Just Answer the Question!

Picture Credit: (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.

A recent ‘real world’ lesson for me was about clarity of communication.  I was listening to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the way into work.  The article on at the time was discussing the up-coming discussions by members of the European Commission about reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

I didn’t catch the name of the UK politician being interviewed by Justin Webb but, true to form, the guy was incapable of answering a direct question.

Twice he was asked what would be the effect on British farmers if the CAP was just scrapped.  He was asked a second time because the first time round he completely ignored the question and spouted his own agenda.

Am I Missing Something Here?

It sometimes feels like social media is powered by lists.  You know the sort of thing:

“6 Ways To Send Emails Your Customers Will Love”,

“7 Sales Tactics that Made Marc Benioff a Champion”,

“5 Types of Facebook Contests You Should Know”

…and so on.  (By the way, the only relevance these three have to this post is that they were the first three I came across in my Twitter feed whilst writing.  That’s three out of twenty one.  You get my point?)

I have no problems with lists per se but generally don’t look at them.  However, I did come across this one the other day:

March 2013 Top 100 Sales Experts to Follow on Twitter

OK, the combination of ‘sales’ and ‘Twitter’ is always going to make me look but I wasn’t expecting what I found.

“As a sales professional can you REALLY turn it off on the weekend or after hours?”

This was a question recently posed in the Sales Playbook! group on LinkedIn.  (It’s a closed group so no link.  If you’re really interested, join the group as it’s a good one.)

It’s a US-centric group so, as you might imagine, most contributors fall into the ‘always on’ category. (That’s my confirmation bias on show there, folks.  I’m a regular one-man echo chamber.)

I did contribute to the discussion about half way through saying “When I started out in sales (all those long years ago) I was very much like most of the people who have responded so far – radar always on, looking and listening for the next opportunity.

However, within a very short time my friends and family got on my case and told me to ‘switch it off’ when I was out with them. Their main complaint was that we were all there to have a good time, not to see me practice my tradecraft.”

Would good Teachers make good Salespeople?

It’s not such a stupid question, is it?  Our local schools are very keen on their pupils undertaking work experience as part of their education.  For the last two weeks I’ve been responsible for a 14 year old girl who, I was told, ‘wanted to work in sales and marketing’.

I’ve tried to make it as realistic and meaningful as possible because I see little point in doing otherwise.  Towards the end of the fortnight, one of my colleagues said to me that he thought I would make a good teacher.

Once I had stopped laughing, we talked around the whole subject of teaching (he thought about becoming a teacher a few years ago and I actually did a little when I first finished college.)

Book Review - Principled Selling by David Tovey

I’ve ‘known’ David for getting on for a couple of years – I don’t keep an exact record of this sort of thing!  Note that I use ‘known’ in its modern sense.  That is, I’ve read and commented on his blog, I follow him on Twitter and occasionally retweet him and exchange the odd DM, we’ve exchanged opinions on LinkedIn and even spoken on the telephone.  It is only in the last couple of weeks that I actually met him in the flesh for the first time.

The telephone conversation came about when David asked me if he could interview me for his then-forthcoming book as he wanted a view from the frontline of sales.  So when you read this book and see ‘Neil Fletcher’ quoted, yes that is me.

By way of thanks for my time, David gave me a copy of ‘Principled Selling: How to win more business without selling your soul.’  However, that’s as far as it went.  What you are about to read are my own words without influence by anybody.  So, to the book.

Desert Island Discs Part 1



 Tropical marine environments scenic landscape</a> by Margos Jim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

 Hello Reader!  Do you remember that post of mine from 2011 – If Music be the Food of Life?  No?  Well, go look at it now, I’ll wait here for you.

Down towards the bottom you will see a reference to Desert Island Discs and I thought I would expand on that and give you the whole list.  However, to avoid boring you to sleep I’ve been kind and split it into three posts.

When you have listened to as much music as I have (and still do), it can be difficult to whittle it down to just 8 tracks you would be happy to be stranded with on a desert island.  What criteria do you use?  I suspect they are different for every single person who makes up such a list.  What I have rediscovered in putting together this list is that it is the rhythm of music which appeals to me.  I don’t pay too much attention to lyrics and guitar twiddling often leaves me cold.  It’s the drum and bass lines which really get under my skin.

