The Salesby5 Blog

Today, gas is at about $4.00 per gallon. AT&T headquarters is leaving our city and taking 700 high paid jobs with it to Dallas. My electric bill went from $300.00 per month to over $500.00 per month in one year. So things are changing and changing fast,  including prices, needs, problems and people’s expectations. Times like these require us to separate thoughts from actions. There are huge opportunities and areas of worry. What can you do today to realize opportunities that are made of todays economic happenings?

Can you sell more or develop creative financing because it helps others?  What if you developed a lawn mower that ran off of garbage or a unique way to cool our homes?  These desperate times call for innovation and creativity.  How can you maximize this opportunity?

 Mr. Fusion – pic by sheriffmitchell

Do you set limits on yourself? Many of us (humans) set limits or constraints on our abilities.  Amazingly, most of these are self imposed.  We have the ability to step out in faith or stay where we are out of fear. You are rewarded when you step out in faith. What can you do today that is different to get you different outcomes?

What if you tried to stop selling?  As Seth says, start telling the stories of how your product or service has helped businesses or people. Tell a great story and it will be remembered.  People will beg you for more.  The begging for more might be in the form of wanting more information, a sale or a referral to a friend that should hear the story.  The more compelling you can make your story, the better.  People can buy a product any time, what they are looking for is a story (feeling) that will make them want to work with you.

 photo by he and fi

The 3rd quarter of 2008 is coming up fast.  Quarterly meetings focusing on key initiatives for sales and marketing are crucial. This review should include what 2nd quarter initiatives were met, still need to be done and hopefully recall those that were exceeded.

Use the Gazelles checklist for your meeting. If you don’t use it during the meeting, at least use it yourself to check off throughout the year.  Remember, these are habits.  They take time to turn them into habits and are easy to break if you don’t make them a habit.

Now, a giant way to increase sales fast is a 5-10 minute daily huddle with sales and marketing together. Marketing learns news from the field and they all learn each other’s priorities, but most importantly the hurdles. Marketing gets excited by seeing what is really going on in the field.  Sales gets excited seeing Marketing finally get the fact that Sales is not like making toast or doing a Google search – a mindless process.

You are three working days away from July 1st. Are you gaining momentum? These tools, used by the best of the best, will help you.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing a short Strengths presentation to the Tesoro interns.  As usual, they had a sharp bunch with great questions (and answers) that I felt were worth sharing here.

- Can people really be that happy to go to work?  Amazingly, yes!  Some people, including me, get excited for Mondays.  I have exciting work to do with a team that I enjoy being around.  We each pay attention to each other’s strengths to make sure that the work is given to the right people.  Frequent strengths conversations are an every day affair.

- I/my parents have spent so much money on my school; to play to my strengths, I’d have to start over!  What do I do?  You may feel that you have made the wrong choice in school or that you are too far along in your career.  There are steps that you can take daily to shift your time from doing the things that you hate, to the things that fulfill you.  Try making a small, incremental shift daily.  Talk to your boss, manager, or employees about how they could better utilize your strengths with the right projects.  Offer up your strengths!

- Is this “Strengths stuff” really beneficial to the organization or is it just for self-awareness?  Strengths provide tangible benefits to the organizations that implement the program. Check out Marcus Buckingham’s White Paper for the details.  The benefit that the individual receives is better engagement in their work. Internal motivation provides a need to work on projects where they have a natural tendency to want to focus.

The most rewarding aspect is when even one person “gets it.” They change course in their life because they know where they are naturally driven and have made a choice to follow that path.  Can you be that bold?

I am on a camping trip with the family. It was the second trip in an RV, the last one was a big sale in March. This one was a lesser RV by far, but incorporated the beach, the water and a second place, Choke Canyon. I set out early to get mentally prepared, as I have been vacation deprived for several years, to the point of 2 to 4 days in 2 years.  Well, mentally I made a point to make sure this was not about me! It was about the experience for my family. It probably sounds simple, like “of course, why would anything be about you?”  In a work or personal environment, things can get to the point of tragic before you realize that you have alienated your co-workers or family, respectively.  Start making the adventure of work and life an experience for everyone, not just yourself, and see how engaged the people in your life can be!  Like most things, life is more fun with others.

Picture by sunchild_dd

Huddles seem to be one of the most underrated and misunderstood habits that we prescribe to new and old clients.  The reasons excuses are endless:

1. “We have 70 people.” or “We only have three people.”
2.  “How can you solve problems in 10 minutes?”
3.  “We don’t have time for another meeting.”

With huddles, it doesn’t matter the size of your team because they’re scalable.  We started with three people on our huddles, we’re now up to six and they continue to be of high value.  Our friends at The Scooter Store have over 1500 employees with cascading huddles across states and time zones.

During these huddles, the entire focus is on communication, not problem solving.  It doesn’t matter if people are in front of you or on the phone.  In our huddle we talk about personal or business news, today’s top 3 priorities and hurdles.  We make adjustments according to hurdles and will move priorities around when changes are needed.  If problems arise, we take them offline to be solved after the huddle.  Huddles are not for solving problems.  Bottom Line:  For C-Levels, managers and supervisors, the huddles teach them where the hurdles are as well as the priorities versus making assumptions.

