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Why You Should Enter Your Contacts in Your CRM System Yourself

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 10th, 2009.

Typing into my Contact Management system As businesses grow, they very sensibly begin to delegate or outsource “administrative” tasks. One such task is often the inputting of contact details from business cards into the contact management or CRM system. The task is typically delegated to junior staff, or nowadays a virtual assistant or service such as Shoeboxed.

As a sole practitioner I need to outsource as many administrative tasks as possible to preserve my time to focus on marketing, sales and client work. But inputting contact details is one task I keep myself.

The task isn't hugely onerous – but it does take time. I'm prepared to invest that time for three reasons:

I always recall useful details of my interaction with the contact that I can enter in my system – but that I didn't capture at the time in a way an assistant would be able to transcribe. Like many people I write useful notes on the back of people's business cards. But, of course, I never capture everything. Typing in the contacts details often triggers useful memories which I can then put in the system.
It embeds the contact's details in my mind and makes it easier for me to remember them in future – particularly if I spot something interesting for them, or think of something I can do to help them. As I've discussed before, I review my contact list monthly (weekly for high priority contacts) to try to see if there's anything I can do to further my relationships. By embedding the contacts details in my mind, a lot of this activity happens automatically during the month anyway.
It triggers me to think about immediate follow-up. If there's something useful I can do for them within a few days of the event we met at, I will become much more memorable to them and be remembered with gratitude rather than just as a contact. A few minutes invested in thinking about what they said, the needs or interests they expressed and about the resources I might have access to that could help them always pays dividends.

Now, of course, you could get an assistant to type the raw details in, and then review yourself and do the tasks I've just talked about. But that has really never worked for me. I need the physical prompt of being forced to type the details to make me get round to thinking about the contact and potential follow-up.

So for me, this admin time is time very well spent indeed.

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Helping Professionals Sell Using Empathy Styles

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 10th, 2009.

One of the biggest barriers professionals have in developing their selling skills is that they simply don't see themselves as salespeople. Many carry round negative stereotypes of salespeople – but even when they don't, their image of a successful rainmaker is of a charismatic extrovert with highly developed social skills.

Not fitting this model themselves, they often fear that they don't have what it takes to sell effectively. This mental block can prevent them from taking some simple steps to improve their sales capabilities.

Jim Wigg of Epicurean Associates presented a seminar on “Empathy Selling” at a recent pro-manchester meeting. The seminar looked at different Empathy Styles – and how each style had different sales related strengths.

The advantage of this model over other psychometric assesments is that it doesn't focus eccessively on one particular type being the “natural salesperson”. By highlighting the sales strengths of each type, it allowed the professionals attending to see how they could grow their sales capabilities without having to have a “personality transplant” and adopt an extroverted style that simply wasn't them.

By breaking down that initial barrier and helping them see that there are multiple ways to succeed in selling, and that you don't have to fit a particular stereotype personality or style; they were freed up to think about how they could improve.

Jim's an engaging and knowledgeable presenter. If you get the chance to attend one of his seminars I recommend you take it up.

You can take a simple “empathy styles” questionnaire here

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Mindset

Don’t Put Me On Your List

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 21st, 2009.

A topic I've blogged about frequently is the importance of good follow-up and of nurturing relationships over time.

In The Importance of Good Follow-Up I highlighted the futility of the “Nice to meet you, if you ever need our services…” email follow-up to networking meetings and suggested a number of value-adding alternatives.

One trend I've noticed recently is the increasing use of email newsletters as a follow-up mechanism. It's a trend I whole heartedly applaud – my business is driven by email marketing. But only when you do it right.

And signing people up for your email newsletter without their permission is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

On at least half a dozen occasions recently I've found myself subscribed to email newsletters from people and companies who I've met briefly at networking meetings. I've given them my business card and they've plugged it straight into their email distribution list.

This is a follow-up mechanism that has the potential to add value if the newsletter is of high quality and relevant to me. But how does it make me feel to have my details “harvested” in this way?

To be honest, not great.

It feels impersonal. I've not had an email or call from them. Nothing mentioning any connection we made at the event and no thought from them on tailoring the message to my specific needs. I've just been fed into their email marketing machine.

