willing to spend more and to refer others, they say nice things about your company which gives you more credibility in the eyes of potentially new customers. Win, win, win. (And it stands to reason that employees who feel valued and appreciated are going to be the ones to engage the customers in becoming your raving fans. Another win.)

Most execs don’t know the actual costs of getting or losing customers and so focus their attention on cutting costs rather than creating more value.

Most don’t understand the connection between employee happiness and customer happiness and a company’s ability to grow. Most dismiss “soft skills” as less valuable than technical skills. That’s a big mistake. The more “Positive Leaders” we train the more the evidence is mounting that by discovering and building on people’s strengths, focusing on what’s right, and creating an environment of trust, respect and appreciation, employees respond by bringing their best selves to work. Soft skills yield hard, measurable results.

So here are a few suggestions to rise above what most are doing and help your company keep more customers and keep them happy enough to become your “promoters” in the marketplace.

Broaden your vision.

Stop thinking that “servicing” customers is something you need to do. Start thinking about building customer loyalty. Loyalty is an emotional attachment a customer makes to your company when they feel good about doing business with you. They perceive that you have delivered value in the way they needed it – and that you do it consistently over time.

Know your numbers.

Make sure you develop an ongoing system for tracking the actual cost of getting and keeping customers. Know your breakeven points and put your attention on what it takes to keep more customers profitable.  Really understand the dollar value of taking better care of the customers you have. Pay close attention to spot changing patterns.

Bring it to the C-level.

Make sure that customer loyalty becomes a C-level strategic concern. Develop a strategic plan to build loyalty and affection in both your customer and employee bases. You can’t separate the two. How an employee feels at work impacts their ability (and their choice) to treat customers well. Some companies have begun to appoint “CCO’s” or “CXO’s.” (Chief Customer Officer; Chief Experience Officer)

Get the word out.

Once you have the numbers and the plan, let everyone know what the customer’s lifetime value is, how much it cost to get them and how much it takes to make back the cost of the investment you made. That consciousness alone changes people’s behaviors. Train everyone in the company that the role they play is creating value for the customer. Make sure that the continuous improvement of the customer’s experience is happening everywhere in the company every day. Help everyone get smart about the customer.

Recognize that soft skills yield hard bankable results.

Too many companies dismiss the real value of good relationship skills. In today’s crowded marketplace, relationship skills – like trust and respect – are a real competitive advantage. Teach people all over the company to master relationship skills.  Ongoing training and learning activities are a must. They’re all customers of each other.

Put your money where your mouth is.

While everyone says the customer is important, only a few savvy, smart companies invest the time, effort and financial resources to do what needs to be done to build a more loyal customer base. Executing a loyalty strategy takes a true understanding of what it takes to create the kinds of experiences the customer will come back for, and tell their friends about. It takes the time and commitment to get educated, it take a willingness to do business differently, the discipline to break old mindsets and habits. A loyalty strategy takes a real shift in the executive focus from short term gain to long term value.

Companies that are courageous enough to challenge their old ways of looking at business and embrace a value creation mindset will grow stronger than those who don’t. The power has shifted from those who sell to those who buy. Keep them happy; they’ll keep you happy.

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David Meerman Scott has been a contributor to  Cincom Expert Access since 2006. Check out the interview below and win a free copy of  his worldwide bestselling book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly“courtesy of Cincom Expert Access. Thanks to David for freely sharing his time and ideas over the years. We only have 50 copies – so first come first serve.

Contact  Steve Kayser at skayser@cincom.com or on Twitter at @SteveKayser.

INTERVIEW BY EXPERT ACCESS CONTRIBUTOR  NETTIE HARTSOCK

David Meerman Scott’s  best-selling book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”  has been extensively updated and features several new major marketing campaign stories as well as how Facebook and Twitter’s usage have impacted the online marketing world.

Nettie: What’s different in this new edition?

David Meerman Scott (David): This second edition of the book has gone through an extensive rewrite. Of course, I have checked every fact, figure, and URL. But I’ve also listened. In the past two years, I’ve met thousands of people who have shared their stories with me, so I’ve drawn from those experiences and included many new examples of success.

While including so many new stories and examples has resulted in my removing many of the less interesting originals, I’m convinced that these exciting replacements are even more valuable.

Nettie: The book also covers the new emergence of tools like Facebook and Twitter?

