Be Different or be dead

February 15, 2021

How ‘feet-on-the-street’ sales can be way better than online sales

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How ‘feet-on-the-street’ sales can be way better than online sales.

Online sales is beating offline sales; here’s how ‘feet on the street’ can get their mojo back.

The traditional role of offline sales is pushing the profession closer to extinction

It’s interesting to observe the evolution of sales over the past several years.

Technology affecting the online marketing and sales function has evolved at a blistering pace over the past 5 years.
Artificial Intelligence and web personalization tools allow organizations to track what individuals have researched and purchased and to present them with an array of buying options during their subsequent browsing sessions, and much more.

All under the guise of improving the customer online experience by making the suggested choice more relevant based on their past behaviour.

I personally find the experience anything but pleasant. Irrelevant ads pop up when I’m browsing and despite the claim from marketers that the digital tools they use are improving the customer experience, I find the process intrusive, annoying and frustrating. My reading experience is diminished with advertisers disrupting me with totally irrelevant product offers.

Notwithstanding the fact that the objective of enhancing the online customer experience is being met with varying degrees of success, this aspect of online sales is ahead of its offline cousin by an order of magnitude.

The online salesperson is nothing more than an algorithm devoid of emotion and ego; the offline one has all those constraints.

How can offline sales morph to what online sales is trying to achieve?

It’s all about context. Online sales is trying to improve the customer experience, and be more effective in anticipating products and services an individual might be interested in buying, so why doesn’t the offline sales world attempt the same?

I know offline sales aspire to build deep meaningful relationships with customers, but when you look at what motivates them it’s hard to believe.

My observation is that offline sales remains in the doldrums, holding on to its traditional role, motivated by:
— improving conversion rates.
— managing the sales funnel more effectively.
— get the sale.
— keeping the pressure on and don’t let the person say ‘no’.
— getting (and staying in) the faces of potential buyers.
— terminating the customer meeting if it looks like no sale is in the offing.
— pushing the product and make it fit what the customer wants.
— improving how to make a cold call.
— achieving quota.
— outperforming colleagues.
— winning the annual sales contest.
— earning salesperson of the year award.

With these motivating factors, it’s not believable when they say that relationships matter; their behaviour speaks otherwise. And certainly, without a strong relationship-building bias, the ability to anticipate customer purchasing behaviour is restricted.

So, what’s the solution? How can offline sales be better than their algorithmic online sales cousin?

We need to redefine the function as ‘un-sales’ and describe it as the folks that don’t sell; taking the focus off selling and putting it on building relationships. And change the way sales is compensated.

To get started, here are the rules for offline sales that must be put in place to build better relationships and experiences with the customer.

1. Pay people for relationships — If sales aren’t paid to exhibit the behaviours necessary to build relationships and create better experiences for their ‘target’ they won’t do it. Period.

So if leadership aspires to get closer to their customers but don’t put in place the infrastructure to enable it, nothing progressive will happen and the aspiration becomes an unfulfilled dream. And online sales keeps winning.

2. Stress (and micromanage) the conversation — Relationships and experiences get better when conversations between people are ingratiating and serve the needs of both parties.

Get rid of the one-way sales pitch. Make offliners the best listeners on the planet. Set a performance rule that the customer must occupy 80% of the conversation airtime. Have ego purging classes; strip dysfunctional ego-drive that prevents a productive two-way conversation (or remove the salesperson who can’t comply).

Make note-taking a compulsory part of the sales kit bag; it’s a vital element of giving someone a relevant, meaningful experience. No act shows that the salesperson cares about what the other person is saying than committing what is heard to paper. The act implies that one has been heard and that follow up is promised along with further action.

3. Find human insights — For the offline salesperson, behind every productive conversation (defined as a deeper relationship and a pleasant experience) is an objective; a specific intended outcome.

And for offline sales, the endgame of every customer engagement is to discover an insight on the other person that is useful in feeding the buying process. Further, if the insight is a rare find that no one else — i.e. the competition — knows, it’s a strategic gem that has the potential to achieve and maintain strategic advantage of the organization.