That said, it’s sometimes difficult to articulate exactly why a certain piece of music moves you.  You just know it does!

All Aboard the Cluetrain!

I recently stumbled across the Cluetrain Manifesto, which I first encountered when it was published in 1999.

To put it in some sort of context, at the time the manifesto was written blogging had been around for about 5-7 years, MySpace was four years in the future, as was LinkedIn, Facebook was 5 years in the future and Twitter was 7 years in the future.

Even so, the authors were bold enough to say:

“Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them.”

Just consider how much more networked markets are now, with all the new, whizzy, social media tools available to them!

Are You Human or Are You Robot?

In ‘the good old days’ if you wanted to buy something B2B you relied on salespeople to keep you educated – where else could you get detailed product information (outside of trade magazines, exhibitions and the like)?  As part of your education, they also educated themselves regarding your likelihood to buy what they had to offer and when.  The really good ones then ensured that you received appropriate information at the right time and, all things being equal, you bought something from them.  Happiness all round.

In a recent blog post, Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power, quoting the Corporate Executive Board, said that “57% of B2B buying steps are completed before buyers connect with a salesperson.”

Clearly, purchasers are now educating themselves by some other means.  Step forward and take a bow, content marketing.

Do you understand your buyers?

I had never really thought about the answer to this question until I came across the Buyersphere Project a few years ago.  That was a real eye-opener in so many ways, not least because it showed me what can be measured if you put your mind to it!

It also helped me start to understand and rationalise some of what I was seeing in my own sales and marketing efforts.  More truthfully, in the resistance I was seeing from potential customers.  “Why can’t I get those appointments?  Ah, that’s the reason why.”

I was reminded of it again recently when I came across When Did You Last Map the Buying Process of Your Customers? by Tony Zambito on the Sales Benchmark Index website.

As Tony admits in his response to one of the comments, a better question might be ‘Why Haven’t You Yet…?’

Sales Growth - Two Opinions

To steal the introduction from one of the blog posts I’ll point you to in a second, “There are 1,525,124 sales books for sale on Amazon.  On April 24^th, McKinsey added “Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders” to this crowded field.”

This quote came from Greg Alexander’s “Book Review: McKinsey’s Sales Book” on the Sales Benchmark Index blog.

By one of those strange quirks of Internet fate, on the same day I also read a post about one of the author’s of the same book on Bob Apollo’s Inflexion Point blog: “Exclusive McKinsey Interview: Finding the Mountaintops in Your Markets”

What a fascinating difference in two responses to the same book!

Buying isn't Selling

I recently read a very thought-provoking article by Kristin Zhivago entitled “Are your customers using social media to warn others to stay away?”  Yes, go and read the article so you understand what this post is all about!  Sheesh, do you want me to do ALL the work for you? J

In brief, this is the scenario – Kristin wanted to buy a voice-recording piece of software or app.  She had clearly identified a number of must-haves and don’t-wants so started shopping around.  Here’s key quote No. 1:

The buying process was PAINFUL

What are you going to do with all that knowledge?

I turned 50 a few months ago (no sympathy, please!)  I guess I’m not the first person to get all reflective around this time and I’m sure I won’t be the last so bear with me.

I started my first blog in 2004 but that quickly sputtered to a halt due, I think, to the total lack of response.  I started this current blog in April 2011 so you can see I’m not exactly bursting with ideas on this one either.  However, I do want to stick with it because (he said modestly) I do think I have a world view that is worth something to somebody, somewhere.  (Hello, wherever and whoever you are.)

Testing that hypothesis is what got me started on LinkedIn.  I wanted to test the waters with my thoughts and ideas and see what happened – did they have value or was I just another arrogant so-and-so kidding himself?

Going through the (selling) emotions

As is often the case in the blogosphere (at least it is in the part I frequent) I’ve seen contrasting posts on, nominally, the same subject over the last few days.