David: Yes, when I wrote the first edition of the book, Facebook was only available to those with a .edu email address (students and educators), so I didn’t feature Facebook. Twitter didn’t even exist at the time I was researching the first edition. I added extensive new information and examples on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

In fact, the rise of the term social media has been so strong in the past few years that I’ve even changed the subtitle of the book to include it.

Nettie: What are a couple of favorite case studies in the book that are new and will be of interest to readers?

David: I have dozens of examples in the book, but I’ll share two here:

Facebook group drives 15,000 people to the Singapore Tattoo Show (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32140274011)

In its first year (2009), the Singapore Tattoo Show had an aggressive target of 5,000 attendees. Organizers launched via a Facebook group called Tattoo Artistry three months prior to the show. The group grew very quickly, securing a place as the center of tattoo artistry for the Asia region.

The passion of the Tattoo Artistry Facebook group members meant they would help promote the group to their friends, so the online community eventually included many people eager to attend the live event. Instead of relying on expensive advertising, show organizers built a community of passionate fans who built anticipation and buzz for the event. The Tattoo Artistry Facebook group quickly reached 3,000 members and was an important reason that more than 15,000 people attended the first Singapore Tattoo Show—that’s three times the expected number of attendees!

Film Producer Creates a World Wide Rave by Making Soundtrack Free for Download (http://www.thegraduatesmovie.com/)

As I say many times in the book, a great way to generate interest in products and services is to make select content available for free online. There’s no doubt that free content sells. The Graduates, a feature film released in 2009, is an award-winning comedy about four friends who head to the beach without a care in the world. Prior to release, the film had been developing a loyal following among the 18- to 34-year-old demographic following a dozen sold-out festival and sneak preview screenings. It had been advertised solely by word-of-mouth and in a clever marketing technique, via a free soundtrack download.

The film features the music of some incredible indie bands (The New Rags, Plushgun, Sonia Montez, The Mad Tea Party, Our Daughter’s Wedding, and The Smittens) that are popular with the buyer personas who might see the movie. So the idea of making the entire soundtrack available for free is a brilliant strategy.

Of course, the bands also benefit because new listeners are exposed to their music and, if they like it, may decide to buy an album or see them live. “We felt it made sense to give away the soundtrack to build loyalty, show off the product, and compensate for a zero-dollar marketing budget, all in one fell swoop,” says Ryan Gielen, executive producer of The Graduates.

I wondered about the musicians whose music was given away. Did any of them resist? “The worst-case scenario for even an established band is that we just crafted a $100,000 music video for them,” Ryan says. “The Rolling Stones should laugh us out of the room, but this is a good opportunity for many, many bands.” The strategy has worked well for Gielen. “The free soundtrack has been a real success,” he says. “The totally free music promo opened us up to many more people.”

What is a World Wide Rave?

Nettie: What surprised you most in the period since 2007 when the first edition was published?

David: Let me disclose a secret. Back when I was writing the first edition in 2006 and when it came out in 2007, I was a bit unsure of the global applicability of the new rules.

What is heartening is that since that time, 25 percent of the first edition’s sales have come from outside the United States. As I write this, the book has been or is being translated into 24 languages including Bulgarian, Finnish, Korean, Vietnamese, Serbian, and Turkish. I’m also receiving invitations from all over the world to speak about the new rules. In the past year, I’ve traveled to countries including Saudi Arabia, the UK, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Croatia, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and the Dominican Republic.

So I can say with certainty that the ideas do resonate worldwide. We are indeed witnessing a global phenomenon.

Nettie: Your books are now being used as part of dozens of notable university marketing programs. Do you have any tips on how universities need to be educating marketing students in terms of social media?

David: At first, when the first edition was released in 2007, College and University marketing programs were resistant to the ideas. But a few professors, including Karen Miller Russell, Associate Professor, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia and Stephen Quigley from Boston University, quickly adopted the ideas in the book and began assigning it to their students as part of classes.

However, what I found most interesting is that it was the students demanding that their professors use the book that pushed adoption in dozens of universities. Students would email me exasperated that they were not being taught online marketing and PR and the tools and techniques seemed to be stuck in the 1980s. Several admitted they had cried when they read my book because they felt their investment in an education had been wasted.

