Take everything that could go wrong with a live software demo, crank it up a notch and turn it into performance art for "GRRF: The Last Lecture"

Been there, watched that, got the tee shirt!

How come my former SE asked if I had been watching him recently?

After I read this for the third time, I realized they missed one important point - never mentioned PowerPoint, TheDestroyer!

This is fun!

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/09/horrifically-bad-software-demos-become-performance-art.ars

The End of the Sales Funnel?

Thanks to Kent Hammer, CEO of HammerConsulting.net, who published the three paragraph version of this post in The Hammer Letter.

The sales funnel has been a foundation of sales practice since before WWII. Whole sales organizations based their activities on this model…because the funnel accurately explained the buying process.

What if the sales funnel no longer mattered?

How could you tell?

What would be a more productive model?

How would you change your selling activities?

Would you manage differently?

What if the sales funnel no longer mattered?
Disintermediation – def: Removing the middleman or intermediary. The internet is changing whole industries. Why not the sales profession?

Through the internet, all prospects are now instantly available. Instead of painstakingly identifying and contacting enough prospects, we can easily contact more prospects than we can ever service. We need to get their focus.

Originally the sales funnel was used to control information flow to the prospect, making sure they got the correct information in the right order. Prospects put up with salesmen because they were the gateway to key resources to learn about the product.

Later, the funnel was crimped to reveal how many touches were needed to interest how many people to generate how many sales, to smooth out vagaries in the demand curve, to cover for organizational mistakes, to predict post sales service revenue, and it goes on and on. The more uses the funnel was assigned, the less accurate it became, but it was easier than creating a more accurate model.

I had one sales manager tell me that the funnel couldn’t forecast individual transactions, but it did give him an estimate of monthly volume.

Today every prospect has a host of internet-enabled ways to learn about your offering. Do you really think your prospects, customers, and investors are not talking to each other on the internet?

How could you tell?
One clear indicator would be an increase of “bluebird” or out-of-funnel sales.

Selling enterprise software and IT services over the last 15 years, I realized that the top tier salesmen are frequently short circuiting the funnel, and that doesn’t count the one hit wonders who intercept a phone call and think they have created a sale.

The salesman has no incentive to admit a sale came from outside the funnel. He is paid to complete transactions.

What would be a more productive model?
Seth Godin pointed out that “prospect” is a term created by a sales organization to mark who they want to sell. Since the “prospects” often don’t know or care about their special status, Seth suggests using the term “citizen.”

How do citizens educate themselves about what you sell? Do you know? Do you participate in, add to, or help guide the conversation?

Tom Peters wrote that “Networking is helping someone.” Are you using “helping” to create beneficial relationships?

“Territories” are a way to keep customers organized…and barriers to purchasing. Before I gave a speech last week, I notified 20,000 people in two hours, using internet and face-to-face communication where I thought the audience might be found. They all didn’t attend, but it was the biggest event my sponsor ever had. I wasn’t selecting “prospects,” I was using demonstrated interest in my subject, industry, geography, and any other affiliation I could imagine.

Some “tips groups” won’t have two members from competing organizations. What about competing to see who has the best offer or the best features for the buyer? I started a $60 million dollar sale by speaking to a tips group. I didn’t even charge them for the speech!

Today all prospects are instantly available. What matters is getting the interest of enough people to support a business. You need fewer customers if you can have more volume from those customers. Of course, if you don’t satisfy your customers, because of the internet the whole world will know.

I read recently that some doctors and lawyers are trying to enforce contracts that you can’t discuss their service with others. Why would they try to choke their most valuable marketing channel?

If the funnel is over, how would you change your selling activities?
Rather than following a “Qualify, Present, and Close” for a limited number of prospects, I am dealing in multiples, telling a different part of the story at each time.

I am depending on my customers and stakeholders to share telling the story, and I am working with them and rewarding them to improve their story.

