Selling Power Blog

Remembering Zig Ziglar – America’s # 1 Motivator

This morning we learned that Zig Ziglar passed away at the age of 86.

Zig Ziglar has been a positive thinker and professional motivator for many decades. His electrifying speeches had a reputation for drawing standing ovations and leaving audiences spellbound. And he relished every single word of his famous punch line, “You can get everything in life you want if you help other people get what they want.”

During our first interview I realized that Zig Ziglar was more than a motivator. He was a person with a strong, well-established guiding philosophy, one that had enduring value for everyone. Ziglar was his own best success story. It began in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He was born one of twelve children. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother with five kids too young to work.

He became one of the most successful cookware salesmen of all time but quit knocking on doors when he recognized his ability to motivate others. Here is a transcript of my first interview with Zig that was originally published in Sept 1982.

Q: In one of your speeches you mentioned that negative thinking is as common as the cold. Did you find a cure for negative thinking?

Ziglar: If you feed your mind with positive thoughts, if you are selective about the things that you choose to read, look at, or listen to, then you are taking effective action against negative thinking.

Q: So you are saying that there is a direct link between negative thinking and negative input and that people can become more selective about the input?

Ziglar: Absolutely.

Q: What is your definition of success?

Ziglar: I believe that you're successful when you've dealt with the physical, the mental and the spiritual man successfully. If I made millions and destroyed my health in the process, or if I become the best at what I do but neglect my family, I wouldn't call that success.

Q: One of your claims is that your attitudes in life determine ultimately how successful you become.

Ziglar: Yes. Dr. William James said the most important discovery of our time is the realization that by altering our attitudes we can alter our lives. There is also a Harvard University study that points out that 85 percent of the reason people are hired or get ahead in their jobs is directly related to their attitudes.

Q: I once read a magazine article about motivational speakers that stated, "Speakers are superficial on the subject of motivation - like cheerleaders at a high school rally. Thin on content, heavy on performance." How do you respond to that?

Ziglar: I think they are right on the button. A lot of people do leave without any real meat. Excitement, yes, but nothing they can chew on the next day.

As you know, the Bible is my great source, because God's plan deals with this dilemma: He never makes a promise unless he gives you a plan. This translates into the principle that motivation without direction is very frustrating. You need to have a plan in addition to the motivation. Motivation without a goal doesn't get you anywhere. Personally, I never make a promise in a book, a speech or a recording unless I give a plan so my reader or listener can achieve the promise.

Q: What is your theory of self-motivation? How do you develop it?

Ziglar: When I build a fire in my fireplace, it will burn for a while. Then I notice that there are no flames. It has died down. I get up and take my poker and shake up those logs. All of a sudden, we've got bright flames. Now, all I did was just poke them, which created some motion. The motion creates a partial vacuum and new air is pulled into the fireplace. With an additional supply of oxygen, the fire ignites, and now we've got a flame. If I hadn't done some poking, there would have been no flame.

Now, this business about all motivation being self-motivation is only partially true. You can choose among many different sources to rekindle your motivation. In other words, the environment you select and the people you associate with become large contributing factors.

Q: Do positive input and the positive attitude need to be supplemented with a sound business plan and professional skills?

Ziglar: Absolutely. Positive thinking is an optimistic hope, not necessarily based on any facts. Positive believing is the same optimistic hope, but this time based on a sound reason. Here is an example. It would be positive thinking if I said I could whip George Foreman. It would be an idiotic action if I tried to do it.

Q: I've heard many sales managers express doubts about the lasting value of a motivational seminar.

Ziglar: They're absolutely right! Motivation is not permanent. Neither is bathing. But if you bathe every day, you're going to smell good. Fifteen minutes a day of motivation from a good audiocassette or a book can make a tremendous difference in your life and give you a motivational lift every day.

Q: You said once that life is simple but not easy, and that too many people are looking for quick and easy solutions.

Ziglar: Right. I firmly believe that the best work is often done by people who don't feel like doing it.

Q: Why do you recommend that salespeople listen to your books on tape 16 times to completely absorb the full message?

Ziglar: There are several university studies revealing that two weeks after you've learned anything new, unless it's reinforced, you only remember about 4 percent of it. That's the first reason. The second reason is that while we are listening we may experience a certain mood, and our minds will seek out messages that relate to that particular mood. On another day, let's say you just made a sale; you'll be in a different mood, and a whole new range of messages of the same recording will become clear in your mind. So by listening 16 times, the odds are that you will have absorbed the entire content.

Q: Let's say I've listened 16 times to your tapes on motivation. Do I know then how to motivate myself?

