Selling Power Blog

A New Way to Think about Customer Manipulation

Many books, blogs, and online sales videos suggest a non-manipulative, synergistic, consultative approach to uncovering a prospect's needs. These resources all advance the idea that manipulative selling is a thing of the past. But is it?

The word manipulation has many meanings. Its definitions range from "artful skill" to "to change accounts to suit one's purpose." Today, we seem to give the word one meaning: to make someone do what we want him to do against his will or better judgment. Of course, this is counterproductive in any selling situation. But does this mean that manipulation should not have a place in selling at all? Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging; it is the skin of a living thought that may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances in which it is used."

Words are the tools of the selling trade, and their meanings change according to the circumstances in which they are used. Tone of voice, facial expressions, emphasis, and emotion are all in play when a salesperson uses any series of words. How we say something is often more important than what we say.

Consider this simple question: "What is it that you would like to think about?" Read it aloud three times, each time emphasizing different words -- "what," "is it," "you." Can you hear and feel the different meanings when you change the emphasis from one word to another? What impact would those changes have on your customer? Selling superstars can deliver the same sentence 10 different ways, depending on the customer and situation. They manipulate language in a way that harmonizes with the customer. But they never manipulate the customer!

Manipulating customers only antagonizes them. But manipulating yourself to suit the situation will bring you closer to your customer and the sale. Salespeople who try to manipulate customers break the rules of ethical conduct and violate the rules of professional selling. Salespeople who skillfully manipulate themselves break only sales records.

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Arthur Ochs Sulzberger - he turned around The New York Times

 

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger passed away today at age 86. He ran The New York Times from 1963 until 1997, growing the company from $100 million to $1.7 billion before quietly handing over the reins to his son.

In January 2000 I got the opportunity to interview Mr. Sulzberger. I was immediately struck by his self-deprecating humor and his endearing stories. As I sat across his desk I noticed a desktop computer on the left side and an old fashioned typewriter on the right. I asked, “what do you use more, the computer or the typewriter?” He smiled and said, “They taught me how to use the computer for my email. Now, the typewriter is another story. When I started at the New York Times in 1963 every reporter had a typewriter and we had a staff of 100 people that serviced the typewriters for over 1,000 reporters. The other day I sent someone out to buy a new typewriter ribbon but the young man could not figure out how to replace that ribbon. I had to show him.” Then I asked him when he last used the typewriter and he said, “Just last Sunday I picked up a copy of our paper and noticed that in the science section there was some color missing so I typed out a note to the production manager asking, ‘did we supply crayons to our readers?’”

I have always been curious about the family business that runs The New York Times. In 1896, Adolph Ochs took over the reins of the struggling newspaper that, at the time, competed with more than a dozen New York dailies. With a total circulation of only 9,000 copies, Ochs had to move quickly. Fortunately, he was an astute salesman.

He lowered the price of the paper from three cents to one penny and promised to publish "the news impartially, without fear or favor." The experts of the day were astounded. Ochs added greater value with better editorial content. He cut out fiction. He cut stale columns. He targeted the paper toward "men in business." He also launched an illustrated Sunday magazine with half-tone photographs and further set himself apart from the competition by heavily advertising the slogan "All the news that's fit to print." By taking the high road in quality and the low road in price, Ochs soon increased The Times’ circulation to 350,000.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was nicknamed “Punch” after the puppet characters Punch and Judy. Punch remembered how his grandfather shared his passion for publishing with family members and dinner guests. After dessert he would hand out copies of stories that were to be published in the next morning's paper. He distributed the articles without titles and asked his guests, "What headline would you assign to this story?" After everyone took a stab at it, he proudly revealed the title as it would appear in the paper the next morning.

A shaky start

In 1963 at age 37, Punch assumed the title of publisher of the New York Times.  At first glance, Punch did not fill the bill. He performed poorly in school – having attended six private schools before quitting at age 17 to enlist in the Marines – and did not excel as a cub reporter in the family business. In fact, while he worked for the newspapers’ Paris bureau in 1955, one incident illustrated his shortcomings. On a weekend outing with friends to the Grand Pix in Le Mans, Punch witnessed a fatal accident when driver Pierre Levegh's Mercedes crashed into the stands, killing the driver and 83 spectators.