The first was from Jim Keenan, titled ‘Be Emotional’.  In it Jim makes a powerful argument that, to succeed in sales, you need to be emotional at least part of the time.

“When we truly feel what our customers feel, then and only then can we be the best sales person we can be.

Be emotional damn it!”

Dumb as a post – How NOT to use Twitter

I was amused last week to gain another follower on Twitter.  What tickled my funnybone was the fact that this guy has followed (and very quickly unfollowed) me at least half a dozen times before.

Clearly, he loves Twitter as he follows about 62,000 people.  What astonishes me is that he has about 58,500 followers.

The Great Social Media Experiment

Partly inspired by Sean McPheat’s book ‘eselling^®’ and partly by my ‘Diary of a Sales Manager’ column on Modernselling.com (all one article of it), I decided to put my money where my mouth is and start the Great Social Media Experiment at the very end of October 2011.

The idea was to use LinkedIn and Twitter to identify prospective customers and to engage them in a non-sales way so that, if and when, they are looking for something I can supply, they are already aware of me.

The Power of How and Why

Have you ever read something that made you say “oh, that’s so obvious now that it’s been stated.  Why couldn’t I see that for myself?”

I recently had just that experience reading Putting Challenger Selling to Work – One on Brian McIver’s blog.

To put Brian’s post in context, if you work in sales and you dabble in social media (you must do, or why else are you here?) you will know that there has been a huge amount of buzz about The Challenger Sale by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson.  The book (not yet read) is based on surveys of over 6,000 sales reps across geographies and industries.

Price v's Value

I’ve been intrigued by a recent discussion I’ve been following on the Sales Playbook! group on LinkedIn.  (It’s a closed group, so you need to be a member in order to see the full discussion.)  For those of you who are members, the title is “Doesn’t price matter a little bit?”  For the rest of you, this is the scenario:

“I totally understand that it's not about being the lowest price and you get what you pay for and all that. I think it is also true that there is a point where cost outweighs the value or quality.

Case in point, I just got a quote back and found out that my price was literally 5 times more than my competition. I don't know how I am going to justify the additional costs.

Thoughts anybody?”

Business and Twitter

Read an interesting article today on “How Twitter will ruin your Customer Service” but it left me feeling that the author was shooting at the wrong target.  Indeed, this was the gist of at least one of the comments made on the article.

I have participated in a number of similar on-line discussions which ask why PowerPoint is so bad.

Neither Twitter nor PowerPoint is intrinsically bad.  They are tools and, like all tools, they will perform best in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.

This is Your Life

This is the Holstee Manifesto, which I encountered in a distant colleague’s blog for the first time today.  (If you’re interested, here is the blog: http://bsix12.com/  It’s much better than mine!)

OK, so the Holstee Manifesto is not revolutionary nor is it profound.  However in my humble opinion it does encapsulate what life should be about.  So many of us (myself included) spend precious time doing things we don’t want to do, seeing people we don’t want to see and generally letting life, in the grander sense, pass us by.

Of course, for all its apparent simplicity, the manifesto may not be that easy to follow!  For me, the real toughie is “If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV.”  I wouldn’t like to begin to count the hours I’ve wasted watching meaningless drivel because it’s the path of least resistance.

It’s also very easy to say “if you don’t like your job, quit” but not so easy to do if you have a mortgage to pay and you want to eat once in a while!  I’m trivialising for comic effect, of course.  The seed of the idea is the important one.

I guess the whole of the manifesto could be summed up as ‘carpe diem’ but it is stated so much more eloquently and elegantly in these 18 (or so) phrases.

What’s your toughie?  What’s your favourite and why?

If Music be the Food of Life...

Yes, yes, I know.  Apologies to Mr W. Shakespeare for stealing his lines and then misquoting them.

Mrs F and I are the proud owners of a Squeezebox radio which some very good friends bought us for Christmas a couple of years ago.  It pretty much does what it says on the tin “A compact all-in-one network music player—that lets you rock the house with digital music.”

I’ve been listening to it at home today.  I started off listening to Radio Paradise, which is just the best radio station, internet or otherwise, I’ve ever come across.  Reader, get yourself over there and listen!  Your ears will love you forever.