Category Archives: Business

the right sales pitch

March 25, 2015 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Whether you work in retail level sales or make multi-million dollar pitches you have one thing in common with every door to door salesman, car stereo salesman, used car salesman, real estate agent, or girl scout peddling cookies door to door; you have to convince someone else to buy something from you.

Somehow and in someway you have to convince another person to spend some of their hard-earned capital and invest in your product or service or, if you think about it in you.

One of the challenges of modern sales is crafting a pitch that will be appropriate to your audience.  In the past I figured a one size fits all approach would work best.  My approach would be to write or present as much technical information about the product or service as I could remember.  To essentially cover my bases and give them all they could ever want to know and hopefully the product or service would sell itself.

This did not turn out to be the best approach.  I mean think about it.  Who wants to hear all the dull technical minutiae?  That’s right!  Technical guys.  The ones paid to know all the nuts and bolts of the operation.  They not only wouldn’t mind hearing this stuff, they would insist upon it.  They are the ones that will talk your ears off about all the little details.

Middle managers and creative types on the other hand don’t really want to get all of that.  They want to know that the “thing” will work for them.  Oh sure, they will have some questions or they may bring in some experts with their own questions but their main focus is accomplishing their goals.

Then of course you have the boss level event.  The CEO, or the President, or whatever that person’s title is. This individual’s time is at a premium.  They definitely don’t have the time for the full dog and pony act and they don’t haggle about pricing.

Your presentation has to be short and to the point.  You also have to discuss the appropriate topic.  Talk about the challenges to their business, about possible opportunities for both firms to work together, make an abstract of how cooperation between both business could be beneficial.

Every once in a while you do get the boss that wants to know those technical details or wants to talk shop so be ready for that but most of the time those bosses are late to their next meeting and can’t spare the time.  They will most likely turn you over to someone else in the company if they’re interested.

If you think about it, every sales person out there will run into one of these type of clients in their working life.  Being prepared with the appropriate response level will help get you to close deals more often and even if you don’t close today, that potential customer will have a much more favorable impression of your sales abilities and will remember that in the future.

Posted in: business, life in general, sales

image and substance

March 19, 2015 6:51 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Back when I was growing up I always heard from my elders that it mattered more to be good than to look good.  The idea that substance mattered more than style.  I was encouraged not to think about how polished or how well I presented myself or my ideas.  The substance was the most important part and for the most part I agreed with this point of view and still do to a small degree.

Time passed of course and I entered college and later went into the workforce and started realizing that style and presentation did matter.  At first style didn’t matter as I was in basic production work and everything that I did or produced would be passed up the chain to a boss or sub-boss who would polish the work and put it into a format that the client would receive.

I was then moved into a position where I had more contact with clients and I began to have an appreciation of style and delivery.  Also I began to appreciate that how you presented yourself might directly affect any possible sales or projects.  I had to write coherent proposals, I had to speak with confidence, I had to become more gregarious and outgoing.  A difficult process that is still ongoing to this day.

So really in the end it has turned out that it’s not good enough to be good or to look good but that you have to both be good and look good at the same time.

Effectively presenting yourself and your ideas can be as if not more crucial than your actual ideas.  But of course if you don’t have a good idea (product, proposal, whatever) in the first place, then all the polish and slick words will mean nothing.

The more I think about this the more I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the way that things have always been.  Even before I was born people have had to both look and be good in order to get ahead.  The notion that this is a new phenomena is preposterous.

So we live in an extremely competitive world where we have to strive and stretch to do our best not just in our business but our personal lives.  Those that can’t look good while being good will find the path to success much more difficult.

 

Posted in: activities, business, culture, life in general, skills

Brand loyalty wars

March 5, 2015 6:20 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Every couple of years planned obsolescence catches up with me.  No matter how good that laptop or cell phone or even car was when you bought it eventually you have to replace it.

In some cases it really seems to be planned.  My smartphone contract is 2 years long and in about 2 years my smartphone pretty much becomes obsolete so time to get a new one.