I wondered whether I was the only one who felt this way, so I posed the question on Twitter to see how others felt:

As you can see from this sample of responses, people's feelings are almost universally negative. They range from “I want to *smack* them!” and “it sucks!” to at best, “my junk filtering can soon take care of them if they fail to send me anything interesting or useful”. And remember, these negative responses are to something as seemingly innocent as adding someone's name to an email distribution list after meeting them. For me, Kneale Mann summed up the sentiment best best when he replied: “A handshake does not make you a customer”.

Obviously, Twitter followers are not a sample that's representative of the public at large. But I do believe they represent an important and growing sensitivity to the appropriate use of information.

So what's the alternative?

Well, since you are interacting face to face with them, there should be ample opportunity to offer to send the newsletter and get their permission.

If the time isn't right when you meet them, then send them an email afterwards with a sample copy of the newsletter suggesting it might be of interest and giving a link to sign-up if they are. Personalise the emails – recalling topics you discussed or better still – add value by suggesting ideas for questions they posed or challenges they highlighted when you were talkign with them.

Now don't get me wrong, this is my opinion as to what you should do rather than something that is proven to have better results. I haven't done any testing to see what results in better long-term subscriptions, click throughs on the newsletter or eventually sales.

But for me that doesn't matter. If you want to establish a reputation as someone who can be trusted then you mustn't do anything early on in the relationship to suggest an abuse of trust. Auto-subscribing people to your newsletter without asking is hardly the crime of the century – but to many people it suggests that you will not treat them as individuals with their best interests at heart.

Personally, I'd rather lose potential newsletter subscribers than lose that reputation of trust.

Ian

PS Many thanks to all the Twitter users who replied to my poll on this topic – your answers were most helpful.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ianbrodie

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Mindset

The Magic of Helping

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 10th, 2009.

Every year in February I make a pilgrimage to the Winter Gardens in Blackpool – home of the world's largest convention for magicians. It's been a number of years since I performed magic professionally – it's purely a hobby for me now, with the occassional close-up performance for charity. But I still visit Blackpool every year to look out for interesting new lecturers and performers and learn new tricks & techniques. But mainly I go to see old friends.

Someone I've shared more than a few pints with over the last few years is Leon Andersen. Leon is a Limerick based magician who recently set up Ireland's first School of Magic. The school helps kids build confidence, self-esteem and motivation by learning how to perform magic.

To help gain publicity and endorsements for this new venture, Leon has been speaking to some of magic's leading lights. From old masters like Eugene Burger to the new wave magic of Dan & Dave Buck. And there's a lot salespeople can learn from the way he has been going about this.

Leon's approach is simple: he offers to help. He spots what the person is most likely to need, and offers to help them with it.

For example, he met one famous magician who had spent a hard day working in the convention dealer's hall. Rather than doing the same as hundreds of other fledgling magicians – asking for a trick demonstration or an autograph. Leon asked if he could get the performer a bottle of water. When the hubbub had quietened down they got talking and Leon was able to mention his school.

Another example: he bumped into a legendary American performer early in the convention. The performer looked busy, so Leon simply said how much he enjoyed his work, and that he'd love to share a drink with him sometime. Of course, he asked if there was anything he could do to help him while he was over in the UK. Later on during the convention the performer spotted Leon and asked him to join his group of friends for a drink. It wasn't long before Leon was able to talk to them about his magic school project.

A final example: Leon spotted a well known magician struggling to carry his materials up to a lecture he was about to give. The other convention attendees were barging past trying to get good seats for the lecture. But Leon stopped and asked the lecturer if he needed any help, and carried his boxes up for him into the lecture hall. After the lecture, the magician gratefully gave Leon one of his books as a gift, and engaged with him in a discussion about the magic school.

Now nothing here is revolutionary or innovative. But the fact is, it works. Only Leon really knows whether he's being helpful in order to get what he wants – or whether he's being helpful because he feels it's the right thing to do – and getting what he wants is a nice side effect (knowing him a little, I feel it's the latter). But either way, the impact is the same. By thinking of others first and helping them, eventually we get what we want.

