Intellectual Property

There are many different ways of making a living.  There are those who go to work each day, use their muscles to lift things, move things, dig things or scan things across a bar code scanner.  They get paid an acceptable wage to do this stuff. If it was not acceptable, then someone else would be doing it. Others go into an office each day. They often sit at desks typing on computer keyboards.  They’re usually given instructions as to what they should accomplish and generally speaking, they follow them and get paid for doing this.  If they don’t follow the instructions carefully enough, they probably don’t last long sitting at that particular desk, then they have to go out and find another one. If this keeps happening, then they might end up having to use their muscles to earn a living.

I make my living by using my brain.  I’m fortunate to have the kind of brain that is capable of earning a living. I could work for someone else and still use my brain, but instead, I choose to pluck words out of thin air, put them in some sort of order that is pleasing to me and consign them to pages, either real or virtual, for posterity.  I also come up with ideas that no-one has thought of in quite the same way as I have.  For example, when my former business partner (who shall remain nameless because she thoroughly deserves ignominy) wanted to video one of her training sessions and sell it to clients,  I thought about it and came up with a far better idea.

Why don’t we make a movie out of the Sales Training books I had written? I know, making movies out of books was not an original idea, but making a series of sales training videos and developing workbooks to make the videos interactive was very original.  That’s called intellectual property. When you devise something that is original, that came straight from your brain, you have the rights to that original something.  Even if you based your idea on something that already existed.  Sales training existed before I came up with my idea.  Videos existed too. So did Sales Training videos.  What didn’t exist before I came up with the idea was the methodology of making them work interactively in a unique way. My way. 

Thinking about unique things is all well and good but as long as those things stay only in your mind, you own only your own thoughts. You actually have to do something with the unique thing before it’s of any value. You have to make something of it and that’s exactly what I did. I wrote scripts because my ignominiously unnamed business partner wasn’t clever enough to speak and look at the camera at the same time.  I learned how to film and edit so that I could create the videos.  I designed workbooks to make it easy for trainees to interact with the videos.  I wrote every word of those workbooks.  Then when I was done, I wrote every piece of promotional material we needed to take the product to market.  That is intellectual property.

The interesting thing about intellectual property is how much or how little people value it. The video sales training programme I created generated over $1.5million in 18 months, so it was obviously worth something.  When things were going well and it looked like I would be creating even more unique video sales training programmes, then I got paid, but at some stage, things stopped going quite so smoothly.  The unnamed ignominious business partner started believing the exultant and exuberant press releases I wrote about her.  She forgot it was all hyperbole and started believing that she was indeed the amazing, talented guru of sales I made her out to be. In reality, she was just a divorced suburban housewife who had experience in sales-training, all learned by rote from other people.  Her primary claim to fame was her innate ability to trail along on the coat-tails of others until she had sucked them dry, discarding them once they had outlived their usefulness.  She had left a trail of ill-used mentors and benefactors behind her, I was just the last in a long succession.

Suddenly, the intellectual property is not worth so much anymore.  Funny how that happens when your business partner systematically dismantles your business so they can steal your ideas and use them to start up under a new name.  Once the formula has been developed and applied and it works, what do you need the creator for?  Why keep paying for intellectual property?  Because, moral obligations aside, without that creative spark, that flash of insight that caused something to be created where nothing existed before, the ignominious, cheating, thieving, erstwhile business partners of the world would have nothing at all.  They could try using their own imagination to create something of value that they could earn a living from, if they’re lucky enough or practiced enough to have the type of brain that comes up with ideas that are worth something. Of course, if they were capable of that, they would have done it themselves and if they had done it, they’d want to protect their brilliant idea so that some other thieving cheat didn’t come along and steal it out from under them.   

The Attitude Issue

Are surly young salespeople ruining your business?  Is lack of personal service driving your customers to shop on the internet instead of with you?

It seems like you just can’t hire good help these days.  A recent Australian study conducted for International Customer Service Professionals* reveals that more than half the population believes that customer service levels have declined over the past five years and they lay the blame firmly at the feet of young retail workers.

