I was given an opportunity to attend a trade show conference this week. When I wasn't attending sessions, I was in the traditional exhibit hall area where a variety of vendors have spent significant money to vie for the attention and interest of the decision makers that have gathered for the conference. I consistently see at these types of events sales and marketing teams that don't recognize the impact they're having on their brand and the experience they're creating for visitors to their booth. They've invested time, money and people to making a great first impression, but too often fall flat because they haven't disciplined themselves in a few key areas. So, here is my top ten list of bad booth behaviors that should be blocked from trade show exhibit halls in the future:
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0 comments 599 readsPosted on 2012-02-03
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0 comments 764 readsPosted on 2011-12-17
As sales people mature in their understanding of sales, they begin to recognize it has little to do with the seller and everything to do with the buyer. Professional, successful sales people recognize it is all about relationships and building the right kind of relationship at the right time with the buyer. People buy from people who are sincere, competent and who empower them. When sales is examined from the point of view of the customer, there are three distinct phases of the buying process - and each requires a different approach to facilitate the buyer's progression from one to another. Last week, we examined the first phase - the buyer recognizing they have a problem. This week, let's move onto phase 2.
Phase 2: The buyer recognizes there are ways to solve that problem.
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0 comments 991 readsPosted on 2011-12-10
I find that when people first start their career in sales, they often have all the wrong ideas of what sales is all about. Their expectations are built on portrayals of salespeople in a negative light. They often think that to be in sales you have to have a pushy personality or use manipulation and deception to coerce people to buy something they don't need. The good news is neither of these is true and as sales people mature in their understanding of sales, they begin to recognize it has little to do with the seller and everything to do with the buyer. Professional, successful sales people recognize it is all about relationships and building the right kind of relationship at the right time with the buyer. People buy from people who are sincere, competent and who empower them. When sales is examined from the point of view of the customer, there are three distinct phases of the buying process - and each requires a different approach to facilitate the buyer's progression from...
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0 comments 948 readsPosted on 2011-10-25
I've been fortunate in my career. For the first 10 years, I worked for a small company with about 100 employees and total revenues under $5 million per year. Later, I worked for a Fortune 20 company with revenues topping $100 billion per year and over 45,000 employees. What I learned in the small company stayed with me in the large company and proved to be powerful principles for building strong customer relationships.
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0 comments 1,474 readsPosted on 2011-10-12
I have a favorite saying that all relationships end up somewhere, but few relationships end up somewhere on purpose. Think about it for a minute. You have a variety of relationships in your life and in your interactions with businesses. Some are merely transactional and have no longevity to them - my dry cleaner for example. Great person. Easy to get along with. But if I'm honest, I'm not working to purposefully develop a relationship with him. My two sons, on the other hand... with them it's about teaching them about life everywhere we go, in all possible situations. It's about nurturing them to grow up from boyhood into effective male leaders in society. There is purpose. There is intention. The same holds true for our businesses. If we're beyond the warm fuzzies of chants about customers being number one and if we're beyond placards and signs that say our customers are first; if we're truly serious about building a culture that puts others first - namely our...
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0 comments 1,152 readsPosted on 2011-10-06
Several years ago surgeons in London completed a six-hour operation to fix a hole in a young boy’s heart. The surgery was successful, but the most dangerous part was about to begin - transferring the three-year-old patient from the operating room to the intensive care unit. Hospital studies report that seventy percent of preventable hospital errors happen due to communication problems, and half of those breakdowns happen during the patient hand-offs. This surgical team was successful, though, because they had spent time studying how a Formula One pit crew was able to coordinate their 20-person team to switch out tires, check fluids, fill gas and get a car back on the race track in under seven seconds. They learned that effectiveness and efficiency is no accident. It's the outcome of a series of well-planned hand-offs among a team.
Hand-offs in your business may not be as life-threatening as a hospital setting, but all customer hand-offs represent significant...
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0 comments 1,034 readsPosted on 2011-09-29
Think for a minute about any simple interaction you have with a company. Something as simple as placing an order at a quick-serve restaurant. What appears on the surface to be a simple interaction, quickly lands into layer upon organizational layer of complexity that crosses multiple departmental and functional lines. Let's count the teams involved in this transaction: the store operations team that has the cashiers and cooks, the information technology department that installed the register and the software, the accounting team that loads in the pricing, the supply chain team that made sure the right supplies were in place and the marketing team that created the desire within you to attend the restaurant in the first place. Each of those teams are being optimized for their function and typically the major decisions for those teams are being made a long distance away from the actual customer interaction. The challenge is that the customer doesn't see, nor do they have any...
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0 comments 3,495 readsPosted on 2011-09-23
We are all customers of a business. In that role, we're all able to see things that are apparently invisible to the owners, operators and managers of that company. Take the local grocery store as an example, has it not long puzzled you why the shortest lines (Express Lanes) are given to those who are buying the least? It's the store with the fresh donuts sign out front and coffee stains on the floor inside. Whether it's a store, a car rental company, a hotel or any other business we frequent, we're able to see things they can't seem to see. So, why is that? I think it's this simple. In our business, we grow so accustomed to what we do, to what we sell, to whom we serve - it all becomes so familiar, that we forget what it's like to see our company through the eyes of a customer, particularly to see ourselves for the first time.
So, I'm challenging you to get an outside-in perspective and here are three quick ways you can do it this week.
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