Knowledge is strategic power, and the offline salesperson is key in the process of learning what people desire and converting this knowledge into economic benefits for the firm.

4. Develop a serving culture — amazing long term relationships and memories can only be created by offline salespeople who like putting the needs of others before their own; they like serving people.

There are serving salespeople out there but in my experience they are rare because of the traditional role sales played and because of past hiring practices that reflected traditional sales values. Servants weren’t coveted; those with aggressive, pushy, and domineering attributes were given the priority.

As a start, how about devoting equal time to product and serving training? Teach the offliners what serving (to gather strategic insights) ‘looks like’ and why it’s critical to the future of the organization.

And, as an aside, if a serving culture were successfully created, offline sales would forever outpace online sales which depend on algorithms and predictive models produced by people who know the digital tool world, not people.

5. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up — Perhaps this might be viewed as a small thing, but it’s HUGE in terms of influencing experiences and relationships. If someone promises you something and you don’t hear from them for 2 weeks, how do you feel and what’s your conclusion? Most people would conclude that they lied to you and they really don’t care about your needs.

This is the one activity offline sales has the advantage. Yes, Amazon can inform us of the status of our delivery but it doesn’t fulfill any other follow up function. For example they don’t enquire on how we liked the purchase (relying on us to advise them if we were dissatisfied) and other more qualitative aspects of the buying process. Humans, only humans, do this the way it needs to be done.

6. Advocate for the customer — Wage battle for the customer inside your company.
There is nothing worse for a customer than having to battle the bureaucracy of an organization when they need something or when something has gone wrong and their expectations haven’t been met.

They are literally on their own to fight the rules and policies and other restrictions that make the experience extremely unpleasant and in many cases annoying.

The salesperson needs to put themselves on the line among their peers and bosses on the inside to represent the best interests of their customer.

Online sales cannot do this; only offline sales can. And it’s critically important to an experience and relationship. When a customer has an issue with their order and they have to deal with the ‘inside world’ of an organization, they feel alone. The offline salesperson can be their advocate to take the pain and suffering away; the organization is rewarded with loyalty and referrals.

Online selling has captured center stage because of the plethora of new digital tools available. But they have limitations that can only be remedied by offline sales.

The successful sales organization will learn how to balance online vs offline to optimize the strategic benefits of both channels.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 2.15.21 at 06:55 am by Roy Osing
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February 11, 2021

Why is a craving more important than a need to marketer’s?

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Why is a craving more important than a need to marketer’s?

‘Crave research’ is the new black in the discipline of determining the triggers that make people buy.

But there still seems to be focus given to traditional marketing research which relies on determining what people need even though most people already have their needs satisfied.

Which means if you remain needs focused you will eventually end up competing on price as the other attributes of your product are the same as other providers - if 2 products are essentially the same in terms of features, price is the only thing left to try to distinguish one from the other.

But competing on price is an ugly place to be. Customers love low prices; organizations not so much, as profit margins are squeezed and competitors can easily copy.

Marketing needs to turn from needs-centric research to ‘crave’ research

The questions to ask in crave research are different than those asked in traditional market research: what do you crave, covet, ache (for), hunger (for), itch (for), sigh (for), yearn (for), lust (after) and long (for) replace ‘what do you need?’

The crave questions address what people spend their discretionary money on these days at premium prices — the marketer’s sweet spot.

The crave game is the new game that will separate successful companies from the mediocre and dying ones.

Crave-based offerings are automatically personalized because no two people crave exactly the same thing. And they command higher margins as people are generally prepared to pay more for an item they are emotionally pulled towards as opposed to one that fills a staple need in their lives. We get upset when car insurance rates go up 15% but don’t sweat the fact that we just financed a high end SAV for $100,000.

In a crave market, the basis for competition suddenly changes; price is no longer the most important element; the strength of the crave pull is.

Competitive advantage in crave markets goes to the organization that best delivers personalized crave-based offers.