 

Not only did Punch pass up the once-in-a-lifetime reporting opportunity, he even failed to notify the news bureau of the accident. "It was unbelievable," Punch says of the accident. "I must have been a block or so away. It was my day off, so I left the story for somebody else. I wasn't the greatest reporter. But you live and learn."
 
The Pentagon Papers

The most difficult decision Punch faced came in the 1960s and early '70s when America's involvement in the Vietnam War set the stage for a showdown between The New York Times and the United States government. When Times reporter Neil Sheehan acquired his own copies of the Pentagon Papers – a series of reports by U.S. Department of Defense analysts describing how, for decades, the government hid from the American people its increasing commitment to the South Vietnamese cause – Times editors and lawyers debated the merits of printing the documents.

"There was no internal debate excepting at the highest level," said Sulzberger. "We did it so secretly that most people didn't know anything was happening. At the final debate, everybody from The New York Times was urging me to publish it." He did, and the first installment appeared in the Sunday, June 13, 1971, edition. Immediately, President Richard Nixon's Justice Department procured an order of prior restraint to prohibit The Times from publishing any more of the Pentagon Papers. President Nixon was incensed. His words to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger included "People have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "Let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail."

The Times resisted, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which voted six to three to lift the order. "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government," wrote Justice Hugo L. Black in a concurring opinion.

Punch considered winning the case of the Pentagon Papers to be his proudest accomplishment during his tenure.

The Times's story is the story of a family that has chosen to perpetuate Adolph Ochs' passion for quality with a greater dedication to public service than many other great American families. While such powerful families as the Kennedys reached the limelight through short-lived triumphs and long-remembered tragedies, the Sulzberger family always took pride in perpetuating their product without much bragging. Arthur Sulzberger was part of the family dynasty behind The New York Times. Like a great actor becomes invisible in the portrayal of a character, Punch has channeled his life’s energy with courage and authenticity into the indomitable character of the paper.

 

 

 

 

How to Get Your Reps to Update and Use CRM

Today's blog post is by Christopher Cabrera, CEO of Xactly Corporation, the industry leader in sales compensation automation.

Your sales team’s most critical data lives in the brains and spiral notebooks of your reps. Which means that losing just one rep could mean losing an important customer relationship.

Salespeople want to do what they do best – sell. As a result, they won’t learn to use a new tool unless its benefits are absolutely clear. And despite the advantages they can get from CRM (like instant access to lead contact information and account histories, for example), many sales reps still see CRM as a glorified filing system.

The good news is that sales leaders can absolutely change the way reps think about CRM. Here are four strategies based on our work with hundreds of companies around the world.

ONE: Consider plugin applications that align objectives across your entire organization. CRM alone can’t give your sales reps real-time visibility into their progress towards quota – or, for example, how much money they could make if they closed a deal. This is a missed opportunity for reps, of course. It also represents a lost opportunity for sales managers to influence sales results, and for the company to accelerate revenue. But you can give your entire sales team up-to-the-minute access to this information with other applications, like sales compensation plug-ins.

TWO: Make your data work for you. To understand your blueprint for success, dive deep into your data across multiple periods—months, quarters, years—and by product, territory, role, function, or even internal contests. Use customizable reports to improve your onboarding, sales training and coaching. Show your reps how to test what-if scenarios to see which sales they should spend time on, and how they can maximize their commissions.

THREE: Regularly and publicly recognize your winners. Once you’ve drilled into the best practices of your top performers, share them with the rest of the team. Applaud winners over email, Chatter, and during staff meetings. Display contest results on TV screens near your sales cubicles or offices. Send out a simple-results dashboard to your team every day via email.

FOUR: Give both Sales and Finance what they want. Finance wants controllable costs. Sales wants to earn huge commissions. You can virtually test new incentive plans within your CRM to make sure you’ll meet forecasts – while also offering motivating rewards to your top reps.

