Unique Sales Proposition

This is one of the least understood and most over used concepts in sales and marketing. Everyone thinks they have one, few companies do. Here’s why….

A Unique Sales Proposition (USP) must have these characteristics:

1. First and foremost it must be unique
2. Second, it has to be easily validated
3. Third, it must have real intrinsic value to the buyer.

USP’s are situational. What has unique value in one environment may not have any value in another. So one of two things must happen, either the USP changes based on the environment or the seller must target only the environment in which the USP is truly unique and valuable. The second alternative limits the viability of the market. The first alternative widens the target market but required that the seller understand both the unique value of their products or services and the specific value the prospect is looking to achieve. So the USP starts to look like a BBQ Menu; pick one entre, and two side items. Listing the attributes of your products and services is the easy part, getting past the second characteristic is where most fail the test.

Validating your USP is going to be difficult in traditional terms. Companies like to think their UPS is best-in-class service, leading edge technology, the most this, the fastest that, the only whatever…. The problem is can you prove it? More importantly can you prove it prior to the sale in such a way that your competition is left in the cold. This innately means that the USP must be measurable. If I want to state that my product is installed in more companies than any other like product; do I have the third party validated market share data to back up the claim? Is there another study out there that might invalidate my claim? If I claim to have best-in-class service; can I validate it with third party customer care data? Many benefits are just that benefits, they are not USP’s. I may be able to demonstrate that my clients rate my customer service 97 out of 100, but that does not make it a USP. It makes it very good and is an asset, but unless I can validate that my competition cannot meet that, it’s not a USP.

The last point is the logic test. Who cares? I have a good friend whose company has incredible IP based video server technology. It is truly great stuff. It is incredibly fast and has great features. The problem is; who cares. They compete against analog video servers that are half the price in small configurations and most of the video is never viewed. They lead with their gee-wiz technology just to get hammered on price. They try to tout their reliability, but the prospect counters with “I can afford spares”. The real challenge is to find a market that requires very high camera counts and the video is reviewed on a regular basis. Think casinos…. Think major airports….

The point is that every buyer has a unique set of pain that requires a unique solution. The product or service does not have to be unique, just the sales proposition. When your company can document that your product or service can uniquely address their particular problem, you have a leg up on getting the business. This will shorten the sales cycle and could lead to larger margins.

Your USP is not a tag line on your advertising. It is a tangible benefit supplied to a specific prospect in a specific environment. Don’t look for the magic bullet. Look for an arsenal, a smorgasbord of objective tangible benefits that can be used as the situation dictates.

Defensively speaking, look at your competitors USP’s and be prepared to demonstrate how your product can provide the same benefit. It won’t make your product more attractive, but it will reduce the FUD factor.

My Biggest Rant

This is a business blog. The concept is to present ideas that would help business people improve both their businesses and themselves. Over the past few weeks I have been bombarded with social issues that just scream for comment. The underlying dismay voiced by most of these self proclaimed pundits is that the United States has serious problems and someone needs to step up and solve them. That someone typically isn’t the writer. What are some of the issues?

1. The United States Ranks 96^th out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index according annual survey commissioned by Britain’s Economic intelligence Unit. (Great Britain is 49^th ). Two of the major factors are the highest number of homicides per 100,000 citizens and the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate of all the countries surveyed.
2. Gas prices are at an all time high at almost $4.00 per gallon. Gas is $8.35 in Great Britain and more than $6.50 in most of Europe, according to AA Motoring Trust, when our gas prices were still at $2.87. Whereas we consume 1.6 gallons per day per person as opposed to most of Europe at .5 gallons per day per person (Economist View )
3. The U.S. economy is on everyones agenda. The unemployment rate has hovered between 4.5% and 5.2% since 2005 according to the US Department of Labor. The Consumer Price Index, less food, has been constant since prior to 2004. With the increase in gas prices and the fact that most food is transportation sensitive the CPI including food has risen significantly. A Gallup Poll suggests that 85% of the population thinks economic conditions are getting worse.
4. The Dow Jones Index has risen from a low of 8235 in September of 2001 to 12823 today. That’s a 55% increase in six plus years. A dollar invested in 2001 would be worth $1.55 today. Real average earning during that same period grew from $497.35 per month to $607.49. That’s a growth of 22%. Factoring for inflation the earnings growth was only 2.3% from 2001. So the stock market is outracing real earnings.
5. Household debt is 133.7% of household disposable income in 4^th quarter 2007. Households spent 14.3% of disposable income to service debt in 2007 compared to 13.0% in 2001.