I am working hard to know where my customers congregate, where prospects congregate, and how I can put them together.

I am working hard to make sure that anyone who is dissatisfied or has an idea for improvement is publicly recognized.

What would you manage differently?
The last to suspect seem to be the sales managers. And the managers of managers. They have all mastered talking about the funnel. They insist that funnel must still be out there, otherwise they will have to learn new skills. So they continue using a tool that has less and less to do with their actual performance.

For the first time in history, there are many companies that are growing to a billion dollars in less than ten years, and as near as I can tell, they have all abandoned the funnel.

They are selling products and services and experiences, and replacing the funnel with a more accurate model of the customer acquisition process has been their key to success in story after story.

What is the state of the sales funnel in your practice?

Web 2.0 in Three Paragraphs

Kent Hammer, CEO of HammerConsulting.net, a hot sales improvement outfit, asked for a short (3 paragraph) piece on how Sales Professionals can best use Web 2.0 without having it consuming all their waking hours for the current issue of “The Hammer Letter.”

LinkedIn (free version) is your personal website. Trick it out with photo, customized URL, and any websites and collateral you want prospects to know. Break the default “resume” format to something that is interesting for your prospects (They really don’t want to start with your “title and company.” They want what you can do for them!) Change the “what are you up to?” box every week so all your links get a weekly email that shows what you are doing for others.

The number of links are your power. When I saw that the real father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, has over 500 links, it was time to take action! The purpose of links is not showing off. They are very useful. Here’s an example: Recently, when the CEO of a federal contractor wanted to team with a software company that does neither online nor federal, he was repeatedly told the company had no interest. It took me three minutes to find the person in the company with the LinkedIn page that said “New Markets, New Products” and put the company in play. Our contact was a friend of a friend I had never met, but he was thrilled to get on our team.

Groups - For outbound credibility, I join groups that interest me and make a point of either starting or commenting on two discussions a week. I offer something useful to others and am amazed at the stream of people who check me out and identify themselves as wanting to buy something. This post is an example.

Event Marketing - Why See People One-At-A-Time When You Can Sell Groups of Twenty?

Do you get enough direct mail?
Too much email pollution?
Is telephone tag an expensive part of your schedule?

Would you be interested in an inexpensive way to increase the time and attention available for educating prospects about your services?

Background Information
Since the 1970's I have been designing and producing events to teach groups of people new skills and information. I use events because they:

• are inexpensive, and
• satisfy the participants.

I have designed and led events that met weekly for over ten years, one-week events, two-day events, one-day events, half-day events and one-hour events. I have observed how an event can be a simple, effective, low-cost, selling tool.

This is about designing short shows that sell for you.

The First Step Is Setting A Date.

Second, Create A Great Title.
The title creates interest, so I spend half my development time playing with titles.

Some say that a negative is the strongest title, i.e. "How to stop getting caught making stupid mistakes!"

I like positive uplifting titles. For positive titles, the first criteria is the "WIIFM Test" for What's In It For Me? When prospects see a clear benefit from the title, they are more likely to attend…and are already considering your offer.

I also make claims about the value of the event. The audience creates the value of the performance. Coaching them on what to expect improves their response.

Creating the Audience
Many people would now spend time developing the presentation, which is exactly the wrong thing to do!

Your primary concern should be creating the audience! We can create the presentation in forty minutes, the day before the event.

Who are your best clients? Determine why they are your best clients and then identify other groups that have similar attributes.

Who do you already know? Ask them to fill the audience, by attending and bringing others. Provide tools to help them.

What could you offer your co-sponsors for helping? Access to people in the audience, the same thing you want!

I invite my clients to events to give them another opportunity to buy. Perhaps I haven't learned what other things they want and they haven't learned all I do.

How many people do you want in your audience? I always figure maximum occupancy, standing room only, sardine packed. More than that and I take everyone to a larger room, a corridor or outside. Encourage the audience to decide they are attending a popular event!

