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The Power of Personalisation

June 1, 2015 //
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The Power of Personalisation

The Power of Personalisation

I received this email in my web mail inbox the other day – and I loved it, both as an individual recipient and consumer of email and as a marketer.

There’s nothing new in it, and I won’t be able to convert my interest in action as I live in another country and can’t easily attend games.

That said, for me it epitomises the power of personalisation. Both the subject line and the quoted phrase are redolent of sporting chants, as well as pandering to my ego. The email is visually appealing, the strapline appeals to me as a fan – and a customer – who can make the telling contribution to success, and the ask is a simple one: we’d like you as a season ticket holder.

Superb stuff. Of course, I don’t know how the email turned out. I don’t know too much about the target demographic. I am willing to bet, however, that it performed particularly well against target.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Lemming Time

May 29, 2015 //
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There is a certain time that kills your productivity in work and life. I call it the Lemming Time, after the animals that are supposed to jump off cliffs in droves to their deaths.

You know the Lemming Time when you see it. It doesn’t happen every time and it’s hard to predict. You might be driving your car in town and it seems like every few metres a car is trying to turn into your path, a pedestrian is attempting an ill-advised crossing or people’s rushed behaviour turns erratic and mildly dangerous. It’s the time of day when everyone has decided they simply have to get something urgent done, yourself included.

It happens in work as well. A deadline is looming, you’re getting close, and suddenly the replies come in, the phone calls, emails, requests for a quick chat. Everyone else getting to the finish line of their own thing needs a quick interaction or two with someone else before they can put their thing to bed. All of a sudden you’re in a funk, that 3-syllable word that starts in cluster and ends in an anglo-saxon word for sexual coition. Bad for your productivity and peace of mind.

Avoid the Lemming Time. Plan better.

 

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Categories Customers, General

The Biggest Lie

May 27, 2015 //
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Have you noticed how much in business and pleasure is governed by disingenuous and disrespectful language?

Life is competitive, otherwise it would be pretty dull, but these days we get subjected to so much of this:

– Hype

– ‘Trash talking’

– Misinformation

– Hearsay

– Mind games

The biggest lie is that you only get honesty, sincerity and respect the day after a political election, competition, contest or the death or retirement of an adversary. A day or two after that, the gloves are back on and it’s business as usual.

How much differently and enjoyably would we view the world we work and live in if the way everyone dealt with other people, teams and companies was open and respectful? Politically speaking (with a small ‘p’), if everyone who had a gun shot themselves it would be problem solved, to paraphrase a certain George Harrison…

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Categories Communication, Customers, Language

Perspective

May 20, 2015 //
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It was Tom Peters who said that ‘perception is all there is’. I’ve talked about this quote before, and its importance, but for me there’s something also inviolably true, and it’s a bit like the other side of the coin.

Perspective is all there is, too. Perspective is your perception of the world, and, more importantly, someone else’s or something else’s perspective. I was reminded of this in the most mundane way recently. Having made myself a cup of tea, I was bringing a soggy tea bag over to the bin, supported by a spoon and, under it, my free hand to catch the drips. The spoon looked full of tea in the side I could see, so I tilted it away slightly. As I tilted it away, it dripped tea from the side I couldn’t see, which was obviously fuller, or at least as full, as ‘my’ side. I hadn’t checked the other side.

It always pays to try and understand the perspective of the other person, in a transaction, in politics, in pretty much anything. Once you get their perspective, you get the wisdom to agree with them, or the ammunition to persuade them to agree with you.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

How to Sell vs How to Use

May 18, 2015 //
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There is a big difference between demonstrating how to use something, and selling that thing itself. Yet it’s amazing how many salespeople confuse the two. Either they show everything the thing does in the hope that something will catch the buyer’s eye, or they will say ‘this bit does this, and this button does that, and oh, watch this, it’s quite cool.’

Who cares? When you’re not sure what to show people, it means you haven’t figured out what problem they’re trying to solve. When you’re not sure how to show it to people, then you need to figure out the correct scenario that will best show off how you fix a specific problem better than anyone or anything else.

When you’re selling something, don’t show them how to use it. You will bore, frighten or otherwise deter them. Instead, show them how that something will make them money, save them money, save them time, or help them comply with something that must be done.

Of course, you need to know enough about your something to be able to demonstrate how you help your buyer, so learn the handful or two of user scenarios or ‘use cases’ that your buyers have, and learn how to demonstrate how your something addresses each scenario elegantly and efficiently.

You don’t need to be a power user of what you sell, with a deep understanding of every nook and cranny. You need to know it well enough to show how it solves a range of problems or capitalises on an opportunity.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Planning, Sales

Go Map Yourself

May 15, 2015 //
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Do you want to be more successful at B2B sales and marketing? Then you need to do three things.

First, figure out how your customers want to buy from you. What do they want to do, when, in what order? If you don’t know, ask them. If they don’t know, consult with them and help them.

Second, map your roles, processes and systems to how they want to buy, so you can deliver that perfect buying journey for them. Then, adapt your roles, processes and systems accordingly.

Third, involve your people in steps one and two so they understand why it’s in everyone’s interest to adapt and come up with some great suggestions for how they can best get there.

Go map yourself. You’ll be glad you did. But not as glad as your customers. In some cases they may not buy what you have very often, and so you have to listen to what they’re trying to do and guide them through the steps they need to get there.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Planning, Strategy

Communication is not Engagement

May 8, 2015 //
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It’s easy for us to think we’re doing a great job of staying close to our customers or our staff. We’re sending regular emails, having regular meetings, touching base as often as we can.

