How do you determine with whom you will conduct business?
If you’ve spent any time at all in business-to-business sales, especially if you’ve spent any time as a small business owner, you quickly learn that there are some people out there that you want to do business with, and there are some people out there that you DON’T want to do business with.
The key to discovering which is which is developing a standard operating procedure that you adhere to every time when determining whom you are going to do business with and whose business on which you are going to pass.
You want your screening process to be something you can easily follow every time. You want a process that relies on instinct, is still objective enough to make sure you don’t miss out on a great opportunity, but at the same time, ensures you are not beating your head against the wall in a losing, unprofitable situation. You also want your process to be one that you can apply at any stage in a business relationship.
While all of these requirements may make it seem like there is no simple way to create a process that will work, I have discovered an extremely easy process that works every single time. And all it involves is asking myself a single question.
Am I comfortable sitting across a table from this person?
That’s it. No great formula or massive amount of research. In all the years that I conducted business-to-business sales as a small business owner, this simple process was accurate every single time. Now, as a fallible being, I didn’t always listen to the process, but the process still remains completely accurate every single time.
What I learned over the years was that if I asked myself that question about the person I was about to conduct business with and the answer was yes, I’d proceed with the relationship and the business at hand, and it would always turn out well. Don’t get me wrong, there were bumps in the road at times and sometimes the relationships took a little work, but as long as I still felt comfortable sitting across a table from that person, we continued to do business.
But, when the answer to that question was no, no matter how sweet the deal, no matter how much profit there was to be had, every single time I felt the answer should be no, it turned out to be someone that I didn’t, or shouldn’t have done business with. Again, I didn’t always listen to my own answer, but very quickly realized I should have.
And I didn’t just ask myself this question at the beginning of the relationship. I made sure to ask myself this question throughout the relationship at key points and milestones. When the answer to the question was yes at each of these later points in the relationship, I would keep doing what I was doing and the relationship would remain positive, and most importantly, profitable.
But, when I asked this question at later points in the relationship and the answer was no, I had to ask myself a second question and make an important decision. When the answer was no, I then asked myself if the answer was, for whatever reason, ever going to be yes again.
If I felt that I could change that no into a yes, I then would set out to do everything I knew I needed to do – everything I possibly could to change that no to a yes. Sometimes the customer would be responsive and we would move forward, other times, I’d notice the answer was not changing.
Once I realized that the answer to my question was never going to be yes again, I’d reach out to the customer and let them know that it was time for us to find a mutually beneficial settlement as to what they had paid, the work that had been delivered, and that it was time for us to part ways.
By following this simple process, which stemmed from me asking the question of whether or not I was comfortable sitting across a table from someone, I always find myself in a position where when I do actually sit across a table from that person, our relationship is square and mutually beneficial.
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It's the age-old challenge for marketers...how to ensure the
collateral your team creates actually gets used by the sales team. In this
guide, I show you the secret to solving that challenge.
We all make mistakes – nobody is perfect, right? Well, I recently read an article about a bit of a blunder from a startup I wanted to share with you, not to highlight the company’s mistake, but to share a great lesson for enterprises. This story really got me thinking about the importance of transparency and honestly when it comes to our customers.
As reported to Medium, the former customers of a cleaning service called Homejoy that had gone out of business received an email from a company called Fly Maids, stating they were Homejoy’s new “partner” service and inviting them to give their services a try. Seems harmless enough thus far, right?
Well, the invite took a turn for the worst when these former Homejoy customers visited the Fly Maids website and found their name, address and credit card information pre-loaded into the site. To make matters worse, many customers found the Fly Maids website so similar to a competing cleaning service’s site they began to think the entire thing was a huge scam and suspect their credit card information had been compromised.
Turns out that behind the scenes, one of the co-founders of Homejoy had acquired the company’s domain and customer data then founded Fly Maids to continue to service Homejoy’s customers. The problem? He decided not to tell these facts to the Homejoy customers he was prospecting as not to influence their decisions to engage Fly Maids for their cleaning services based on their previous experience with Homejoy. First off, I’m not really sure why you wouldn’t want to take advantage of a customer’s previous experience with you…unless, of course, it was a bad experience. And secondly, how could you not expect to freak someone out by pre-loading his or her credit card information to your website? And thirdly, which is a topic for another article, how scary is it that someone can purchase your credit card information from a company that has gone out of business?!
The backlash was so bad that Fly Maids has taken down their site and assured former Homejoy customers the company has deleted all of their credit card information. So, what is the lesson here? I believe this is a great lesson in transparency and honesty for enterprises.