What’s the underlying business concept to all of this? It’s responsibility. The problems we are facing are problems we can deal with on an individual basis. If, and it’s an incredibly big IF in an entitlement culture, we all take responsibility for our part of the problem, it solves itself.

Number one on the list is dismal. Twice as many citizens were killed in the state of California during the duration of the Iraq war then were killed in that war. Several points scream out to me…

1. This is just one state in our union. The needless death toll in our own back yard is staggering.
2. These people neither volunteered, were skillfully trained, nor took an oath to die, they just got up in the morning thinking they would make it through another day and didn’t.
3. There is no outrage from the public like there is for the war. We have come to believe this is acceptable.

I visit prisons every year. We can’t afford to continue to build prisons at the rate we are currently building them. Something has to change. I suspect the real reason is that we don’t expose this like the war, is we might feel somehow responsible for not doing our part. Because it happens all around us, we might be asked to actually take action to prevent it. The war is a long ways away and we can’t possible impact the outcome, so we vent and rage for someone else to take action.

The problem with rising gas prices is not a matter of the government reducing taxes, but modification in our social norms. Not an easy task to accomplish. We are Americans and the constitution says we can have and do anything we like as long as it doesn’t impinge of the freedom of others. So I want to drive a big car anytime and anywhere I want and the government is responsible for assuring I can continue to do this. Capitalism is great as long as I get what I want at the price I want. If not, the government needs to step in and mandate my happiness. This is just self-center goofy thinking. Only desperate times will change this. It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature. We have lived the high life so long we expect it to last forever without our sacrifice. As China and India continue to grow their economies, this problem will continue to grow. It’s not a matter of our government solving this. Free enterprise and right thinking by the general public will solve it, if we choose. If not we will be doomed to second class status in the world economy.

The last starts with the very basic premise of spending less, investing more. If we take control of our spending and invest the difference two things happen. First we capture back 14% of our disposable income used for servicing debt. Second our investments grow faster than real earnings. As individuals we have more. More importantly we invest in businesses that provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Unemployment goes down, employee demand goes up, wages rise, we invest more and the cycle continues.

It's all about individual responsibility. Something we have total control over.

How do you catch wild pigs?

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question.

He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat; you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America.

There is a lot to be said concerning government entitlement programs, not all of it is bad. But I want to address the entitlement programs in our lives, the ones that we create for our own benefit. They are the short cuts in our lives that at the time seem expedient, but later sap us of the drive end energy to push through much harder issues.

In college I took four semesters of calculus. Four mind numbing semesters of proving theorems that were printed in the back of our CRC. It was a slow and repetitive process that didn’t seem to have a goal other than to make us work harder. Once I got to Differential Equations and Applied Differential Equations I understood why. This process of proving what had already been proven provided me with the framework to analyze much more complex ideas. The hard work in the beginning prepared me for the work ahead. I could validate amazing concepts that previously seemed impossible to comprehend. (Calculating the center of mass of an irregular object) Many students never got to “Diffy Q” to see the fruits of their labor.

How many times are we so busy multitasking that we lose the lessons that eventually imprisons us in mediocrity? We are looking for a free lunch thinking that it will always be free. The problem is that it will be free as long as you never want to be more than you are. We slowly lose our ability to think outside the box. Psychosclerosis sets in. We become so convinced that new ideas won’t work, that we lose the ability to move forward and grow. We start to love the fences around us. They bring us comfort. We start to believe we will always be able to provide for ourselves and our families using only the skills, talents and knowledge we presently have. We can somehow start to coast to the finish line. I see this happening to younger and younger generations

.

