The essential sales trio: Audacity, leverage and persistence

January 30th, 2012 · · Today's Wisdom No comments

When it comes to marketing and sales, I discovered a simple and durable model for looking at all of the world’s actions and activities.    Employing audacity, leverage or persistence is essentially how anyone sells anything.  It’s like a secret code.  Once you unlock it, you’ll see everything you do through the lens.  Why do you care?  Because having a better understanding of what assets you posses and how to position, market and sell your value is an incredible responsibility you have and a very exciting opportunity.

When we are looking at Sales and Marketing, I subscribe to the “Lead Generation, Lead Conversion, and Fulfillment” school of thought.  Those three distinct activities have their own nature and needs.  Looking at Lead Generation only, we can employ the sales trio of Audacity, Leverage and Persistence for maximum impact.  I’ll explain how…

Audacity:  When it comes to getting in the room, what’s really over the top?  If we’re talking about a high profile opportunity and you have no connections to facilitate a meeting you’re in cold calling land.  That is essentially the Siberia of selling and if you’ve ever made cold calls you know that there are only a few things as frightening.  On the other hand, cold calling puts hair on your chest (whether or not you want it there is an entirely different matter).

Where audacity comes in is through the application of over-the -top tactics to get in the room.  These can be anything from sending a four foot porcelain elephant to the client’s office with a note that reads, “should we talk about the elephant in the room?” or a can of oil with a little message that reads, “let’s grease the skids on next years program” or like one of my clients who sent a dozen high end remote control cars with her logo on them to a floor of young bankers.  The note read, “Just like with Mackey Advisors, the batteries are included.”  The point here is that a little audacity can get you noticed.  It’s fun, it’s uncommon and if what you need is a meeting then why not get it aggressively?

I have one client who chatted with me about his close ratio with big accounts – 50%.  Then he shared about the average engagement with these larger accounts – $100,000/yr.  I asked him what he would be willing to spend to make a deal and his answer was 10%.  So we had, according to my math, $5000 per qualified lead to spend.  We could send postcards until the cows came home but instead he rented a Ferrari and sent a courier upstairs to the CEO’s office with a note and the keys that read, “if you would like to test drive a performance machine, meet me downstairs for a spin around the block”.  A little risky?  Yes.  Over the top?  To some.  Audacious? You betcha.  But when we are all competing for attention you have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone and get out there.

Persistence:  When I started in sales I could make only a certain number of calls a day.  My process was to reach out to as many people as possible, try to move a “suspect” to become a “prospect” (or eliminate them) and then a prospect to a qualified lead (or eliminate them).  It wasn’t rocket science but it required diligence and large numbers, all of which were limited by my being human.  Because of the nature of this type of dynamic I was motivated for a binary decision – I drove to a “yes, I’m possibly in” or to a “no, I’m not interested.”  In our dysfunctional world we craved no’s as much as yes’s because it meant we could spend less time wasting ourselves with the wrong people and more time on the folks that could become buyers.  But do you see what’s wrong with that?

People buy for their own reasons, on their own time schedules.  Instead of moving to a binary model, we should have moved to “maybe”.  As crazy as it sounds, a permission-based connection over a long period of time based on a “maybe” can be a more powerful opportunity than a solid yes or no.  Why?  Because it means at some point that “maybe” is going to get hot and when they do you’re their go-to person if you are in front of them at the right time.  Can you do this on the phone?  Nope.  Can you do it through advertising or direct mail?  Not unless you’re sitting on some serious dough.

Enter the magic of technology.

With new solutions like InfusionSoft and even less tech savvy ones like Aweber and even Constant Contact, we now can stay in front of a pool of thousands of “maybes” waiting for when they are in a buying mood.  This is great news for when we really just want to let the clients come to us on their own terms and timing.  The secret: build up your database and just drip on them with content that isn’t too obnoxious to make them unsubscribe from your list.  Create some value, always ask for the sale and stay at it slow and steady.

Leverage:  Last but not least and probably the most obvious and intuitive.  Leverage is a wonderful thing.  When someone brings you in and endorses you it’s the fastest and most enjoyable path to success.  Simply put, you can shorten sales cycles, extend the scope of work and move faster to a place of real trust (and value creation hopefully) because you’ve been able to enjoy the leveraged trust built by another party.

