When is it okay to ask for help?

Sustaining superior performance…

Whether you have been selling for two months or twenty years we all remember our first sale or the first objection we had to overcome. We also remember the times we struggled to sustain our level of performance and effectiveness, trying to rise above a plateau or break through to an even higher level of success.

I remember when I first started; trying to learn everything I could about media & advertising, striving to understand my products strengths & weaknesses and more importantly those of my competition. I was prepared, confident in my products ability to produce a return for my advertiser’s investment. With a briefcase full of layouts I was eager to show my accounts everything that my newspaper could do for their businesses. Looking back I now realize the most important asset I had was my first ad manager… right there with me making calls. Dennis was a long time newspaperman who told me once I got ink in my blood I would be hooked… I guess he was right. He was old (he must have been in his late forties… gee how time flies), spoke with a thick Scottish accent, (which somehow added to his air of confidence), and seemed to know everything about advertising. He explained that confidence comes from experience and experience comes from time… “You can’t rush it but you can learn something every day from your interactions with your accounts”.

Our sales calls together were coaching calls, although I didn’t know to call them that at the time. I did know enough to recognize that this was an opportunity not to be missed. The simple lessons learned from his “experience” are still with me today.

Experts tell us superior performance occurs because when we are committed to doing our very best. As sales professionals our willingness to be coached, or mentored, increases our effectiveness by allowing us to see our actions through someone else’s objective perspective. Giving us the feedback we need to continue learning and improving.

Coaching consists of two main components - Responding to Needs and Initiating Alternatives.

Responding to needs - Counseling, mentoring, and tutoring are coaching conversations that respond to needs…  help with a current project or task, clarification about conflicting priorities, or help with a personal work issue. Needs may also address career or developmental goals or long-term learning projects. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. Remember, the person you may ask for help, regardless how successful they may be, once faced the same challenges you now face. You have the opportunity to gain perspective and learn from their “experience”. That is the true definition of a Mentor… an experienced and trusted counsel or teacher.

Initiating alternatives - Your manager may perceive that you are ready to move on to more difficult challenges and take the initiative to present you with such a possibility. Or they may see that you need assistance and discuss the situation with you in order to “coach” you through your challenges. You may also identify a challenge or an area for improvement and choose to discuss it with your manager or coach.

Coaching establishes the major factors that lead to success: it clarifies and prioritizes; it helps us understand what is important and what is not; it invites us to demonstrate influence over our own performance and career by improving the knowledge skills and abilities we need to do our best. Coaching helps us to focus our energy, exercise self-control, and commit to excelling in our performance.

It takes a confident sales person to know when they can use the assistance of their manager and be open to assistance when it is being offered. Being open to being coached not only helps us improve our performance; it also assists in challenging us to reach for even higher goals.

I’ve learned a lot from all the great coaching managers and sales staff I have been fortunate enough to work with over the years and from Dennis’s coaching I remember to… strive to learn from my experiences every day.

Seek out your coach or mentor… whether your current manager or someone else where you work. Their experience will assist you in reaching your true potential. Then, when the opportunity presents itself you too can share your experience with others to create a never ending system of support for sustaining superior performance for yourself and your team.

Lessons in communication from...  

Curious George… 

I was watching the Curious George Christmas show “A very Monkey Christmas” with my two year old daughter when I realized the lesson about effective communication that it held and how it related to communication in business today.  My daughter loves George… the mischievous little monkey who uses non-verbal communication, pointing at objects and making monkey sounds, which is somehow very appealing to young children who enjoy following his antics.

George and The Man with The Yellow Hat are having a very merry time counting down the days until Christmas. There’s only one problem: neither of them can figure out what to give the other for a present. As they get more and more distraught over what to get one another for Christmas they begin following each other around trying to ascertain or “Guess” what the other really wants… getting more & more confused. Only when the Man in the Yellow Hat truly tries’ to understand (in context) the picture George drew him of what he wanted does it come to him… (albeit in a dream).