Continually strive to stretch your imagination and knowledge. Go through the pain and sometimes boredom required to grow. Never stop. It will pay tremendous dividends for years to come.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson

Getting a Clue

People use to different types of information for making decisions. I’ll call them primary and secondary clues. I’ve heard them referred to by many different names (Peripheral and Central or Intellectual and Emotional, etc.), based on the branding the author is trying to support. Fundamentally, primary clues are attributes directly attributed to the product, service or idea you are trying get across. Secondary clues are corollary or ancillary attributes of the selling environment. Keep in mind that all of us are sales people. Parents have a monumental task of selling their children on all types of issues. Teachers have one of the hardest selling jobs out there. Anyone with an idea, accountants, engineers, administrative assistants, need to know how to position their idea so that others will accept it. Think of this is terms of getting through life. As a sales professional, it is paramount to maintaining and growing your income. To the rest, it’s a tool to stave of insanity.

The first question that needs to be answered is; does the person you are trying to persuade mentally process information in a secondary or primary fashion. Are they more likely to analyze the facts of your proposal in deciding (primary) or are they more likely to analyze your status, or appearance or some other external issue before deciding (secondary). Most people are some combination, but all people have a preference. Don’t confuse this with personality traits like driver, analytical, expressive or amiable. All of these personality types rely on primary and secondary clues when making decisions. The Vice President of Retail Operations may have driver as their primary personality type, but make decisions based on secondary clues. He or she may very quickly rule you in or out based on appearance, status, or how your proposal will help them personally.

Lets talk about secondary clues first. People who rely on secondary clues for most of their decision-making may need or want a lot of information. But they are less interested in hard-core features and facts than in benefits. This is tough for technical people to grasp. They just think everyone is interested in how things work. Non-technical sales people relate more easily on this level. Physical appearance can be very important to these people. Your appearance provides or detracts from your creditability much the same as your status. It is also important that the person you are persuading must see himself or herself in the solution. If they don’t see themselves as part of the solution, they are less likely to agree. Make statements that include them when presenting. Another great tool to use when presenting to this group is emotional stimulus. Anything that makes them feel positive like excitement, enthusiasm or happiness will make them more inclined toward your presentation. References play well with these folks.

People who prefer primary clues would be as expected almost the opposite. They are more price, process, feature, and fact oriented, wanting to leave the creation of benefits to themselves. The more of an expert the prospect feels they are, the less inclined they are to care about any benefits you mention. Pushing too hard on benefits can turn them off. They want to talk with a highly creditable person. The more creditable you are in presenting numbers, statistics and details the less your appearance or status will play a role. Those of you who are solution sales people might ask, “How do I not present the benefits?” You give them the A=B=C approach. Lead them directly up to the benefit and let them deduce it for themselves. Verify that they have as a safe measure.

Reading your prospect is extremely important for getting to “yes”. Relying too heavily on your own preferences and bias may lose the sale. You might be able to look back on great opportunities that didn’t pan out and immediately see that you took the wrong approach. You were slick and polished and right on, they wanted dry facts. You saw them as an analytical and gave them all the product facts and figures; they wanted to understand the support in detail, the company track record and the benefits of the solution, not the technical aspects of the product.


Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking. - Malcolm Gladwell

Get 'er Done

Its interesting how hard life’s lessons are to learn. It most cases if we just listen we would learn them quickly and painlessly. Most of us, myself included, prefer to take the circuitous route through impatience, frustration, and distress to get there. One of life’s more important lessons that I learned was from my father. Keep in mind during my teenage years my father was clueless. He learned a lot during the third and fourth decade of my life.

I grew up in and around farm communities. Walking beans, bailing hay, detasseling corn and construction were my occupations between 13 and 18. I enjoyed it. It was outside and physical. Most of the time it gave me time to think. But the greatest lesson I learned didn’t include these. It included high school football. In a small country school all you had to have was a steady heartbeat to play on the high school team. Don’t get me wrong, we had some great players (we were conference champions and a couple of guys went on to play college ball) I just wasn’t one of them.