Ian

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Mindset

Optimism vs. Accuracy – The Rainmaker’s Paradox

Posted by

Ian Brodie on February 17th, 2009.

Hitting the Target The objective of the rainmaker – the high-end salesperson – is to bring in sales. High quality sales, of course – work the firm can actually deliver, in areas of strategic importance with target clients. But at the end of the day the their overriding objective is to bring in as many sales as possible.

The sales manager, on the other hand, often works to a different agenda. They care about accuracy – will we hit the numbers? Those who work for publicly quoted companies know the extreme pressure to hit quarterly revenue and profitability forecasts to meet City/Wall Street expectations. Often (very, very often in my experience) , the focus of sales or pipeline meetings is less on figuring out how to sell more and more on getting an accurate forecast.

Now in theory, those aren't incompatible objectives. Strive to sell as much as possible and provide an accurate forecast as to how we are most likely to do.

In the real world however, human psychology acts to make it very difficult to achieve both.

By nature, successful salespeople are optimistic. In fact, Ford Harding's research for his classic work Creating Rainmakers highlighted optimism as the first and most striking defining attribute of a Rainmaker. Optimism is vital because it causes the Rainmaker to interpret events in positive ways that encourage them to keep progressing and chasing opportunities long after the rest of us have given up. It gives them a thick skin which allows them to brush off the rejection that's inevitable in sales and to keep knocking on doors, picking up the phone, and heading out to networking events. Developing the relationships necessary to deliver sales in complex, service oriented business such as consulting, law and accounting takes time – much, much longer than most people realise. And it's only the optimistic salespeople that hang in there long enough to reap the rewards.

The side effect of this optimism shows up in forecasts. Rainmakers are inherently prone to be optimisitic and overestimate their chances of winning a deal. Despite the fact that “sandbagging” (deliberately producing a low and easy to beat forecast when setting sales targets) can be very lucrative – in fact the vast majority of forecasts I've experienced in my many years selling, managing and consulting in professional services have been significantly overoptimistic.

So how can we square this circle and produce accurate forecasts despite the inherent optimism of successful Rainmakers?

Well, here's how not to do it: grill the Rainmaker, question their judgement, highlight all the risks and potential slip-ups, and browbeat them into lowering the forecast.

Apart from royally pissing off the Rainmaker, dampening their optimism damages their ability to sell. All of a sudden, they stop going the extra-mile – because they're not quite so certain the client is going to buy. They stop making quite so many calls, or going to quite so many networking events. Their dampened optimism even projects itself to client prospects who notice the Rainmaker doesn't seem quite so confident: perhaps his firm can't help after all?

Now, I'm not saying that analysing and qualifying opportunities is a bad thing – far from it. Done in the context of identifying the actions the Rainmaker needs to take to win the sale, or to help him focus his time on the highest payoff activities, it is tremendously helpful. But using it as a hammer to beat down the Rainmaker's optimism in order to produce a realistic forecast can have the side-effect of killing his effectiveness as a salesperson.

So what's a a more effective approach?

Well, one option is to lessen the need for accurate forecasts. This is easier done in partnerships than in publicly quoted companies who live or die by hitting their quarterly numbers. But remember – these are aggregate numbers for the whole company. An accurate company-level forecast is not necessarily one that is built from highly accurate micro-forecasts from each salesperson. When aggregated, forecast inaccuraces can balance out, and optimistic biases can be corrected for. In many leading consumer goods companies for example, sales forecasts are not calculated by asking each salesperson to accurately forecast then rolling them up – they are calculated statistically using overall demand and environmental factors – and are often far more accurate than salesperson projections. It also makes sense to reduce the firm's reliance on accurate forecasts by thinking through: apart from our external reporting – why do we need accurate forecasts? Capacity planning is an obvious reason – but often, accuracy is not needed so far in advance – and clients can often be surprisingly flexibile over scheduling & start dates. Outside of that, there are often few reasons to maintain an accurate forecast (especially in professional firms) – other than the fact that it gives leadership a feeling of “being in control”.