How To Market Your Event
My best channel for producing an audience is direct contact-Walking up to someone and asking them to attend. I print and distribute invitations. I also ask others to use the invitations to bring the audience.

I send out letters every month, which brings in some attendance, but chiefly creates an ongoing communication with the companies I am prospecting.

Finally, there are excellent free media opportunities. Find them and use them. Direct mail and advertising typically produce less than 10% of my audience.

Designing Your Event
This is for selling, not showing how smart you are.

• Make a list of twenty most-asked questions about your subject.
• Prioritize the questions.
• Define one or two physical exercises for your audience for every hour you will be working with them. People learn more when their learning is tied to physical activity.
• Create value-packed handouts.

For one of my favorite events, I show people a better way to introduce themselves and tell what they do for their customers.

I talk for less than 18 minutes setting up the exercises, each person in the room gets to talk for about five minutes. People in the audience buy from each other which makes me the “expert.”

Finally, finish on time. That is more important than finishing your presentation. Your prospects need to know that you keep your promises.

Gary Hoover explains good business

Oracle invited me to meet Gary Hoover, who had just sold his Hoover's database company to Dun & Bradstreet. His talk had some important points. These are my notes.

A Sense Of History

Gary just sold Hoover’s database to D&B. Says he is a “serial entrepreneur. He grew up in a GM town in Michigan, 27,000 out of 60,000 residents worked for GM. He wanted to know about GM when teachers were teaching European history.Was told to pay attention to the lesson.

Bought his first subscription to Fortune when he was 7, now owns every issue ever published. Keeps them for reference. If you want new ideas about an industry go back to the 30s and see what was written about that industry in Fortune magazine.

Next fell in love with retail, He started out as a retail analyst for May department stores, and is familiar with DC as the place where May’s Hecht’s was always trying to overtake Woodward & Lothrop. Well that took care of itself.

Wanted to start his own business, interested in big box stores. In the ’50s, Charlie Lazarus started the first big box store in Adams Morgan, called Toys R Us. Toys R Us has gone through its lifecycle and isn’t so much now, but back then it was precedent breaking.

Hoover looked at the flight to the suburbs and figured his big box store would have to be in toys, automotive supply, recreation, books. Liked books, so he set up a big box store, took it national, was bought by Barnes and Noble.

Just before he started, after seven years of research, he went to a book convention to see what was coming in big box bookstores. Got into the presentation about ‘The Future of Bookselling,” and waited for an hour. They never mentioned big box stores.

After selling the books store, set up the Business Reference company, which became Hoovers. Now working on two other ideas.

His speech was on “Requirements for Entrepreneurship.”

1. Curiosity – Entrepreneurs are always asking questions, which other people think are often inappropriate. “Nothing has ever been discovered in the same place as everyone else was looking.”

Technology (def) - Any better way of doing things.

What are you curious about?

2. Gary thinks a sense of history is important. You can only trend forward as far as you have backward historical data.

The biggest change in the last 50 years was women entering the workforce. Most went to work at banks, which continued to be open 9 to 5, Monday thru Friday, not when the customers were available. People shop nights, weekends and lunch hours. The banks, who hired the women, missed that.

Market researchers are always lagging behind the customers.

Next big themes are the aging of America, the Latinization of America, and the Asianization of America.

What would Roland H. Macy do if he were alive today? Hoover has read his biography and believes his way of thinking could fix the Federated and May department store chains.

He feels that Lou Gerstner was closer to Tom Watson, Senior than how IBM insiders remembered Watson. He said the most important thing was to serve the customer, not wear a blue suit.

3. Geography - Understanding where you are in space and time, can be your most important advantage. What is the difference between an IT consulting firm in Reston in 1994, 1999, in 2004, 2009 and in 2014?

When starting a company, ask what it should look like in 10 to 20 years. To do that, you have to establish what it looked like 10 and 20 years ago.