I couldn’t help think that this was somewhat of a metaphor for business communication today. We are all really busy… inundated with information “guessing” what everyone is trying to say… yet we write cryptic emails and leave incomplete voicemails that do not tell the person we are communicating with what they need to know and understand in a simple clear concise manner.  Unlike George we are blessed with the capability to communicate in many rich ways.   

Communication is a process of effectively exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through speech, signals, writing, or behavior. In the communication process, the sender (encoder) composes a message and then uses a medium or channel to send it to the receiver (decoder) who interprets the message processes the information and responds appropriately. Simple, but yet complex when we as sender do not assume the responsibility of ensuring our communication is concise and clear. Even saying the text book “encoder” and “decoder” makes it seem more complex. Do we really want to communicate in “code” that the other person has to try and interpret like Georges’ drawing of what he wanted for Christmas?

When we talk to others, we assume that others understand what we are saying because “we” know what we are saying. But this is not the case. Usually people bring their own attitude, perception, emotions and thoughts about the topic and hence create barriers in delivering the right meaning. We have all said… “That is not what I said – or that is not what meant”. But did we communicate clearly? In other words… it is our responsibility to ensure the person we are communicating with “understands” or “gets” our message.

People communicate with each other in a number of ways that depend upon the message and the context in which it is being sent. Choice of communication channel and your style of communicating also affect communication.

So in order to deliver the right message, you must put yourself on the other side of the table and think from your receiver’s point of view. Will they understand the message? How it will sound to them? Only then are we are thinking of context in the eyes of the receiver.

Through attempting to truly understand George’s communication the Man in the Yellow Hat realized just how important he and George are to one another. In the process, he “decodes” George’s message and figures out the perfect gift, and, clever monkey that he is, George also thinks of a gift that will mean more to the Man in the Yellow Hat than anything else in the world. What could be better than a holiday story about truly understanding each other and the joy of giving?

Merry Christmas everyone…. May all your communications this holiday season be rich and rewarding.

For more conversation on how to improve your Sales Skills check out our webinars on www.mymetroland.com or register for 2013 courses, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.

High Value Questions in Negotiations….Invaluable.

I came across a great article by Pat Tinney on asking High Value questions in negotiations that I thought I would share…

 “Curiosity is the basis of education and if you tell me curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly”- Arnold Edinborough

Curiosity in negotiations saves money. It’s as simple as that, so be the cat!

The way we channel our negotiation curiosity is to ask “High Value Questions”. High Value Questions are questions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or a “no”.

Examples of High Value Questions on negotiation training are as follows;

1) When and Why was negotiation training introduced to your team?

2) What was the big difference in your team after negotiation training?

3) Where do you think you will gain the most from negotiation training?

4) Who on your team needs negotiation training?

5) How much revenue is your company hoping to capture with negotiation training?

The person who curiously enquired with the above High Value Questions would certainly have gained a lot of information on;

1) Timing

2) Corporate Culture

3) Response Expectations

4) Goals

5) Personnel

6) Budget information

High Value Questions sometimes called “open ended” questions are essential to collecting the kind of information from the other side that allows us to avoid making assumptions and costly mistakes in negotiations.

To put this in context, if a business negotiation were a military exercise can you imagine leading a team on to the battle field without having asked piercing questions to build reconnaissance on the opposing side? Not likely!

An astute negotiator will have a list of High Value Questions in her pocket before she enters every client negotiation meeting. These High Value Questions will be ranked by importance of revenue or objectives.

If the High Value Questions are delivered in a non threatening manner and the other side starts to answer at length four important things should happen.

1) The person on our team that asked the questions should then assume the role of interviewer and gently encourage the other side to continue with their line of response so the interviewer can ask deeper questions.

2) If our side is on a four legged call with the client, the person not asking questions should be taking detailed notes.

