Oct 31, 2010 | Customers, Sales
Sales is something we all do, all the time, professionally as well as in our private lives. We may not always be selling a product for an employer, but we will be selling our ideas, priorities, time, and experience, in some way. Here are some simple rules:
- Talk as little as possible, and listen as much as possible
- Recognise early, preferably before anyone else, when the horse is dead and get off
- Act short term to make the sale, but never at the expense of the medium and long term, as any individual sale is rarely the end of the relationship, unless you choose it to be.
- Lack of real understanding of the problems faced by customers, their external competitive and profitability challenges, and the internal organisational and operational barriers getting in the way of “yes”.
- Lack of product knowledge appropriate to the interaction of the person you are talking to.
Fix these, and the sale should be pretty easy.
Oct 28, 2010 | Communication, Social Media
It seems that there is something at work that is largely unnoticed. We no longer trust what we read in newspapers, but we tend to trust what we see on the net, weather it be in wikipedia, on a site like Business Spectator that has journalists of real stature, or in some random blog.
Just because somebody said it, does not make it right, but it also seems that if it is said digitally, the default is to trust it, at least a bit.
In Sydney, there are two newspapers, the Telegraph and the Herald, neither are held in much esteem these days, although nobody seems to believe what they read in the “Tele” it is almost a work of daily fiction. Similarly the weekly “womens” (don’t men read them?) magazines are filled with complete fabrications, a few weeks ago one of them had an “exclusive” on the wedding of local actor Kate Ritchie, down to photos of the smiling bride and new husband, interviews, and comment on the honeymoon destination. Absolute fiction, some goose sat in a room and made it all up, photo-shopped composite “photographs” and all, but it was published as an exclusive!
Is this just a bit of fun, or a more serious erosion of our standards and expectations of the profession of journalism, and the publishers that bring it to us. Had it been on line, it may have had more credibility, and I am wondering why?
Anyone can be a publisher these days, all you need is a computer and a free weblog account, when in the past, at least you had to be serious to stump up the capital involved in the printing and distribution networks, and the expenses involved in staff, offices, phones, and the rest. I suspect the “old media” is hastening its own demise by desperately seeking to attract readers for short term circulation numbers to sustain advertising, when they may be better off recognising the world hs changed, and alter their business model accordingly.
Oct 27, 2010 | Personal Rant, Social Media
Isn’t it interesting, the next election in NSW will be contested by a large number of independents, and they will all have a shot at being elected.
It is pretty easy to just put this down to the appalling dross we have been putting up with for ages, but is it the only reason?
I think not.
Both sides are as distrusted as the other sharing some key characteristics other than almost homogeneous policies, where they seem to be as dysfunctional as each other, but other things, they are boring, dull, common, beset by “duurrrrr”, relying on mass media to deliver a picture as it has in the past. However, we the voting public no longer rely on mass media to form our views, we get our news, information on our particular interests, and opinion forming commentary, elsewhere, all powered by the new media forms that have emerged.
The independents now emerging are doing so because they now can, they do not need the piles of money and endorsement of the media owners and party machines to be seen, it can be done by being different, gaining stature because they are prepared to say things with personal passion, their views are not subjected to the discipline of the focus group, they are interesting, and interested, and can connect on a personal level.
I expect a NSW parliament full of independents post election, maybe we will get some robust debate for a change, not the personal attacks that belong in the gutter, but battle of ideas, options, and something different.
Sounds constructive for a change, and perhaps even useful.
Oct 26, 2010 | Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
The thing about market research is that it can only elicit responses to the questions that are asked from within the context of what they already know and understand.
Innovative solutions are rarely a result of asking a group, or committee, about what they would like. Henry Ford once quipped that if he has asked customers what they wanted before he developed the model T, they would have responded, “a faster horse” and this is proven true time after time.
Similarly, leadership is not about agreement, and gaining consensus all the time, it is about someone having the moral courage to stand by him/her self and say, that is wrong, or I disagree, here is what I think, this is what I am going to do!
When was the last time you saw a statue recognising the contribution of a committee?.
Oct 25, 2010 | Collaboration, Communication, Social Media
Why is it that in the face of plummeting communication costs, and remarkable availability of new tools to make it easy, that business travel continues to grow?
On first glance, we should be travelling less, not more, but on further consideration, perhaps it is the richness of the face to face engagement and the potential to develop “social capital” with customers, geographically spread colleagues and suppliers that is keeping us on the planes, and the communication tools let us keep on top of the necessary crap in the office without having to be there.
Travel may be complementary to other communication costs, rather than the new tools being a substitute for travel as we all assumed to now.
The depth of personal, face to face communication cannot be substituted by the width possible with social tools, as looking someone physically in the eye involves having some “skin in the game”, putting yourself out there in a way not equalled by electronic means. The evolution of communities and the social capital that keeps them glued to gather, will see roles changing, but the physical handshake cannot be substituted by exchanged electrons.