The 521 Australian consumers surveyed cited poor staff attitudes, problems with overseas call centres, and a lack of professionalism and product knowledge as the biggest causes of consumer dissatisfaction, with lousy attitudes from young retail workers the standout problem identified by most of those surveyed.

Now those customers might have blamed young retail workers for their poor attitudes but we know better, don’t we?  If your staff has attitude problems, then whose problem is it really?  I’m not suggesting that management are solely responsible for the attitudes of Gen Y workers, but management are definitely responsible for how they tackle the problem.

Judging from appearances, an awful lot of retail managers have their heads firmly buried in the sand when it comes to addressing the attitude issue and let’s face it, there’s lots to hide from.  Attitude is such a personal thing and if there’s one thing this generation is really good at, it’s standing up for their personal rights.  How then do you deal with a lousy attitude without falling foul of your worker’s right to feel as surly, lacklustre, bored and altogether uninspired as they want?

You could start by not looking at it as an attitude problem at all, but as a skills shortage.  People like to do things they’re good at. It makes them feel good about themselves and when they feel good about themselves, it shows in their attitude. The better they feel, the better the attitude.   We’ve talked before about The Success Spiral and this is a classic example of how we can use it for everyone’s benefit.

Young retail workers are often poorly trained if they’re even trained at all, therefore they don’t really know how to sell, immediately putting them at a disadvantage.  This then discourages them, making them feel useless and incompetent, which of course manifests itself in poor attitude. Because they lack the skills required to change things for the better, they respond the only way they know, with a lousy attitude and feelings of despondency and hopelessness at their situation.  This comes across to their customers as surly, belligerent, uncaring or disinterested and of course, the customer responds accordingly, making the worker feel even more useless and incompetent. This is the downward spiral. It keeps on circling the drain until something comes along to stop it.

In order to succeed in sales, retail or otherwise, you need well developed skills.  You need to know with certainty that if you do ‘x’, then ‘y’ will happen.  But first you need to know that there even is an ‘x’.  Too many young retail workers don’t.  One of my favourite expressions is “You don’t know what you don’t know.”  It stands to reason that you can’t address a problem unless you’re first aware that there is a problem and this is particularly true with sales skills.

Given the choice, most people would prefer to be good at what they do.  It feeds their sense of self-worth, which makes them feel good and naturally, the better they feel, the more enthusiastic they are about what they’re doing.  This is the Upward Spiral.  So how do we make people good at what they do?  With skills of course!  How to we break that downward spiral?  Skills!  When salespeople understand what is required of them, when they know with certainty what steps they need to take to get the job done, when they feel assured enough to competently complete their tasks, they’re happier, their customers are happier and it stands to reason that you will be happier too and who wouldn’t want that?

We sell outstanding skills.  The skills we sell make positive and lasting changes in people’s lives. They completely change the way people do business, the way they relate to each other and to their customers.  We sell amazing skills and we build strong workplace cultures.  We know this because our customers thank us for this every single day.  If you have an inkling that you or your workforce need skills to break out of their downward spiral, don’t wait until you bottom out, don’t wait until you lose one more customer or have to sack one more unwilling worker.  The solution is a lot closer than you think.  Contact me today.  

*The study was conducted by research consultancy AMR and customer feedback platform Feedback ASAP and is based on a survey of 521 Australian consumers.  It was conducted for the International Customer Service Professionals.

One BIG Thing

If there was One Big Thing that you could do to drastically improve your sales results, what would it be?

Sure, having good product knowledge is helpful but people with no product knowledge can still sell well. 

Yes! You’re fabulous and your fantastic positive outlook makes a huge difference, but what if your cat died, or your phone bill blew out to $1,500 this month and your car blew a gasket and the engine seized, or your partner dumped you for someone a lot less attractive than you and your formerly fantastic positive attitude took a nose dive?  If you have the One Big Thing, you can at least console yourself with the fact that you can still sell really, really well.

Brilliant customer service is important, but it’s not in the same league as our One Big Thing.

It should come as no surprise to regular readers of our newsletters that I’m talking about your ability to ask questions.  I know it comes as no surprise to our latest batch of trainees, because I’ve been watching their figures and very intriguing figures they are too!  