3) After the meeting these notes are then dissected and matched against our ranked list of High Value Questions and objectives.

4) Finally, a new set of High Value Questions is created for the next meeting in the negotiation.

The outcome of the meeting may not be as important as the information gathered through well conceived High Value Questions.

High Value Questions in Negotiations? …..Invaluable!  “Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat”!

Pat is Managing Partner at Centroid Marketing & Negotiation Training and has an extensive background in Consultative Sales & Business Negotiation. He has represented many of Canada’s largest daily newspapers over a 30+ year career on both a corporate and local sales basis and has been placed in a position to close some of Canada’s largest print media buying deals. For more articles by Pat on business negotiation check out www.centroidmarketing.com.

For more conversation on how to improve your Negotiation Skills check out our webinar on www.metrolandhr.com or register for our next Negotiating Skills course on Tuesday December 4th (9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.).at the Vaughan Press Center, - 1 Century Place, Woodbridge ON L4L 8R2. To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.

Why most “SALES” Presentations suck…

Legendary screenwriting guru Robert McKee said "as a method of persuasion, I am not a big fan of PowerPoint presentations," What McKee is really saying is that using PowerPoint the way most people still do today in sales presentations (slides filled with loads of data and lists of "points" - mostly features not benefits) fails… Even assuming people are able to stay focused & pay attention… largely because the audience assumes the presenter is hiding something or that they are only including the bits and pieces that support their case.

McKee also greatly dislikes the term "PowerPoint presentation" When people use this term, especially in a disparaging way, they assume that using PowerPoint necessarily means using it the way the Microsoft templates suggest (title, bullets, small charts and graphs, etc.) rather than as a simple digital storytelling tool that can amplify a person's live message with full screen video clips, easy to see quantitative displays, high quality photography, good type, and so on.

There are no such things as "PowerPoint presentations" there are only effective presentations and ineffective ones. The effective ones almost always incorporate elements of story and good storytelling, regardless of whether they use multimedia or not.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools a presenter has. Yet it's also one of the most difficult things for a presenter to do well. But why are stories so important? And what separates a good story from a poor one?

First, presentations need to be is deceptively simple and storytelling is central to simplifying complex concepts and opportunities in a sales presentation. Stories help us make sense of the world and give structure and order. They tell us what is important, and what is not, and give us a way to connect individual experiences to those of others, as well as to our own goals, wants & needs.  More to the point for a typical presenter stories are the best way to make the message more memorable.

There's very little substitute for good narrative…  Good presenters are instinctive storytellers. Without narrative, a presentation isn't a presentation at all, it’s just a "data dump" of information clients are unlikely to remember. A true presentation looks toward its own outcome (what the presenter wants the audience to do) and is designed accordingly. "You look at understanding, believing and remembering. If the audience understood what you said, did they believe it? And if they believed it, did they remember it and see the value? And did they remember the key things to drive to the outcome you want? That's what stories do…

Stories embody knowledge, and knowledge is best embedded and remembered through a good story. In short, stories make facts come to life to truly show your clients not only what is in it for them but also provides an emotional resonance…  They are a powerful way to trigger an emotional response and engage an audience's memory.  They create a context that helps you understand why a point matters. An overhead with a couple of formulas just can't do that. Stories establish common ground between speaker and audience… a way to motivate without intimidating or being too pushy. Stories free people to discover for themselves, so they aren't threatened… they feel included… their intelligence has not been insulted and most importantly… they are more likely to take action.

You can find stories everywhere… on the news, on the Internet, in everyday conversation with clients. If they add value to your presentation… add them.  But, to connect with your audience make it yours. Stories without connection or context are deadly.  They don't have to be all yours, but if you to put something of yourself into it they will resonate.

So remember to tell your story in your next sales presentation. In the introduction tell them why they should listen and what you will do for them… Tell them the story… what their situation is and what it will look like when they choose your solution… And summarize the benefits gained in your conclusion… Remember… Simplicity Sells.