At the core of these conversations is the user experience. It defines how fast you can drive CRM adoption, and even how much value you can enxtract from good, clean data to drive predictive sales results.

Want to learn more about how you can implement a robust CRM adoption strategy that delivers ROI? Learn more here. 

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Capture & Use Social Insights to Gain a Competitive Selling Edge

I'm convinced that social insights are the key competitive differentiator for impacting revenue cycles today. 

Today we get social insights from information and data shared on social networks. But really social insights are nothing new to any experienced sales leader. Many sales professionals remember walking into a prospect's or customer's office and looking around to get a sense of what kind of person they'd be talking to. Were there photos of family on the desk? Sports trophies on shelves? Degrees on the wall? 

People carry their accomplishments, hopes, fears, and dreams around with them. These are the kinds of things that great salespeople excel at uncovering. Context clues -- what the person wears, how the person talks, etc. -- can help you figure out what is most important to this individual. These clues can help you establish trust and rapport. 

Today all of this information and more is readily available to you via a simple LinkedIn search. Your prospects and customers might be on Twitter right now, sharing details about themselves and their lives that can help you create a meaningful connection.

Reps who use social insights to uncover business concerns, personal interests, career history, common acquaintances, and more are better equipped to make connections with prospects that ultimately lead to more sales. Sales teams that can access a deeper level of knowledge beyond names, titles, and contact information automatically become more competitive by collapsing the sales cycle. The thing that amazes me is that many sales leaders and their teams have yet to tap into the rich resource of social insights to learn and listen to uncover opportunities.

I believe that sales leaders who act immediately to capture and use social insights will gain an automatic edge over the competition. Tomorrow I'll be discussing the power of social insights in more detail during my webinar, "How to Impact Revenue Cycles" with Ralf VonSosen, Vice President of Marketing at InsideView. He'll be sharing the compelling results that companies have been getting by incorporating social intelligence into their lead-to-revenue process, including explosive growth in call-to-opportunity ratios, true sales opportunities, and close rates.

Register now to join us and learn how your team can start seeing similar benefits today. 

 

My Thoughts from the Sales Management 2.0 Conference

At the Sales Management 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia, I talked a lot about how automating the sales process can drive higher revenues faster and more efficiently. In fact, I continue to be amazed at the number of Sales 2.0 tools and solutions that continue to emerge to make life easier for B2B sales teams. 

I firmly believe that, to succeed, sales leaders need to constantly be experimenting with and adopting new tools for their sales teams. But do tools alone create better sales teams? Of course not. Why? Because salespeople continue to fall into the same old traps:

• They talk all about themselves and their products and fail to uncover customer needs. 
• They run from one opportunity to the next without consulting with their sales manager or tapping intelligence that already exists within the sales organization. 
• They reinvent the wheel every time they need to write a proposal or reach out to a prospect. 

Inevitably the sales organizations that provide the best sales tools to make teams more effective are the ones that win more. They continually train their salespeople and help them seamlessly integrate process with technology.

At the same time, these sales leaders never lose sight of the need to train and coach sales reps on the ground-level selling skills.

No other department in any company can do what sales does; the value of its function is unique. The sales team has the rare ability to build rapport, to create relationships where none existed, and to persuade executives to make the changes and decisions that will help them run a better business.

All paths related to the sales cycle -- technology, process, selling skills -- lead to one final destination: the customer. The customer is the reason we are in business. They dictate our actions and reactions. They drive the conversation and tell us where we need to go next. 

Yet, as I told the audience on Monday at the Sales Management 2.0 Conference, only 13% of customers believe a typical salesperson can demonstrate an understanding of their business issues and solve them. This number should make every sales leader sit up and take notice. What is the level of customer understanding at your company? And what actions will you take to make sure you're in synch with their needs? 

This Thursday during a live webinar, I'll be talking about one area sales leaders can leverage to build a better sales organization: CRM. I'm excited to share ideas that can help you put the customer back where they belong: at the heart of your selling strategy. I invite you to register now for this webinar and join the conversation.