Ziglar: Yes.

Q: Do I master the skills sufficiently so that I become independent of your recordings?

Ziglar: Only if you've been practicing the things we've been advocating. It's like driving a car. You don't learn to drive a car by watching.

Q: Can I graduate in self-motivation, ever?

Ziglar: I don't think so, and I don't think I've graduated, because I constantly read and constantly study. I think you could draw an analogy with eating. You can't graduate in eating. You need to continue to make choices about your input. The same is true with self-motivation. You need to continue to make choices about what level of self-motivation you want to maintain.

Q: Many salespeople have a tough time in this economy. What thoughts can you offer to approach these tough challenges more positively?

Ziglar: A good friend of mine, Calvin Hunt in Victoria, Texas, said, "You know, Zig, it's an absolute fact that when we are in an economic slump, 50 percent of all salespeople literally slow down rather than speed up their efforts. They are not motivated to do something. They lose that enthusiasm.

"Now," he continued, "when that happens, it simply means that if business is down 20 percent, but 50 percent of the salespeople are not nearly as active, your own personal prospect list is considerably higher than if there was no recession."

Q: And the winners still keep winning.

Ziglar: Absolutely. It's their discipline, their commitment to maintain a high level of motivation and their sense of direction that gets them to the top.

Tomorrow: Zig’s Keys to Sales Success and his most memorable quotes

Who Made Our 2012 Top 10 Sales Training Companies List?

 

Image via graur codrin/freedigitalphotos.net

Many B2B sales leaders could use a crash course in reality when it comes to developing their sales talent. 

Companies should not be selling to yesterday's buyer. They should be selling to the digitally empowered customer. Yet countless sales organizations continue to let their reps use old approaches that don't map to the way customers think -- or, most important, to the ways they buy. 

The purpose of a company is to serve the customer, and if you cannot speak to your customer, engage your customer, and persuade your customer, you will quickly become irrelevant.The best sales-training companies provide insight that helps reps make a real impact with Customer 2.0. To help sales leaders make smarter choices about training and developing their teams, we put together the Selling Power 2012 Top 10 Sales Training Companies list. Presented in alphabetical order, the companies are: 

The Brooks Group

Carew International

CEB

Forum Corporation

Fusion Learning

PJF Sales Training

Profit Builders

Sales Performance International (SPI)

Sales Readiness Group

ValueSelling Associates 

We believe that each of these firms has demonstrated an excellent awareness of the skills and tools that sales professionals need to succeed and remain competitive. I encourage you to download our free feature article, “Sales Training that Works: How to leverage the best sales training methods to help your team win," to learn more about how these companies might help you attain your goals in the coming year. 

5 Factors that Affect ROI on Sales Training

Today's post is by Norman Behar, Managing Partner, Sales Readiness Group, Inc., a leading professional sales training company that develops customized sales and sales management programs for business-to-business sales organizations.

 

 

 

What can a sales organization do to maximize its ROI from a sales training initiative? Start by focusing on the following five factors that create sustainable changes in behaviors.

1. Motivation

Without motivation sales professionals won’t invest the effort required to change behaviors. There are many ways an organization can help participants develop the motivation to learn new sales skills, including conducting pre-training skills assessments and establishing professional skill development plans, or coupling the training with some form of post-training certification and recognition program. Of course, perhaps the most powerful motivator is having management at all levels within the organization lend their presence and authority to the training program.

2. Customization

A common characteristic of unsuccessful sales training programs is using off-the-shelf curriculum that does not address the specific needs of the sales organization. As part of the sales training development process, the training must be linked to the goals and objectives of the organization, closely align with the sales professionals’ development needs, and customized for company and industry-specific needs. 

3. Spaced Learning

The most effective sales training occurs when the delivery is spaced over a period of time rather than within a concentrated training event. The idea of spaced learning is based on the simple yet powerful insight that training participants learn, apply, and retain new skills more effectively when training is divided into manageable chunks of content that are delivered over time. To leverage the benefits of spaced learning, many sales organizations have adopted virtual instructor-led training (VILT) as their primary method of training delivery and rely on a combination of VILT and eLearning for reinforcement. Both of these delivery methods are generally more effective, both from a learning and cost perspective, than traditional event-based training.  

4. Reinforcement

According to one study, approximately 50% of learning content is not retained after five weeks, and after 90 days, 84% of what was initially learned is lost. In order to maximize the investment in sales training, companies should implement a fully integrated reinforcement program that includes one or more of the following: (i) ongoing reinforcement sessions, (ii) sales coaching by the frontline managers, (iii) on-demand reinforcement using eLearning, and (iv) sales tools and job aides. 

