It’s been just over a month since my last post.  WOW has it been busy.  Too busy to write.  Too busy to think clearly about what to write.

A friend I met at Wizard Academy last July has an incredibly powerful blog and he writes and posts every day 365 days a year.  He gets up at 3am and always has quality ideas, concepts and video’s to share.  I’m not that great.  For me it takes great focus and energy to push out concepts that I believe will be of value.  Even today, I really don’t have time to blog, but I can’t let another day go by.

So today I share the thought of focus and energy.   When does something that needs to be done, get so important that you stop what you’re doing whether you’re on deadline or not and dedicate your focus and energy to that new project?  For me it’s letting a blog go 30 days.
Gair Maxwell has enough focus and energy to write great blogs every 24 hours.  Now maybe he’s not as immersed as I am with client projects.  At any rate, you’ll love his blog and you can find it at www.seamlessbrand.com.

Enjoy the day, enjoy Gair’s blog and enjoy your focus and energy on whatever subject you determine needs to be focused on right now!

We all face a continuous set of challenges.  In our personal lives we do the best we can to be a productive member of society, to create positive experiences with our families and along the way work to maintain good friendships with people we trust and enjoy good company with.  Each of our challenges is relative to real problems in the world.  In America our worst day is way better than those who face ongoing war and disaster.  Afghanistan and Haiti come to mind without thinking.

So our challenges are miniscule.

In our professional lives it’s our responsibility to be productive citizens.  The industries we’re in and the companies we work for create expectations that we’ll do what’s necessary to advance ourselves, our companies and our customer’s experience.

As a sales coach and business consultant, I’m fortunate to work with many people who have vision, and are pursuing growth by providing products or services desired by their customers.  The real challenge I think has become how to balance the day to day operations and deliverables with the necessary drive to increase performance.

That’s why I teach.  That’s why I coach.  That’s why I consult.  To help the business owners we’re in partnership with create a positive balance between the daily challenges that exist and how they can look ahead and design their business practices in a way that supports employee growth and development.

I’m in the early stages of developing a radio advertising sales training program with Radio1 Broadcast School in LaCrosse.  They’ve been focused on the broadcast side for 7 years and just this week won awards presented at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Student Awards for Excellence event.  They are good at training prospective announcers.  Now they want to develop a quality radio sales training curriculum and I’m honored to be involved in the creation of this new professional development series.

The radio industry like many media today faces significant challenges adapting and evolving to stay relevant with changing technology.  One thing that has not seemed to change much is how broadcasters train their sales people.  I was fortunate to be the recipient of the best sales training in the world from my very first day in advertising sales.  The companies I worked for were adamant about having the best people and the best training to keep their revenues chugging along to reach goal.  My experience is the exception to the industry.  Most radio stations leadership is so busy fighting fires internally and with corporate investors that they lose sight of what is really happening on the street with their customers and their sales people.

Radio sales people come in three categories.
1.  Experienced veterans that bill 80% of the stations revenue. (top performers)
2.  Novices who are learning and committed to their careers. (mid-level performers)
3.  Beginners who may or may not make it in the business.  (entry level learners)

If the radio industry wants to continue as a viable advertising and entertainment medium, it must look critically at how seriously it’s committed to training.

Sales managers are the individuals charged with running the sales operation, managing people, taking care of key clients, going on sales calls and training the sales staff.  Only the finest broadcast companies have the sales management experience to support the daunting challenges sales managers face day to day.  These radio groups are rare indeed.

We’re developing this new radio advertising sales program to help the companies that don’t have the experience and budgets to train their people properly.  So the process has begun.  We’re customizing our sales training curriculum to fit perfectly with the challenges that radio stations and radio advertising sales people face today.  Having been in radio advertising sales, sales management, sales training and having been on the buying side as marketing director and as a consultant that still is involved in buying media for my clients, I’m excited to be able to fill a huge void.

In the days ahead I’ll begin to share the resources I’ll be using to help me become the best radio sales trainer in Wisconsin.

Over my 25 year career I’ve been fortunate to be the recipient of great sales and business training.  My library has over 60 books written by the best business experts, consultants and trainers.  Even though I’ve read them all, I consistently re-read those that pertain to specific disciplines I’m involved with in helping my clients.

One of the best is “Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business”, written by Ram Charan.  Ram has written or co-authored 7 books and I’ve read several.  In “Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business”, Ram outlines 10 tools of profitable revenue growth.  “Growth is a creative act, but it is also a social process that is disciplined and links together the moving parts of an organization to achieve a consistent increase in revenues.”

The tools for growth beg a thought process that requires commitment, dedication and a desire to win.