They made steady increases in sales through all the modules of our Cert IV course, enough improvement to make their managers (and us) proud.  Then they did the questions module and their sales results exploded! 30% increases were commonplace almost passé, 50% increases had salespeople thrilled and amazed at their own abilities to sell so well and those who’d notched up 80% improvements or more had their managers laughing all the way to the bank.  The fascinating thing is that the trend has continued long after the lessons ended.

Of course it matters that you ask the right questions in the right order, and to do this effectively you need to learn how, but if you do nothing else today but ask your customers three more questions and actually listen to their answers, you will sell more. 

If you’re having trouble coming up with three questions of your own, try using these.  Insert them into appropriate places in your conversation with customers. 

1. What’s your biggest challenge with that? 
2. How does that make you feel? 
3. How do you mean?

Try it, and when you succeed, as I’m sure you will, drop us a line and let us know.

The Disturb Factor

In sales, much time, money and effort has been spent trying to figure out what makes people buy. Simply put, people buy when they’re disturbed enough by their current situation and they realise a need to change it.

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? What this statement really means is that when things are not going the way you want them to, you need to do something to change that.  In a sales situation, this means buying something that will help things run smoothly again.  Let’s look at an example.

Customer:  My printer is broken.  I need a new one.  (Nothing disturbing about this.) Salesperson:  What’s it doing?  (Do they really need a new printer? Let’s find out a bit more…)

Customer:  It keeps telling me I have a paper jam when I really don’t. (Slightly disturbing, but printers break down all the time for all sorts of reasons.  Let’s find out what’s personal about this situation to this customer….)

Salesperson:  Hmmm. That sounds annoying. (Show a little empathy, let them know you understand and relate) How does that make you feel? (Tap into their emotions)

Customer:  It’s driving me crazy.  (Now we’re getting somewhere…)

Salesperson:  How do you mean? (Asks for more information...)

Customer:  Well, I have to drag the printer out from under the desk, turn it around, open up the back and then immediately close it again, just to fool the printer that I’ve cleared the non-existent paper jam! I’m sick of it! (Disturbed!)

Why disturb them at all? After all, the customer already knew they needed a new printer when they came into the shop.

Being aware you need a solution is not the same as taking action to get your solution.  Before we raised their disturb factor, this customer could have happily browsed all of your printers and then gone next door and browsed theirs.  Raising the disturb factor encourages them to take action and buy something right now to fix their problem.

How do you disturb someone enough to make them want to take action?  Ask the right disturbing questions! I also call them “Wake-up Call questions” because that’s what they do. The aim is to tap into the customer’s feelings because ultimately their purchase will be based on emotion.  “How does that make you feel?” “…..and how did you feel about that?” “What did your boss/wife/partner/colleague think about that?” “What do you think will happen if you don’t fix that?” then follow up with requests for more information…”How do you mean?”  “What happened then?”

At this point in the sale, the customer is fully aware of their need to purchase a new printer and because they’re now disturbed enough, they will take action by purchasing from the first person they trust will offer them a satisfactory resolution to their problem.  The key word here is “TRUST” and in order to build it, you would continue with more questions to find out exactly what kind of printer will suit their particular situation.

Knowing the right questions to ask and when to ask them is crucial to sales success.  No other single factor…. not handling objections, nor closing techniques… has more of an impact on the sale than asking appropriate questions at the right time and in the right sequence. It means the difference between making the sale and losing it.

Natural Curiosity

Remember when you were a little kid and you wanted to know everything? Why is grass green? What makes the sky blue?  Why does my little sister have freckles?  What’s a freckle?  Even the most egocentric of us possesses natural curiosity – a desire to know more about things that come into our orbit. Unfortunately for some of us, our natural curiosity is somewhat under-developed and therefore, useless to us as a sales tool. All is not lost though! Natural curiosity, just like a muscle that hasn’t been used for a long time, responds well to exercise and a bit of flexing.

How can curiosity be a sales tool? In order to find out exactly what will be the right solution for your client, you need information and the best way to get that information is to ask the client. Sure, there are standard, one-size-fits-all questions to ask that will elicit some of the information you need, but what about the information that is pertinent only to an individual customer?  How are you going to find out about their personal truths and feelings just by asking stock questions?