We tend to forget one simple, inalienable fact. Communication does not equal engagement.

Your customers are not buying from you because they’re not engaged.

Your staff are not changing the way they do things because they’re not engaged.

It’s a question of commitment. Think of eating your egg and bacon. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed…

Communication does not equal engagement, and engagement is what you need, if you want to achieve or change something. You need to start involving people earlier, getting their buy in, and asking them the why questions, starting with why they’re not engaged, why they’re not committed.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Analysis Catalysis

May 1, 2015 //
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You used to hear the phrase ‘analysis paralysis’ all the time in business. The inability to make a decision in favour of hiding behind a surfeit of analysis was a common attribute of poor operational business.

You tend not to hear the aphorism that much these days, at least not in the last 5 years or so. Now we’re all about big data. We have more data, but we have better analysis since we can corral computing power, sometimes from global networks and forces, to crunch a monumental amount of inputs and come up with meaningful, helpful outputs.

Now we’re all about analysis catalysis. Since we’re only as good as our data, our ability to maintain a high quality of it and interrogate it in the right ways is the catalyst for solid, informed decisions. Sure, we can still rely on our gut from time to time, but now we can test repeatedly and get extremely fast feedback on our hunches.

Analysis used to cause inertia. Now it causes energy.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Strategy

Opening a Bank Account

April 27, 2015 //
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Opening a bank account in 21st century Ireland is a tortuous exercise. Let me put this another way: starting a relationship where you are trying to be a customer of a financial institution and give them your money so that they can make interest off it in return for a meagre few services is a tortuous exercise.

I know there are money-laundering regulations to be complied with, and processes to go through, but come on, there has to be a better way. I won’t tell you which bank, but they’re all pretty much the same. I was recommended by my accountant to go with a specific one, which I did, but these were some of the hoops you have to go through to become a paying customer. As someone who advises companies on how to work hard to attract companies to you, I’m always boggled by how difficult life is made for someone who wants to become your customer.

I suppose it’s because they’re all as bad as each other, and they’re pretty set in their ways, but if there’s one industry that’s prime for disruption, this is it. Anyway, here are some of the things I find amazing:

– You can’t apply for a business bank account online. The lady I spoke with in the bank said there’s more paper involved these days than there ever was

– You can’t take the application form out of the branch

– You have to make an appointment to apply in person (I’m not making this up)

– If it’s a limited company, all of the directors need to attend in person, to be verified in person for ID and address. For small companies who have maybe two directors, one of which is a spouse working somewhere else, this means they need to take a holiday to get to the bank, for the next reason

– The bank’s opening house are 10am til 12:30pm, and 1:30pm til 4pm. On Mondays they push the boat out and stay open til 5pm

– Once you’ve negotiated the application process, which has to be done in real time, your time, with the bank person, they send it off to head office, where it takes two weeks – yes, two weeks – to process

As the Irish would say, it’s mad isn’t it? Except the Irish simply shrug and get on with things.

As I said, ripe for change, this industry…

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Strategy, Technology

The Loss of Win/Loss Analysis

April 24, 2015 //
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Most companies talk about the importance of win/loss analysis, yet few of them do it. Win/loss analysis is the business of analysing the deals you won and those you lost. Setting up a formal call with your customer to analyse why they bought from you is a very useful exercise, as it builds both a qualitative and quantitative picture of what makes you successful.

Setting up a formal call with a non-customer, or an existing customer who didn’t give you the new business, to analyse why they didn’t buy from you is even more successful, since – yes you’ve guessed it – you can learn what contributed to your being unsuccessful so that you can improve your approach and win more business.

Even fewer companies do the loss analysis than the win analysis, and there are lots of human reasons for this. You can learn so much from a lost customer, however, so here are some things I’ve found useful when doing them:

– Get someone not in sales to do the call. It’s easier to get the call, and less confrontational, so it’s easier for them to open up. Sometimes they simply didn’t like the sales person

– Offer to arrange an appointed time for the call, but ask them if now is a bad time, as you only need a maximum of 10 minutes and then you might get to do the call right then

– To secure the call, emphasise that it will be a short call, you’re not trying to reopen the business – though that might happen if you do a stellar job on the call – and that it will help you improve your service in future bids

– Have your questions in writing before the call. If the person is a touch monosyllabic in their answers you can use the questions as prompts to avoid an embarrassingly short call

– Have some suggested answers to some of the questions that can also be used as prompts. For example, for ‘what was it about our proposal you didn’t like’, you might prompt with price, service, track record, solution fit, project management and so on

– Sometimes they prefer to fill something in than speak to you, so be prepared to send in a form with your questions on it, and be prepared to chase to get it back

– Ask them to be as honest as possible in their assessment of why you were unsuccessful. You will get subjective answers and objective ones. Your job is to figure out if they’re giving you a different answer to the true answer. Probe if you have to

– Try to distinguish between personal and subjective answers that you can’t do much about – like ‘we didn’t get on’ – and more objective answers that you can feed back into the business or use for coaching. Example of these include: ‘I felt she was unprofessional’, ‘I didn’t like his approach’, ‘she didn’t understand my business’ and ‘they were too pushy, I wasn’t ready to buy’

– It’s not that high a priority for the person you’re calling, so be prepared for them not to pick up the phone at the appointed time. Be persistent and polite

– After the call, send the person a hand-written note or a small gift thanking them for the feedback, mentioning how valuable their feedback was

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy
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