Another option is to remove responsibility for forecasting from the Rainmaker. The Rainmaker's job becomes one of selling as much as possible (of course, at bare minimum hitting the sales targets). Forecasting becomes the responsibility of the sales manager or a staff function – who are measured on the accuracy of the forecast. It's their job to understand the pipeline – and the Rainmaker – enough to make an accurate forecast. It's not the Rainmaker's job to hit the forecast – it's the Rainmaker's job to sell as much as possible.

A third option is for the Rainmaker to retain responsibility for the forecast – but for firm management to be more hands-off in how this is done. Allow the Rainmaker to manage their own pipeline “in private” and pass up forecasts (either per major opportunity, or just overall). In this case the Rainmaker can keep their own optimistic perspective on the opportunity 90% of the time, but is asked to pass a number upwards which they can “guarantee”. The sales manager (or managing partner/practice head in a professional firm) will work with the Rainmaker to give coaching on how to progress each opportunity – but they don't browbeat the salesperson into changing their forecasts.

Now these methods aren't perfect. But individually, or in combination, they are a lot better than the traditional approach of beating up salespeople in pipeline meetings to get accurate forecasts – and actually damaging their ability to sell.

Ian

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Get Your Life Under Control with Zen to Done

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 25th, 2008.

Struggling to become more productive? If you're anything like me, you're constantly juggling priorities and deadlines and struggling to keep on top of a ton of key activities.

And since starting my own business, I've found that there are many more things that need my personal attention – and no PA or team to delegate to.

So I've found that my personal productivity has become critical to my business success.

A number of years ago I started using the popular Getting Things Done methodology from David Allen. It really helped me get control of all my activities and ensure I didn't “drop the ball” on any of the key ones.

GTD focuses on developing a “Trusted System” to get all your ideas and actions out of your head, scraps of paper, emails, texts etc. into a limited number of physical and electronic Inboxes. It introduces a method for processing the Inboxes in a structed and efficent manner – along with key principles like the use of “contexts” and focusing on Next Actions.

Over the years I modified the system – adding in elements of Strategy, Prioritisation and Planning which I used when running consulting projects.

Of course, I'm not alone in building on GTD. Many variants have been produced, and lots of tools: from software such as GTD Agenda and Nozbe to the various varieties of Hipster PDA and paper-based planning forms like the D*I*Y Planner.

But recently I ran across what I believe to be the best – most practical implementation to date. Especially those who aren't naturally fluent in organisation and admin. The Zen to Done system from Zen Habits founder Leo Babauta combines GTD with principles from Steven Covey's 7 Habits system – and most importantly, a series of habits which allow even the most disorganised of us to successfully adopt the system over time. It shares a lot in common with the system it took me years to develop – but takes it even further and makes it more practical. I liked it so much I signed up to become an affilliate straight away.

You can learn Zen to Done at the Zen Habits site – or download an ebook which goes into more detail and provides examples and FAQs. My suggestion: Try out the site first to see if you like it – then download the ebook. At only $9.50 it's an absolute steal.

Ian

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Thinking vs Doing : Thoughts on Different Personality Types

Posted by

Ian Brodie on October 14th, 2008.

In my experience, sales is mostly about doing – about taking action.

Thinking in advance is important, vital in fact, to focus action on the right things, and to make action “automatic” when it's time to act.

But at the end of the day, sales happen “in the moment” face to face with clients.

In line with this, most sales people tend to be action-oriented. So I find when I'm helping most sales people to improve their performance, my work often focuses around helping them with their thinking. Perhaps they need to better target and select their customers. Perhaps they need to identify better ways of generating leads. Or perhaps they need to rethink the way they hold sales meetings and interact with clients.

But when I work with the people who sell professional services – the lawyers, accountants, consultants and other professionals themselves – it's a different story.

Most professionals tend to love thinking. They'll analyse and debate a problem to death. So I find that my work with many professionals is to get them to be more action oriented.

The professional's seemingly inbuilt fear of rejection and losing face adds to this tendency to think rather than do. Doing involves risk – the possibility that you'll have an unpleasant interaction with a potential client. Thinking is safe – at least in the short term.