So I would say to the professors out there: OPEN YOUR EYES. Study what’s going on and how smart marketers and PR pros are reaching audiences today and educate yourself on the new ideas so you can better prepare your students.

Nettie: What do you think are the three things everyone needs to understand about new marketing and PR for 2010?

David: Before the Web came along, there were only three ways to get noticed: buy expensive advertising, beg the mainstream media to tell your story for you, or hire a huge sales staff to bug people one at a time about your products. Now we have a better option: publishing interesting content on the Web that your buyers want to consume.

The tools of the marketing and PR trade have changed. The skills that worked offline to help you buy or beg or bug your way in are the skills of interruption and coercion. Online success comes from thinking like a journalist and a thought leader.

The Web allows organizations of all kinds (large and small companies, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, political candidates, consultants, even rock bands and churches) the ability to become publishers of content.

So to be successful in 2010, everyone (including me) needs to be asking this series of questions:

1) Who are my buyers? (Or who are my donors, voters, readers, etc.)

2) What problems do my buyers have that my products or services solve?

3) How can I create some amazing information on the Web (a YouTube video, ebook, blog, Webinar, series of photos, charts and graphs, survey results, and so on) that my buyers will be eager to consume and that will brand me as someone to do business with?

Nettie: How do you deal with skeptics?

David: Here is my video response for that:

David Meerman Scott keynote at BMA 2009 national conference from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

At every speech, I pose four questions to the audience and ask them to raise their hands if the answer to a question is “yes.” How would you answer?

In your personal or professional life in the past two months, when looking for an answer to a problem or to research a product, have you

(1) responded to a direct mail advertisement?

(2) consulted magazines, newspapers, TV, or radio?

(3) gone to a tradeshow as an attendee?

(3) used Google or another search engine?

( 4) electronically contacted a friend, colleague, or family member (email, IM, Facebook, etc.) who responded with a Web URL that you then visited?

I just love asking these questions in front of skeptics. I’ve asked them in boardrooms filled with senior executives who are adamant that my ideas are not appropriate for their business. I always turn people around.

Over the course of a year, in front of over ten thousand people from many dozens of groups all over the world including college students, marketing professionals, technology buyers, and executives at Fortune 500 companies, the answers were surprisingly consistent. Between 5 and 20 percent of people answer each of the first three questions affirmatively.

These answers mean that the ways most companies have historically reached people—advertising, direct mail, tradeshow booths, and pleas to the mainstream media for coverage—are only effective in reaching a small portion of potential customers. However, between 100 percent of people raise their hands to indicate that they have used a search engine to find a solution to a problem or to research a product and 90 percent report that they have checked out a Web site suggested by a friend, colleague, or family member.

Clearly, establishing a new rules of marketing & PR strategy and creating effective Web content that is indexed by search engines is critical for any business. When people are looking for answers to problems, they go online first.

Nettie: What would you say to people who think social media is a fad?

David: I’d say they are correct.

But let me explain. “Social media” is a misunderstood and over-hyped phrase. Much like the overused “Web 2.0,” many people think they know what social media is, but few can actually describe it. So in my experience, the use of the term “social media” is absolutely a fad.

By way of clarification, here is my personal definition: Social media describes the way people share ideas, content, thoughts, and relationships online. Social media differs from so-called ‘mainstream media’ in that anyone can create, comment, and add to social media content. Social media can take the form of text (blogs & wikis), audio (podcasts), video (YouTube), images (Flickr), and communities (Twitter, Facebook, & more).

What’s not a fad is that creating interesting information and publishing it online. The New Rules of Marketing & PR is incredibly effective and most certainly not a fad. The ideas in my book are much more than just “social media.”

Nettie: Thank you.

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A Sales Management Nightmare

Picture this. It’s late in the day, the last day of your fiscal year. You are waiting to hear from your number-one sales team. They are on-site with a customer, trying to close the one deal that will assure your company of a profitable year. A deal that will trigger some generous accelerators in your compensation package.

As the clock moves relentlessly on toward 5:00 p.m., you stare at the phone waiting for word on the progress of the negotiations. Finally, the phone rings and your sales team reports that victory is theirs! The order has been submitted! You can hear loud laughing in the background and the unmistakable clinking sound of beer steins being filled at a bar. Clearly the celebration has begun.

Breathing a sigh of relief, you call other members of the executive team and tell them the good news. You then call your spouse and offer to spring for dinner out.

