Archives for category: Sales
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Client or Customer

January 25, 2017 //
2

Client or customer? Which term do you use? I must confess I’m not keen on the word client, at least in business.

I remember having this conversation about a decade ago with a software VP. ‘Which term do you prefer,’ I asked. ‘Oh, I don’t like the word client. Hookers have clients…’ was her reply.

Well, yes, I suppose they do. Yet, so do social services organisations, charities, artists, business agencies and probably a good few professional services companies too.

In business, everything revolves around the customer. But it’s still a partnership between you and your customers, a fair exchange of outcomes between you and them. Usually, they pay money and you deliver products and / or services, but not always. It’s a business relationship built on a series of mutually beneficial transactions over time.

Calling them clients in business – internally within your business or externally with your various stakeholders – puts them on a pedestal and makes for an uneven relationship that’s open to abuse, or at best unnecessary leverage.

Client equals master-slave, whereas customer equals business relationship.

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Language, Marketing, Sales

Primary, Secondary

January 9, 2017 //
0

Almost everything we do is secondary. Not secondary in importance, you understand. Secondary as in it’s been done before, said before, heard before, tried before.

We spend 99% of our entire school and college lives learning stuff that has already been figured out. We’re getting it second hand and not doing the primary work, the genuinely ground-breaking stuff. Remember that odd time when you stuck your neck out in school or college and wrote what you felt was something new, a product of your independent thought? I bet it was marked wrong, right? You’re treading where thousands of people have gone before, so your new thing is not thought to be right – thought being the operative word.

So much of what we do is secondary. Our working lives are about replicating processes, re-working, recycling, renewing what’s been done before. So little of it is actually new, never done before.

There is a very small number of people doing the primary stuff. Making the law, setting the precedent, inventing a financial mechanism, product, sport, piece of technology, process, creating something new and valuable. The rest of us are studying it, reading it, criticising it, adopting it, using it, benefitting from it, and sometimes improving it.

In the world of doing primary stuff there is failure, mistakes, false dawns, incorrect conclusions, disappointment and a huge amount of wasted time. But also, by an order of magnitude greater, there is fame, fortune, progress, history, satisfaction, gratitude and humility.

What primary stuff are you doing, or trying to do?

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Really Viral

January 6, 2017 //
0

There’s nothing like the physical world to give us a powerful corollary of how it works in the cyber world.

I’m always reminded of this in late December when families and friends get together at the end of a few months of solid graft and a winter vomiting bug or two runs riot, moving through areas like wildfire.

That’s really viral, genuinely viral. You can see why the term virus was coined in the cyber world. A physical virus is an amazing thing, replicating itself, producing different strains and moving quickly through people in different cycles and timeframes.

Millions can be affected within the space of a couple of weeks, brought on by the combination of people being at a low ebb and slightly more vulnerable to infection after a sustained period of work, proximity to others, and mobility within family groups and circles of friends.

I’m always fascinated by how terms like desktop, folder, cloud, virus and so on are borrowed from the physical world for their digital equivalent. They always seem so apt.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Language, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Tell A Story

January 2, 2017 //
0

Do you want to sell something to someone?

Do you want to market a product or service?

Do you need to convey a complex idea or concept?

Are you trying to get your audience to remember something?

Do you want your audience to be able to absorb, internalise and re-use the information you’re giving them?

Do you want someone to learn something?

Then tell a story!

Stories connect. They resonate with people. They’re memorable. They attach all the links in the right order into a coherent chain.

The story is the basic building block of the sales person and the marketer. Even if you don’t need a full story to get over your message, then a metaphor makes it memorable. So does an image, or a picture.

In this hectically fast world we occupy, with woefully short attention and retention spans, people are still engaged for hours and hours reading a good book, far longer than watching a movie or TV program.

So tell a story. It works.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Speaking with non-Native English Speakers

December 30, 2016 //
0

I was reading an article the other day which suggested that native English speakers need to learn how speak English with non-native English speakers.

It seems pretty obvious to this writer that we need to adapt the way we speak – to some degree – to every single person we speak to, even if they’re also native English speakers. That’s what communication is all about; adapting our vocabulary, phrasing and colloquialisms to the person and situation at hand. This is what all communicators do naturally, talking more slowly to non-native speakers, avoiding idiom, softening accents, and so on.

Those that don’t do this are small-minded, either because they don’t understand the basics of communication or they don;t care to make life easier for the person they’re in dialogue with.

Non-native English speakers may find written English easier to understand, because it’s more formal, they can take their time with it and revisit the sentence if they want, or look a word up for a translation. Spoke English offers none of these luxuries, unless you help out. Written and spoken English are also two different, and diverging, languages, each subject to different forces like speed of change and formalising regulations.

So, speaking with or writing for  non-native English speakers is like speaking with or writing for any speaker. It;s basic sales and marketing. You adapt your content to your audience.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Meeting with New People

December 16, 2016 //
2

Did anyone notable ever say something along the lines of ‘a wise man speaks less, a foolish man does not’?

If they didn’t, they should have, so I’m filling the gap now.

When you’re in a meeting with new people, I think it’s a sensible course of action to keep your own counsel first. This is deferential, which is polite and considerate, but also gives you a chance to gauge the situation, see what they’re like, assess what they know, and generally rate them as individuals, based on your early impressions.

Then, when you’ve given them a chance and you’re surer of the situation, you can start contributing from a more knowledgeable basis.

This approach certainly works well in sales and marketing, when you’re looking to get the customer to do the talking so you can learn more and propose a better solution that builds on your increased understanding of their requirements.

When you understand the situation and the new person you’re talking to better than they do you, you’re in a position to help them better, make a better first impression, and have a better chance of controlling the dialogue and the output.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales

One Hour

December 9, 2016 //
0

I’ll keep this post uncharacteristically short. I’m going to put it out there. It applies for work and play.

No meeting, session, presentation and so on should be longer than an hour. Anything more is too much, unfair to the audience, not a good use of anyone’s time. It’s a productivity and attention thing.

Do we really need longer than an hour? If we do, we should split it up into sessions, with breaks. Look at the educational system, which should be focused on learning, absorbing, retaining and using information. Classes are less than an hour, and double classes should have a complete break.

The exception to this is if you, the customer, the audience member, have paid for the privilege. A film, a show, or an evening with someone. Other than that, it should be an hour, max. It’s all you should need.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales
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