5. Measurement

Measurement ultimately means holding participants accountable for changing their behaviors and adopting new skills that drive sales results. Such measurement can be done through a combination of assessments, skill simulations, and field observations. Ultimately, frontline sales managers are in the best position to observe members of their team to assess skills adoption and, based on these observations, determine if change has taken place, if it is relevant to the desired outcomes, and if it is sustained. 

Incorporating these five factors into a comprehensive sales training program will result in more sustainable adoptions of new skills and behaviors, and, ultimately, increased sales.

How Important is it for Your Salespeople to Practice?

Dave Kurlan is the bestselling author of Baseline Selling, a top-rated speaker, and a sales thought leader. His blog, Understanding the Sales Force, was a Gold Medal winner for Top Sales & Marketing Blog of 2011. He is the CEO of Objective Management Group, the global leader in sales assessments, and Kurlan Associates, a global sales development firm. 

 

 

When I was much younger, I was a pretty good trumpet player, playing professionally for nearly 10 years. I took weekly lessons from the age of 9, played in multiple bands and orchestras, and when I wasn’t taking lessons or performing, I practiced. And I felt I should have practiced more; a lot more. I could have been so much better...

Although baseball was my favorite, I spent most summers on the tennis courts, playing with anyone and everyone, until I entered college as the #2 on the school’s tennis team. It wasn't good enough though, and I felt like I should have practiced more; a lot more.

I was not going to be a star in music or tennis.  But what if I was?  Would I have been finished with all of that practicing? No way. The greatest athletes and musicians still hire the best coaches in the world and practice harder and even more frequently! I would have done the same because that’s exactly what I did when I started my sales development business 27 years ago.

By contrast, I am a terrible golfer. Why? I never practice. It’s not very different from the sales profession. Salespeople are very much like me, the golfer. The typical salesperson receives, on average, 3 days of sales training -- in their entire career. I've interviewed thousands of salespeople and most have never had a single day of professional sales training. And practice? There has not been a single client whose salespeople had been practicing the art and science of selling before I required them to begin practicing.

Why aren't salespeople getting enough professional training? In most companies, ego, fear and money are the three biggest reasons. Sales leadership, although completely lacking in the skills required, believe it’s their job to train their salespeople. Upper management is frequently afraid of change, even when it will bring about a change in results. And many companies simply won’t invest money to develop their salespeople.

Why aren't they coached the way they need to be? Although coaching is the number 1 job of sales managers today, most have never learned the proper way to coach, instead using a home grown approach and applying it on an as needed basis.

Why aren't they practicing? Believe it or not, most sales managers are afraid of upsetting the apple cart. They believe that if they required their veteran salespeople to practice they will have a rebellion on their hands.

Are your salespeople practicing each day? 

Objective Management Group has assessed more than 550,000 salespeople and according to their data 74% of all salespeople are completely ineffective and many of them shouldn't even be in sales. They get by for a variety of reasons, among them:

• Low Expectations from management
• They are no worse than the other ineffective salespeople at their company
• Some are order takers and they take enough orders
• Some are major account managers and the accounts were previously established
• Some possess intangibles and have simply developed strong relationships over decades of work
• Many work for industry leading companies - lowest price, best reputation, highest quality product, lowest risk - and they don't have to sell, as much as show up and quote
• Some bounce from company to company never staying long enough to actually fail

Are your underperforming salespeople getting by? Can any of them become performers?  You can find out with a sales force evaluation. Even better, why not join me for my annual Sales Leadership Summit?

 

4 Sales Management Resolutions for 2012

Many sales managers today are finding themselves leading teams that are not as effective as the
competition. Why is that? 

It all starts with the sales process. When the sales process is weighed down by outmoded methodologies, leadership, and people, your sales reps are more vulnerable to failure.

If you haven't already started, now is a perfect time to shake off the dust and get in gear for 2012. Here are my four New Year's resolutions for sales managers -- each one is based on changes I've seen in sales management in the past year. Use them to get your team on the path to sales success today. 

Resolution #1
I will create content that attracts customers.

Many sales teams are struggling because they work for companies that are failing to respond to the new ways that customers are buying. I routinely talk to sales leaders who do not see the need to optimize their B2B websites to capture and follow up on inbound leads. They don’t take advantage of marketing automation software. They have no online sales channel. They think social media is a waste of time and have little or no presence on Twitter. They’d rather have their reps out selling than blogging or connecting with new prospects on LinkedIn. Yet these are all steps that leading companies are taking to engage with an audience and turn prospects into loyal customers.