And I hope you'll consider joining me on April 2-3 in San Francisco, where I'll host the next Sales 2.0 Conference. For my money, there is no better investment of your time than to take the time to network with other sales leaders. Everyone needs consistent exposure to new ideas that can help them meet the challenges and realities of selling to today's customer. That is why I continue to dedicate my time to these events -- there's nothing I enjoy more than bouncing ideas off of other top-notch sales leaders and industry experts. There is always something new to learn about how to make a better customer experience in a digital age. 

How to Win More Customers with Better Email Practices

Today's post was written by Sue Hershkowitz-Coore (@SpeakerSue), the author of Power Sales Writing and How to Say it to Sell it. Sue helps salespeople transform their sales messages and close more business. 

 

 

If you were to walk into the grocery store wearing clothing on just the top half of your body, two things would happen: 1) You'd call attention to yourself (in a really distracting way), and 2) you'd get escorted out of the store (without the chips and beer).

Emailing is just like that. If you send sales messages without attending to certain important guidelines, you become a distraction to your own success. These eight tips from my just-released second edition of Power Sales Writing (McGraw-Hill, 2011) will help your prospects and customers see you as appropriately dressed and ready to earn their business. Your respectful attention to detail will help them feel comfortable and confident in choosing to do business with you.

1. Start friendly. Though the salutation "Dear…" may have gone the way of a carbon copy, starting with a friendly hello sets the right tone. Depending on your brand, choose either "Hi," "Hello," or any variation of "Good morning/day/afternoon." Then, use your customer's name. Research shows that readers tend to misinterpret writer intent, reading positive messages in a neutral light and neutral messages in a negative one. Take a moment to say hi to create a more positive message.

2. Match your subject line with your message. Every time the subject of the email changes, so should the subject line. Use your subject line to truthfully summarize the content of your email. Whatever you do, don't promise what you can't deliver! Be transparent and relevant and likeable. If your subject line sounds like your offer is too good to be true, your email will be deleted.

3. Save the world on your own time. Your personal philosophy of life is just that, yours, and it should not be included in your signature line. Not only do you run the risk of offending a prospect, but your philosophy can also sound pompous or arrogant. Even a seemingly safe line, such as, "Consider the environment before printing," can annoy a prospect. Why chance it? 

4. Make your phone number mobile. If you want your buyer to call you back, right after the words "Please call me," include your phone number. Don't make busy prospects scroll to the end of your email to find your phone/fax number. Place important information (like your phone number) where your recipient can best use it. The easier you make it for clients to call you, the more likely they are to do it.

5. Ask for what you want! Customers shouldn't be expected to figure out what you want from them. Make it crystal clear. If you want them to get back to you, say something like, "As soon as I receive your confirmation, I'll...," or "I'll follow up with you as you suggest." Avoid using such phrases as, "What do you think?" Be specific and clear.

6. Take on the work load. It's always best to have control of the next step. Whenever possible, avoid asking your customers to get back to you. Simply say, "I'll phone you Tuesday morning to discuss the exciting options." If you ask which date is best for them, they have to take the next step – and you lose control.

7. Don't overpunctuate. Multiple exclamation points may make folks think you forgot to take your meds today. Unless something truly exciting happened (a wedding, a baby’s birth, a big contract was just landed), use only one exclamation point. Even worse than "!!!!" is "????" What is it you're really saying with all those question marks?  Be careful of ellipsis points, too. Use them too much, and your email begins to look like an S.O.S. message. You can occasionally use an ellipsis to indicate missing words or a thought break, but one... often leads to another... and to... Enough said!

8. Stop the high-priority flag thing. Only flag an email high priority if your buyer has asked you to do that (so, pretty much never). 

Create distraction-free sales messages so that customers feel safe and smart when selecting you. Take time to get dressed – and demonstrate your business smarts – to extend your professional reputation and get your best sales results.

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Analyze This: Why Predictive Sales Intelligence Boosts Sales Results

Why did Sequoia Capital – the renowned venture capital firm behind LinkedIn and Google – make a major investment in Lattice Engines, the front-runner in predictive sales-intelligence software? What is predictive sales intelligence, and why did Lattice Engines raise capital from Sequoia?