Then of course comes the competing advertising and opinions and advice from partisans from all sides advocating their own point of view. I wrote something about this partisanship a couple of years ago.  Some people will swear by their technology choices and will not yield an inch on anything.

Even though I try to keep clear of biases I suppose I do have some of my own.

My mobile provider for example.  Widely regarded as one of the worst providers for a long time it had the one benefit that my contract had an unlimited data package.  It in fact was the only unlimited data package for a long time before competitors began offering that as well.  In the meantime my providers signal strength and coverage has grown substantially so I could have hopped from provider to provider looking for the best deal but in the end sitting still and letting things develop proved to be the best strategy.  Sometimes doing nothing at all is the best strategy.  Shrug.

But other times, no matter how much you hate to do it, you have to admit that you have to change.

In a related vein I have looked at the specs of the updated version of my smartphone and have determined that it’s not going to meet my needs so off I go looking at other brands.  I have about 6 months to decide but already I’m looking over different models and brands for any marked advantage.

In this case my brand loyalty is absolutely nil.  The maker simply dropped the ball on the new design and I have to look for something that will meet my needs.  I did the same with my last car.  I used to drive an SUV and the maker stopped producing it so I changed not just brands but car types and got a sedan instead.  When it comes to practical items that I use every day I find that I am that way.  If something doesn’t meet my needs then I will stop using it.  When it comes to something less tangible like say fashion choices I may have more brand loyalty.

I think that’s something for makers of practical goods to consider more than say how stylish their product looks or what celebrity endorsements they can get.

If you meet your customers needs, and satiate their desires for a good quality product then the market will come to you.  You will not have to go to them by altering your product and possibly making it worse.  Remember where the core of your clientele is and go out and meet them.

Posted in: business, consumerism, shopping, technology

Empathy in business

February 25, 2015 6:47 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The cold season struck my house and I was at a local pharmacy picking up some cold medicine.  I picked up what I needed and headed to the checkout line.

Up ahead of me in the checkout line was someone who had worse problems.  A guy wearing construction gear was buying some gauze and tape.  He had his bloody arm up in the air.  He got to the front of the line and the checkout clerk started asking him if he would like to fill out an application to get a pharmacy loyalty card.  Poor guy is bleeding and wants to buy his stuff and tape himself up but this clerk wants to talk about filling out forms.  Was this clerk blind?  Could she not see that saving a couple of cents on his purchase wasn’t the guy’s prime concern right now?  Couldn’t she intuit the poor man’s situation and help him get on his way?

Unfortunately this is not something rare or just limited to checkout clerks.  Too often when talking with business professionals, with contractors, with other salesmen I get the same type of treatment.  People just going through the motions of doing their job and not really getting a feel for the other person’s situation.

We’ve instituted procedures, scripts, and ways of doing our jobs that take out most human thought and decision-making out of the process and taken the individual out of the equation.  Why have people if you’re just going to make them act like robots?

On the other hand I’ve been mildly amused and somewhat taken aback whenever I get praise from a client or potential client for “listening” and tailoring solutions to meet their needs.  I’ve always been somewhat shocked by this and thought to myself that I hadn’t really done anything special.  As it turns out maybe I had done something special without knowing it.

As I see it if you are in a position where you meet the public in any fashion whether you’re a salesman for a company, or a technician or even just a checkout clerk, part of your job description is to interact with the public and engage in an interactive give and take that actively tries to meet the client’s expectations.  You don’t just read from a prepared set of responses or follow set procedures.  You need to think, react, and maybe be a little proactive and actually think through a situation.

Posted in: business, communication, sales

Does SPAM still work?

February 9, 2015 6:32 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been online now for over a quarter century.  I was there when the vote was taken to allow commercial traffic onto the internet.  I even remember some of the early and primitive websites that first popped up and nowadays would hardly qualify as a website.