Oh… and for all of you that I have been been fortunate enough to have spent time with… the secret is out… all my stories are there for a reason and are mostly planned… if you remember them you will have remembered the message I was trying to convey… see… it works…

For more conversation on how to structure, build & deliver Presentations that Sell check out our webinar on www.metrolandhr.com  or register for our next Sales Presentations that Sell course on Tuesday November 6th (9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.).at the Vaughan Press Center, - 1 Century Place, Woodbridge ON L4L 8R2. To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.

What is your time really worth?

Time Management skills are especially important for sales professionals, who often find they are performing many different tasks during the course of the day. You can be in control and accomplish what you want to accomplish – first you’ve come to grips with the time management myth and take control of your time investing it where you receive the greatest return… time spent with clients.

In our last piece on Time Management we discussed the fact that time doesn't change and that all we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have. Identifying where we are wasting time, creating goals, implementing a time management plan, & prioritizing, using the tools readily available to us. We also discussed getting organized, establishing routines, setting time limits for tasks and using waiting time more effectively.

The one thing we didn’t talk about was truly understanding just what your time is actually worth…Determining your personal ROI… What your average sales potential per hour actually represents.  

First establish your average sale in dollars then identify how long it takes to complete a typical sale. In essence how much do you Sell in one hour in front of customers???  Tally the number of hours you spent in a particular week on other tasks… (Tasks where you could have managed your time better or even avoided) Now consider just how much could you sell in that squandered time frame?

For example; If my average sale is $1,000. and takes approximately 20 minutes… my sales potential is $3,000. per selling hour. If I spent five hours on other tasks this week, (where I could have better managed my time) and my time is worth $3,000 an hour in sales potential, those five hours have "cost" me a potential $15,000. in sales this week alone. Now extrapolate those numbers… how much does that cost you over the course of a month or a year? 

The one thing I know for sure is that our income as sales people is in direct proportion to the amount of time we spend with customers… or more simply… the more time you spend with customers - the more you make…

To succeed, we have to manage our time & stay focused investing our time where it yields the highest return… Time spent with customers - time spent SELLING!

For more conversation on effective time management principals check out our Time Management webinars on www.mymetroland.com  or register for our next Time & Territory Management course on Tuesday September 11th (9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.) at our Wolfedale Training Room - 3125 Wolfedale Road, Mississauga, L5C 1W1 To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.

The Missing Piece

My Metroland September 2012

 

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with a topic for this article.

I changed my mind several times but kept coming back to a conversation with Joe Anderson that took place at our advertising training day for his Muskoka region in July. .. Creativity

When I was a young “Advertising Sales Person” I would spend countless hours developing layouts for clients with innovative marketing concepts… Ideas that would get them excited. Quite frankly it worked… they bought into the creative or idea and then it would just be a matter of how big, how much and how often.  Once those details were ironed out I would run their campaigns and work with them to see what worked and what didn’t. Over time customers developed into clients and my revenue base consistently increased year over year.  Joe concurred, adding that as a young rep he wouldn’t bring just one idea to a customer he would bring three or four as a solid means of providing creative options and build campaigns and business.

The missing piece in our process today can often be the lack of creative ideas for clients who are looking for marketing solutions and ideas…  not just ad space.

Think about what it says on your business card. Most likely it will say Advertising or Marketing Consultant and that is exactly what our prospective clients are looking for… Consultants that will help them across the confusing river of marketing options…  a river that is ever flowing & changing and incredibly more & more difficult for them to come to grips with.

So how can we become more creative? Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher and the world's first creativity teacher felt that consulting our own knowledge and intuition is a wonderful way to gain insight. Unfortunately, some of us never learned this lesson. Much of our educational system is an elaborate game of "guess what the teacher is thinking," and we come to believe that the best ideas are in someone else's head rather than our own.  In our world very often we try and guess what our customers are thinking and offer them what we think they want before we make even the feeblest attempt at needs analysis and truly understanding their business.