My dad had a rule that if you start something, you must finish it. Every late summer, fall football practice would start. It had been a full year since the last experience, so as a budding adolescent it was ancient history. Virtually every guy I hung with played sports. We all went to the first practice together. This is where my dad’s rule comes in. The first few days of practice were pretty much the same. We had three-a-day practices in 90-degree heat and almost 100 per cent humidity. We used to consume salt pills like popcorn. We ran laps in full pads. Coach Scott had this general rule about exercising until you threw up. Everyone had to do it. It’s how we got into playing shape. I usually remembered this about noon the first day. Now I liked to play in the games. Once the season started practice was easy to take, but the first six to eight weeks were next to impossible. So around noon of the first day I would announce I was through. Dad’s rule kicked in: If you start something you must finish it. I played high school football four years. Four years I started in August and four years I finished in November. I never learned.

It was a great lesson for life. It has served me well. I’m careful what I start and I always finish. I am a lot better at the “careful what you start” part. I don’t commit to things I’m not sure I can finish. If I do take on a project that I may not have resources to finish, to my liking, I make sure to set that expectation up front. Sometimes people want you to do something knowing there is a chance it won’t work out. I’m OK with that. I treat it as an idea or concept, not an action item. I make sure we are all on the same page from the beginning.

Recently as part of a management review, our consultant stated, “Don’t ask him to do something you don’t really want done.” That is part of what my dad gave me. It’s now part of my DNA. Your family, friends and co-workers should see you as a person of character. A person they trust will follow through and get it done. If you’re not, you need to fix it. Don’t over commit or under produce.

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Web 2.0’s affect on Marketing

Web 2.0 was coined my O’Reilly Media in 2003 and has become many things to many people. Some would even say that it doesn’t really mean anything at all. Most would agree it is just the natural inflection point of the DOTCOM phase (Net 1.0) and what comes after it (Web 2.0). Over time is has come to mean a change in the direction of information on the web. The underpinnings are elements like social networking sites, wikis and folksomoies. In the past (Web 1.0) someone (supplier) would produce content, they would publish the content on a website and push the information out to the users (consumers). Web 2.0 is an attempt to formalize a symbiotic relationship between suppliers and consumers of information. (Great video tutorial on Web 2.0 ) Consumers can now become directly involved with content on the Internet. It is a two-way conversation with the original content provider. Blogs are perfect examples. Someone can post content and anyone who reads it can post a comment correcting or adding to anything that was originally posted. These comments bring clarity to the original content. Many times the comments have a stronger impact on readership and creditability, then the original post. Companies like ViTrue have launched a user-created advertising platform that allows companies to use a Web 2.0 approach for collaborative promotion development. The company (supplier) creates a marketing program around a subject. The consumer creates the content and posts it to ViTrue’s site. The supplier then uses, by virtue of user voting, the best of the user-supplied content in their promotional package. An interesting aspect is the extent that users propagate the content across the network without direct involvement by the originating company (viral marketing). ViTrue provides a vetting process that helps weed out undesirable content, which is a big distinction with sites like YouTube that have less control over user interaction.

Times Magazines “Person of the Year” is the consumer. And the consumer will continue to become more ingrained in the promotional process. Marketing is being driven toward the “Have it your way” approach to promotions. Many of us have Kroger or CVS cards that track what we buy. The card also allows the retailer to customize his or her promotions sent to each cardholder. For years major magazines have had regional publications to maximize advertising dollars within each market. This isn’t new stuff it is just more sophisticated. Self-serve gasoline has been around since the 1970’s. Self-server check out counters started being installed few years ago, we are now entering the self-server advertising era. We all thought that self-serve check out was a way of saving on employees, not providing better service (and it was for the most part). But now self-serve is part of our culture. Many people now prefer self-service to live cashiers.

Some day a cottage industry will sprout up of innovative aspiring producers that can have their creations aired by submitting them through a Web 2.0 portal. If their stuff gets voted to the top, they become the star. Marketing’s role this process will be to determine the direction of the ideation. They will also provide the vetting process to assure company standards are met. Traditional marketing will always have a place in the promotional mix. Web 2.0 may just give them more original material to work with.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. -Mark Twain

Sales Innovation

Life is accelerating. Product life cycles are shrinking. Corporations must re-invent themselves every 3.5 years. Innovation is not a nice-to-have but a must-have. Historically new product development has been driven by marketing or engineering. There are several levels of innovation within new product development; brand new earth shattering products, major improvements of existing products, re-positioning existing products and cost refinement. At any given point most of these should be in play within your product portfolio. All of them have a price tag.

