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Why it’s OK to be rubbish at selling

Posted byIan Brodie on April 3rd, 2016.

I was never a natural at selling, but over the years I got quite good at it. It was very hard work, but I learned how to do it in a way that felt comfortable to me.

Fast forward a decade and frankly, I'm back to being pretty hopeless.

It's been so long since I've had a proper sales meeting that although I know what to do, it would all be very stilted. And honestly, I'd rather not have a sales meeting if I can avoid one.

What I'd much rather have is a meeting with someone who already wants to work with me, just to confirm what we'll be doing together.

Peter Drucker famously said “the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

I always kinda doubted it. When I worked for big firms we always had to pitch to win things. Same when I first started out.

But over time, something changed.

Turns out Drucker was right. If your marketing is really working. 

Not the kind of marketing I did in the corporate world that's all about telling people how great you are.

But when you do marketing that adds value to potential clients and helps them before they ever pay you a penny, something different happens.

And when you do it week in, week out you build the kind of relationship that means you don't need to sell to people. They come to you wanting to work with you.

So you can be rubbish at selling and still get sales :)

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Some feedback is better than others

Posted byIan Brodie on March 20th, 2016.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions they say.

But I've found that some feedback is more important than others. If particular, if you do surveys and get input from potential clients you should pay special attention to a particular type of input.

This is something I heard first from researcher Glenn Livingston many moons ago. It's simple really, but most people don't realise it…

Whenever you do a survey or ask for feedback and ask open questions, pay the most attention to the longest answers.

It makes sense really. If someone invests a significant amount of time to write you a long, detailed answer to a question, then the chances are they really care about the problem or challenge you asked them about. Much more so that someone who just writes a few words.

I had the same thing when I used to do face to face interviews to kick off consulting projects.

Most people would give decent answers to questions. Some people would give more thorough ones. And some people went on and on and on…

I was always frustrated by the folks who wanted to pour out their souls. After all, I had 5 or 6 interviews to do a day and I didn't have the time for each one to drag on.

What I didn't realise at the time was that these were the people I should really be paying attention to.

When I look back now, it's easy to see just how insightful some of them were. They really cared, and they wanted to share what they knew.

Make sure you pay attention to the long answers whenever you get feedback. Don't get frustrated because you'd prefer a quick summary. The long answers are where the gold is hidden.

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A great way to develop new products

Posted byIan Brodie on March 13th, 2016.

Here's something I've been doing for the last few years that I've found is the best way for me to develop new products.

It's something I thought was relatively unique to me because most of my business comes through my Momentum Club membership program. But I realised recently that almost any business can adopt the same approach. Pay attention and you should be able to tweak it to fit your situation.

What I do is pretty simple. Whenever I'm thinking of producing a new product I make a free version of it for my existing membership site members first. I've done this with my Facebook Advertising course, my Client Winning Websites course, my Lead Magnet Masterclass course and my Content Marketing Mastery course.

I go through a few phases. Firstly I confirm via email and our private Facebook group whether the course I'm planning would be useful.

If it is, I then draw up a timeline with the main components I'm going to include and start working on those modules bit by bit, usually over 4 or 5 weeks.

I drip-feed those modules out to my Momentum Club members whenever they're available. And recently I've started doing short Facebook Live broadcasts with Q&A for members only.

Based on the feedback I get I update the modules or add new components. At the end of the 4-5 week period, I have a course that I know delivers what my best customers are looking for that I can now promote to new customers.

This method works brilliantly for me because there's no downside. Normally when you produce a course, if you don't get many sales then you've wasted a lot of time and effort.

In my case, even if I don't get any new sales, I've created new content and given it free to my existing customers in Momentum Club. I've built goodwill and created yet another reason to join and stay in the club.

Of course, I'm quite likely to get new sales because the development of the course has been steered by my very best customers. But even if I didn't, I'll still feel like it was a great investment of my time.

And there's no pressure when I'm developing the course. Because it's a free gift to existing members, if I get ill for a week and the timetable slips or there's some other delay, there's no anger or pressure to deliver. It's all goodwill all the way and viewed as a bonus.

The end result is a course that's much better than it would have been had I tried to develop it on my own. And happy customers even before I sell a single copy.

Even if you don't run a membership program like me, you can do something similar in your business as long as you've got some existing customers.

As soon as you have an idea for a new product or service, test it out with those existing customers.

Email them or call them first and get their feedback. That in itself is a good way of keeping in touch and broadening their awareness of what you do.

Then invite them to participate in a pilot version of the new product or service.

That might be a one-off workshop or training course run across your client base. It might be a day's consulting for one of your best clients in this new area to test out your new methodology or approaches.

There are many ways you can do it. The key is to make it really valuable for your clients and to get feedback from them to help you shape the new product or service.

Don't try to sell the service itself to them – this isn't a sales pitch in disguise. But quite naturally, if you have a couple of their staff on a brilliant new course for example, word of mouth will generate demand and pull in more people for further paid versions of the course.

Worst case, you'll have generated a ton of goodwill with your existing and ex-clients and reminded them of the other things you do. Best case, you'll have shaped up a great new product or service, generated demand for it, and got a bunch of testimonials you can use to promote it.

Now doing all that will take time and effort. But it's going to be a lot less effort and a lot more effective than starting from scratch and then having to market your new product cold to people who don't know anything about it.

As I say, I have a natural outlet for this with my membership program. But with a bit of thought, you can do this in pretty much any business.

The upside is a great new product. The minimum you'll get is happy customers.

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Could you do what Bruce Henderson did?

Posted byIan Brodie on March 6th, 2016.

A bit of a history lesson today, but bear with me because I believe it's directly relevant to you and how you can win more clients.  

Back in 1963, the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company asked Bruce D Henderson to set up a management consulting division for them.

The “division” was initially Henderson, a back room in their offices, and a phone.

And Henderson faced the challenge many of us face today. He had strong incumbent competitors (McKinsey had been going for 45 years by that time) and he lacked the contact network and well-placed alumni that consulting firms of the day used to bring in new clients.

But what he did have was ideas. Great ideas about how businesses could improve and grow.

He knew if he could get those ideas into the hands of senior executives in large organisations, he stood a chance of winning them as clients.

So in 1964 he started mailing essays he called “Perspectives” direct to senior executives. 

He didn't wait to write a book. He didn't try to get articles into prestigious publications, or to ask for introductions, or to get on radio or TV.

He sent his essays directly to them.

And they weren't just any essays. Henderson described them as a “punch between the eyes”. Deliberately provocative. Focused on big, important topics. In Henderson's words:

“Statements that senior executives would find believable are not supported. Only provocative material is argued. The subject matter is chosen to be deliberately provocative, significant in implication, and relevant to the policy decisions of corporate competition.”

Henderson steered away from content that his potential clients already know or could hear from his competitors. He focused on his own distinctive point of view.

Within 10 years the Boston Consulting Group, as they came to be known, had become the leading strategy consulting firm in the US.

All started through Henderson's approach of getting his best ideas directly into the hands of his idea clients.

Could you do something similar?

Do you have great ideas that would help your clients and are different from what your competitors are saying?

Our ability to “go direct” has never been greater. With paid advertising on Google, Facebook or Linkedin we can get our message to exactly the right people based on demographics, geography, income levels, what they're interested in, what they're searching for, they job they do, their level of seniority, which industry they work in, and a whole bunch more.

Writing a book and hoping it's a success is great and can absolutely boost your authority. Appearing on TV or radio or podcasts can do similar. As can writing guest articles or appearing on social media.

But for a surefire strategy for getting your ideal clients to take notice, nothing beats going direct.