A nice place to be — high market share at premium prices that deliver high margins. Nirvana marketing.

Long term sustainable competitive advantage is possible because once the crave research and offer development infrastructure has been developed, it can be sustained as crave factors change.

And the crave marketer is automatically changing with the customer; they are always relevant to the markets they serve.

Do you study what your customers crave?

Observe and ask them.

Build your marketing machine around what you discover.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.11.21 at 05:38 am by Roy Osing
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February 8, 2021

6 easy ways to learn more and be more successful

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6 easy ways to learn more and be more successful.

Successful career development requires staying relevant and this means riding the knowledge curve: if you want more you need to know more.

If you want more success and rewards in your career you need to know more. Expecting infinitely more returns from your current knowledge base is unreasonable; there’s only so much more you can squeeze out of a sponge before you need a bigger one and before you must replenish it with water.

Yet there are too many people who are unsatisfied with their lot in life because they believe they should be able to leverage their existing knowledge base to produce more and more personal benefits. They think they should be able to squeeze more personal benefit from what they’ve learned in the past.

Whereas this approach may work for a while, at some point one has to replenish themselves with broader and different skills and competencies if their end game is to be more relevant and therefore have an opportunity to be more successful.

If you’re no longer relevant, you’re done for future opportunities.

These 6 tactics will help you build your ‘know stuff’ repertoire:

1. Knowledge frontier

What’s the new knowledge frontier? What are the growth sectors of the economy? Which way is the wind blowing in terms of new business opportunities and what skills do you need to possess in order to make a valuable contribution to their exploitation?

It’s not just about what you would like to do; it’s more about exploring what you need to do in order to be relevant in the changing world ahead.
For example, digital technology is definitely headed down the artificial intelligence path and bright people with AI knowledge are needed by companies that want to leverage it for financial gain.
So, if the job growth is disproportionately high in this sector you might want to find a way to play in it.

It’s critical you do your homework on this to discover what know-how will be sought after in the next few years.

Context for learning is critical; make sure your learning curve follows the skills and competencies curve of the economy — learn and stay relevant.

2. Career plan

Update your career plan based on your assessment of where industry knowledge needs are headed.
This is the step where you action what you discover in your knowledge frontier explorations.

For example, you may have been on a financial path and need to pivot to digital technology based on your frontier findings. If so, your career development plan needs an overhaul. Go back to a clean sheet of paper if need be; a new end game requires a different strategy to achieve it.

If you don’t build a specific career plan to exploit knowledge opportunities, you’ve wasted your efforts so far. And nothing will change for you.

Re-read BE DiFFERENT YOU! and a few of my blogs to make sure your career plan is solid and updated.

3. The Magic Question

Ask yourself the magic question as a way to focus your career plan pivot.

The MQ has always served me well in my career. I posed it every time I faced a job change: a new job, a demotion (yes, I had a major one of these), a lateral move, a new boss and so on.
And it guided me to make the right decisions that served me well.

”Now that I’m facing a change, what do I have to do differently” is a requisite for any pivot.

Failure to ask the question is deadly; asking it and getting (in retrospect) the wrong answer at first, but eventually getting it right, at least keeps you in the game. It just costs you time.

4. Someone else’s shoes

My experience is that the wealth of knowledge available when you walk in another’s shoes often goes undiscovered.
Cross training or stepping in to assume someone else’s responsibilities is not seen to be the amazing learning opportunity that it really is.

So look for the chance to do someone else’s job for a temporary period and you’ll be amazed at how rewarding the assignment can be.
Either you might learn that the temporary role is not for you, or you’ll discover some aspect of it that appeals to you and that might lead you to seek learning opportunities on a different track than you were originally on.

Learning based on practical experience in my view is far more valuable than textbook learning only because you learn theory from a real life situation rather than merely hypothetical possibilities promulgated by theoretical experts.

Practical learning makes knowledge real and so it’s much easier to retain and replicate.

5. Paper mentor

The world is at our feet through the internet; there is more online knowledge available than most of us could ever tap in our lifetime.