What I want to talk about is sales innovation. Whatever your sales force is selling today will be obsolete in just a couple of years. How they are selling will become obsolete just as fast. This isn’t a marketing problem or an engineering problem. It’s a sales problem. Sales need to apply the same methodology to sales innovation that marketing and engineering apply to product innovation. Here are the key steps:

Ideation (brainstorming)

The Product Development organization will spend anywhere from hours to days just brainstorming ideas. Sales organizations need to think the same way. Either as an individuals or as a group during sales meeting you need to take time to talk about new approaches to sales, underutilized markets, or sales strategies that need tweaking. The idea is not to filter these ideas but put them all on the table. The more the merrier. Later you can group them into subject areas. Now be responsible for following through.

Concept Development

This phase is a weed out phase. Collect as much third party information you can on the viability of the idea groups. Use the Internet, publications, friends or any other easy to access source. The goal is to identify the next BHAG by eliminating the dogs. There are a number of selection criteria such as consistency with corporate vision, greatest net new revenue volume, highest potential Gross Margin, length of sales cycle, shortest time-to-market, etc. You have to know your priorities. From a sales innovation standpoint you are not looking for R&D dollars and a long product ramp. You are looking at an evolutionary process, incremental improvement to the way you sell.

Validation

So you have found a couple of ideas that seem to have merit. You are still in the weed out phase. Do you have creditable primary research (ie. Customer testimonials, steering committees notes, marketing feedback from research) that supports the need to move forward? Do you have the core competencies to execute? Is there time, budget, and resources to be successful? Whereas concept development may rely on some subjective information, validation should be much more objective. Do the numbers make sense? Do I know the details of what I have to accomplish. If it were an R&D project you would have to have detailed specifications of requirements. Think in terms of that philosophy.

Development

This is peddle-to-the-metal time. The best projects spend 80% of their effort putting together the specifications of what needs to be accomplished so that only 20% of the effort is used for actual development. If this breakdown of effort is reversed there is every chance that development will require re-work, re-work cost time and money, and you will miss your market window for execution.

Rollout

They key to this phase is preparation, preparation, preparation. Are all the T’s crossed and I’s dotted? Is there a specific plan for go-to-market? Are you providing all the tools required to be successful?

I great place to learn more about this is through Ken Westra’s New Product Development trainings found at http://nplearning.com

Keep in mind this is sales innovation, not new product development. What is within your control? Your goal is to move your sales organization toward the next natural position in their evolution. What are innovations to look for?

New Geography

Are there pockets within your existing territories that are not being exploited? Are there territories that are not covered? Is there a way to effectively expand to these areas?

New Client Profile

Can you go up market or down market? Is there an approach that will provide a valid value proposition to larger prospect or smaller prospects? Can you go deeper and wider within existing accounts?

New Industry

Are there industry specific solutions that can be emphasized? Can you put together a capture team targeted toward specific job titles or work processes with an industry?

New Product Approach

Can you re-position an existing product with a new pricing model? Do your customers talk of unexpected benefits of owning your product? Is that an opportunity? Can you target ancillary products in the market that will benefit from your product? Can you build relationships with those vendors?

The key is that the outcome must first of all have a positive impact on results and second be repeatable. One-off initiatives, unless they have long lasting benefits, are expensive and send mixed signals to the sales force. One-offs have a tendency to detract from success not add to it. You may see a short term bump to results, but long term it just might be a distraction.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. - Peter Drucker

Sales Good to Great

The role of a consultative sales person has three distinct attributes. First of all they have to be a business consultant, second they have to be a strategic partner and finally an ally. Let’s look at these three roles. In the role of a business consultant the sales person has to be more concerned about the business health of the client then making a sale. Those who practice true consultative selling know this. Most product sales people think consultative selling is trapping the customer into buying by using their own words against them. During the interview process it is easy to weed these people out of the hiring process. Just ask them to explain the methodology they used to uncover the value of the business problem they used their product to address. They can’t do it. The client did all this before the sales person got there. I believe the best way to be a true consultative sales person is to throw your product knowledge away for the first sales call. Don’t worry about the solution until you understand the problem. Literally put yourself in the shoes of the client and try to find out what you would need to know to understand the magnitude of the problem if it was your problem.