Direct referrals are the most obvious choice and can be obtained in several ways that everyone has already read about.  The problem with asking for referrals for most people I meet seems to come down to the asking part.  We’re surrounded by good ideas about how to do it, but no one wants to do it.  One of the best ways I’ve ever heard was to simply ask the client, “what would have to happen for you to feel good enough about our working relationship to consider making a referral?”  It’s a soft opening with a clear message, “I’ll work for it but want to know, up front, that we’re talking about the same thing.”  Clear, direct and nowhere in the neighborhood with, “write down the seven people you know who will work with me or I will not let you out of this room”.

Leverage.  Audacity.  Persistence.  Your little power-pack of sales and marketing strategies.  The trick is to do something and do it well.  Pick your horse and ride it and whatever you do, don’t back-off, chicken-out or get cold feet.  Nine out of ten times the sale is won by the person who shows up and is simply able to ask for it!

The Seven Deadly Sins of Implementation

January 13th, 2012 · · Today's Wisdom 2 comments

A bit of wisdom I’ve learned from observing our entrepreneur clients is a dirty little secret we call The Seven Deadly Sins of Implementation.  Sometimes even great entrepreneurs fail and this is often where they do.  Now, it should come as no shock to you but there is never going to be a shortage of good ideas.  Where things fall apart is in the “getting things done” department.  Those are the barbs that sting.

These are the seven most prevalent failings of the entrepreneurs we meet when it comes to innovation implementation, no matter how successful.  Looking directly at them will dramatically enhance your ability to steer clear.

Deadly Sin #1:  No sense of self

Painful as it is, the leading cause of frustration with the entrepreneurs that fail in execution is that they don’t select projects well.  They don’t know what they are or aren’t capable of actually pulling off and so they fail.  They don’t see themselves as they actually are; don’t know what they seek and they don’t know what they would fight for.  They select and invest in innovations with very little respect for the impact they will have on their lives, their team’s time or the experience their clients will have.  A blind man poking around in the dark is a tragedy, but it’s also dangerous for everyone involved.  Don’t let this be you.

Deadly Sin #2:  No vision of the future

Correlative to Sin #1 but not identical is a lack of vision.  Without a sense of where one is heading, having self-knowledge is wasted.  It’s when you point your skis downhill and attack the mountain that your insight about what you can or cannot manage comes into play.   A friend of mine who skis a great deal once told me that the fastest way to crash when you are skiing is to stare at whatever it is you don’t want to hit – a tree, a person, a big jump you cannot land.  The trick is to aim your gaze at where you want to go, not where you don’t and you’re body will follow.  And for those poor souls without a plan or a vision of their future, they will constantly seek salvation in the latest gimmicks, tech gadgets and products.   Beware.

Deadly Sin #3:  No constraints

This one is often misleading.  My entrepreneurs who have constraint issues are usually a lot of fun.  These folks often say yes to a lot and have little sense of when to slow down or stop.  They invest emotionally and can change their mind based on whoever was the last person to speak with them.  Look out for trouble here.  Without constraints you can very easily fly off the mountain, take a jump you cannot manage or roll down a canyon and never been seen again.  Set clear boundaries and observe them.

Deadly Sin #4:  No plan

All plans fail the moment the first bullet is fired, right?  Interestingly enough, this is often the line repeated by the guy or gal who hates to plan.  It’s not ever a good idea to fail to set a roadmap for where you want to go.  “Hope” is not a plan.  Having expectations that others will do the right thing is a form of insanity best left to the institutionalized.  Every skier knows the slope or at least has a game plan for how they will address the bumps along the way.

Deadly Sin #5:  No communication

Often the fan of “winging it” commits this sin too.  Somehow in this person’s head is the idea that they can possibly achieve results without constant and proactive communication.  Often this person is alarmed and shocked that other people aren’t always clear about what they are doing or how. Leaders must communicate their expectations and invite communication from the people accountable for results.  And while we’re at it…

Deadly Sin #6: No accountability

It’s pretty hard to make progress when no one owns projects, tasks or deadlines.  If these aren’t agreed to up front, no one gets anything done.  Face it, you’re busy.  Your people are busy.  And in my experience they seldom get the chance to see the big picture enough to fully understand and get excited about why you are making this change or that or investing in this new thingy or other.  For them, work is work and new, poorly defined work goes to the bottom of the list.  Make an accountability outline of who’s doing what and when and you’ll see stuff get done like nobody’s business.