So, go online and find a paper mentor you can learn from.

For me, Seth Godin has always been an invaluable marketing mentor for me though I’ve never met or spoken with him.
But because he is a prolific writer with an incredible perspective on where marketing needs to go in order to remain relevant, I learn voraciously from his published work.

Find a paper mentor that is in the sweet spot of your career development plan and not only study them but also try to apply what they teach.

6. Young professionals

Go find a younger person who is doing what you would like to do (again, as determined by your updated career plan) and rub shoulders with them.
This is where you probably have to build yourself a new contact list.

Younger people are generally on the cusp of breaking new knowledge so they represent an effective lens for you.
But don’t make it weird if your chronological impairment — aka your age — outpaces theirs.

Find a way to hang with them (probably virtually to begin with), conclude that they have knowledge to offer that you need and then play your relationship networking card to get closer to them.
Who knows? You may even make a friend for life.

The fate of your career development plan rests in your head; whether or not you keep pace with knowledge trends, and your capabilities to implement your new-found learnings in real world situations.

But the truth is, it starts with new thinking and new skills. So, go find what’s hot in the learning space, soak it up and apply it with passion like no other.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 2.8.21 at 04:54 am by Roy Osing
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February 5, 2021

8 simple ways you can improve your marketing muscle

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8 simple ways you can improve your marketing muscle.

There are organizations that emphasize the role of marketing in their business plan. They are proficient at marketing who they are and what value they create.

They exhibit marketing effectiveness.

They have marketing muscle.

There are others, on the other hand, who struggle to get their message across and are not contenders.

Building marketing muscle isn’t just the job of the marketing department; the entire organization must take on the responsibility and work in harmony to deliver it.

Muscle-building routine

▪️Consistently WOW! your customers — Delivering awesome customer service is fundamental to building muscle; it’s the basic platform you need to build a strong sustaining brand. If you don’t serve your customers in an exemplary way (or at least have plans to), ignore the rest of this article.

▪️Lead with innovation — Be the first ones to do something creative and “out there”. Yes, it’s risky to try something new, but if you try often enough you will have the winners that add dimension to your brand.

▪️Surprise your market — Do something that people don’t expect. Muscle builders pulse surprises from time to time, creating buzz and attracting a great deal of attention.
And they don’t surprise just anybody; “delight tactics” are aimed at their loyal customers. Check out Richard Branson to see how it is done.

▪️Earn the customer’s business everyday — Don’t feel entitled to it just because you have it. This is all about never taking the customer for granted; assuming that since you already have them, you don’t have to do much to keep them.

This is a fatal mistake! Investing in deepening your relationship with a customer and earning their trust will not only keep them spending with you, it will also motivate them to “spread your word” to others.

▪️Integrate yourself in your community — People want to do business with organizations that care about the communities they are in; that give back in some meaningful way.

Muscle is built with a HUGE dose of humanity, and social investing is an effective way of allowing your softer side to be seen. And target community investments to programs aligned with your strategic plan; avoid trying to support every cause out there.

▪️Adopt customer learning as a core competency — Learn about your customers as a continuous process rather than a periodic task.

Customer needs, wants and desires change and it is critical to keep up. Muscle strength grows proportionately with how knowledgeable you are about who your customer is and what their top priorities are.

▪️Have fun! — It’s amazing how impactful it is to shed the business formality thing and show an informal playful persona from time to time. Casual language, humour and making fun of yourself are ways to show your customers “it ain’t all about the bottom line”.

▪️Think “ME” — Shift your thinking from mass production to personalized value creation. Narrow your focus to create solutions for small groups of customers rather than trying to come up with one size that fits all (which doesn’t work anyway).

Keep in mind that muscle form isn’t developed overnight; it can take years of blood, sweat and tears before the market sees you as a contender.

However, there is no time like the present to get on with it.

Define your muscle building program.

Start executing.

Don’t look back.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.5.21 at 10:48 am by Roy Osing
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