Once you know the nature of the problem and the value of the problem you can begin to address it. If you have a commodity product and you are trying to take a consultative approach, what you are selling is service(s). You can’t differentiate the product. Generally speaking if you have a product that is in the later stages of the product life cycle, the client isn’t going to give you the time to engage in consultative selling. They know what they want; they generally have already applied the benefits to the organization. They are just looking for a price. You’ve got to find an angle to rise above this. It can only be done with service (s). Don’t be afraid to walk away from something that is not in your sweet spot. You will save your client, your company and yourself time and money. But take this opportunity to recommend another product or company that might more closely fit their needs. It will pay dividends in the long run.

The role of strategic partner is tricky. Being a strategic partner is not negotiating a volume discount. You really have to take the time to know their business and position yourself as a trusted advisor. There are no short cuts to this. If you are the type of sales person who does not call on a client unless you are looking for a sale, you will never be seen as a strategic partner. Not going to happen. You have to take the time to read their 10K’s and news releases. Use your network to help them fill positions. Understand what they see in other vendors they do business with. Understand which vendors they see as strategic and why. Seek their input on new product initiatives. You know you are getting to this level of trust when you spend a great deal of time talking about corporate initiatives and next years budget in stead of status of purchase orders and pricing.

The third role is easy for most good sales people. That is the role of ally or customer advocate. The tricky part is to understand what battles are worth fighting. You are an employee of the company, but you also have the responsibility to be the customer advocate. Where do you draw the line? The best way to help solve this dilemma is to understand the product roadmap of your company and the capabilities of internal resources. Capabilities does not mean what they can accomplish if time and money were not an issue. It means based on known workload and priorities what can reasonably be expected. If you advocate a position for your client that is a losing position, or will require undue stress to accomplish, you have tarnished your client's perception of your ability to get things done. You may win the battle but lose the war.

So how do you start down this path? It starts with the first impression. Always dress one-step above what you think is required. Psychologically this gives you an advantage. Plus it is better to error on the side of too much than too little. If you think your client will be put off by a tie then one of two things are true; the industry (construction, farming, etc.) is tie adverse and the one-step above rule still applies (sport coat, no tie) or the person you are talking with is not a player. If the later is true, move up the food chain. So you’ve made it through the door, you’ve read their 10K and their news releases, now what? Ask smart questions and take the time to actively listen to the answers. Ask questions that make the client think and draw conclusions. If you ask your client questions you could have answered simply by going to their Web site, how intelligent or hard working does that make you look? Now a phenomenon is going to happen. You will ask a question and not get a very quick monosyllable answer. You will be met with silence. Don’t help the client by suggesting answers. Let’s not make it multiple-choice. Give them time to think over the question and construct a meaningful answer. Silence is a good thing. Also listen closely to the answer, don’t use the time to construct your next question. This isn’t speed dating. If you need another head on the call to pull this off, bring one.

The skill to pull this off is not spontaneously acquired. It is developed over time and through preparation. If you are a shoot from the hip type of sales person you may earn a very good living, but nothing close to your potential. Collins stated in the book “Good to Great”, the enemy of Great is Good. If you start to believe you are good, you may never be great. Achieving nirvana as a sales person is a journey not a destination.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life, which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance. - W. R. Inge

Most-Praised Generation

There was a good article in the Wall Street Journal by Jeffrey Zaslow concerning the attitudes of the 20-somethings. The article in itself was well written, although I thought it painted with a broad brush. Probably one of the most interesting aspects was the large number of comments. This Blog site does not support TrackBack, so I will just add my comments separate from the original post.

