Archives for category: Sales
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Two Years of Blogging

September 2, 2015 //
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Two years ago today I published my first blog post on ‘Paul Dilger’s blog – Musings on stuff I come into contact with.’ I committed to do 3 posts a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, going out between 7:30 and 8:30 am London/Dublin time, regular as clockwork. It didn’t seem worth the commitment to do one when I felt like it, since that would degenerate into one a month, and pretty soon none a month.

Two years later, and some 300-plus posts later, it’s still going strong, regular as clockwork. I like to think that I’m still true to the values from the early days: mostly sales and marketing stuff, posts that take a maximum of 2-3 minutes to read – rather than 10 seconds or half your morning – and posts that I hope interest and enable people.

It serves as the chief dollop of fresh content for my business web site, but it doesn’t feel like work. I really enjoy writing the posts, and I know the discipline of creating them is good for me.

I hope you enjoy dipping into them as well. Here’s to the next post :-).

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

It’s Not About Starting Something

August 17, 2015 //
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It’s not about starting a project. It’s not about coming up with a great idea that could make millions. It’s not about deciding to walk coast to coast for charity.

Anyone can start something. Kids start new things every day, but how many do they finish before they get bored and move onto the next shiny metal thing?

It’s not about starting something.

It’s about finishing something. It’s about following through, executing, closing the loop, learning from the experience and moving on to the next thing.

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

The 3 C’s of Customer Intimacy

August 12, 2015 //
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This is not so much 3 separate Cs as one rule with 3 C’s in it.  Here is my golden rule of customer intimacy:

Customers Crave Consistency.

Consistency is a comfortable armchair after a long day. It’s a familiar tune, or a fly ball to centre field. Easy.

When you’re consistent, and deal with your customers in a consistent way, they know what to expect. They grow with you, they’re comfortable with you, and the relationship deepens and develops. Remember the ‘one more thing’ of Jobs-led Apple product launches? We know it’s coming, and it sucks us in.

When you’re unpredictable, haphazard and inconsistent, customers are confused, discombobulated, frustrated. It turns them off.

I try to keep my posts consistent, to a consistent standard. It’s not a case of ‘this is getting stale, let’s change it up.’ It’s more like ‘I’m going here, it feels like home.’

For more on my consistency soapbox, see here.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Why Go To A Consultant

July 15, 2015 //
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Question: Why go to a consultant rather than someone in your company to get something important done?

There are myriad reasons, but the 3 I like and the 3 where I feel people like me can add value are these:

1) Specialised experience. You pay for experience in the field where you need help, because a consultant’s experience allows them to know which corners you can cut to execute quickly and save time.

2) Hard-nosed practicality. Consultants know what works and what doesn’t work. The practical, workable solution gets the job done.

3) Laser-like responsiveness. A good consultant knows that you went with them because they are free from any internal company politics or distractions and because they can deliver.

These 3 reasons are the ones we stand behind at M4 Marketing, which is my consulting practice. Together, they add up to what I think is a compelling offering, namely accelerating a company’s time to market for any important project.

Answer: You should go to a consultant because you want to get something important done.

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

Empty Promises

July 13, 2015 //
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Empty Promise - No Paper

Empty Promise – No Paper

Don’t make empty promises, promises you know you can’t keep.

Don’t offer things you don’t have. You’ll create a need for something that people now want but that you can’t deliver.

Don’t invite people to use your resource sparingly and then have none of that resource available.

If you run out of something, remove the notice or label it refers to, or amend your stock to say – yes, you’ve guessed it – ‘out of stock’.

These are all easy things you can do.

Remember, you’re looking to establish a relationship with your customer, one based on trust and the mutual expectation that each can deliver their side of the bargain. Don’t blow it by failing to do the easy stuff.

Otherwise, you run the risk of phantom marketing, creating demand which you can’t satisfy. You’ll annoy your audience, turn them off and break whatever bond you had built up. Then you’ll have to work doubly hard to get it back.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Sales

Selling Isn’t Yelling

July 8, 2015 //
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Selling isn’t yelling. Marketing isn’t yelling either.

That’s the wrong direction.

Selling is NOT:

– talking

– telling

– reciting

– shouting

– bullying

– lecturing

– pontificating

Selling IS:

– asking

– listening

– qualifying

– disqualifying

– challenging

– guiding

– advising

That’s the right direction. It comes from the customer to you, not the other way around. Pull versus push.

So how do you initiate the conversation? Tell them something that compels them to engage with you, to put their hand up, to come to you.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Sales

How Long is Your Runway?

