Month: June 2016

The Customer Mindset

On By Joe DeRosaIn BusinessLeave a comment

MyBook

Developing strategies to grow revenues really excites me.  It’s what gets me jazzed.  Ideating, innovating, and brainstorming, mixed with good old fashion common sense usually always provides the best path forward.  The key is listening.  Listening to the business, the market, the employees, and most importantly listening to your buyer.

I’ve spent the last decade studying, observing, learning, testing, and monitoring results that are achieved with various go-to-market strategies.  Many companies spend too little time developing the strategy and plan to take their product or service to market.  They make or produce something, price it, and give it to Sales to sell.  Make it, and they will come.  Not really.

The Age of the Customer has arrived.  No longer does the sales person control the sale.  If you believe your sales team is in control think again.  The buyer has all the control.  Many well-respected sources indicate up to 70% of the buying process being complete before a buyer meets with a sales person.  Your buyers have looked you up, researched you, watched you, and asked about you before you even knew they existed.  Do you know where they found you?  Do you know who they talked to along the way to ask for advice or opinions?  Do you know what they read to educate themselves on this purchase?  This is all very important work.

I am proud to announce my new book The Customer Mindset: Thinking Like Your Customer to Create Remarkable Results.  I wrote this book to provide an actionable roadmap for those charged with growing revenues. The book is filled with real-life stories, frameworks, and methods for mapping your buyer’s journey.  By creating a visual map of the journey your buyer takes on their way to the cash register, you will be better able to create a sales and marketing process that assists in this journey.  Remember, the buyer is in control.  Once you recognize and accept that, then you can get started focusing on how to help them through their journey versus spending your time trying to figure out how to sell them.

I want to thank the more than 5,000 readers of my blog who inspired me to go deeper.  To provide more detail.  To be more prescriptive.  Thank you so much.  I also want to thank David Moncur who has been a great friend and inspiration, not to mention the best creative mind I’ve ever worked with.  It is his firm, Moncur, that designed the awesome cover – front and back – of my book.  Thanks David.

I hope my blog, my book, and my stories continue to help you grow your business by providing strong leadership, innovative thinking, and a discipline to focus on doing the right things that maximize your results.

Get Specific -4 Ways to Make Your Business Conversations More Effective

On By Joe DeRosaIn Business, SalesLeave a comment

Business People Meeting Growth Success Target Economic Concept

 

Your eyes are glazed over.  You’re trying to be discreet but you can’t help looking at your watch.  Is it over yet?  As meeting standards go this one is pretty brutal. It’s dull, boring, lacking insights, not informative, it’s basically a disastrous waste of your time.  Have you ever encountered one of these meetings?  Here’s a daring question – have you ever been the one driving one of these meetings?  If your answer is “no way, I’d never run such a terrible meeting”, I’d say you should probably spend a bit of time on self-reflection.  We all have coordinated and run meetings like this.  We’ve all wasted someones time at one point or another.

Here are 4 Ways to Make Your Business Conversations More Effective:

  1. Prepare – Do some homework on the individual you’re meeting with and the company.  It’s not enough to just throw out facts about the company or industry.  With the advent of social selling you’ve got to know your buyer – the human behind the decision.
  2. Ask good questions – Dump the “what keeps you up at night” question. So boring.  So predictable.  Kind of shallow.  A rookie question.  Have a hypothesis of what you believe keeps them up and night and throw it on the table.  Of course that requires having completed Step 1 above.
  3. Know what’s going on in the world – Don’t take a political stance, but know what’s happening in the world, the markets, etc.  Election year impacts, the Brexit issue, the Middle East conflicts, the Puerto Rican debt default. People enjoy spending time with people who have a bit of depth.  You don’t need to be Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffet, or Seth Godin, but you do need to have ideas and opinions beyond your company’s.
  4. Manage your time – Arrive early.  If you’re on time you’re late.  I get tired of hearing how bad traffic was.  Sales people today, especially in bigger cities think they can use traffic in Seattle, LA, NY, Boston, Atlanta, etc., as an excuse and people will just understand.  If you want to be like every other sales person walking in the office than great.  You will be – just like every other.  You want to be different?  Give yourself extra time.

One final extra tip.  Please show up with some energy.  No, you don’t have to drink 17 Red Bulls before you walk in the door.  Likewise you don’t want to be Eeyore either. Find the balance between excitement and control.  Do all of these together and you’ll run an awesome meeting.

 

 

The Snooze Test: 10 Things You Could Do With An Extra 9 Minutes Instead of Sleep

On By Joe DeRosaIn Joe's Opinion2 Comments

alarm clock.jpg

At a recent lunch with colleagues our conversation got around to the subject of sleep.  We’re all running hard, intensely focused and super competitive.  Sleep often times takes a back burner to other more pressing needs like delivering for a client, hitting the number, or providing coaching to a team-mate.