Keep this in mind: Good content stimulates curiosity, sparks online conversations, and encourages "likes" and online engagement. Seize the opportunity in 2012 to become the conversation leader and content leader in your field. In 2012, good content will pave the road to more closed sales.

Resolution #2 
I will create messaging that gets our customers to open their minds.

Right before a meeting, your reps should be able to pull up vital information about the prospect’s company and industry in order to set the stage for a relevant dialogue. Access to the right information is the first step. Translating this information into messages that engage and persuade customers is the second step -- that's an area where many salespeople come up short. 

Last month at the Sales Strategies in a Social & Mobile World Conference, I invited sales executives from sponsor companies to deliver a one-minute elevator pitch to the entire audience onstage. While we heard a number of creative and compelling messages, some of these pitches didn't have traction. 

In 2012 you want to make sure that your salespeople are able to deliver a message that opens their customers' minds. You also want to make sure they will follow up with a clear value proposition. If they don't, their clients won't open their wallets.  

Resolution #3
I will create top performing sales reps. 

A recent report on how successful companies are creating opportunities for new and better sales shows that leading organizations are opting for short and timely training programs that can be disseminated virtually and accessed at any time. If you create a winning sales culture – one that empowers reps to learn new skills through training, share collective knowledge, and tap internal resources that can help them sell more effectively – the top performers will come knocking.

Resolution #4
I will hold everyone responsible for the sale companywide. 

Another mental shift that many sales managers need to make is that sales is not an island. Because today’s customer has often completed up to 80% of the buying cycle before even coming into contact with a sales rep, it’s important that all departments be empowered to act as sales support. 

If finance and legal work in silos it will be impossible to create an effective sales negotiation strategy. If sales and marketing are not aligned, it will be hard to optimize your company's sales potential.

Today, sales management success is about being social and mobile. You can’t always control when and where customers find you, but you can control your social presence and your level of engagement. This is great news for sales managers who want to succeed in 2012. Sales success has always been an art, but it is now equally about science. As a sales manager, your job is not to get there before the competition or win the war on price. Your job is to equip your team to find and follow the right opportunities, engage with prospects early and with intelligence, and create an overall culture of success.  

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Closing the Gaps in Lead Nurturing

This guest blog post is by Baxter Denney, principal of Marketologist, which provides strategic marketing consulting. Baxter is a marketing automation and demand management expert. 

 

 

Lead nurturing is a largely familiar term among the marketing automation software crowd, but in case you are new to the game, here is a great description from Eloqua: "At its core, lead nurturing is the process of cultivating leads that are not yet ready to buy."

The approach to setting up a lead-nurturing program is pretty straightforward:

• Identify who you will nurture.
• Identify how you will do it.
• Create content.
• Set things in motion.
• See what happens.

Many organizations new to the idea of marketing automation and lead nurturing will take this route; however, they will be doing themselves a disservice. Let's go back to the Eloqua definition and the concept of cultivating leads. The word "cultivate" implies a sort of building process. It is not a hit-and-run instant. For marketers to truly cultivate a lead, they need to influence the buying-decision process at every step throughout the customer's lifecycle. The most powerful way to influence the buying-decision process is to strategically provide targeted content to your prospects based on where they are in the process.

Baxter Denney of Marketologist works with companies every day, helping them set up quality lead-nurturing programs that do just this. Here is an outline of his method.

First, he says, you have to visualize every step in the buying-decision process. He suggests using the image of a funnel, something any of us in the sales and marketing world should be very familiar with. Below is an example.

The funnel and stages may vary by organization, but the point is to visualize each stage and identify points where marketing can add value and influence by nurturing. This is what Denney calls a gap analysis. He provides an example, using a fictitious company called Webert. He looked at the current content-nurturing program, comparing that to the number of leads that ended up converting. Here is a chart showing what he found.

Overall, this program looks pretty good; however, there is always room for improvement. In this next image, Denney illustrates the places where marketing is either completely absent or has the potential to modify the message to better reflect the buyer's stage in the buying process.

With this analysis done, Webert can now begin constructing a revised program that will nurture these identified gaps. The next step is to develop (or repurpose) content that has both a meaningful and appropriate message that will engage buyers.

Finally, it is vital that marketing keeps sales involved in this process. When doing the gap analysis, pull the sales team in so that it can provide real-time feedback. Perhaps there are additional gaps the team can identify. Additionally, sales can communicate to marketing where the most support is needed. Then marketing is able to create a nurturing program accordingly. With both sales and marketing on the same page, companies will be able to optimize their nurturing program in order to convert the most leads possible.

For Denney's full post, see the Marketing Automation Software Guide blog.