All through this time I had email accounts and for a good portion of that time I’ve had to deal with SPAM.  That unwanted and now largely ignored mass communication method made possible by the ability of the internet to send “free” and “unlimited” numbers of electronic mail messages to recipients all around the world.

This form of advertising is now on the decline but still serious and pervasive enough to bother a great number of people all around the world.  Most countries now have anti-spamming legislation which makes this type of communication increasingly the purview of criminals seeking to infect the computers of unwary people with malware or peddling illegal items.

I should say however that some countries do still allow spam and that some forms of emails that are annoying may be thought of as spam even though they are not technically spam.  It is this category that I want to discuss.

Why do business people, rational people I’m sure, think that this shotgun approach to advertising will work?  Sending out untargeted, unwanted, and somewhat random emails out into a general population that most certainly did not ask for this sort of attention is prone to incur the wrath of the recipient.  So why do it?

I think it is fairly clear that the general population has gained a level of technical sophistication in the last decade.  Certainly the terms: virus, spam, and scam, are not unknown to most people.  I have to imagine that most people will react negatively to the arrival of such emails to their inbox.  So with that thought in mind, is it really a worthwhile exercise to engage in this practice anymore?

I mean at best most people will do what I do, which is ignore these emails completely.  Those people who are really annoyed may take hostile action such as tracking down those responsible and reporting those responsible to their internet providers.

Further in the last few years online advertising has embraced social media and grown in sophistication that allows advertisers to more selectively target their message to the “right” audience.

So with so much going against it and with much better ways to spend their advertising dollars, why do people still persist in this practice?

Posted in: business, computers, internet, sales, standards and practices

experience

January 28, 2015 6:44 AM , Leave a Comment ,

You know how it is.

You get out of college and you know it all. Those geezers that hired you? They don’t know anything.  They’re fossils, and ungrateful fossils at that because they pay you next to nothing and you “know” that you’re worth so much more. So you sit in front of your monitor try to do as little as possible and try to make it to Friday.  Friday night when your real life begins.

Flash forward 20 years, and you have a 20 something asking you how to send a fax, or how to fill out their weekly time sheet.

“Does this look right?”

“What am I supposed to do for this?”

“When do I qualify for vacation time?”

All those inane and ridiculous questions that you’ve conveniently forgotten that you once asked when you were their age.  Every day, and it just keeps getting worse and worse.

When did I become the “old man”? The one that people come to with questions, the one that people needed an opinion from, the one who is an authority on so many topics?

I suddenly look down.  I’m wearing a button down shirt, pressed pants, hard sided shoes, and to top it all off I shaved. I’ve become one of “them”!

When I was starting out I did my job, I tried sneaking out early or sneaking in late. Now I have to ask them why they came in late and are they working late to make up for it, and I need them to do it cause we have a lot to do, and they need to be here.

Funny thing is that I try to look calm, thoughtful, and wise. On the inside I’m panicking, confused and dazed. I wonder if it was like that for the old men when they were my age.  Has it been the same thing for every generation of office worker since this whole lifestyle began back in the 19th century?  Will it continue to be this way in the future?  Is that good or bad?

Time for me to go and pretend I know what I’m talking about…

Posted in: activities, business, career, life in general

living with your choices

January 24, 2015 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 strokes.

1 stroke over from my last lap.  Have to reach farther with each stroke on the return lap.  I’m in the Memorial Athletic Club at 6 on a Saturday morning.  Outside it’s freezing and I’m the only one here swimming laps.  I’ve been assigned to swim laps by my trainer for the next 3 months.  Something that a few years ago I would not have dreamed of doing. Not because I couldn’t because frankly I just wouldn’t.

Sometimes you just have to do things for yourself.

I’ve had friends offer to set me up with trainers and recommend clubs and regimens to get fit but none of it seemed quite right.  I mean I’m sure the trainers were great and the facilities were top-notch and the exercises probably work but it never seemed to be quite right for me.

Still feel like a jerk for not taking what they offered but in the end it’s me that has to put in the effort, right?  I have to be comfortable with the choices I make and then follow through with them.