As we traded sleep stories – are you a good sleeper, bad sleeper, restless sleeper – we arrived at the humorous topic of snoozing.  That standard, commonly accepted, always expected “extra” 9 minutes of sleep you can get simply by hitting a button.  The delay button.  Let’s face it, that’s all you’re doing when you hit it.  You’re delaying the inevitable.  Getting up, getting started, getting ready, and getting on with your day.

I’ve never been a “snoozer”.  Most mornings I’m up around 5 am without an alarm – it’s just how I’m wired.  But if I were a snoozer, what might I gain by not snoozing? What could I do with that “extra” 9 minutes rather than sleep?  What could I accomplish?  Here are some ideas, not in any order of priority:

  1. Meditate – spending just 15 minutes each day meditating produces huge benefits.
  2. Read – a book, the paper, scan your social channels, know what’s going on around you
  3. Exercise – most sources indicate the average calorie burn is 9 calories for every minute of moderate exercise.  A 9 minute walk burns 81 calories.
  4. Self Reflection – different from meditation, self-reflection peers into how your actions have produced the outcomes you’re currently experiencing.
  5. Time with loved ones – sure you may say, “hey no one else is up at this time”, but if they are, spending the time with them will provide benefits far greater than what you gain from snoozing a bit longer.
  6. Chores – You’re thinking, “I’m going to give up my sleep to do laundry?” The fact is, household chores that build up lead to greater degrees of stress.  The quicker you can reduce the list of what needs to be done the easier it is to find your Zen.
  7. Love your four-legged friends – play with, and love your animals. Studies have found that playing with your pets increases the stress-reducing hormone oxytocin and decreases the production of the stress hormone cortisol. Imagine what it does for them?
  8. Eat – breakfast is for kings, lunch is for queens, and dinner is for – you get the point.  breakfast is the most important, yet most missed meal of the day.  It’s like leaving the house with an empty gas tank and hoping to drive 300 miles.  Doesn’t work out so well (unless you’re driving a Tesla).
  9. Share a quick thought on social media – your goal for the day, a thought, insight, or perspective.
  10. Spiritual activity – anything you do that makes you feel whole, or connected by way of faith.

Years ago I heard a conversation between two elderly people at the gym one morning.  One man said, “What I wouldn’t have done to get a little more sleep this morning”, to which the other man replied “We’ll have all the time in the world to sleep when we’re dead.”  So true.  Live life.

A word or two on sales coverage models

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

 

 

Isolated Earth - Elements of this Image Furnished by NASA

In a recent conversation with a CEO of a large service organization I was asked which sales model I believed was most effective in generating improved sales results.  A popular question these days.  Everyone who is responsible for generating revenue has asked this question at least once.  The answer however, lies with your buyer.

In a vacuum there is no one single, silver bullet to drive sales results.  The most popular sales coverage models include:

  1. Generalists – sell everything
  2. Specialists – sell usually one, perhaps two products
  3. Verticals – sell to specific industries; professional services, restaurants, manufacturing, etc
  4. Revenue – sell by revenue size of client; SMB, mid-market, enterprise
  5. Employee size – sell by number of employees; payroll companies often use this coverage model
  6. Account-based – assigned specific accounts/companies to sell or cross-sell

In addition to this mix of options, a head of sales must consider whether a field sales organization or inside sales team is most effective.  Again, the decision here should be informed by the company’s buyer’s journey.  Many products and services once believed could only be sold via an in-person interaction are now sold over the phone.  Taking this a step further, we also know – thanks to Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Intuit, and others – that self-fulfillment is not just possible, but preferred by many consumers.  The ability to do-it-yourself is highly appealing.

Gaining an understanding of how your buyer makes decisions is the first step to determining which model is best for your business.  Listen to your buyers and then align a sales process that helps lead the buyer through his or her journey.  That’s the answer to which model works best.

To Sell or Not to Sell?

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment
USP concept
Hand with marker is drawing USP concept on the transparent white board.

Selling isn’t about winning or losing.  It’s not about money, trips, plaques, or prizes.  Selling is not an easy job, nor should it be a job to kill time until the “real thing” appears.   It’s not a set of activities, calls, presentations, or ratios.

Selling is about helping others.  Helping others solve problems and improving lives in the process.  Simply put, to sell is to make something, or someone better.  If what you’re offering for sale doesn’t provide some improvement over the status quo you have no sale.  The key is to understand your buyer well enough to know exactly how your product or service will improve their life or business.

People know when they’re being sold.  They also know when they feel they’ve been helped.  Seek first to understand before being understood is a good way to approach helping others.  Set out to help others and the sales will follow.