Dec 13, 2023 | Customers, Marketing
The best word in sales is ‘Free’, it will close more often than any other, by a long stretch. However, being free also implies there is no value to the buyer, and in any event, it is not really a sale, as there is no money involved. At best a ‘freebie’ is a ‘bait’ of some sort that may lead to a sale.
As a freelancer, I am tempted often to give away a lot of time and advice for free, partly to demonstrate expertise, which may lead to a sale, and partly because I am asked, and am able to do so to help. It is also partly because I find it difficult to just say a flat ‘No’
Recently I had some assistance from a professional to address a health problem. It was someone I knew quite well, and have helped a bit in the past. As I turned up for the appointment, I was asked if I had some time afterwards so the professional could, as it was stated, ‘pick your brain‘ in a specific area where I have deep expertise. As it happened, I did have the time, so said it was OK.
The upshot is that I gave away an hour delivering expert advice, while paying full tote odds for the appointment and professional advice I had gone there to obtain.
Stupid me.
I should have used the second most powerful word in Sales.
‘No’
It is hard for us to say ‘No’.
We all like to be liked, we like to be asked, and to be seen as an expert, and we do not like to be seen as ungenerous, or even a jerk.
However, is my time and expertise of any less value than the professional I was talking to?
As humans, we also want what we cannot have, wanting something just out of reach is a driver of behaviour. Saying ‘No’ moves the opportunity to learn something,, or get something that is just out of reach further away, making it more attractive, and adding to the perceived value of that something.
Watch what happens at contested auctions, as the price goes up, those remaining in the bidding become more desperate to win.
There are many ways to say ‘No’, but the essential element is that it must be clear.
If you apologise, say ‘Sorry’, the door remains open, and you feel a little guilty, when there is no need for you to apologise.
If you say ‘I can’t’ does that mean you cannot now, but might at another time?
If you offer a range of excuses, the ‘No’ remains ambiguous, and everyone is confused.
Remembering that ‘No’ makes you more attractive, you do have options.
- Just be firm and say ‘No’ I do not do that.
- Redirect. ‘No’ I do not do that, but here is someone you could ask.
- Redirect back to you. Again, several sub options:
- ‘No. However, email me a few simple questions, and I will try to answer them quickly.’
- ‘No, but I do offer calls up to 60 minutes for $XXXX fee.
- ‘That is a complex question, usually only answerable after a detailed examination, for which my project fee is $XXXX.
Use one of these, and the chances of some sort of conversion are real.
Unfortunately, in this case I did not follow my own advice, and so know that the hour I spent outlining the solution to the problem will not be valued and implemented, so we will have both wasted our time.
At least, I got a blog post out of it, so maybe there was some value after all?
Dec 11, 2023 | Change, Communication
Following on from a previous post about the value of information, it seems relevant to ask how long any value created lasts.
We are all familiar with the notion of the ‘1/2 life’. The time it takes for radioactivity of an element to decay by 1/2. Uranium 238 has a 1/2 life of several billion years.
What about the 1/2 life of information?
The 1/2 life of a daily newspaper is arguably 1 day, today’s news is ‘tomorrows fish wrapper’. For 99.9% of blog posts, and most other so called ‘content’, it is about 2 seconds. This seems odd in what is supposedly the ‘Information age’, why is the life so short in most cases, and what make the difference for the 0.1%?
The answer seems to be: It depends on the utility of the information, which is partly a function of the ‘friction’ or resistance which is applied to its transmission.
Businesses, and most institutions are structured to be top down in functional silos, a system that evolved before digitisation of information arrived at our inboxes. This enabled the scaling of effort and the most efficient allocation of resources. A 20th century solution to the challenge of information transfer and leverage.
In the 21st century, with digitisation, the structures of the 20th century are redundant. They are simply too slow to be competitive in an environment where the action happens at digital speed on the ‘front lines’ of customer interaction. It takes too long for the siloed decision making processes to work. Customers will now move quickly to someone who is able to satisfy their need on the spot.
We have to turn our power structures upside down, and give the front lines the authority to make on the spot decisions within a much broader remit than was previously the case.
This creates huge complications for organisations, as the status quo is upset. The power people at the top have worked to achieve all their lives is diluted, and for those at the bottom, suddenly they are being tasked to take decisions that last week were being referred up the chain.
There is a driver of activity, always present, but to date well in the background for most. This is the ‘operating rhythm’ of the market in which they compete. When their decision cycles are slower than the operating rhythm of the market, the market will go elsewhere, or at the very least, opportunities will be lost.
Getting ‘inside’ the operating rhythm of your market, being able to respond quicker than the market reacts, is an emerging key to strategic success.
The 1/2 life of information is now in the hands of others, those who really count, by being customers.