Deadly Sin #7:  No agility

The entrepreneur who is impeccable with the previous six Sins can often struggle here.  This person is diligent.  They are focused.  They plan, they act and they get stuff done.  What they sometimes do, however, is get emotionally attached to the work rather than to the outcomes.  Things are moving pretty fast these days.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.  It’s not improbable that you could have your head down plugging away at a project and look up six months later to congratulate yourself and find out that it’s now irrelevant.  You have to be able to pivot and the person with Deadly Sin #7 is usually the last one to notice someone moved the mountain.

The truth is, we all suffer from each of The Seven from time to time.  The advice I offer is to grow in your awareness, reach out and communicate with the people on your team to help them help you!  and most importantly – get clear about who you are, where you are going and WHAT your function is.  Want more help?  Go here and download the free Wisdom Harvest Tool:  http://www.thewisdomlink.com/wisdomharvest/wisdom_harvest_tool.php

The Great Work Challenge

November 4th, 2011 · · Leadership 2 comments

Here’s a news flash:  It’s really pretty easy to do good work.  And therein lies the problem.

We develop a great deal of “creative work product” here at The Wisdom Link, like copy writing and design.  And it’s surprisingly easy to do a good job of it.  With several years behind us, we have all kinds of examples to borrow from, proven designs to use as a starting place when we meet with the creative team and the experience of working with many of the same industries over and over.  It’s a lay-up to do good work and because of it we have the opportunity to create far more good work, far faster.

What’s a challenge is to create great work.  If good work is easy, you’d expect making great work would be only fractionally more difficult.  Much to my own amusement, I’ve learned that maintaining the standards for great work is a fairly tough challenge.  And we’ve taken that challenge on.

Instead of borrowing ideas from other people, being great means we have to do all that intellectual work of really thinking things through every single time from scratch.  Instead of taking designs from one client and re-purposing elements and ideas for another client, we have to start with a blank slate.  We have to understand what our clients want when they don’t.  We have to understand the way they think.  It’s time consuming.  Sometimes it’s costly.  And instead of leaping ahead of the client when I know where they’re headed, I have to bite my tongue, listen up and force my mind into the present moment to really hear them.  It requires a surprising amount of discipline.

And since almost none of our clients would notice, it’d actually be quite easy to cheat.  The difference between great work and good work isn’t always the quality of the design or writing itself.  You can’t look at a piece and always see the distinction between good and great.  Not enough people have the skills to tell the difference.  The way we measure success is in the way our client relates to the work.  They may not know a darned thing about design or copy writing but they can tell when their wisdom is in the thing more than ours.  They can smell the subtle difference that makes the work unique, tailored and useful to them and that makes all the difference in the world.  If we define great work as being useful, efficient, affirming, beautiful and finally an effective extension of our client, then we have to recognize that benchmark is a moving target.

Achieving that goal is incredibly rewarding.  Being great is part of The Wisdom Link brand and frankly, where I find the personal value in the work that I do.  Being good at the level where we play is pretty much the same thing as dialing it in and treating our clients like widgets.  The difference is subtle but it’s certainly significant.

Being great means we don’t cut corners.  It means we don’t take it for granted.  It means we pour our hearts into the work and the world of the client.  It means the work we do matters and the results reflect it.  There is no replacement for being great and there is no more rewarding lifestyle than building a business that has made it the priority.

Work Like an Artist – a legitimate argument for re-structuring your time

October 14th, 2011 · · Leadership No comments

So, here’s the big idea:  We need to work like artists; and not classic “workers”.

I know what you’re thinking, “but LoDuca you’re in “creative services.”  You go to the theatre and eat sushi.  You like that crap.  And so it’s not such a stretch to think like an artist”…but bear with me, this idea is germane to all of you reading this on one level or another.  Black turtle-neck optional.

For most of us over twenty years old, we were raised in a decidedly industrial era.  The twentieth century was a watershed for changes in lifestyle and work-style for American workers.  The sheer enormity of the movement forever changed the fabric of social and work-life for generations and left deeply ingrained beliefs about work and our relationships to it.

As it relates to the use of time, this shift left its mark for many, many years.

Fast forward to today.  And so here we are in a totally different paradigm in so many regards.  And for entrepreneurs it’s even more pronounced.  We have so many options for how we work, where we work and when.  Not to mention why!  We have access to technology that makes geography irrelevant and challenges most of the rules of business from the previous century.  However, we adhere to many of those old rules, especially how we use our time.

