Brave New Sales

Facebook, Your Brand Is A Heart-Breaker!

Oh, Facebook, you hurt my feelings.

Again, baby!

Oh, we've had a rocky relationship right from the start.

And each time you hurt me, we kiss and make up, and then we slowly slide back into the state of normalcy. Correction: I slowly slide into your new definition of normalcy.

You give me vague explanations. You tell me that this is for my own good. But I'm beginning to wonder about this relationship. I'm beginning to see the light.

You're a wicked soul mate, Facebook.

I'm hooked on you... as a product.

A product is something we buy and sell. It's something we use.

Sure, it's cool that you let me use this valuable product for free and then you monetize it. You sell advertising. Cool.

A brand, however, is a relationship.

A brand is so much more than a logo or a trademark.

It's an expectation of an experience.

A great brand inspires trust.

A great brand inspires loyalty.

And your brand sucks.

You're riding high because your product is the biggest game in Palo Alto. Will that last forever? When the chips are down, will your brand carry you, Facebook? Will it? Will it?

Have you built strong, trusting relationships?

Not with me, baby!

I'm not too upset that Mark Wunderkind Zuckerberg (allegedly) screwed his best college friend out of millions... billions... while insisting he's not driven by money.

I'm not too upset that I have to adapt to this week's "new views" on my homepage. I've been keeping up with technology for 30 years, and I can handle this.

But I do question why you feel you need to be the editor of my life, of the community that I've stored on your platform, Facebook. What other bits of my information are you editing?

I do question why you were commercializing my data without notifying me. I found out through other, more trustworthy relationships. They coached me on how to proactively adjust the settings that you surreptitiously manipulated and abused.

I'm upset that you've been cheating on me, Facebook!

I'm upset that I heard it through the grapevine!

I'm upset that our relationship is always on your terms!

Oh, I've been such a fool! I now see that... you're just using me, Facebook!

I've pulled myself together. I've wised up. And now I'm just gonna' use you back... your heartless product, that is. I'm just gonna' use it.

But your brand?

You ain't been showin' me the love, honey!

Your brand has breached my trust.

I can only imagine what you're doing when you come home a little late and then feed me that line of bull... you and your nerdy friends eating pizza at the office while writing HTML code.

My imagination runs wild. I've got pictures in my head of you runnin' around town, sellin' my soul to the highest bidder, sellin' my data to any bidder, and then tellin' me that everything's gonna' be just fine.

Oh, I've wised up alright, Facebook.

And I'm sorry, baby, but... I don't love you any more.

Sure, I still need you. I've gotten used to this lifestyle, and I need this roof over my head for a little while longer.

But it won't be long and I'll be cheating on you, too, Facebook. When another product of equal utility comes around, my heart won't hold me down to your brand.

I just know I'll start sneakin' out out the back door from time to time... with another social network!

You can bet that if that relationship starts working for me, if I start building trust in that brand... I'm just gonna' walk right out that door, honey.

Because I don't trust you.

And that's not my fault.

Your brand sucks.

 

Photo by http://logo-s-collection.blogspot.com/2009/10/facebook-logos-facebook-facebook-logo.html

CRM Tools: Beyond Tracking

Many salespeople hate CRM tools

And many sales managers do not fight the noble fight and insist that the salespeople use their CRM religiously.

To the brave new entrepreneur who may have a brilliant product or solution but who also may be going deep in the discipline of sales for the first time, CRM means "Customer Relationship Management" generally.

Specifically, CRM also refers to a company's IT program where sales people track activities on each account and maintain in-depth customer profiles -- from recent client proposals to a prospect's anniversary and children's birthdays.

It's not hard to imagine why some salespeople hate the CRM.

"All that reporting and typing. That's a drag on my time out in the marketplace."

There is some truth to that. So any sales manager who puts processes over face-time with clients should take a big step back and assess.

On the other hand, if neither sales manager nor sales person qualifies and tracks each account, follow-up can be ineffective and opportunities can be lost. To any enterprise, start-up or existing corporation, this is your lifeblood... and sales management is the heart that pumps it.

Managed well, a CRM puts a wealth of information right at your fingertips.

But there's an even bigger benefit

A CRM tool helps you plan... creatively.

I recently met a Business Unit Manager who improved her team's sales performance by asking them the following question: "When you come back from your next sales visit, what do you hope you'll type into the CRM with regards to meeting outcome?"

The team gave her a dozen different answers for two dozen different accounts.

"OK," she said.  "Now when you plan ahead for each respective meeting, make that your meeting objective... in advance. Have a descending order of desired outcomes for each visit, printed on your call plan, most desirable at the top, knowing what you know when you plan.

"To the extent that you achieve these during your sales visit, we can call the visit a success, and we can measure how much closer we are to the sale."

The B.U.M. told me later that it now helps the team develop creative applications and solutions for prospects and existing customers.

This is golden!

While a choreographer might not call something like a CRM tool "creative," a sales manager should.  A good way to "sell" the CRM discipline to a sales team is to show them -- as opposed to tell them -- how the CRM can help them find creative sales solutions to prospects' challenges, provided they do the disciplined stuff every day.

 

The gist 

A CRM tool should be seen as much more than just a tracking tool for salespeople and a control tool for sales managers.