Shashi Upadhyay, CEO of Lattice Engines, told me in a phone conversation to think about the advances in analytics that such B2C companies as Amazon or Netflix pioneered by offering nuanced recommendations. For example, if you have purchased books about French wines on Amazon, you may get recommendations about French cookbooks or travel books about Burgundy. How does Amazon find out which books might interest you? They compare the shopping history data of other customers and find out which patterns resemble yours.

Lattice Engines is now applying the power of data and predictive analytics – a staple in the B2C world – to boost B2B sales and marketing productivity. The insight is that the explosive growth of data about companies and purchasing decision makers contains hidden but invaluable intelligence for frontline sales teams. Lattice Engines has encapsulated this vision into its sales intelligence software, salesPRISM.  Shashi explained that this is the first solution that combines a company’s internal view of its customers and prospects (e.g., purchase histories, product usage data, customer service records) with external information about these accounts and decision makers (e.g., news sources, company Websites, social media).

What’s really unique about this? It’s not about overloading reps with even more data. It’s about transforming enormous amounts of data into intuitive, simple, ongoing, account-specific recommendations for when and how to engage with each account.

Shashi, who holds a PhD in physics from Cornell University and was a partner at McKinsey before starting Lattice Engines, explained that when it comes to running a sales organization, data-driven decisions yield significantly better and measurable sales outcomes compared to the traditional, gut-feel approach.  He noted that salesPRISM is being used by thousands of reps at leading sales organizations, including ADP, Dell, and VMware, which have experienced double-digit sales productivity gains within the first year of deploying the software.

Shashi emphasized that predictive sales intelligence is not the same as backward-looking reporting. In today’s battle for improving sales, a business needs to move from looking into the rearview mirror to looking through the windshield and predicting what’s next. The big bet is that the mix of internal and external data, smart math, and a continuous flow of new, predictive, account-level insights will make reps more effective.

While data and analytics in sales have always been seen as an auxiliary to a main function (like a PowerPoint presentation to a speaker), Lattice Engines sees analytics move into the hub of a sales and marketing organization, informing every customer interaction.

The Impact of Analytics

Independent research by CSO Insights shows that when companies arm their managers with better, new information through analytics, they enjoy better results:

15% higher close rates of forecast opportunities
20% more reps meeting or exceeding quota
34% lower sales-rep turnover

Traditional analytics solutions, such as Birst, Cloud9, Right90, and SAP BusinessObjects, offer improvement in five areas:

1. Ability to better view the sales pipeline
2. Ability to measure and track sales performance
3. Ability to create more accurate sales forecasts
4. Ability to visualize performance
5. Ability to track competition

Lattice Engines goes a step further by suggesting to salespeople where future sales opportunities lie based on a rich set of internal and external data. The Intelligent Targeting module within salesPRISM enables each rep to easily identify the most promising targets (who is most likely to buy what and why?) and deliver the best content suggestions to salespeople so that they can have more relevant and productive conversations with customers.  The key to turning the recommendation into a sale is, according to Shashi, the ability to empower the salesperson with everything he or she needs to know to have the most productive conversation. That means no boilerplate pitch, but an effective conversation around business issues, effective solutions, and profitable outcomes. The ability to create dynamic, on-the-fly, needs-based talking points is called Contextual Conversations within salesPRISM.

Andrew Somosi, SVP of marketing and business development, said that when it comes to making decisions in account targeting and injecting intelligence into business conversations, there are three horizons: the salesperson’s view within his or her territory, the company’s view across all customers, and the whole market view. The trouble with relying on just our individual knowledge is that we see only what we know. With sales intelligence software,  we have the opportunity to tap into the universe of insight around us. The role of sales intelligence software is to enlighten both buyer and seller to a higher level of insight, which leads to better business decisions and happier customers.

Vital Stats:
Lattice Engines was started in 2006.