That is why the OODA loop, conceived by US fighter pilot John ’40 second’ Boyd in the 60’s is so relevant to 21st century competition.
Nov 22, 2023 | Change, Communication
Last week I was copied on an email one of my clients sent to a now former supplier.
It was polite, respectful, thanking them for their service, and wishing them well. What struck me immediately was that it was not in the ‘voice’ of my client. A moment later, I realised it had been generated by AI. There is nothing wrong with that, AI is a tool, like any tool, that enables leverage to be applied to your time and effort. There are many situations where that leverage is enormously valuable. Not using it to free up cognitive capacity to do something more valuable with your time would be dumb, even irresponsible.
However, writing has a crucial and increasingly unacknowledged role. The generation of wisdom and understanding.
I write a lot. There are almost 2,500 published blog posts on StrategyAudit, a bank of thoughts, ideas, opinions, responses, and a few rants about things I believe in. It is the product of 14 years of reflection, thinking, and understanding.
Writing for me is way more than just putting words on paper, or out into the ether. It is the way I explore, clarify, focus, and reason. It is an essential tool in my thought processes that build understanding. It is also the way those ideas are shared, inviting response, in whatever form it comes, building greater understanding in the process.
Over a commercial life of almost 50 years, I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience, the latter often gained at the expense of some pain. Writing about all this has made it much more real, visceral, and readily available to those few I work with.
The machinations at OpenAI, the sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman, and conflagration that is still unfolding will be a tiny ripple in the exponential process of AI development. It will do little more than create some headlines, and the opportunity for commentators who have no inside knowledge at all to express an unfounded opinion. It seems the fight is, as usual, about money. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit with a mission to ensure responsible deployment of the emerging AI technology. Potentially a fragile mission in todays world.
I worry that the world we are leaving our grandchildren (my kids are all making their own way now) is one where superficially attractive output camouflages a lack of real understanding of the drivers of those outcomes. To overcome this, we should encourage them to read, and write, a lot. Put down the devices and read books, real ones, with highlighter and pen in hand to emphasise the points of new understanding, and those that need further thought and investigation.
You cannot achieve that by skating over the surface, outsourcing your thinking. Using tools that cannot think is no substitute to doing the work yourself.
Nov 3, 2023 | Communication, Marketing
Over the course of writing 2,500 plus blog posts and many articles and presentations while reading widely on the advice to copywriters, usually published by those desperately seeking to sell some sort of course, the commonality of advice is clear.
- Without an attention grabbing headline you are toast. David Ogilvy noted: ‘On average five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline you have spent $0.80 out of your dollar”. Find a way to insert your key benefit into the headline
- Have an early hook in the copy. This could be a question, surprising fact, contentious observation, a statement of the bleeding obvious, or even a one line joke. All of these will encourage the reader to get further into the copy.
- Employ the bouncing magnet. Everywhere use the device of bouncing from positive to negative, to positive, back to negative, back to positive. For example, copy selling a cash flow service might read as follows:
Imagine a future where your business is thriving, cash flow is strong, and financial freedom is beckoning.
Sadly, the reality for many business owners is quite different.
Cash flow problems seem endemic.
Payment of unexpected expenses, slow debtor payments, losing a significant order, can make life a nightmare.
Don’t despair, we’re here to help you regain control.
Our proven financial management solutions have empowered many businesses to turn the cash flow challenges into opportunities for growth.
It is a fact that many financial advisors and software tools promise the world and deliver little. You’ve been burnt by these claims in the past.
Our approach is different.
We do not offer quick fixes or empty promises, we provide a tailored, data driven plan that aligns with your unique business goals and challenges.
You have a right to be hesitant given the previous promises made and broken.
That is why we offer a satisfaction guarantee: if within 60 days you are not experiencing a noticeable improvement in your cash flow, we will refund your investment in full.
Take control of your financial future today, join our satisfied clients who have seen their cash flow transformed, and dreams become a reality.
- Consider the ratio of copy to surrounding whitespace. Blocks of dense small font copy tends to be intimidating and uninviting to the casual visitor. It is much better to have lots of white space surrounding the copy with numerous paragraph breaks to make the reading of it easy and inviting. If you need evidence of this, copy the above cash flow tool sales pitch, remove the paragraph breaks, and see how less readable it is then!
- Say more with less. Enough said.
- Recognise the first draught will be rubbish. First draft is what you’re setting out to say, the 3rd or 4th is how you really want to say it. There are editing tools in Word, and other commonly used writing software and AI is throwing up new editing and copy improvement tools like mushrooms after rain. Use them to assist the development of your copy. Good writing like anything that is good takes time and effort on top of some level of talent for the task.