Life is good; you are good.

It just doesn’t get any better than this. In your mind, you’re spending the end-of-year bonus several times over. Visions of Rolex watches, trips to Maui and small, red, Italian automobiles float through your mind as you drive home.

It’s all sweet, very sweet.

Three weeks later, the end-of-year audit is well underway. Everything appears to be going fine. Your bonus will be coming through in just a few weeks. There is nothing to be worried about.

Your phone rings It’s one of the finance guys asking if you could stop by and discuss a recent order. It seems the auditors have a question or two about that big order that put you over the top a couple of weeks ago.

You wander on down to the Finance Group conference room and find your CFO, your Corporate Counsel and the Executive Vice President sitting quietly around the big conference table. Fingers are drumming impatiently and all eyes turn to you as you enter the room.

Also seated at the table is a little weasel of a man with an HP 12C financial calculator peeking over the top of his shirt pocket. He stares at you intently through his thick glasses. There is a faint expression of smug delight coloring his face.

Then the questions start.

Did you know this customer has over 100K in 90-day outstanding invoices with us … before we add on the additional 500K for your new sale?

Were your guys aware that the product set ordered is not compatible with the product set already installed?

The discount code applied to this order is reserved for federal-government customers buying off GSA. This customer is not GSA qualified. Didn’t your guys know that … what were they thinking?

Now, it’s very quiet in the conference room. It’s also very warm. The CFO looks up, shakes his head and tells you that the revenue will have to be backed off last year’s statements. The order is simply not valid.

You head back to your office in a sort of stunned state of disbelief. You think to yourself, how could this happen?

Your stomach starts churning as you realize that the deposit you put down on the little red roadster is not refundable, the tickets to Maui are subject to substantial cancellation penalties and that Rolex suddenly seems very heavy on your wrist.

It ain’t so sweet anymore.

The Sales Weasels Strike!

The CFO Nightmare

What a year! Your company is leaving the bad old days far behind and quickly establishing itself as a Must Watch on the street. The analyst community is absolutely fawning over you as every revenue target you have promised over the past two years has been hit pretty much dead center, bull’s eye accurate.

The timing is right, the market is right, the business climate is full of opportunity and the next step in your skyrocketing career is your handling the IPO for your soon to be wall street darling employer.

You have an interview with INC. Magazine slated for the next week and you’ve even had a couple of discussions with the folks at Fortune. You have an empty place on the wall in your home office that is reserved for the Fortune magazine cover featuring your picture. That dream seems to be getting closer to becoming a reality.

This past year everything has come together. A number of strategic moves you’ve guided the company through, along with an enviable sales effort, have made it all possible. All that remains is a successful audit and then the planning for your IPO can be finalized.

The little weasel from the audit firm has been going over all of the business closed in the final days of the previous fiscal year. You’ve noticed that he seems to be particularly energetic during the past two days. Out of curiosity, you decide to check in with him before leaving for a long weekend.

You drop by his desk and casually ask him how it’s going. He looks up and shakes his head. His words bring on a little shiver, “I’m fine, it’s going quite well. But, I can’t say the same for you. Frankly, you’ve got some problems.”

“What do mean?” you ask.

He chuckles and asks, “Do you guys just book anything that comes out of the fax machine? Do you check anything? Is there any effort to validate what your salespeople are bringing in as business?”

Then the examples are dropped onto the desk one by one.

This customer is bankrupt and has a Paydex rating in the single digits.

THUMP! A folder hits the desktop.

This customer hasn’t paid your invoices for the past 10 months.

THUMP! Another folder drops.

This deal features a right to return for full refund anytime, for any reason, over the first 24 months following delivery.

THUMP … SPLISH! This folder lands on the pile then slides off, its contents spilling onto the floor.

None of this business is bookable. It’s all bogus.

Can this Happen to You?

How do these disasters happen? Aren’t there systems in place to prevent this kind of thing?

You might be thinking, it can’t happen here, we have the best ERP going; we have sales automation tools and CRM systems.  All of those systems your company invested in your ERP software, the Customer Relationship Management software, your sales automation systems – all of them may perform flawlessly. But, they also all operate independently of one another.

Usually this doesn’t result in the dramatic events described above. But, the effects can be just as devastating. They just aren’t as noticeable because they happen one at a time, over the course of years.