The use of huddles is actually a more efficient use of time instead of people sharing news and priorities individually throughout the day.  Why not communicate everything at once, in an efficient manner instead?

Get started with your huddles this week.  Pick someone to run them.  Then, pick an unusual time (preferably in the morning, never the afternoon) – ours is at 9:15 AM.  Have everyone stand up to keep the huddle moving.  Give it a shot, then come back and tell us how they’re working for you in a month!  See what you’re missing.

Huddle Agenda

Today we had an interesting discussion about our culture and how it has dramatically changed. We used to allow the unacceptable and in my previous business it got to the point of ridiculousness. So if you want to change it so that your people are not de-motivating (un-selling) each other, you, your customers, what do you do? Remember the flywheel Jim Collins referenced in Good to Great. Imagine a giant, heavy wheel that moves an inch after much pushing.  With continuously dedicated pushing in a consistent direction you start seeing it speed up. Finally it is spinning.

Once you have your purpose, core values, brand promise and goals and BHAG in place and the leaders are living them, the flywheel starts to move! It is not over a week, but the movement in one month can inspire.  The movement in six months will make you shudder at where you were six months ago and in a year, it is all clarity so you can focus on the vision (BHAG). It can be fun if you have a great coach or a great team pulling, pushing and providing the inspiration. Once you get to this stage, you do not get to rest or relax, you then get to make sure that everyone is realizing how each person is living that brand promise and living the company’s purpose. How cool would it be if everyone is moving in the same direction with enthusiasm?  This is similar to a rowing team. What if one person did not row in the same direction once? What if they did not row the same direction two of five days? The rowing team would not allow it, why should you?

Summary: Selling starts with an attitude and reaches success with momentum. Selling on the inside gets sales on the outside and keeps the flywheel moving.  When were things the best?  Who is rowing against the team now and how fast can you fix it?

…what you eat. 
…who you think you are. 
…who you hang around.

When I was 15. I had ambition, energy, and passion for cars. I was searching for who I was.  I had friends who were encouraging the wrong things, weren’t positive, and worst of all, they de-motivated me.

When I was 16 I had a girl friend who was “out of my league” and she inspired me, complimented me and best of all, asked me why these people were my friends. I had no good answer! Within months, I learned that a friend is defined as a person whom one knows, likes, and trusts. But further definition in a dictionary is: a person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade. Further finding is: One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement.

What does all this mean? Friends sell you on doing what is right and wrong.  If you have friends that belittle or de-motivate you or are jealous of you, get new ones! Fire the old ones! People sell bad things sometimes.  It happened to me. I want my children to have friends that inspire them to achieve more, whom they can trust and most of all, ones they respect.  According to Marcus Buckingham, besides having a stable home life, the most influential group of people growing up are friends during your youth.  Their perceptions of you shape you as a person.

At SalesBy5 we practice a core value:  follow your heart, it will not lead you astray.  What’s your heart telling you about your life?

I was just checking out Dave Balter’s new book, The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II (click to download in pdf free), as mentioned on Seth’s blog.  Dave published an interesting formula to calculate the value of a traditional commercial to word of mouth communication-

(# of traditional media impressions) X (Average length of impressions) = (# of word of mouth communications) X (Average length of word of mouth communications)

Compare these numbers and see how many people you need talking about your product versus being totally engaged with your commercial:

# of traditional media impressions (the total number of people who saw your commercials) – 100,000
Average length of impressions – 30 seconds
Average length of word of mouth communications – 480 seconds (8 minutes)
100,000 X 30 = 3,000,000/480=6,250

According to his equation, the equivalent of 100,000 people watching, understanding and digesting a 30 second ad are 6,250 people having a conversation.

How can you get those people talking about you/your products and service instead of spending money on advertising? Did you start with a great (remarkable) product/service?  Are you applying marketing physics – the product has an overt benefit, with a dramatic difference and that gives people a real reason to believe that you are able to deliver that benefit.  Wrap these things all together with a 5th grade level explanation and you have a winner on your hands.

Yesterday, our new intern Bobby started at Salesby5.  We know that the first day at any job is important and sets the stage for engagement in the culture, fun and quickly feeling like a part of the team.  Kya, our Director of Remarkable Service, set the stage for Bobby with signs and balloons.  We prepared his BlackBerry for use, had his business cards ready, sent him welcome e-mails and had his work area ready. Our friend, Jack Daly, teaches the world to stop celebrating an employees last day and celebrate (sell) the first. How many people get taken to lunch on the last day or given presents and cake? 

All these things seem small, until you realize that most people wonder if they made the right job choice during the first 30 days.  Another gem from Jack: if you want to make a great impact (sale) with the spouse, why not send a bottle of wine/champagne to the house with a note to the spouse with well wishes? We sell or un-sell people on coming to work with a smile and great attitude and ready for day 2!

Take the time to tell a great story about you, your company and your culture instead of making the first day about paperwork and employee manuals. Make work remarkable!