50 years ago, ads in Fortune always said where the HQ was. “Coca Cola of Atlanta Georgia.” Web designers today say it is not important. That is bullshit and expensive bullshit. Customers want the context for the people they are dealing with. (Amen to that…I always check location - D2)

Sam Walton said, “In a store, adjacencies are more important than price.”

Vern Harnish of gazelles.com asks, “Do you have a map on the wall of your office?”

Michael Dell knows a lot about China. If California (our largest population state) were a Chinese province it would be 19^th largest. We don’t even know 19 Chinese provinces. The Chinese know our states and cities. They are setting up for entering this market.

Four requirements for Vision:

1. Clear words, sentences and paragraphs that mean something. Business executives and college professors can’t do this. Need a third grade vision. Best one he ever heard was a national retail chain of hat stores, Hats, Inc. Their vision? “Sell Hats, Have Fun.”

2. Commitment - Great companies do one or two things incredibly well over time. Acquisitions aren’t the way to heaven. Be really focused on what you are doing.

In the 50’s, American car manufacturers decided to get into sports cars. They came up with two, the Corvette and the Thunderbird. The Corvette was always a red 2 seat V-8. Now I am sure they have consulting studies to get into four door, SUV add-ons. But they stayed true to a red, 2 door, V-8.

In contrast Ford took the Thunderbird and moved it to four doors killed the brand, let it lie for a couple of years, brought it back, then killed it again. Today you can’t buy a new Thunderbird.

It was not what the Thunderbird lost, it was what Ford gave away by not being true to their concept. By the way, in the ’50s Thunderbirds outsold Corvettes three to one.

Ford has bought Volvo and is doing the same thing. In the US, Volvo has never been able to sell cars. They sold two things, reliability and safety. Now Ford is selling sport Volvos and convertible Volvos.

3. Serving – Saying “we exist to make a profit” is like saying we drive a car to get good gas mileage. You drive a car to get somewhere, good gas mileage is a secondary consideration. Being measured is not why enterprises exist.

When Wal-Mart started, Sears was the king of smart retailing, knowing the most about their customers, selling the highest quality, investing in suppliers, getting the right real estate for the lowest price, having the best merchandise. How did Wal-Mart surpass them?

Turns out they didn’t. Sears took their eye off their customers and started acquiring financial service companies and other services, while Wal-Mart was fanatical about supplying what the customers wanted The bottom line is “all power is in the hands of the customer.”

When someone approached Sam Walton about investing in IT systems, he would ask, “How does that help the person in line check out faster? How does that help us keep adequate stock in each store?” Anything you buy has to directly serve the customer.

4. Unique – You have to be unique.

Hoover observes that the new rage to dominate markets consists of naming the company with a computer generated word that begins with “A.” Avaya, Agilon, etc. He doesn’t think that formula is going to work.

Steve Jobs is the master of the unique. When they brought him back to save Apple, all computers were beige. He said, “Make ours pink,” and sales took off. The next time he had to save the company, he invented the i-pod.

For the future, Hoover sees four areas to concentrate on, Healthcare and services, Financial services, Travel and Education (especially boomer education). For health care, Hoover would expand the category to include Whole Foods and Walgreens.

Large firms don’t understand differentiation. To be everything to everybody doesn’t work.

When you understand how you are differentiated, it drives the business, how you define your offer, your work environment, treat your customers and employees.

5. Passion - a successful business has to be built by people who love what they’re doing. You make fortunes doing what you love.

Question (from audience) “What is the role of quality?”

Answer - Yes, we lost it and got it back. In the sixties to nineties how could General Motors have 40 years of idiot CEOs, accountants as CEOs, accountants who didn’t love the product?

Question – I have a problem being government where I have to serve everyone

Hoover’s answer - Find some area you can love. Or some customer you can love. Check out the census website. Its ease of use beats many corporate web sites.