I try and do all this in my writing, but generally I’m only able to reach a level I would consider OK. I’m a scribbler rather than a copywriter. However as a means of organising and extracting from between my ears all the stuff going on, it is an absolutely necessary exercise. The quality of the writing in technical terms is an entirely different matter, and ultimately up to the reader
PS. Where do I buy that cash flow tool?
Oct 31, 2023 | Change, Marketing, Strategy
When I was a boy in this business, back in the seventies, having a brand was table stakes to be in the game. At that time, there were a number of supermarket chains, and every one was stocked with a suppliers proprietary branded product.
There were many types and scale of brands. From the small producers hoping for a modest segment in the market that would provide a living and employment in their modest factories, to the multi-national, mass market giants. There were no ‘House brands’, until Franklins as an experiment ranged ‘No Frills’ margarine, packed by my then employer Vegetable Oils Ltd, which later became Meadow Lea foods.
Over time, the number of supermarkets reduced to the two gorillas and Aldi that we have today, and the number of brands reduced from the many hundreds down to the few MNC brands, with a very few exceptions, which are slowly being squeezed of life today.
If the trends of those 40 years continue, a brand extinction event is getting closer every day.
The latest victim is Sara Lee.
Originally the brand came from the US, and at its height had diversified into a wide range of products from the initial frozen cakes to clothing, and real estate. The Australian business has been through several owners, the most recent being a Dutch company nobody outside the industry would have heard of.
Manufacturers have been their own worst enemies.
They have failed to recognise the long-term impact on their profitability of the increasing power of Woolies and Coles, with the recent addition of Aldi. Retailers do not care about proprietary brands; their goal is their own profitability. If they cannot have your product on shelf, they are just as happy to have an alternative.
Increasingly over the past 30 years that alternative has been a house brand.
When retailers own the shelf space from which consumers pick products, and also ‘own’ the sales margins from half the products for sale, guess who wins. Retailers have used their muscle to squeeze out proprietary brands, taking the proprietary margin for themselves. The stupidity is that manufacturers have aided and abetted this quest to destroy them, by supplying the products and stopping the long-term brand building that made them successful. The funds have been redirected by manufacturers from advertising and brand building back into price promotion. Selling with price being the only differentiator is a sure way to destroy a brand.
To explain the resilience of a few brands, and some that resisted the retailer pressure for years before succumbing, you need look no further than effective, long term brand building advertising. The Vegemite jingle is in the brains of most Australians over 40, and Vegemite persists. Aeroplane jelly is also there, and I would guess the brand could be rejuvenated by a return. Similarly, Meadow Lea is a shadow of its former self, but 30 years after the great ‘you ought to be congratulated’ advertising finished, the positioning of Meadow Lea remains viable, and could be revived with investment.
To explain the failure of FMCG management to continue to invest in their proprietary brands over the years, allowing house brands to take over, you need look no further than the lack of understanding of the contrary dynamics at work.
Advertising is a long term investment, over numbers of years. Advertising is treated as an expense, one that is accounted for on an annual basis in the accounts of businesses. These two contrary forces, when allied to executive KPI’s dominated by accounting thinking, and the increasing power of the retailers to demand discounts as a necessity for distribution has drained the capital necessary for brand investment. The retailers are happy, they have the margin. The short term executive profitability goals of a few executives may be reached, so they are happy individuals. However, the brands have been destroyed, and the long term viability of their manufacturing operations been compromised, in most cases, terminally.
That in a nutshell, leaving aside questions of the operational efficiency of the Sara Lee business, is why it is now on the discount block itself.
Oct 27, 2023 | Collaboration, Communication
Throughout human evolution, we have existed in small groups, tribes and clans. Individuals have worked together for the common good of the small tribe, and often, perhaps most often, been at odds with the tribe across the river.
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar introduced his theory that humans can maintain stable social relationships with no more than 150 people. This is a theory now so well accepted that ‘Dunbar’s number‘ has almost become a cliché.
The phrase ‘Stable Social Relationships’ has particular relevance in the age of social media platforms. How many friends do you have on Facebook, connections on LinkedIn, followers on Instagram?? For many, it is way beyond 150.
Question: How do you maintain ‘Stable Social Relationships’ with that number of people?
Answer: You cannot.
Social media gets the blame for all sorts of things, rightly so, but it is not the fault of the platforms, it is the fault of evolution.
Our application of technology has run well ahead of our evolutionally capacity to manage it and retain the relationships that made us the most successful species ever.
It seems to me that the growth of private messaging, reversion to personalised even handwritten notes, and emotional engagement of ‘Local’ things is a response to the ‘platformisation’ of our social relationships.
I think it is a trend that will continue and grow.
Now we have the relative unknown of AI coming at us like a train, changing again the basis on which we interact.
Dr Dunbar has little advice on that score.
I wonder if ‘friends’ will ever include Robbie the Robot?