Last time I looked there was over 100 comments posted. They ranged from 20-somethings that felt the 50-ish were not pulling their weight and still getting the big bucks to the non-20-somethings that felt the 20-somethings were a bunch of whiners (lazy and narcissistic in nature). There seemed to be a lot of unhappiness. There also seemed to be an undercurrent that all CEO’s were overpaid and should be jailed for theft. The majority opinion was that the up bringing of this particular generation lead them to want and need more positive reinforcement then previous generations. As they grew up, they got pats on the heads for just showing up and don’t understand why it doesn’t continue. My belief is that generalizations tend to not hold water over time.

Most 20-somethings of any generation don’t know what they don’t know. Most fresh-outs don’t even know what a manager does. They don’t appreciate that the manager most likely made the decision to hire them either directly or indirectly by approving the hiring plan. If it weren’t for the management growing the company they would not have a job to complain about.

I also think that it is valid that the entry level positions don’t get recognized for their contribution as much as more senior employees. This is due in part to their newness. The new employees aren’t politically connected because they haven’t established value. Once they start to prove themselves, their stock goes up and they have more value. People start to take notice.

What about this perception that all CEO’s are overpaid? This seemed to be a rally point for both sides. What about the value of non-business people? The minimum income required to make the Top 50 List in sports in 1994 was $5M. In 2004, just ten years later it was $15M. (Celebrities) That’s a 300% increase in 10 years. Payton Manning made $45M at age 28. Shaquille O'Neal made a paltry $32M. Tom Cruise made $45M. The Olsen twins made $28M. Now none of these people contributed to the employment for anyone other then themselves. You might be able to argue that they all have supporting casts, but that is a stretch. The Owners or Producers create those opportunities. None of these celebrities set strategy or budgets, or managed organizational P&L’s. They are individual contributors. All of them are talented, but $45M to play football for one year? No one seems to get to upset over the compensation paid celebrities.

Compare this to the likes of Steven Jobs who made $646M, (the highest paid CEO) but that was all in the capital appreciation from 500M shares of Apple Computer (that’s about $1.30 per share). (CEO) He took no salary. Michael Dell made $154M, with almost $150M coming from his 5,367M shares of Dell Computer. Without the stock appreciation he only got paid $3.7M. The medium income for the top 500 CEO’s in the United States was $5.6M including all incentives. These people are responsible for hiring ten’s of thousands if not hundred’s of thousands of people. They bring wealth to stockholders. Now they may not bring wealth to every stockholder every time, but over time the DOW has continued to rise.

CEO’s are responsible for the employment growth in the United States. They set the pace for their companies. They are held responsible for the stock appreciation that helps not only individual investors but also all of our 401K’s. In most cases they represent products that we can elect not to buy if we feel so inclined. We don’t have to contribute to what we may feel is their disgraceful income. The top 500 CEO earn a medium income less than the top 500 Celebrities.

Are there issues, sure there are. 20-somethings need a break and they need to give one too. None of us needs to paint with that wide brush we so often see in the media. Some CEO’s are doing a great job in very difficult situations. Others are not. Some 50-ish’s are not carrying their weight and need to be replaced. But most employees are trying to live up to expectations. Most do not get as much positive reinforcement as they desire. That goes for managers too.

We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess. – Mark Twain

ROI (Return on Influence)

There is nothing new here folks. Actually as time goes by I find fewer and fewer original ideas. This is particularly true for technology. Names change, underlying physics stays the same. The reason it is on my mind is not because it is a new concept that I can exploit for my personal gain, it’s because it is a very old concept undergoing a technology upgrade. Interestingly enough, like most technology upgrades, it makes networking faster, more convenient, easier to do and more impersonal. The later really bothers me in this case.