When you are about to launch a campaign or are planning your sales and marketing strategy, be mindful if you are ever at a point where you are about to, maliciously or not, take a step in which you are going to try to keep your customers from finding out about something. If there is one thing that customers don’t want from you, it’s a surprise. If you are about to do something sneaky, think twice. As I always say, just be square with people, no matter what. Make sure that you are always the one who is above board, straightforward and never working behind the scenes. Your customers will always appreciate your honesty.
You’ve called and emailed a prospect as often as reasonable and you’ve done everything to show them the value of the product or service you’re selling. We’ve all been there – we know exactly when it is time to let the prospect go and move on to the next one.
But, what if instead of completely letting go, you kept that prospect on a drip campaign that did nothing but provide them with some bellwether industry information and the latest industry news from time to time? Or, better yet, sent them a personalized email at some seemingly random times that provided them with this content.
This is the age of content marketing. And while not a new concept, today’s sales and marketing professionals need to keep in mind that simply providing a prospect with information about your product and all of its bells and whistles simply does not cut it anymore. Prospects want to buy from people they know are thought leaders and who have a close eye on the market’s pulse, not just someone who scanned their badge or bought their name on a list.
It is going to take multiple touches to make a sale these days, and if you simply continue to prod people with nothing but facts about your company and its products or services, you are going to lose their interest pretty quickly.
Chances are, you spend at least a small part of your day reading up on the latest trends and news about the industry in which you work. If not, and you’re in sales and marketing, trust me when I tell you that you should be.
When you come across a particularly interesting article, spend a few moments thinking about whom on your prospect list might also be interested in that article. Shoot them a hand-typed, text only email with a link to the article. Don’t explain how the article relates to your product or service or tell them about a discount promotion you’re running, simply, send them a quick message briefly explaining how you just finished reading an article you feel they might find interesting.
I’ve seen this relatively easy method for creating a touch point bring a cold prospect back to the table and even into the win column. You will find that over time, your prospects are not only going to see you as an industry thought leader, but also come to feel that you genuinely care about the well being of their business.
When you are out making sales and someone tells you that they actually feel you care more about their business than they do, you know you’re doing some good out there. If you’ve never heard that before, then it sounds like it’s time for you to build and strengthen some relationships. One of the best ways to do that, especially when a prospect has given you every indication they are simply not interested in your product, is to start reaching out to them about their industry and showing them that you care about their business. A simple and easy way to do that is to start sending them links in a personal message to some of the articles that you have recently read.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Screen capture by William L. Savastano
The consumers and businesses we were selling and marketing to before the economic collapse were much different than the people and companies we are selling and marketing to today. Think of them as "post-recession", and know that they are going to be "post-recession" for quite some time.
One in ten Americans who wants to be working is unable to find a job right now. That in itself changes the game when it comes to sales and marketing. One in ten Americans is struggling to pay for food and shelter, so how do you sell them something that is not necessarily an absolute need? Even those of us who are still on the job are being much more discretionary with our discretionary spending.
Despite it all, however, companies that are looking forward are asking today, "How do we market to consumers and businesses once we finally get out of this mess?" The businesses that are going to survive are hunkered down, weathering the storm, but also being proactive and looking to the future.
It is important to keep in mind that while a small percentage of consumers will quickly forget the hardships of the past year, a larger majority will be changing their spending habits for years to come, some of them, even, for the rest of their lives. I bet anyone alive today that lived through the 1930s in America is as spend-thrift today as they were in the 1940s and 1950s.
As businesses, we are not only going to be asked to provide something new and exciting, but today, and well into the future, are going to need to provide value, and lots of it. Consumer relationships with businesses, and business relationships with vendors will be under a microscope for the foreseeable future. Gone are the days of the whimsical purchase, because gone are the days of easy, endless credit lines.
So, what do we do now? We get to work. We need to look at our products and services and ensure that they are providing real, tangible value to our customers. We need to ensure that our customers are having the best experience possible with our businesses, because their post-recession dollars are going to demand it.
We must be aware that there is not going to be a magic day when all of the sudden things are back to how they were before. We may not see that day within our lifetimes, and even if we do, it will probably just be an indicator of another coming collapse. Think back to the opinion page writer for a local newspaper in 1946. The depression was long gone, the war was over, and things were swinging, but it would be over 50 years until we saw a similar pre-depression upswing. That is where we are all at today. Take your age and add 50, and that is how old you may be the next time we can market and sell like it's 2007 again.