What are you doing to help your customer?
In every customer interaction, how well do your people extract information about customer needs?
How does that information get shared internally?
Is your focus on cost cutting at the expense of revenue growth?
Are you focused solely on one big idea or multiple small ideas?
Can you improve productivity and increase revenue at the same time?

Ten Tools
1.  Is revenue growth part of everyone’s business every day?
2.  Work to hit more singles and doubles, not just home runs.
3.  Seek good growth and avoid bad growth.
4.  Dispel the myths that inhibit both people and organizations from growing.
5.  Turn the idea of productivity on its head by increasing revenue productivity.
6.  Develop and implement a growth budget.
7.  Beef up upstream marketing.
8.  Understand how to do effective cross-selling (or value/solutions selling).
9.  Create a social engine to accelerate revenue growth.
10.  Operationalize innovation by converting ideas into revenue growth.

The implications in Ram’s Ten Tools clearly indicate the need for an open company culture, the importance of teamwork, communications and the overall need for training.

The chapters in “Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business” are filled with practical, easy to understand perspectives on how you can create your own high performance customer development strategy.

From time to time, we’re struck by the loss of someone close to us.  Yesterday a friend of mine passed into eternal life.  Gregg and I got to know each other through business and became friends.  That’s the kind of guy Gregg was.  He had great vision, great dreams and was a true entrepreneur.  He had great energy, an unending smile and great spirit, always.  I never saw him down, even when he faced challenges.

He was a never-ending positive force.  He cared for people, literally in his volunteer work as an EMT.  He loved golf and the freedom that being an entrepreneur provides.

He was a maverick.  Stepping up, making big decisions and forging relationships that required guts.   I’ll miss Gregg.  I’ll also keep his spirit alive.  I’ll take what I learned from him and I’ll internalize his spirit and I’ll share the things I know made Gregg one of the greatest men I’ve known.  This is what I call the Circle of Life.

So today I share with you Gregg’s finest qualities.  Take inventory of his greatness and make these qualities part of your life and share them with others.

Gregg was a great family man.
Gregg was a great husband and father.
Gregg was a vibrant and positive spirit always.
Gregg always had a smile.
Gregg lived his life to help others always.
Gregg was a visionary.
Gregg was fair.
Gregg was trusting.
Gregg appreciated quality and knew quality when he saw it.
Gregg was fun.
Gregg lived life with passion.

I will miss Gregg in person, but I will keep his spirit alive and share his greatness with others.  Celebrate Gregg’s life by helping others capture the quality that Gregg lived every day.  Here’s to you Gregg!

Maintaining high levels of communication with your team is essential to creating the energy necessary to achieve momentum through innovation.  Company information needs to flow from person to person and top to bottom across all internal company operations.  From financial updates to in-field sales reports and market observations, a steady flow of information in real time creates the opportunity for adapting and shifting of products and service offerings based on market demand and conditions.  This open communications creates conversations between employees on new actions that need to be taken to support the various company functions and meet client needs.  The actions that result create momentum and innovation.

Sooner or later in the life of every salesperson the infamous price objection will rear its ugly head.  The reality is that buyers want to spend as little as possible.  Salespeople want to maintain high maintained margin and don’t want to be viewed as a commodity for which there is no customer loyalty.

So how can you differentiate yourself from the competition and sell your products and services at higher prices?  The answer is:  Add value and service. But before that you have to:

Do your homework. Make sure that you know your product, your market, your competition and the needs of your prospect

That means asking your prospects open ended questions and listening to their responses.  Develop a list of 10-15 questions to get to the root of their needs.  While, on the surface, price may be an objection, it may be overcome by a cast iron guarantee or value added services and support options.

For example, you sell apples for 79 cents each and the store (vendor) down the road sells them for 75 cents. The only difference aside from the price of the apples is that you have a return policy.  If the customer buys an apple from the store down the road to save a couple of pennies and gets a rotten apple, they’re stuck with it.  If they buy the apple from you they can get a new one.  It’s a matter of developing a comfort level.

When selling higher-margin products, you need to educate prospects about what they’re getting for their money and why it’s in their best interest to do business with you.

An additional way to overcome a price objection is to surround the account and become a consultative salesperson.  In other words if a customer has needs that are beyond your capacity to deliver, have the courage to go the extra mile and partner with outside non-competitive sources that can help you get the job done for them.

Remember:  Customers don’t care how much you know until you show them how much you care.