I make as many sales calls in our markets as time allows. I learn from great sales people and our many clients who respond well to the right questions about their businesses and individual needs. One client summed it up quite succinctly when he told me… “I am tired of advertising salespeople who try and sell me their flavor of the day and ask me what I want to run in it… I want someone who understands my business and offers me Ideas for marketing and options for getting my message to my customers”…  Question first to gain understanding… ideas and creative second and the proper vehicle or solution last… Interesting… Sounds a lot like what Gordon Borrell calls The Agency Approach.

If we see the process of problem solving for our clients and creative thinking as a journey across a the river of marketing options then the opposite bank of the river is the obvious answer...  so to get there we must find the path.  We have many methods (solutions) to cross. We could chop down a tree carve out a boat and paddle, riskily tightrope across or we could strategically gather stones and make a path placing & building on them as we go. This is creativity.

Using the stepping stone analogy we first have to determine the best path by which to cross. Initially, we may think the best path is the shortest from shore to shore. This may not be so. We may find that there is deeper water at the shortest point, or the current is strongest there. We must first understand their business & focus on talking to their ideal customer with a timely marketing message in the form of effective ad creative.  We have to use the knowledge we have as media consultants to sort from our many choices (vehicles or solutions) that will be the most useful and effective for them to cross the river.

What we will end up with, hopefully, is a pile of well formed and appropriate stones (well planned creative ideas& solutions) that we can now use to cross. Thinking strategically or with a longer term approach we’ve picked our route, analyzed our many options and so we can now start to place our stones or build our multi media campaigns. With every step and stone we take across the river we will evaluate to see if the stone proves to be right for the position effectively working with our clients to evaluate and modify their advertising campaigns as markets and their situations change.

Eventually, all the stones will be placed across the river and the path formed will yield the desired outcome for our clients. Creative ideas combined with a longer term agency or campaign approach.

Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They’re “creative types.” We’re not.  But creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is a skill we can learn and develop.  It grows from a true desire to assist our clients in achieving their sales and marketing goals in creative and innovative ways. One Metroland Ad Manager (as a young rep) offered to sit on the roof of a local car dealership until they sold 100 cars as part of an innovative advertising campaign… the dealer bought into the idea… it worked (he got lucky with the dealership sales manager doing the roof sitting) and the dealership increased their advertising spend and started running consistent campaigns. We could recount thousands of Metroland examples just like this  and the solutions have a common theme… think like an agency, understand their business and specific challenges trust your intuition and bring them novel ideas that will generate desired solutions and not just broker ad space.  

As Heraclitus also so eloquently stated … "No man ever steps in the same river twice”. We must diligently make the effort to come up with new and creative ideas & ways to cross the ever changing marketing river for our clients to help them reach their goals.

Remember… the return they receive on their advertising investment will dictate how they choose to invest with you in the future… besides… trusting your intuition and coming up with great ideas that really deliver results for our clients is really fun and rewarding.

Are you a Transactional or a Consultative Salesperson?  

Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference…

Like most of you I wasn’t a born sales person nor did I aspire to be. But my first job at a daily newspaper called to something inside of me and quickly led to a sales role.  Although, the thought of being a salesperson was not necessarily what I had wanted to do… after all weren’t they the people who SOLD you something you didn’t need or really want, or at the very least talked you into the extras you always regretted later? My paradigm was based on the idea of the transactional sales person.

My first thoughts of a salesperson in media went to “Herb Tarlek” from the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati. You know the type… after shaking their hand you immediately checked to see if you still had your watch and wallet intact. Yet when I began my career in media and worked with clients… asking lots of questions about their businesses… really listening to their business situations… designing advertising that addressed their individual business needs… and bringing them the ROI they needed… it didn’t really feel like Selling… at least the way I had envisioned it???

