Can You Hear Me Now?

As a hobby, I am a woodworker.  I have learned to build fine furniture, jewelry boxes and a wide variety of other wood projects. I’ve even done some custom commission work and made decent money for doing so.  Someday I’ll get some pictures of my work on my site so you can take a look at my work.

Yesterday, I was down in my shop working on a shelf for the patio and took a look around the shop and wondered which tools were the most valuable.  I have several thousand dollars worth of woodworking machinery and hand tools and I’m pretty proud of my collection.  I couldn’t decide between the top two so it ended up being a tie for first place.

What was my choice?  Was it my cabinet saw, router, planer, workbench or any of my hand tools?    My cabinet saw is definitely what I use them most and if you were to survey woodworkers about the most valuable tool, the cabinet saw would win, hands down.   But that’s not the case for me.

The two items have a combined value of $30.  One is my safety glasses and the other are my hearing protectors.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I believe the two most important selling and marketing tools are closely related to my choice of shop tools.  In sales and marketing, your eyes and ears are the most important tools.

Words only play a small part in communications

A 1972 UCLA study concluded that the words we say account for 7% of our overall communication!  The other 93% of our communication is non-verbal and consist of body language and voice quality.  Now you can see why I chose the tools that protect my eyes and ears!
Your eyes allow you to read the body language and emotions of your customer.  You can see if you are connecting with them or if you are boring them.  Are they engaged with you or just being polite?   Your ears allow you to hear voice inflection and tone and understand your prospects needs.

Understanding body language and how to use it can mean a huge difference in your sales.  Countless studies have been done on the topic and you can find great resources online and in the library.  A study I read about several years ago revealed that the salespeople who sat with their legs crossed during the sales presentation closed dramatically fewer sales than those who sat with legs apart.  I don’t recall the exact percentage but it very significant.

God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason

Some people see it as a cliché.  Well, there’s a reason it’s a cliche – it’s true, particularly in sales. It is so we can listen twice as much as we talk.  You will only know what benefits to stress when you understand your client’s needs and you can’t identify their needs and wants if you’re doing all the talking!

Listening is an art

A key listening skill is to avoid responding until the other person is speaking.  Notice I said listening, not hearing.  Ask your client or prospect to clarify and elaborate be sure you are answering the question they asked.  Avoid interrupting, unless it enhances or clarifies the topic.

I once heard a friend in a conversation with another person and he was quite frustrated about being interrupted by the other person.  He finally said, “Our conversation will be a lot better if you wait for me to finish my sentence before you talk.  You will know when I am done talking because I will stop.”   Talk about getting to the point!
Think of how frustrating it is for you when someone interrupts you in the middle of a sentence or answers your question with an irrelevant answer.  It shows they did not hear or care about what you were saying because their thoughts were what mattered, not yours.  The same applies in sales.  The top earners are not pushy and brash, they are recognized as professionals who understand and fulfill their client’s needs.  They do so because they listen and recommend solutions that will benefit the client.

Do you remember the Dean Whitter commercial that ran several years ago?  The tagline was “We grow our business one client at a time.”  I thought it was brilliant.  It meant they listened and cared about YOU, not the next sale.  The campaign ran for quite some time so it was obviously a success. It was built around the simple precept that people appreciate someone who listens to them.

As you look to improve selling skills, remember that the things that can make the biggest difference are as simple as seeing and listening.  Now, let me ask you… Can you hear me now and what do you see?

You are in the Marketing Business

1. You are in the marketing business.  Everything you do ultimately affects your marketing.

2. Your business or industry is not different.

3. You must build a marketing system using several different
marketing strategies.

Understand the business that you are in.  Regardless of the product or service that you sell, you are in the business of marketing that product or service.  Marketing brings you clients and until you have clients you don’t have a business.  You may have a store, a profession, a practice, a factory or whatever else your product it but without clients, you are still in the idea phase.

Management guru Peter Drucker tells us Marketing and Innovation make money, everything else is a cost.  When you understand you are in the marketing business, you realize everything about your business is part of your marketing.  They are either taking you closer to more sales and profits or moving you away from them.

One of the biggest business marketing mistakes that prevents businesses from succeeding in the marketing business is to think their business is “different” and that they are somehow “special.”

They think their profession or industry is different and that the marketing rules don’t apply to them.  If you happen to have this mindset, let me ask you these questions:  Are your customers people?  Do they have emotions?  Do they make emotional decisions? Do they want to be taken care of and get quality products and services?  Do they want a better life for themselves, their families and businesses?   Do they want to be happy and have fulfilling lives?

If your clients are people and have the above traits, guess what?  Your business is not “different.”  What if your clients are businesses?  Well, the client may be a business but the the buying decisions are made by people who are making them based on their emotions and feelings about the products.

I have personally been involved in and made buying decisions from as small as the ad specialty pens to give to clients to multi-million dollar shipments manufactured overseas and shipped in on containers.  I made those buying decisions as a person, not as a business.

These business owners also think their industry is different and they have standards to adhere to.  I am not referring to professional standards, codes of conduct and behavior or ethics.  These, of course are valuable  standards that may protect the public and the integrity of your industry.  I’m talking about marketing standards.  These are not official but have become the norm.

After many years of experience, I am still astounded by the number of times an owner shows me a web site, ad or brochure of their competitors and tell me they want their materials to look the same.  I ask if they are different or better than the competition and the answer is always a resounding, “Of course!”  I then ask, “If you are so much better, why do you want to look the same and have the same message?”  What I really want to say is “What the hell are you thinking?”

The lesson is this:  Everything you do that potentially impacts your clients and prospects is part of your marketing.  Your products, your staff, your policies, your building, your restrooms and the list is nearly endless.

You must have a marketing system built on multiple pillars (or strategies).    The exact strategies vary but the key is to use several.  At the top of the list are strategies to maximize the value of a client (which we will address in a later chapter) and to build a long-term relationship with them.

Direct mail, media advertising, sales representatives, email, fax, a web site, telemarketing, referrals, joint ventures and alliances networking are all examples.   The key is to never rely on any specific one strategy because if it fails for any reason, you have problems.

Start with a Plan

Where to start?  With an ad in the Yellow Pages, a newspaper, a magazine or on a billboard?  Do you join a
networking group and get your name out there?  The media and ad reps and web firms will find you and all have the greatest stories about exposure, market penetration and all other wonderful phrases that will have you dreaming of clients beating down the door.

They all have compelling stories and each has great potential.  But before you start running ads, you need to
start with a marketing plan.  Don’t worry and start working up a sweat.

You’re not going to be preparing a plan to present to Donald Trump on the Apprentice.  You re laying out a plan for yourself (if you are going to use it for financing, you will need to be a bit more formal and detailed).

I’m going to approach this as if you are doing this for yourself and layout the basics in a series of blog posts.  The summary is available to subscribers to Paul Flood’s Marketing  Moments e-zine, which you can subscribe to by clicking here or by filling in the brief form in the upper right-hand corner.

I’ll break this down in a series of steps and exercises you can follow to create a marketing plan that is just
right for your business.