July 1, 2015 //
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When you’re executing a project, it helps to think about runway. For example, when you’re looking to generate leads for sales people to follow up on, there is a lead time between starting the project and leads coming in from the project you’ve executed. You need to plan for this runway, or else you’ll be trying to do vertical take off, and unfortunately business operates like an aeroplane rather than a helicopter or a jump jet.

The smaller your project, the smaller the runway you need. The larger the project, the larger the runway. You can get a light aircraft off the ground in 200 metres. You need at least ten times that for a jumbo jet. Same thing with business projects.

Make sure you’ve allowed enough runway, or you won’t get off the ground.

Equally important, the larger the project, the more runway you need to bring it home, complete it and assess its performance.

Make sure you’ve allowed enough runway, or you won’t land to fly another day.

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

The Frisson of Closure

June 19, 2015 //
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I must admit to a certain frisson of pleasure at the closing of things. Mundane, inconsequential things.

Let me give you examples. That feeling when you load up the dishwasher – surely the single greatest invention of all time – put the cleaning tab in, hit the ‘on’ button and close up the lid. So satisfying.

It’s same when you close the heated oven door after carefully preparing your dish for cooking. Here’s two more for you: Closing and locking the house front door at the end of a day, ideally a Friday, when everyone’s home, last thing at night. Closing the car door when all the family is inside after a long walk somewhere, ready for the drive home.

I know, the last ones have serious womb syndrome about them, but you see parallels in the working world. Submitting that final report, either paper-based or electronically, is a rush too. Signing off on an initiative, a project, a job even, come on, you must feel it too. Sales people – closing a deal! How good is that feeling?!

Perhaps the ultimate work-related frisson of closure is the day you fully retire, as long as what you have lined up after it is better. This post harks back to a recent post about the circle of life, which makes them both all the more valid I think.

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Categories General, Sales

Content Equals Writing

June 10, 2015 //
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The word content is everywhere. It’s the buzz word for marketing, especially digital marketing, sales and the online world. You’re nowhere and no-one without content.

Content hasn’t really changed its meaning from the original. It’s still the stuff inside that’s important.

My 2 brothers and I are in 3 completely different industries. I’m in sales and marketing consulting, brother 1 is in natural history broadcasting and publishing, brother 2 is in English language teaching literature.We all create content for a living, which is perhaps what you might expect of 3 siblings with conjoined DNA.

We’re all involved in content, but we wouldn’t call it that. We would call ourselves writers (among other things, polite and otherwise).

Don’t get hung up on the word content. It’s not a new piece of jargon to be afraid of. It’s still about writing engaging stories that your audience can identify with and derive something from.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Language, Marketing, Sales

When The Numbers Do Lie

June 8, 2015 //
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The number system is a handy thing. You know the sequence of it and this helps you navigate life and work in an incalculable – pun intended – number of ways.

It’s only when the numbering system becomes unpredictable and lets you down that you feel helpless and want to exclaim ‘WTF!’ very loudly.

Take the numbering system in the estate I live in. Calling it maverick would be like calling a serial killer troubled. You struggle to fathom why they did it that way. I swear people never give a thought for how someone – possibly at some point a customer or buyer – can find it so hard to find a place for the first time. I don’t know a resident of the estate who understands how the numbering works. Our postman does, but that’s his job after all. You get visitors coming in asking ‘excuse me, I’m looking for number 37?’ and you have to say ‘I’m sorry, I do live here, but I don’t know. The numbering system is a mystery. You might try down there, but no promises.’

The other day I was travelling to the new London office of a client for a meeting. I had in my head a picture of where the office was, but when you emerge from the underground you rarely know which side of the road you are. There tend not to be helpful exit signs like ‘High Holborn – south side’. As a consequence, you don’t know which direction to go. Try asking someone which way is east, west, north or south – so easy in the US and engrained in city-building and thus people’s heads – and you’ll get a confused look as if you asked them what the chances were of seeing a Hutu tribesman on the south Pole.

I was advised to go in one direction, which I did for a few minutes. Following numbers is harder than you might think, as few offices or shops display their number, possibly because they don’t want you to find them the first time. After a while I realised that the numbers on both sides of the street were heading in the wrong direction. So I did a one-eighty and headed the other direction, but suffered the same fate. Worried that the bank of offices I needed were in fact held somewhere in a parallel universe, I enquired again and was sent back the original way. Sure enough, the numbering went against me again, but then after 5 minutes started to move in my favour.

Why on earth would you make it difficult for people to find you the first time, people who want to give you their time and money? Madness I tell you, madness.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales
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