Archives for category: Sales
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Welcome Back

October 21, 2016 //
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In 2000, I was in San Diego, California, for a conference. The day before the conference started, I had some time to kill and I needed a new travel bag with wheels and one of those extendable handles. So I went to the local mall with a colleague to do some research.

We split up and I went into a couple of shops. I nodded my hellos to the staff and I didn’t speak any more to a sales assistant. In the second store found the bag I thought I was looking for. I left the store and went to go find my buddy for a second opinion, as he travelled for work more than I did.

20 minutes later we came back into the store. ‘Welcome back’, said the sales assistant, a handsome African American bloke in his late-20’s. The store was Sharper Image.

What struck was that the guy remembered me. When he said ‘Welcome back’, I took the unspoken part of this to mean:

  • I noticed you come in before
  • You’re important to us
  • We pay attention to our prospects and customers
  • I want you to know that
  • We want to serve you so that you can become a customer

I bought the bag.

I still have the bag.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Best B2B Sales Deck Ever

October 17, 2016 //
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The other day a colleague pointed me towards an article he’d seen by a chap called Andy Raskin on LinkedIn. It was a recounting and generalising around the best sales deck he’s ever seen. You can read the full article here.

If you can’t get to the article now, I’d recommend you bookmark it for another time. For now, though, the essence of the article is that the best flow of a sales deck, predominantly for B2B and disruptive technologies, touches on 5 key milestones. I’ve written about this a lot, and the following flow definitely hits all the major points.

Here are the 5 milestones:

1) Set the scene with a major change event in the world

2) Show that there’ll be winners who embrace this change event, and losers who don’t

3) Show them what success looks like when you’ve got there – what Andy calls ‘teasing the promised land’

4) Introduce your features as ‘magic gifts’ to get them to the promised land

5) Demonstrate your evidence that you can get them there, ie you’ve done it for others

Nothing new here perhaps, but it brings the prospect along the journey in an exciting way and doesn’t slam them on the defensive or put them off progressing because it’s too complex/scary/hard. As I said, the full article is here and well worth a read.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

People and Culture Don’t Change

October 5, 2016 //
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It’s really hard to change the culture iof an organisation. It’s even harder to do it quickly.

This is because culture is made up of people, who themselves find it particularly hard to change their engrained behaviour, as you might expect. You’re expecting people to change who they are. Not gonna happen, at least not without a ton of effort, time and patience.

I remember working with a company in the last 2o years where we worked hard on establishing the mission and values of the organisation, those important things we stood for. The difference, however, between what was on paper and what was exhibited by people, from the CEO down, was considerable. The value statements looked great on paper, but that was not how the company behaved.

This is why culture eats strategy for lunch, and why it’s so important that, once you’ve genuinely established the culture of your organisation, you hire people who are true to that culture. It’s easier said than done.

People and culture don’t change. Sometimes people join a company and find the culture is different to their experiences of it before they joined. Other times people join a company thinking – or more likely hoping – that the prevailing culture there is a good fit for them. In either situation, if you find yourself in a business either where the corporate culture is not your culture, it’s a good idea to consider trying to find a company where there is a fit, preferably as soon as possible.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Product Descriptions

September 21, 2016 //
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In the world of high tech, the product description is a vital document. It’s the link between inside and out. It connects the worlds of product management and product marketing, like the bridge between the left and right sides of the brain.

The product marketer has the job of enabling the sales force and partners to sell the new product, and customers to buy it, with the right messaging and assets to support the buying process.

To do this well, the product marketer relies on a good product description. A well-written product description is the base document that feeds internal enablement documents, the data sheet, website content and more detailed pieces of collateral.

Despite this, it’s sometimes hard to get a good product description. Perhaps this is because the product management function is more internal and technical, and being able to translate this into something that resonates with the customer is more external and business-oriented. When you don’t get a product description, it tends to make your job as a a product marketer very difficult, and it tends to compress the timeframe for generating the content.

The product description needn’t be a huge document; in fact, the simpler the better in my opinion. Here’s my suggested outline of what a good product description should cover:

  • What the product or product enhancement is
  • What it does (feature/function)
  • Which customer and prospect audiences it’s for
  • What it can and can’t do
  • How we should message it 
  • How we will sell it (including customer fit and pricing if relevant)
  • How it stacks up against the competition
  • How it will be implemented and supported
  • What success looks like for the product

Not too difficult, and key to success.

Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Initiative

July 4, 2016 //
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It’s always good to see people taking the initiative. It doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as it should. Having initiative and taking the initiative is a bit like putting ‘self-starter’ on your CV. Everyone feels it should be on there but few generally do it, at least not early in their careers.

I remember being on a train in London Paddington, about to head west, during the evening rush hour about a decade ago during the time when intercity trains were not just full, they were packed, in a Japanese commuting-style. This particular train was bound for south Wales, but stopped off at Reading, the first major stop 25 mins away and a city that was served by a train every 15 minutes or so. The train was packed, dangerously so.

Many of the travellers were heading for Reading, perhaps 40% of them in my very unscientific estimation. I happened to be standing wedged in a corner of one of the carriages when I overheard the conductor talking to a couple of colleagues. ‘I know what we can do,’ he said. Two minutes later, the conductor came onto the intercom, apologised for the schedule change and announced that the service would not be stopping at Reading.

There was a degree of huffing and puffing, the rain emptied to the point where everyone could just about get a seat, and we took off a few minutes late.

The conductor was probably not authorised to do what he did, but he got the train away, 500 passengers where able to get to their long distance destination on time, and 200 commuters to Reading were delayed 15 minutes getting home.