I had been lucky to have been coached in the art of consultative sales by my first Ad Director (Dennis Keating- many of you may remember his name from the Thomson Newspaper days).  Dennis taught me to approach the business/sales conversation from a consultative or long term partnership stance…in other words… never just sell an ad (why wouldn’t you sell 3 or 6?) … develop a partnership where you assist the business reach their target audience with the correct message at the right time… He also let me in on a little secret… You don’t make a sale every time… especially if it is the first call on a business… but that is a topic to go into further at another time…  

As Jeffrey Gitomer once said… “Sales people are not needed to quote prices. They are the bridge between the selling price and the Perception of Value provided to earn the sale.”

Value lies in the customer concept or what we can do for them.

There are really two different types of sales – Transactional & Consultative.

A Transactional sale is a simple, short-term sale in which the customer already knows what he needs, so little to no product knowledge is required on the sales side. Typically, these are product rather than service-based. Buying criteria usually hinges on price or ease of acquisition.
Consultative selling is a more complex, long-term process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, in which the latter must first develop an understanding of the customer’s business, industry, and needs, and then develops a solution to help the customer achieve their objectives.
The greatest advice we can take as sales people is to Think Like a Customer to truly understand their needs and offer valid solutions… Thinking like a customer… the difference between a transactional sale and a consultative one can be easily understood from best-selling author Roy H. Williams’ comparison of the transactional vs. relational shopper:

The Transactional Shopper

1. Transactional shoppers are focused only on today’s transaction and give little thought to the possibility of future purchases.
2. Their only fear is of paying more than they had to pay. Transactional shoppers are looking for price and value.
3. They enjoy the process of comparing and negotiating and will likely shop at several stores before making their decision to purchase.
4. Transactional shoppers do their own research so they won’t need the help of an expert. Consumer Reports are published primarily for the transactional shopper.
5. Because they enjoy the process, transactional shoppers don’t consider their time spent shopping to be part of the purchase price.
6. Anxious to share the “good deal” they’ve found... transactional shoppers are excellent sources of word-of-mouth advertising.

The Relational Shopper

1. Relational shoppers consider today’s transaction to be one in a long series of many future purchases. They are looking less for a product than for a store in which to buy it.
2. Their only fear is of making a poor choice. Relational shoppers will purchase as soon as they have confidence. Will your store and your staff give them this confidence they seek?
3. They don’t enjoy the process of shopping and negotiating.
4. Relational shoppers are looking principally for an expert they can trust.
5. They consider their time to be part of the purchase price.
6. Confident that they have found “the right place to buy,” relational shoppers are very likely to become repeat customers.

Although his article is talking to merchants and store owners, our customers, his advice still makes perfect sense. Some clients will be in transactional mode and others in relational mode, your success or failure hinges on knowing which and adjusting your selling style accordingly.

Some sales are more complex and end up as a mix of both transactional and consultative, depending on the client. Yet, in a consultative industry like ours, problems occur when buyers attempt to engage our services using the transactional approach. These are people who don’t respond well to questions and just want to know how much???  You know the client… the one comparing apples and oranges… buying an ad or online property as a commodity. Basing their decision solely on page price vs. page price not considering even the most blatant question… reach & readership or number of potential clients reached.  Your success lies in how you deal with them, and not in adjusting your selling style to match their buying mode… the slippery slope of discounting or DE-Valuing our products.

The key is to recognize and change your prospects buying mode, rather than adjusting your selling style. A transactional buyer can be converted into a relational one if handled properly. Remember… consultative selling is a long-term process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, understanding of the customer’s business, industry, and needs, and then developing solutions to address the customer concept or their objectives. This takes time but the return spells long term success for both you and your clients.

For more conversation on Consultative Selling  principals check out our Consultative Selling webinar on http://www.mymetroland.com/  or register for our next Consultative Selling course on Tuesday July 10th (9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.) at the Vaughan Press Center, - 1 Century Place, Woodbridge ON L4L 8R2. To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.