For the first 100 years social networking was constantly on the rise. We were joining and contributing to more and more organizations and groups. Over the last 25 to 30 years this trend has reversed. Look at this proof; Organizational membership is on the rise, but attendance at meetings has dropped 58%, having dinner as a family has dropped 33%, having friends over has dropped 45%. Working from home is on the rise. And we are unhappier for it. Clinical depression has grown ten fold over the last thirty years to what many consider is at an epidemic level. Younger people are unhappier than older people. This too is a reversal in historic trends. (Bowling Alone, Robert Putman)

As a sales person using an index card file as their Rolodex, it required effort. The sales person made an investment in every person they entered. I’ve actually never done this; when I learned excel the investment dropped to my level. The next phase was to get more impersonal by scanning a business card, no typing required, but the sales person normally still had to make physical contact to get the business card. Better yet, now the sales person can invite another person to their LinkedIn connections and let them enter the information no physical contact required. David Nour of Relationship Economics, The Des Moines Register, Self Magazine and many other publications have all trumpeted the value of LinkedIn for networking. LinkedIn reached 10 Million users in April of this year. We can have hundreds of connections without actually getting directly connected with anyone. Now there’s a concept.

At work, IM (instant messenger) has even taken the place of the quick walk down the hall or fast phone call. I am always interested when employees IM each other two cubes away. I have been on IM exchanges when I finally had to tell the person “we should meet over this”. We send e-mail to blackberries or laptop computers to have instant access. We are better connected with our peers and counterparts then ever before. We know the names of more people, from more places than our parents would have even dreamed of knowing. "Rob Cross and Andrew Parker, in The Hidden Power of Social Networks, researched the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the most successful executives, and discovered a consistent trait: successful executives not only had very large networks, which we might have supposed was a given, but more importantly, those networks were extremely diverse, involving people in many disciplines."

But we seem to have fewer real relationships. Many of us live in an urban environment where we don’t know much about our neighbors. We change jobs every few years. When we leave, we leave most of the relationships we built over our tenure there. When someone quits our employer or move away from the neighborhood we lose touch. We’ve got all the names and contact information. We just don’t make contact.

My parents were concerned about my social skills because I grew up in front of a television. The good news was that I needed to interact with other kids if I wanted to play team games (baseball, football, tag). Today many kids play games over the Internet. Home schooling and online education is growing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not against any of this. I’m just curious. Humans are social animals. We seem to be evolving into less social animals.

At what point do we lose our desire, and hence our ability, to relate to each other has human beings. This is not an altruistic concern. People buy from people. People buy from people they trust. At what point do I start to lose the value proposition that is “me”? When does “me” become a commodity? Over a lifetime the ability to create and nurture meaningful relationships has a real ROI (Return on Influence). It is tangible and valuable. It is not manipulative.

Pick up the phone and call someone…

Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships. - Harriet Lerner

Personal Sales Plan

Here is an interesting question: “Do you have a personal sales plan for the year?” The reason I ask is this, I have been managing sales people for almost two decades and in that time I have encounter very few sales executives that take the time to develop a personal sales plan. What does almost everyone do? They take the quota given them by the company they work for, they read the compensation plan developed by the company for the benefit of the company and they figure out how to make a living. This seems counter intuitive to me. As the Buddhist monk reportedly stated, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

The best sales people know when accelerators kick in and maximize their effort to make over target income. These people many times completely ignore the myriad of advice they have been given concerning a balanced personal and business life. They feel money will buy happiness. It doesn’t buy happiness it just eliminates some unhappiness.

I start out every year having my sales people write a Personal Sales Plan. It starts backwards…what do you want to earn this year? According to the Compensation Plan how much do you have to sell and of what? What’s the average value of a sale? How many sales do you have to make to meet your goal? What’s your specific close ratio? How many proposals do you have to write to close the right number of sales? And so on down to the specific lead generation active you need to engage in to have qualified prospect for proposals.

Of course this means that you have to do something sales people, right up to the executive level, hate to do, a little book keeping. Keep a simple Excel worksheet of exactly what you are doing. Compare it with your plan. Are your ratios correct, are your averages high or low, is the activity level where it needs to be? Make adjustments on a monthly basis. Make sure you can measure each tracking element. If you don’t have access to the information, you can’t validate your performance. The whole plan becomes meaningless.

It is easier to manage your personal life if you understand where your business life is heading. If you know you want to go to the cape during the summer, you look at your Personal Sales Plan, accelerate some activities, and go on vacation knowing it’s all taken care of.

“Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true” - Lester R. Bittel, The Nine Master Keys of Management
Winning is the Science of being Prepared