This is where your natural curiosity will make the difference between a good sales solution and an outstanding one. If a customer tells me they need a new phone, I’d feel compelled to ask what types they’ve had in the past and how did they find them. Eventually, I’d find out that they have broken the last three mobile phones they’ve owned. My natural curiosity would lead me to think, well, that seems odd. I wonder why they’re breaking them. 

So then I’d ask what kinds of phones were they? “All different.”  OK, so that’s not the source of the problem. Then I might consider how the customer was using them and I’d ask, so what were you doing when the phones broke?  “The first one fell out of my pocket into a batch of fresh cement. The second one’s screen broke when I accidentally left it on a pile of bricks and when the bricks were moved, the phone fell and broke. The third one got smashed when a pile of paving tiles were delivered right on top of it.”

Knowing all this, I’d be more inclined to come up with a solution that would work for this customer. Just selling him another phone, even if that’s all he asked for, isn’t going to solve the problem of the chronically damaged phones, but maybe a simple device like a leather pouch that fits onto his belt will help keep his new phone out of harm’s way.  

If your natural curiosity could use a little flexing, ask yourself why. No, I don’t mean why does it need flexing, I mean ask yourself WHY about everything you hear.  When your customer is telling you something, keep an open mind and ask yourself, WHY did this happen, then try asking your customer the same thing.  You’ll find a whole heap of sales opportunities opening up to you just by using that one tiny little word, WHY.

The Balancing Act

Forget Cirque du Soleil and children’s birthday party performers,

far and away the best jugglers I know are all working mothers. It takes skill, daring and tenacity to throw all those balls up in the air; it takes dedication, commitment and outstanding time management to keep them there.

It’s flu season and your youngest has the sniffles. What do you do?  You’re giving a major presentation to your company’s biggest client but it means an overnighter on the same night as your daughter’s piano recital. What do you do?  Your ex-husband is late with the child support again and this is the third weekend in a row when he’s failed to pick up the kids. What do you do?

The biggest obstacle in attaining a Work-Life balance is guilt. You feel guilty when you’re at work because your kids are in child care and you find yourself worrying about them all day.  You feel guilty because you’re at home with the kids and all you want to do is sneak away to your office and finish that report you’ve been working on.   Or worse yet, you’ve put in a hard day at work, the kids have been fighting from the moment you got home and you’re too tired to give your husband a goodnight kiss, let alone anything else, so of course you feel guilty about that too.

So where is all this guilt getting you? Exactly nowhere. Unlike other more robust emotions, like anger or jealousy which often prompt us to take action, guilt just sits there festering. It doesn’t compel you to act, there is no hope that guilt will help you make things better. Guilt simply drains your energy so that you feel powerless to change things. So, first on the agenda? Lose the guilt!

You do that by living in the moment, being present in the here and now. When you’re at home with the kids, be there in that moment both physically and mentally. Don’t allow your mind to wander to what you “should” be doing, because the fact of the matter is that you should be exactly where you are. When you’re at work, be there one hundred percent.  Worrying about your children will not help them or you; all worry does is make you less effective for the task at hand. “BUT....!” I hear you cry, “what if......” When “what if” actually happens, you deal with it, but until it does, move on.

It helps to have contingency plans for all those “what if” moments. I don’t mean that you should sit down and think up every disaster imaginable and have a plan of action for each one.  I mean you should have a general plan of action for predictable problems like your child getting a cold and being unable to go to school or day care, or your boss offering you a big advancement opportunity contingent upon doing work you haven’t scheduled.  Knowing what you will do under these circumstances takes the worry out of the equation. You already have it covered, so there’s nothing to worry about. 

Make agreements and stick to them.  If you need to work for an hour after dinner every day but the kids keep interrupting, or fighting, or crying or generally finding other “kid” ways of getting your attention, make a deal with them. If they leave you in peace and quiet for one hour, then they get your undivided attention for the rest of the night. It’s always tempting to over-compensate and bribe them with food, gifts or outings. Avoid this because it sets a nasty precedent that they will exploit because they’re kids and that’s what kids do. Their reward must be your undivided time and attention. When you’re with them, be WITH them.