My father came over to the US on a boat from Rome when he was a kid and could barely read and write English.  They were broke.  He became an entrepreneur when he bought the pizza restaurant he’d managed at seventeen and opened four more before he was twenty-one.  Then he built a construction firm and added a cabinet shop. And  then he started a horse breeding farm.  Then he started developing properties. And in the meanwhile he was a classically trained opera singer having gotten his degree in music from the Detroit Conservatory of Music.  A busy guy.  And so no big surprise, he was up at 4:30am and home at 8pm for years working a six and often seven day work weeks.  My father knew how to put in a good day’s work and he ingrained in me a solid respect and value for it.  It was that old twentieth century logic though of slogging it out, day in and day out…a treacherous deal he had made with Father Time.

Consider the logic of the following:  What I do and what you do isn’t all that very different.  The quality of the work and the quality of the experience we create is predicated on a lot more than just the talent of the technicians behind the scenes.  We don’t, as you’ve often heard me say, “just make brochures over here” and the same applies to you.  If it’s a life insurance policy, CPA services, a financial plan or an airplane – if you are selling a service or a product you’re smart enough by now to know you’re really selling something else of greater importance. As I see it, the most valuable resources I have to bring to my clients are my creativity, my passion, my insight, instinct and accountability to the project’s overall success.  Me grinding out the hours every day, one client after the other like a factory worker doesn’t support the delivery of uncommon experiences and transformational results that we pursue.

Instead of being a line-worker at Ford where consistency and endurance are more prized than bursts of innovation and creativity, I find that I absolutely must protect myself and my “artist-like” contribution to the overall equation.  It sure sounds cheesy but it’s a requisite shift in thinking in how I create the most value for my clients, my team, my family and my self.  I need to hit it hard and then go to the mountain for a while.  I need to rest, pull away and “veg out” to fill the tank.  The taxing demands of a day-to-day grind are incongruent with the demands of a performer/creator and so should then be the practices.

So how to do it?  Book time off in advance.  Sleep in once in a while.  Tune out from the wall of media we have access to all the time.  Go on a news and cell phone blackout for 48hrs.  And get over the guilty feelings about surrendering the helm every once in a while to protect your own leadership capabilities.


Outfoxing the microchip

October 6th, 2011 · · Today's Wisdom 4 comments

Here’s an idea I’ve been working on for a while, a thesis I’ve been watching and tracking for a few years to see if it will bear out…And it has.  I see this idea showing up almost every week with the clients we serve.  And the idea is simple, relatively innocuous and deceptively intriguing:  in the face of all this technology we’ve started to exalt those things that make us uniquely human.  “Human” is, in fact, the killer app. for business value creation.

There’s “no use fighting city Hall” the old expression goes.   And as it pertains to trying to outperform technology, there is no competition.  It’s over.  We lost.  When it comes to computational ability, those damned computers have us beat every time.  You’ve heard the sound bite, “there is more technology in my watch than NASA needed to land a guy on the moon.”   We’ve known it for a long time but we’ve been in denial.  I can still remember that movie with Matthew Broderick, War Games from 1982.  The classic cautionary tale from the people who were saying “computers are scary”.  Remember?  They weren’t really right but the point was simple:  People need to be running the show.

It started with the promise of the industrial age.  We wanted to automate, we wanted to streamline and we wanted to mass-produce.  And America got really good at it.  So it’s no big surprise that we dominated in the technology boom both in innovation as well as mass production.  We rock when it comes to leveraging technology to accelerate results.  But it’s simply making people nuts trying to keep up in industries that have been directly or indirectly touched by the pace, precision and power of technology.

So if you are trying to sell more policies than a website forget about it.  If you think you’ll EVER be faster or more accurate than an online ordering system you’re kidding yourself.  But there is great news, there’s room for something else.  What we’ve seen is a shift coming from the professional services folks that come to us to slow down the transacting of product to improve the quality of the relationship…and they are getting paid for it.

Top tier pro’s who have so much to lose trying to play the game of the “commoditized” are finding new arenas to compete and thrive…and it’s not about doing more, faster.  Their secret?  Exalt the human.  Accentuate the emotional, empathize, listen and employ connections with storytelling.  The secret is to be human in the face of all this technology.  The secret is to connect on a level that cannot ever be replaced with a screen or through an inhuman exchange of data.