Once the disciplined work is done, we can draw "business pictures" that help sales people and start-up entrepreneurs alike develop creative solutions for their prospects and, thus, close more deals earlier.

Photo by www.lifesip.com 

What's Your 9-11 Story?

I've yet to meet anyone...

... over 15-years-old who doesn't have their own, personal story of 9-11.

Perhaps they didn't know anyone who was killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Perhaps they didn't know anyone who cancelled a meeting in the World Trade Center that day. But they can tell you what they were doing when they heard the shocking, near surrealistic news. Many can tell you how 9-11 changed their lives in some way.

What's your story? 

 

My 9-11 Story

I had been living in Europe for years when two hijacked planes took down the World Trade Center, another slammed into the Pentagon, and another fell into a field in Pennsylvania while its hijackers were reportedly going for the White House.

At first I was numb. Then I became angry. Then I became confused.

Then, two months later, I flew to New York's JFK Airport and drove a rented directly for my hometown, two hours north. I arrived home just in time for Thanksgiving, the most American of holidays, and this year, my homeland was feeling a lot of patriotism and going through a lot of reflection.

The purpose of my trip was really business, and on Monday morning, I took an early train back into Manhattan for meetings, arriving in Penn Station, like I had so many times before.

But this time it was different

Yeah, sure, my homeland had been hit by terrorism like never before. Yeah, sure, it had been a prolific Thanksgiving holiday with lots of thanking and questioning. Yeah, sure, everyone everywhere was talking about the tragedy.

But now I wasn't just in my homeland. I was in the epicenter of 9-11. I was in New York City. Manhattan.

All around Penn Station, wherever there was a bare space of wall, even where there wasn't, even over paid advertisements, there were flyers... posters... of the missing.

People had posted these flyers. Human beings... who were holding out hope that the loved ones they lost in the World Trade Center that otherwise gorgeous September morning would still be alive... that they would miraculously and literally surface.

I had seen these flyers on news reports. But now I was really seeing them. Everywhere. As far as the eye could see, accompanied by a strong smell of burned wire.  You could smell Ground Zero here in Penn Station, a couple of miles away.

Something took the wind right out of me. I burst into tears. And not quiet tears. I was sobbing out loud. This was just overwhelming and I just hadn't anticipated it!

You think New Yorkers have a tough shell?

Well inside, they're human and they're soft. They're cream puffs, in fact.

As I pulled myself together, I realized that a stranger, a cream puff, had his hand on my shoulder. It was there for what seemed a minute, yeah, a real minute, 60 long seconds, when I cleared my eyes, and said, "Sorry. Shit, I'm sorry." I didn't ask him why he stopped, or why he dared touch me. It was ok. It was... human. And New York City was more human than ever.

"Did you lose somebody?" he asked.

"No. Nobody... but this is my homeland... and I've been living outside of the country... and this is the first I've experienced this... and I can't believe how deep the pain is here... and how wide. That's all. I was numb. And now, even my pain is small. But everyone else's? Shit!"

Cream Puff smiled. "You're ok, then?"

"Oh yeah. I'll be fine. But all these people?" I motioned at the flyers.

"Yeah, they had a really bad day," Cream Puff said. "But the people who put these flyers up? They're the ones still living in hell."

I was speechless.

"God bless," Cream Puff said. He smiled and started away, back to his somewhat normalized New York pace.

"I don't know if I believe in God," I shouted.

"You will now," he said. "And it won't be in the way someone else defined it for you when you were a kid, either. But you're gonna' start asking a lot of questions. Namaste."

 

He was right

I started asking a lot of questions, and I still ask those questions.

No, this is not a blog about religion, and it's not going to become one now.

But this is a blog about the human side of sales. Selling requires that the buyer does something different as a result of you framing things in the right context. Stories are a powerful way to put things in context, to impact people so deeply that they change behavior.

So here comes my change in behavior, followed by moral of the story. Here comes the essence, which is what a good story must have if it's going to have any chance of changing the buyer's behavior.

 

So what changed?

September 2001 changed my life. But so did November 2001. So did New York. So did Penn Station. So did Cream Puff. So did the questions.

Later that November afternoon in New York, after my meetings, I was on my way to the hotel and I passed a bookstore. I stopped dead in my tracks, then bolted inside.

For the first time ever, I found my way to the Religion & Spirituality section. An hour later, I left with two books, Religion For Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide To World Religions, and a mental list of more books to buy in the future.

Until that moment, I was a dummy, a complete idiot, on the topic of religion. Here I had considered myself a culture and geography buff? How can one really know world cultures if one does not know the world's religions?

In the following two years, I read about 30 books on religion and spirituality. Whether or not I became religious or spiritual is not the purpose of this blog, either. That's a pretty personal thing, and it's my own business, thank you.

What I will share with you is the fact that, on a mental level, on an intellectual level, I love the topic of religion. I love how my knowledge of the world's religions complements my knowledge of geography and culture... so profoundly that I now see the world with different color lenses.

Something changed in me that cold November morning in Penn Station. Something persuaded me to do something differently that afternoon. Something sold me on the need to learn more about humanity, my fellow human beings.

And I'm still learning.  And I'm still asking questions.

What's your 9-11 story?

I'd love it if you could write a few lines below, or on my Facebook page, on how 9-11 impacted you.