In sales, the second best plan implemented today is often much better than the best plan implemented tomorrow. But that really goes against the grain for professionals trained to search for the very best solution to any problem.

With professionals, the key to helping them improve performance is therefore often less about new ideas and insights – and more about coaching and coaxing to take action.

Ian

PS If you're wondering about the graphic – it's an Einstein Action Figure – the perfect combination of thought and action!

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Mindset

Ethics in Sales

Posted by

Ian Brodie on June 13th, 2008.

A recent post by Colin Wilson – Are You Lying Comfortably (now, sadly not available on the blogosphere) – got me thinking about ethics in sales.

It's something people new to, or outside of sales often worry about. How ethical is it to “manipulate” people with salesmanship to buy a particular product or service?

I think one of the toughest areas is in the choice of what you sell. By this, I don't mean choices over whether you sell cigarettes, alcohol or sex products (although your ethical stance there is important, of course). What I mean is selling something you know your customer doesn't really need.

There's really a scale here.

Ethics in Sales: To Sell or Not To Sell?

Selling something you know your customer doesn't need is, in my view, clearly unethical. A professional salesperson has a responsibility to ensure that he or she only sells what their customer will genuinely benefit from – or at the very least, if a customer is intent on buying something they don't really need then the salesperson should warn them of that.

At the other end of the scale, selling something that your customer really needs, where your product is clearly the best available solution for them is unquestionably ethical.

But there's a potentially grey area in between. What if the client needs your product, but you know of a competitors product which meets that need even better? Do you tell them about the competitors product that's a better fit – or keep quiet and just sell yours?

That's a tricky call. I know many salespeople who would say that as long as you “do no evil”, as long as the customer benefits from your product – then it's not your duty to tell them about the better product they could get. That isn't my view – but I'm OK with it. The customer still benefits – and really, it's their responsibility to find the very best product for themselves.

Personally though, If I believe a competitor has a better product, then I'll recommend my customer gives it a look over. I just don't feel right if I know there is a better solution out there but I withold that information.

In the end, I believe this stance actually helps me. As a consultant, one of the critical success factors for me to win and keep clients is to establish a deep trusting relationship. How can I hope to do that if I deliberately withold important information from my client? I believe that my honesty in this helps deepend the bonds of trust with clients – and helps win me further work.

But at the end of the day, holding strong to my position on ethics in sales, whether it benefits me or not, it just feels right. And that's perhaps the biggest benefit of all.

———
Update: I've written a more recent article on ethics in sales here. It gives a very practical and unexpected solution to the ethical conundrum.

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Mindset

Rejection – sometimes it really is personal

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 27th, 2008.

It's one of the oldest sayings in sales – “rejection isn't personal”. But sometimes, more frequently than we'd care to admit, it really is personal. We all need to accept that sometimes people may just not like us or get on with us, and learn to live with that.

A while ago on one of Jeffey Gitomer's newsletters I read a question by a reader which made me smile. The essence of the question was that if people buy from people they know, like and trust – then surely rejection really is personal?

Well, of course, there are many reasons why a prospect may not buy even if they know, like and trust you. An obvious reason being that the value of your product may not be right for them at this specific time – and Jeffrey answered by talking about this.

But the question itself got me thinking. Although rejection often isn't personal, just repeating this mantra without thinking can cause us to overlook problems in the way we are selling.

Firstly, it may well be that we just aren't being liked or trusted enough by our potential clients (or at least not enough of them).

While repeatedly questioning our own likeability or trustworthiness could drive us mad – we do need to take a step back every now and again to analyse whether there is something we are doing which is damaging our ability to be liked and earn the trust of our clients.

Secondly, we need to accept that even if we are doing nothing wrong – not everyone will like or trust us.

Our personal styles or other intangible factors will mean we just can't be liked by everyone. In fact, people with a very strong personality – people who really inspire strong positive feelings in many people – are also likely to inspire strong negative feelings in others. It just goes with the territory. It's probably better to be really loved by some and hated by others than it is to be viewed as OK by everyone.