Return lap, I get a nose full of chlorine water, snort it out and keep paddling.

Another good example, I got into the real estate game last year and another friend offered up some contacts in the Sugarland real estate market.  Sugarland is a nice place to live, probably lots of good houses and opportunities and probably a good investment but I just don’t know the area.  I don’t know how the traffic patterns run, what the school districts are like or where most people like to shop and a myriad of other things.  Whats more I don’t have the time to research it all so I said thanks but no thanks and went ahead with an area I did know.

You’ve got to have confidence in your choices.

If you go in with confidence in your choice then you are much more likely to engage with that choice once you get involved and you are much more likely to make the best of it.  With a choice that you don’t have confidence in you will likely be tentative, you will be slow off the mark and lose time, you won’t get the full advantage of your decision.

Walking back to the locker room.  So cold.

So is it the old dictum of “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow“?

Sort of.  More like a “A good choice you can work with is better than a perfect choice you can’t live with”

Or something like that.

Posted in: activities, business, decisions, health, life in general, thought

Leadership

January 2, 2015 7:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“Experts in war depend specially on opportunity and expediency.  They do not place the burden of accomplishment specially on their men” – Ch’en Hao

“Now the method of employing men is to use the avaricious and the stupid, the wise and the brave, and I give responsibility to each in situations that suit him.  Do not charge people to do what they cannot do.  Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities.” – Chang Yu

So why all the philosophical quotes?  Well I want to talk about an aspect of leadership that is seldom discussed.  What happens when a project goes wrong and the blame starts flying left and right.

In this case (and no I won’t name names) an acquaintance that works at a large company told me about a project she was involved in and how her project leader mismanaged the whole operation from start to finish.  When things started really going bad and the upper management began to take notice the manager started assigning blame left and right but of course never accepted any for himself.

In this case my friend described the project and all the challenges involved, all the tasks that needed to be done and some of the other people involved and it became fairly clear that the project manager had mishandled things primarily by not assigning people the jobs for which they were best suited for.  Senior personnel were given research jobs fit for starting staff and junior staffers were assigned tasks for which they had no training for.

The second error that the project manager committed was not making himself available for consultation and expecting the situation to resolve itself favorably.  When red flags started popping up and things were not going as the schedule demanded the manager failed to heed the warnings and take preventative measures.  He wanted everyone to stick to the original plan.

The last error and really something classless to do was to place the blame on the subordinates and not acknowledge his part in the failure.  By the way that my friend described the events it really sounded as if the project manager really believed that he was blameless.  Luckily the upper management took notice of the chain of events and took appropriate measures but the damage was already done and the project was set back several months and cost the company a lot of money and prestige with their client.

A situation that could have been easily avoided if the project manager had been more conscientious about his management of the project, had been more flexible in his approach but most of all if he had taken an active rather than a passive role in the development of the project.

 

 

Posted in: business, energy, motivation, plans, relationships

Sometimes you have to go on trust

December 19, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m looking straight up at a ceiling light.  I’m at my favorite barber shop and I’m about to get a razor shave.  The barber slathers some sort of alcoholic lotion on my face and then covers my face up with a steaming hot towel.  I can feel the capillaries and arteries in my face thumping and pulsing with blood as he covers me up. It’s supposed to make my face more pliable and easier to shave.  Somewhere behind me I can hear the wheet wheet of a leather strop.

Admittedly this is something of an extravagance in these days of electric shavers and disposable razors.  But sometimes in your private or professional life you need to have an outside eye to get a better perspective on a situation or to complete a task.  Trimming a beard is just such an occasion.

I normally trim and take care of my own whiskers.  But over time I find that my beard gets skewed or tilted to one side and you need someone else to look over the situation and fix what needs to be repaired.  Working in small shops for my entire career I have always worked with outside contractors and consultants; some good, some bad.  They are now a ubiquitous part of professional life in the modern business world.