Teaching the value of time to your children is a great gift; one that will hold them in good stead for the rest of their lives, so plan your time. With a time management plan in place, everyone knows what’s expected of them.  Write up a daily plan on a calendar and put it on the fridge door.  Explain how it works and encourage your children and spouse to add their special events to it.  If you run into conflicting timetables, negotiate. Aim for win/win outcomes. Teaching them to negotiate for time gives them a sense of priorities.

The most important part of any balancing act is the pivot or central point on which the balance depends. If it’s not strong enough, everything falls apart. If it’s not alert enough, all the balls hit the floor.  In this balancing act, you’re the pivot, so look after yourself. Allocate “Me Time” and treat yourself well. Make sure you’re not always sacrificing your personal time to fulfil the needs of others. If you’re not replenishing yourself, giving yourself the luxury of “Me Time”, you’ll run out of resources and will be useless, not only to yourself, but for all those who rely on you to keep juggling. Putting your needs first ensures you’ll remain strong and alert enough to keep all your balls in the air. 

The Finishing Touch

If you’re relying on a piece of paper to do your selling for you, you’re in trouble.  

A while ago, I had a tradesman come to my house to give me a quote for an air-conditioning system. He spent a lot of time measuring things and climbing around in the attic testing the depth of my insulation. He even crawled under the house and checked out the insulation down there.  When he was done, we sat in my office and chatted, mostly about air-conditioning.

He was a nice guy who seemed to know his stuff and if he’d given me a price on the spot, it’s highly likely I would have said “YES!”…..but he didn’t, so I didn’t.  There’s a process they have to go through. I get that, but mix the process with a little common sense and you’ll land more sales.  While we were sitting in my office, the tradey noticed a copy of our Big Book workbook sitting on my desk and he asked me about it and that, of course, inevitably led to a discussion on sales, or rather a lack of them.

He told me he was the owner of the company and he and his two salespeople were doing lots of quotes, but they were converting far less than 20% of them. I was surprised at this, because he seemed competent.   Research tells us that when looking for a quote, the average person will get three. That means that if you’re giving quotes, you should expect to get on average, 33% of the business, because you’re only competing against two other companies’ quotes. What on earth could be wrong with his quote, I wondered.

It took a while, but I found out.  First, it took three weeks before I set eyes on the quote and that was only because I called the company and reminded them of my existence.  The quote arrived and it seemed acceptable to me, the prices weren’t outlandish, the proposed work on topping up my insulation was probably necessary, so I put the quote on top of the pile of things to do and I waited…..and I waited…… and then of course, I gave 

up waiting because no-one called.  

I still need the air conditioning, but I’m not doing business with people who either don’t care enough about getting my business or are too stupid to pick up the phone and follow-up.

Think about it. This tradesman took an hour out of his day to crawl around the insides of my house and educate me on different types of air-conditioning. He went to the trouble of working out the numbers and putting them in writing. Someone had to take that quote, put it in an envelope, write my name and address on it, stick a stamp on it and go to the post office and send it to me. All of that took far more effort than a simple phone call would have taken. So he faltered at the finish line.

I was beginning to understand exactly why he wasn’t winning his fair share of quotes.  How could it have turned out differently for him?

1.)    If he’d noticed when we discussed the solutions in my office, he would have recognised that I was eager to buy.  He could have worked up the numbers on the spot, given me a ballpark and gained my agreement right then and there. If he had to put it in writing, he could have followed up with a written quote to confirm our agreement.

2.)    Or he could have returned to his office late on the day he saw me, worked out his quotes for the day and put them in the post that evening. Had he done this, I would have been impressed.  I would have had no hesitation in saying “Yes” to his quote, because I would have felt that he was trustworthy and reliable.

3.)    He could then have telephoned me firstly, to ask me if I had received his quote (things do go astray in the mail) and secondly, to ask me for the order.

People buy from people. Not from bits of paper.  Of course the number on that bit of paper was important, but it’s always negotiable as long as all the other ducks are lined up. If you’ve built rapport and trust, you have a solution that matches the client’s need and you assertively ask for the order, why wouldn’t you get the business at least 33% of the time?