Total capital raised before this round: $1.5 million
Number of customers: 20+ Fortune 1000 companies
Integrated with salesforce.com, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Custom CRM
Number of full-time employees: 70
Key industries: High tech, business services, asset management, commercial banking
Key customers: ADP, Dell, VMware

 

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7.5 Million CRM Failures on Google Search

Here is an interesting set of numbers. Totally unscientific, but interesting. I searched for "Microsoft" in Google and got 1.05 billion results. Then I repeated the search and entered "Microsoft failure" and got 36.3 million results. Sounds high? Not as high as some of their competitors. The biggest surprise: Salesforce.com is the clear winner of this (unscientific) comparison. See for yourself and check your company's failure percentage.
 
CRM 86.3 million results
CRM Failure 7.5 million
Failure percentage: 8.7%
 
Salesforce.com 36 million results
Salesforce.com failure 701,000 results
Failure percentage: 1.9%
 
Microsoft 1.05 billion results
Microsoft failure: 36.3 million results
Failure percentage: 3.46%  
 
SAP 155 million results
SAP failure 18.6 million results
Failure percentage: 12%
 
Oracle 162 million results
Oracle failure: 24 million results
Failure percentage: 14.8%

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When Mr. Big Cancels Your Meeting, Frame Him

Today’s post was written by Oren Klaff, director of capital markets for Intersection Capital, an investment bank. In his new book, Pitch Anything, Oren talks about the interesting concept of “situational power.” For example, when a surgeon comes to a golf pro to improve his swing, the golf pro has situational power over the surgeon. Oren’s strategy is to gain situational power over the ego-intoxicated client.

 

I regularly go up against big guns who compete in the same market I do, pitching the same sort of facts and figures. But I’m the one who consistently gets the funding at a rate of about $2 million a week.  I admit it: I’m not lucky, and I don’t have a special gift for sales. I don’t even have a background in sales.  

What I do have is a good method. I use an approach called the S.T.R.O.N.G. Method, which I outline in my book, Pitch Anything.  

The first key to the method is Setting the Frame, by which I mean establishing mental structures that shape the way we see the world. Imagine looking through a window or a camera lens. As you change perspective and view, the sounds and images you encounter are interpreted by your brain in ways that are consistent with your intelligence, values, and ethics.  This is your frame, and it can clash with or become absorbed entirely by someone else’s viewpoint or frame. Using a variety of techniques, you can reestablish the frame.  

I’ll give an example of how framing works by giving you an example of the Prize Frame. 

Let’s say that you’ve done everything right so far. You’ve come into the business interaction and quickly asserted control with the people you’ve just met. You’re ready to start your pitch and are waiting for “Mr. Big” to come in, when his assistant steps in to announce, “I am so sorry. Mr. Big just called. He can’t make the meeting for another hour. He says to start without him.” She turns to leave.

This is a defining moment for you. You have just lost the frame to him, and there is nothing you can do about it; however, this does not mean that you do not have choices. Your options:

1. Go ahead with your presentation, even though you know you’ve lost the frame. Hope for the best, and hope that maybe Mr. Big will join the group toward the end of the meeting. (I would not recommend this.)
2. Stop everything. Reframe using power, time, or prize frames, or perhaps all three. Immediately take the power back. 

You’ve traveled to this meeting, prepared for it, and have an established goal. Are you willing to throw that away? No one can tell your story as well as you can. If you trust your presentation to subordinates and expect them to pass it on to the decision maker with the same force and qualities of persuasion that you have, then you are not being honest with yourself. Mr. Big must hear it from you.

This is what I usually say in this situation:  “So you guys are asking me to delay the start? Okay. I can give you fifteen minutes to get organized. But if we can’t start by then, let’s just call it a day.” Usually someone will volunteer to track down Mr. Big, and that person will try as hard as he or she can to find him and request that he join the meeting.

Or someone will say, “Let’s go ahead with the presentation, and we’ll make sure that Mr. Big is briefed.” You can’t let your frame get absorbed by this. Your response? “No, we’re not going to follow your agenda. This meeting is going to start when I say start, and it will end when I say stop. You’re going to make sure that all the right people come to the meeting on time. Then we’re only going to cover the items on my agenda, and you’re going pay attention to every minute of my presentation.” 

You only think this, of course. What you actually say is, “I can wait fifteen minutes, but then I have to leave.” That’s enough to get the message through.