The barber takes the towel off and dabs on plenty of shaving foam.  He’s not my normal barber.  I usually get the shop owner to do this but he’s busy working two chairs over.  The shop is packed with customers.  Guys talking about sports or politics or just gossiping.  The little blonde kid in the next chair over looking wide-eyed in my direction probably not believing that I’m about to let someone run a blade over my throat.

I have to admit I’m a little hesitant too as I’ve never worked with this barber before.  But I’ve known the shop owner for years and he wouldn’t hire a rookie so I must have faith and hope for the best.

It’s like that in business and in life sometimes.  You need help in something and someone, maybe a friend or business colleague, gives you a suggestion to follow or a recommendation.  You’ve no frame of reference to go on besides the fact that you know this person and he or she cared enough to give you this advice.  If you think that’s enough then you go ahead.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I just don’t know enough about a subject or I don’t have the time or resources to do a particular job and I need the expertise or help from an outside source.  I then need to turn to my friends, colleagues and even acquaintances to steer me in the right direction.

The secret to shaving with a razor is little tiny scrapes.  Just a few inches at a time.  No need to rush.  The true professionals don’t need to be showy just precise.  If the person or company you hire out does a good professional job then that’s worth more than a hundred flashy business cards or a slick website.  The real professional doesn’t care about looking good but instead cares about the task at hand.

The crucial moment.  My throat.  That spot right over my carotid artery.  I try not to think about how my veins were thumping and pulsing a few minutes ago.  Trying not to breathe.  A steady hand and total concentration at this critical moment.  The essence of being a good consultant.  You need to be there for your client when and where you’re needed to finish the project or product or service when it’s needed.  Not tomorrow or later on but right at that moment.

The moment passes and everything’s okay now.

Now this barber has become a known quantity.  Now I can trust him to do this service for me in the future.  Hopefully that’s also true of the consultants that I trust for different projects.  But until they do prove themselves the only thing you have to go on is the word of a friend.  That’s where you have to trust that good people know good people and that your friend or colleague wouldn’t send you a bad recommendation.

That’s the moment you have to leave it all up to faith.

 

 

Posted in: business, grooming, life in general, thought

performance reviews

November 13, 2014 6:44 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Anyone that’s worked in an office for a boss has had to go through one of these at some point.

In small companies it’s usually a one on one informal and unannounced get together.  Basically the boss stops by your desk and asks “how are things going?” and gets to the point in a roundabout way.  One thing you should know about your boss is that they rarely do something without a reason.

In larger offices of course it’s a more organized and formal affair.  You might have to talk to your immediate boss or an HR person or maybe you even have a peer review system in place and discuss matters with your co-workers.  So it might be useful to know what a performance review is and what it is not supposed to be.

So what’s the point of a performance review? it’ basically the opportunity for those that you work with or work for to let you know how you’ve been doing at your job. We all like to think that we’re doing things the best way possible and that we don’t have any flaws in our work habits.  But even the best and most conscientious of workers has a lapse from time to time.  In other cases, such as when you’re just starting out, your boss or your co-workers can share with you their accumulated wisdom and may be able to improve your workflow or make things easier for you.

So what is a performance review not supposed to be?  It’s not a beat down session where people take free shots at you.  Sometimes it’s hard to hear that you’re not perfect or that you could be doing things in a better way.  Sometimes when you’re starting out in your career a performance review seems like everyone is ganging up on you and trying to pick on the least little flaw.  That’s not what business is about.  Remember you and everyone there at the company is there to make money for the company.  Personality issues are not conducive to that end.

Take this as the opportunity not only to learn from any flaws or mistakes in your work rhythm but also to think about how you fit into the general scheme of the company.  Is the way that they do things comfortable for you?  Is it totally bizarre, alien, and not at all your way of working?  They’re basically telling you what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it.  Think about all of this and take this opportunity to decide whether you want to continue on at this company.

The performance review should be an opportunity for you not a dreaded event.

Posted in: business, career, work