This chasm or disconnect between your back-office enterprise systems and the front-office tactical systems costs you much more than you probably know. In our little stories above, the orders were actually booked.

But what about the lost orders that don’t ever make into your Order Management System?

* How many orders are canceled or die from neglect after multiple changes?
* How many cycles are lost in your factory because the product you are building has to be rebuilt several times to meet the customer’s expectations because sales cannot effectively communicate the customer’s needs to your engineering group?
* How much money is lost due to unnecessary discounting that eventually reduces your margin to a negative number?
* How many customers simply gave up because of your inability to generate a proposal in alignment with their RFP?
* How much are you spending having your engineering people modify a product just to make it work in some non-standard manner?

These things happen because your organization is not acting like an organization; rather it is acting like a group of separate organizations each striving to meet their own goals. The structure of your systems probably mirrors this as well. In the back office, your ERP system buzzes along cranking out reports and feeding information to your manufacturing group and your finance group.

In the field, your front office if you will – other systems, CRM systems, sales automation tools and the like -  all are operating as well. They do their jobs well, but they do not interface with your back-office systems any more than your sales personnel talk with your plant managers or finance managers.

What’s missing is collaboration – collaboration between systems, between people, and between functional units within the enterprise. This collaboration gap will manifest itself in different ways within differing business models.

The engineer-to-order and contract-to-order enterprises face unique hurdles that the traditional quote-to-order business models don’t encounter. These might include things such as special invoicing requirements, bidding and estimating needs and complex project-management challenges.

All of these can create yawning chasms in the inquiry-to-ship process. These chasms are frequently the graveyard of otherwise good business for both buyer and seller.

A good selling and business acquisition solution will bridge these chasms and facilitate quick response to unique customer demands, streamlined processing of complex product orders and the efficient communication of crucial information between the front and back office.

This facilitates accelerated growth through better service to your customer in the form of reduced response times and reduced order errors.

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By Dave Stein, CEO of ESResearch and author of "How Winners Sale." Photo courtesy of I.L. Piano

You can find top-performing sales teams in every industry. And just as many, if not more, that are so dysfunctional, their results hinge largely on lucky breaks. What separates the two? The most important factors that determine sales-function success are the degree of formality, organization and discipline in the sales organization.

When Sales operates the same way Finance, Production or Engineering runs, very often sales teams excel. But most sales departments don’t run like other departments. They don’t have the same discipline, order and process. They don’t have the same measurement mechanisms, or the same degree of experienced, focused leadership. That’s why something like 40 percent of salespeople in the U.S. didn’t make quota last year, and the average tenure of a Sales vice president in 2006 was only 21 months.

That’s not a big surprise when you consider that most sales executives and managers rise through the ranks. Take your typical right-brained, gut-feel, talk-my-way-out-of-anything salesperson, who’s surpassed quota for many years, and the next logical step is to promote him or her to sales manager.

Sales managers who fit this profile may be very intelligent, but because they are right-brained, they aren’t very comfortable with methods, process, order or discipline. What’s more, they may not come to the party with management experience or a solid grounding in management methods. And now they are running your sales force.

Guess what happens: They continue to sell, negotiate and close deals for their teams, but their organizations can’t scale, because the sales managers become the bottleneck. They have to negotiate every deal, because their ego is involved, and they don’t know how to delegate. And only so many deals can happen on a monthly or quarterly basis – because they shoehorn themselves one way or another into every sales opportunity.

And that’s the best case! In the worst case, the best salespeople see that they’re not getting the support they need, that the sales function is being run in a seat-of-the-pants manner, and nothing is optimized. They don’t get the help they need from elsewhere in the organization — Engineering, Finance, or especially Marketing — and vote with their feet.

There is a better way. If you want to optimize your company’s sales organization, here are three ways to strengthen your team.

1. Hire people with the right genes

Responsibility for the bottleneck manager really goes one level higher. CEOs, COOs and general managers seem to repeat the same pattern, year after year: hiring one ineffective sales vice president after another. You need to break out of that cycle, and resist the temptation to hire that bright, personable individual because they are so darn good at selling themselves. I know it’s hard, because top-notch salespeople usually come on strong and have great interview skills.
That means Step one is to have a very strong understanding of the skills and traits a sales vice president or sales manager needs to bring to the table. If you hire someone who doesn’t have a sense of discipline, and an innate tendency to stick to the process, you are asking for trouble. Think twice before you hire or promote people with great sales track records whose previous five jobs lasted 21 months each. That usually means their ability to sell the CEO on hiring them is much better than their ability to actually get the job done.