William F. Kendy – TBS

How does hiring a professional interior designer impact the appeal of your workspace?  As a designer learns about your corporate culture and mission, he or she will be able to show how design can help achieve corporate goals. A businesslike approach to workplace design means getting key decision-makers to think about how a workplace can reflect the organization’s brand, image and vision.  Interior designers today are actually part designer and part management consultants.

To meet employees’ needs for a stimulating, energizing workplace that enhances productivity, efficiency and satisfaction, integrate interior design into strategic planning.  Hire a professional designer to reflect or help change your company’s culture, environment and work habits.  A designer can help clients turn their offices into tools that will yield long-term benefits including happy employees and ultimately increased profits.

By:  Brenda L. Brady, ASID

BRENDA BRADY DESIGN LLC

http://www.brendabradydesign.com

It wasn’t until I actually worked in a design firm that I started to become more aware of design.  Design is defined as:

1a. To conceive or fashion in the mind; invent: design a good excuse for not attending the conference.b. To formulate a plan for; devise: designed a marketing strategy for the new product.
2. To plan out in systematic, usually graphic form: design a building; design a computer program.
3. To create or contrive for a particular purpose or effect: a game designed to appeal to all ages.
4. To have as a goal or purpose; intend.
5. To create or execute in an artistic or highly skilled manner

When I started learning about design I began to ask questions about how design impacts business.  If I took a little from each definition above, I could say design means,

“To conceive in the mind, to formulate a plan systematically for a particular purpose, with a goal in mind, in a highly skilled manner.”

Then I began to think about how design impacts the customer development process.  In other words, how can an entrepreneur or business owner design a process to increase sales.  So I spoke with my director of research, Fran Ray and he set out to learn what the best minds in the country think about this subject.  His white paper is a bit esoteric, but the impact that design has on business and how leaders set plans and execute them is clearly evident.  Email me if you’d like a copy.

So my curiosity continues.  Soon I’ll share with you, what another designer friend of mine thinks about the business of commercial interior design.

Without a doubt, referrals are the best source of qualified leads.  When friends, business associates or clients recommend you and your company to someone they know, your odds of bringing home the bacon increase.

When you receive a referral you have pre-approved authority to conduct business with the person referred to you.  It’s a matter of commonality and endorsement and you are operating on a higher level of trust and the prospect-turned-client and a stronger sense of loyalty from the get-go.  It’s a third party recommendation.

Many salespeople don’t capitalize on the power of referrals simply because they either are afraid to ask for them or feel that asking is pushing and are uncomfortable making the request.

The real key to getting referrals is to ask for them at the appropriate time in the sales scenario.  Once the customer sees value in what you’re proposing, whether they buy or not, is the time to pop the question

What do you have to lose?

William F. Kendy – TBS

Sales people are constantly searching for ways to maximize their opportunities to increase their sales.  In 2005 I had the great pleasure to work with a sales coach on my team named Kevin Patrick.  He has since moved into a new position as Sales Manager with a successful company.  Kevin wrote a little booklet to assist our clients and staff highlighting 16 natural opportunities to win or lose a sale.  I keep that small booklet handy and refer to it from time to time to check my own process to make sure I’m conscious of these opportunities and incorporate them into my daily work as a business coach, sales trainer and sale person.  These are great action steps.
Here’s a shortened outline of those 16 opportunities.

Natural Opportunity 1
Turning your suspect into a prospect through qualifying questions.

Natural Opportunity 2
Determine the true decision maker.

Natural Opportunity 3
Send the first letter branding you as a source of information not necessarily available to the prospect

Natural Opportunity 4
Send a second piece of information adding additional proof of how hard you will work, just to get the appointment, which translates to the prospect how hard your company will work, once you make the sale.

Natural Opportunity 5
Send a third piece of information noting that you have empathy for your prospects busy schedule, challenges and time.  This demonstrates your professionalism, show’s respect for your prospect’s time and your time.

Natural Opportunity 6
Dial the phone.  Use effective voice mail scripts in your messages and have a communication strategy to demonstrate your understanding of their business and the potential value you will bring to them in helping them solve their challenges.

Natural Opportunity 7
Contacting the Decision Maker.  Make sure you’re investing your time to connect with the person who can say “yes” to your proposal or who is the chief influencer of the decision maker.

Natural Opportunity 8
Book the appointment.

Natural Opportunity 9
Confirm the appointment and plan for the meeting.

Natural Opportunity 10
Complete the first appointment.

Natural Opportunity 11
Book the customer needs analysis.

Natural Opportunity 12
Complete the customer needs analysis.

Natural Opportunity 13
Book the proposal presentation.

Natural Opportunity 14
Write the proposal.

Natural Opportunity 15
Present the proposal.

Natural Opportunity 16
Confirm the sale