We need people to take the initiative and shoulder the consequences. That’s how we get stuff done.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

Prime Now, Prime Not

July 1, 2016 //
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I did a stupid thing the other day.

I packed for a trip to the UK from Ireland, and forgot the power pack for my MacBook Air. Realising the error of my ways, and with an hour’s juice left, I went online to see if I could get one delivered to me the same day. I had heard that with Amazon Prime Now you can get stuff delivered in big cities like London within the hour, which was perfect.

I couldn’t see any Prime Now offers for the charger I needed. Then someone told me that Prime Now was a mobile thing, so I needed to download the app. I couldn’t find the app, which was when that same someone told me I probably couldn’t see the app because I lived in Ireland where Prime Now was not available. No problem, I’ll change my country to the UK in my Amazon settings. Except that it’s not straightforward and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do it.

No problem said that same someone, I’ll order it for you with my Prime Now app and get it delivered here to the office. Great, except that the app wouldn’t allow him to change the delivery address from his home to the office. Not a good first impression…

We gave up. I walked 3 minutes to a local electrical store, they had the power pack I needed, which I bought, and I was back in the office in 15 minutes.

You see, when your ecommerce technology fails your customers, they leave you and go back to good old bricks and mortar.

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Categories Customers, Sales, Technology

What is a Product Roadmap?

June 27, 2016 //
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What do you understand by the term ‘product roadmap’? There are lots of definitions, some narrow and some broad, some internally focused and some market- or customer-focused. And how detailed should a product roadmap be? Should it pin your detailed colours to the mast, or should it be high level, allowing you room for manoeuvre?

I think that over time B2B customers have become somewhat desensitised towards product roadmaps. This is especially true in the software industry where the sheer complexity and number of moving parts, combined with the influences of individual customers, conspire to make roadmap projections aspirational at best and at worst downright misleading and fictional.

The pressures on the business in a dynamic landscape are changing all the time, and I’ve seen businesses where products or product enhancements have arrived 2 or 3 years after they were advertised to come on stream.

But back to product roadmap definitions. The one I use when asked this question defines a product roadmap as a plan of product or platform developments, delivered through a release mechanism – which could be a few or several times a year – through properly managed projects and programmes. After all, you’ve got to be sure that all the parts of the business can fulfil their element of the whole product solution. In other words, the roadmap should really be about when new releases are delivery ready, not sales ready. By all means seed the market, and build the demand to allow for the natural lag of a sales cycle, but publish your roadmap based around genuine availability.

Customers love to see detailed roadmaps, but only if you actually can commit to the associated timings, otherwise the trust quickly evaporates. Just like in sales, you’re only as good as your last quarter. Software development never seems to build in any buffer for the inevitable bumps in the road – probably because the front of the business is pushing for the earliest possible delivery date – and when those bumps occur, it’s very hard to get back on track. That’s why I fall back on the principle of under-promise and over-deliver to customers, and pushing back to the business. The customer comes first, so I’m in favour of high level roadmap pronouncements that strike the right balance between demonstrating progress and allowing wiggle room, so you can be on time, on brief, and maybe even on budget.

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

Statistical Sophistry

June 17, 2016 //
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Statistical sophistry? What on earth do I mean by statistical sophistry, other than repeating it for improved SEO purposes?

Well, one of the first things we should all learn about statistics is that you can pretty much use them to illustrate any point you like. People use them all the time, because they add a layer of credibility to an argument or case. We’ve all heard the phrase that 48% of all statistics are made up on the spot – feel free to insert your own stat as you read this – but the dangerous thing about statistics is that they can be created, skewed and twisted to serve any purpose. You only have to ask the global political establishment.

Then there’s the sophistry. They used to bandy the term about in Ancient Greece to draw the differences between genuine philosophers and thinkers and the sophists who argued for the sake of things, using trickery, guile and superficial nonsense to dupe their audiences. I originally typed ‘dope’ there my mistake; maybe the typo is more accurate.

The key to interpreting all statistics is to look behind the numbers. What do they really mean? How were they arrived at? What was the sample size? How rigorous was the analysis? How objective was the work, or was it done to justify a preconceived view? Often you can’t answer all these questions, but it still pays to look behind the numbers and peer into the ‘why is information being presented to me in this way?’ abyss.

Just because you use a stat, doesn’t mean it’s true. People who use statistics responsibly and clearly are edifying and educating us. People who use them to distract or obfuscate are not. It’s up to us to keep our wits about us to distinguish the true philosophers from the sophists.

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

A Sense of Urgency

June 15, 2016 //
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A sense of urgency is the secret weapon of the self-starter. A self-starter adopts a sense of urgency because he or she understands that time is the most precious commodity, and wasted time can never be won back.

I try to instil this in my kids, with almost unwaveringly poor results. Whenever they’re asked to do anything around the house, or to get ready for school, they seem to head into a neutral gear, returning the aside I made to them once: ‘yes Dad, I’m on a sponsored go slow…’ They don’t buy into the concept of the sooner you start something and the quicker you do it, the quicker you can get onto something else. Either that, or they fly through jobs in a slap-dash fashion that necessitates a rework and the accompanying retort: ‘if only you’d done it right the first time, you’d be done by now…’

It’s all about balance. A sense of urgency – in work or play – combined with the right level of quality gets things done in the most effective way. Emptying a dishwasher, putting everything in the right place with no breakages and a sense of urgency gets the job done correctly in the least amount of time. This sense of urgency, using the dishwasher example, pushes us to group items for the same cupboard or shelf into one trip, so that we minimise aggregate journey time.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we fly around our daily work and house tasks like people possessed all day. Everyone needs downtime. Don’t get me wrong, I love to relax, and taking time out from work and play is key. But you can still relax well, relax effectively :-).

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy
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