The first time you think this way and say these words, you’ll be uncomfortable - no, make that terrified - and you’ll wonder if you are doing the right thing. Your heart will race, and you’ll fear the consequences of your boldness, afraid of having offended your audience. You’ll second-guess yourself and think you’ve just made an awful mistake.  

And then something awesome will happen. The people in the room will scramble, doing their best to prevent you from being offended, doing their best to keep you from leaving. They are worried about you. 

When you own the frame, others react to you. Like Peter Parker’s transformation into Spiderman, you will suddenly be empowered by an internal change that is felt by everyone in the room. Be judicious with this power as you are now in complete control of the situation. If you stand, pack up your things, and leave; it will be a social disaster for Mr. Big and his staff. So be benevolent, give Mr. Big the promised 15 minutes to arrive, and act politely but true to your frame.

And if he does not show at that point, you leave. You do not deliver your presentation, leave brochures, nor apologize. Your time has been wasted, and you don’t even need to say it. They know.

If it seems appropriate, and if this is a company with which you want to do business, tell the most important person in the room that you are willing to reschedule - on your turf. That’s right, offer to reschedule and acknowledge that these things happen (we have all missed meetings before). But for the next meeting, they must come to you.

This is a subtle framing technique known as Prizing. What you do is reframe everything your audience members do and say as if they are trying to win you over.

A few moments earlier, you learned that Mr. Big wasn’t coming to your meeting and apparently you were just the morning entertainment. Now, however, you are communicating to your buyers that they are here to entertain you. What prizing subconsciously says to your audience is, “You are trying to win my attention. I am the prize, not you. I can find a thousand buyers (audiences, investors, or clients) like you. There is only one me.” It also conveys to your audience members that if they wish to get any further information from you, they will first have to do something to earn it.

This is a powerful and unspoken expression of your high status and frame dominance. It forces your audience members to qualify themselves by telling you exactly how interested they really are. Sound outrageous? It’s not, I promise you. 

When you rotate the circle of social power 180 degrees, it changes everything.

 

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Are You a Feel-Good Millionaire?

While many people like to say that one of their goals in life is to leave the world a better place, the thought of improving the world may show lofty ambition but also hints at arrogance. Good salespeople don't aim to improve the world; instead they work at improving themselves. If self-improvement is the first step to improving society, what would be the next logical step?

We bring to the business of selling more than just the knowledge of the product, the skills of dealing with people, and the motivation to win. We also bring our own set of personal and ethical values to our customers –values that communicate who we are and what we stand for. Good salespeople know that real champions are not measured by how much money they can collect, but by how much meaning they can contribute. Real champions know that laughing all the way to the bank loses its appeal when they realize on a gloomy day that a fat checkbook won't hug them back. Zig Ziglar once said that “money can buy you the best mattress in the world, but it can’t buy you a good night’s sleep.”

During the past decade, value-added selling became key in generating more business. Given the increased complexity of our changing world, I believe that the next wave of progress will be value-added meaning. Sure, business will always demand that we produce profits, yet our minds always demand that we find meaning. Sensible business leaders help their sales teams understand the basic human need to create both.

For example, Marc Benioff, cofounder, chairman, and CEO of salesforce.com has sparked an international movement with his Salesforce Foundation. He first described his feel-good formula in his book Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well (Amazon).


Here is a four-minute video that shows how Benioff’s feel-good idea has grown around the globe:



While value-added selling creates dollars that we can take to the bank, value-added meaning creates a different currency, one we might call "feel-good dollars." While it takes a long time to become a millionaire in real dollars, we all can become overnight millionaires by earning feel-good dollars. How? You can add meaning to your customers' lives, contribute to your community, or simply engage your heart in random acts of kindness.

We build our net worth by what we collect; we increase our feel-good worth by how much we contribute. Good salespeople ask themselves, “What can I do today that will help my customers feel good about doing business with me and my company? How can I bring more meaning to my customers and my community at large? How can I add value to the profession of selling?” In 2011, replenish your treasure chest of human values by getting better at doing good. It doesn’t take a lot of time to feel like a million dollars. Become a feel-good millionaire starting today.

 

 

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