More importantly, professionals (or people in any senior role) just can't afford to need everyone to like them. In sales, we frequently have to push into areas outside our comfort zones in relationships.

We have to cold call prospects and risk them telling us where to go. We have to ask good customers for referrals and risk them feeling we are “using” them. We have to ask customers for the sale and risk rejection, or the customer feeling pressured.

Of course, there are ways to minimise the impact of these relationship “boundary stretches” by pre-positioning the customer that you will be asking for referrals later for example, or warming up the cold call.

Nonetheless, these techniques won't work 100% of the time. An effective professional must be prepared to take calculated risks and to suffer pushback and rejection. And let's not kid ourselves – sometimes it will be very clear that the rejection is personal – you have pushed an existing relationship a bit too far, or tried to initiate one with a prospect who just wasn't ready.

Rather than pretending that it wasn't personal we must get over our need to be loved by everyone. We must do our best, but at the end of the day some people just won't like us.

If we can't get over our need to be loved, we won't take the “risks” or be bold enough to do what's needed in sales – to make the calls, ask for the referrals or close the sale. A life lived in cotton wool can be comforting and risk free – but it's not the life of a successful professional.

Onward!

Ian

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Mindset

The Joy of Text (or “Is it just me who hates webinars and video”)

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 22nd, 2008.

Text Message Update: OK. I was wrong.

I've tested video, podcasts, webinars. Here's what happens:

Firstly, you do lose some people. Some people just won't watch videos or tune in to webinars.

Secondly, text really is better for communicating most things.

But – here's the rub – videos and webinars have more impact. You might get less people but you build a better relationship with them, faster.

So I'm using video and webinars a lot more. I'm still doing plenty of text blog posts so that everyone gets something. But video and webinars have the biggest impact.

Here's the original post…

I like to think I keep up with the times. I'm PDAd-up, work a lot via mobile broadband, and of course, run a blog.

But one thing I just can't get the hang of is the increasing use of multimedia resources on business websites.

For me, text works brilliantly. I can quickly scan it to see if I'm interested (and ignore it if not). I can jump ahead to relevant pieces and backtrack to things I want to review – all incredibly easily. I can read at my own pace – taking more time over difficult concepts and speeding up through things I already know. Of all the valuable business resources I have found on the web, almost all of them have been text (with maybe some pictures thrown in).

But nowadays there seems to be an increasing trend to put business resources into video format or run live webinars. And it just doesn't work for me.

Of course, video is great for some things. Instructional material for manual processes can be much better done in video for example. But concepts and ideas?

I almost never join webinars. The thought of sitting in for half an hour or even an hour of my life not knowing whether what's coming is going to be of value fills me with dread. I can't scan ahead, I'm restricted to listening at the pace the presenter is speaking – I can't get him to speed up or slow down to the pace I'd like to be at. I can't backtrack to key points (even on a recording I have to guess where the key points may be timewise).

And it just takes longer. I can read at roughly 3-5 times the speed someone can talk at. So in reality I'll be multi-tasking during a webinar and probably miss the key points anyway. Honestly, who in the real world with a real job really has the time to listen in to webinars and watch videos?

Sure, webinars give a chance for interaction and asking questions – but this can easily be done by requesting questions before writing an article – and that gives more time for deeper thought about the answers than answering on the spot in a webinar.

Video resources are little better. For the explanation of concepts and ideas a talking head (which is most often what it is) is rarely a good substitute for a written article.

So why the move towards the use of video/webinars? Well in my view there are two reasons.

Firstly, people think it's trendy and they're moving with the times and so providing a better service. I wonder if they would think the same if they actually asked their readership whether they preferred webinars/videos to text.

But in reality, I think it's mainly because it's easier to organise and do one than it is to really sit down, organise your thoughts and write in a clear, lucid manner. Of course, you should do this before a webinar or a video too, but frankly it doesn't seem to happen often, What we usually get is a stream of consciousness rather than a well thought out, structured presentation.

So please, to anyone thinking of doing a video or setting up a webinar to cover a business oriented topic – think about whether you could just write about it instead. I'm sure that for most of your potential “customers” it would be far easier and more effective to receive your content in good old text.

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