The real trick is finding someone who has the right stuff as a salesperson, along with the skills and traits required to be a top sales executive or team leader. You need a whole skill set beyond great presentation skills or competitive drive. As a manager, you need conflict-resolution skills, management skills and the ability to motivate.

One CEO I am working with just had the kind of “Aha!” moment I am talking about. He said, “I will not hire another salesperson that doesn’t plan things out in detail. I don’t want someone who decides to go to California and jumps in the car and heads toward the sunset because that’s west. I want someone who will stop to figure out how far it is, what stops to make, and whether the oil needs to be changed. Someone whose brain is wired to think about it and put a plan together.”

2. Focus on planning and process

To get a feeling for whether or not your sales function “needs work,” seek out the person responsible for an important new deal. Then ask, “Show me your plan. How are you going to win this piece of business for the company?”

If that person can’t produce a single sheet of paper, or even verbalize a plan designed to be communicated to the other people on their team, then that person is selling by the seat of their pants — and being managed by the same type of person.

In sharp contrast, if you have an institutionalized, well-founded set of processes in place, and a set of tools salespeople have been trained to use every day to get their jobs done, the company is likely to be successful at selling. Questions to ask:

* Do salespeople know their roles, and what they should be doing at every step along the way in a sales campaign to land an important piece of business?
* Can they predict in advance when they will need resources, such as Engineering or R&D support?
* Do they know, based on internal processes you have in place, what kind of customers buy, and in what way?
* Do they know what your competitors are up to?

Of course, the more complex a sale is, the more essential organization and discipline become. I’ve worked with sales teams running $200 million deals that take 18 to 24 months to close, with two-dozen influencers or approvers to keep track of. You cannot keep all of this in your head, Willy Loman style. People move around and resign, and the needs of companies change. You need to count on others and have people who stay on top of things and communicate what’s going on.

Order, process and discipline make all the difference. Here’s an example: One of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had was working with a group of engineers who had never sold anything before. As part of a company restructuring, they became responsible for bringing in business. As it turned out, their sales results were unbelievable — off the charts.
These engineers didn’t have much charisma, or the personality-plus you find in the classic right-brained salesperson. But we gave them a 20-step process to follow, and they followed it to the letter, in a disciplined way — and became successful. They’re never going to get as good at people skills as someone who’s purely right-brained, but that left-brain ability is a critical piece of success. Step two is all about focusing on planning and process. You need people with the ability to imagine a critical path or think like a chess player. What’s going to happen five moves out?

3. Consider the way your customers buy

After reading this, you might be tempted to kick your entire sales force to the curb and start over. That’s not terribly realistic. But as part of an overall operational and behavioral “makeover,” it may be appropriate to rethink your approach from the customer’s point of view.

The latest best practice, especially when it comes to such complex sales situations as high technology or capital equipment, is to assemble sales teams with different — but complementary — roles and responsibilities. Typically, a lead person responsible for the engagement gets either the credit (or the blame). That team leader acts like a “virtual CEO” with technical advisors, a customer-service specialist and even a finance person on the team. The leader, like a project manager, brings all those resources together to apply maximum leverage to that sales opportunity.

Such teams work best when tailored to the way customers in your industry buy or behave and the relationship they are used to having with vendors. In some industries, a team-based approach, with multiple client touch-points, may not work. But it can pay off handsomely in terms of increasing the overall book of business.

For example, if customers in your industry have a reputation for very tough negotiations, with negotiators “in the trenches” 40 hours a week, you cannot send in a lone salesperson who only spends five hours a month negotiating. Similarly, if your customers expect fast answers to technical questions, they won’t want to wait while you “touch base with the home office.” Having technical advisors who respond quickly can win business.

Of course, this adds a whole other dimension to the management and organization of your sales force, including staffing. I can visualize a CEO objecting to the idea of hiring four specialists to replace one, but those four people may sell eight times the business, because they focus on what they do best. What’s more, that success will feed on itself — especially when you have people in place who are comfortable with the process, and get part of the classic sales “rush” from seeing a plan come together.

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