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Build a “Commissions Community” to Achieve Revenue Growth

Today’s guest post is by Talent Builders CEO, Barbara Giamanco. She is the co-author of The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media and capped her corporate career at Microsoft, where she led sales teams and coached executives. Throughout her sales career, Barb has sold $1B in products and services.

Special note: Register to hear Barb speak on Tuesday, April 24 during a live webinar: "5 Ways to Create a Winning Connection with Qualified Prospects." 

 

Here’s a question for all the sales leaders out there: Why it is so darn difficult to capture, leverage, and pass on the success methodology of your sales superstars? 

For the past decade, I’ve worked as a consultant with hundreds of sales leaders from top enterprise companies like Georgia Pacific, GE Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UPS Capital Insurance Agency, Earthlink Business, Microsoft, and PepsiCo. They all say the same thing: there just doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get their top producers to share what they know with the rest of the sales team. 

Over the course of my 20-year sales career in the tech industry (during which I sold $1 billion total in products and services) I’ve personally felt this frustration many times. As the landscape of sales has changed, I think I’ve finally figured out why this frustration exists. Simply put, companies and sales leaders are not going out of their way to use technology to build what I call a “commissions community.” 

When I began my sales career as an individual contributor, the freedom of not being chained to a 9-to-5 schedule was heaven. I loved being responsible only for me. I knew that the extra effort that I put into my sales activities meant higher commissions in my pocket, and that’s exactly what I wanted. I’m betting that many members of your sales team feel exactly as I did. After all, top producers respond to three main motivating factors: 

1. The potential to earn more money
2. High-level recognition
3. Awards

Sales management can talk all day long about the importance of team collaboration, but let’s face it: that isn’t how sales reps are typically compensated. And why should top performers be asked to carry the bottom twenty percent of the team? Before I got started in sales, I’d worked with peers who dragged their feet on the job, and I hated knowing we were paid roughly the same amount of money even though I busted my butt day in and day out. Rewarding sales performance simply on the basis of individual contributions runs counter to a collaborative culture. 

Another major stumbling block that I see -- particularly among dispersed enterprise sales teams -- is communication. Conference calls and email exchanges can only take a sales team so far. There’s just no excuse for this in an era where information travels in real time. Part of the reason I decided to co-write a book specifically about sales and social media is because I realized that many sales teams are failing to adapt to today’s selling environment. Your salespeople are selling amid constant digital disruption, and B2B buyers are relying almost exclusively on the social web to search for solutions before they make purchasing decisions. In other words, buyers are deciding what they need and why, without any interaction with a salesperson. “Customer 2.0” expects salespeople to have a global view of their organization and be well versed on their specific issues and challenges. This amplifies the need for team collaboration and support. Lacking a formalized process, platform, or location for internal knowledge sharing and retention, the sales rep is left to sink or swim. And the “I can do it on my own” sales performers who try to manage the customer relationship and sales cycle without internal support or guidance and mentorship from managers and peers may find they are losing more deals than they close.

Now imagine if you could help your top performers see actual, measurable benefits from their investment in a culture of collaboration. Imagine their reaction if they knew that sharing their knowledge with the rest of the team could open the door to earning higher commissions and winning more top awards.The problem is that many sales leaders are not taking advantage of the new kinds of social learning tools that would make these things possible for top performers. A social learning platform facilitates companywide communication in real time and also serves as a repository for valuable information that reps can tap at any time. For example, reps who are stuck in a code red, “I need an answer right now or I’ll lose the attention of this prospect” situation can quickly log on and conduct a search among information that’s been logged in by top performers or experts within the company, start a real-time chat with a peer (or even someone in marketing or customer service), or tap into a wealth of recorded training sessions to find a great answer without having to wait for their sales manager to get a free moment for a phone call or answer an email. 

Aside from the intrinsic value of feeling good about coaching and mentoring their peers, how does the sales superstar benefit from taking time out to share experience and knowledge with others on a social learning platform? Some examples of what they might gain include: 

• an increased potential to close their own deals more quickly (they can actually use the benefits of a social learning platform to enhance what they’re already doing well), 
• larger commissions in their pocket, 
• greater visibility with senior management, 
• a handy way to retain their top spot in the sales organization.

Sales teams win more when they work together as a community. When sales leaders start embracing social learning, their teams will be able to share ideas and brainstorm approaches to winning sales opportunities. This is the key to unlocking the power of a “commissions community,” where everyone is motivated to put in their best effort to win on an individual as well as a team basis. But sales superstars need to have a clear understanding of the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) factor.

Email Barb at barb@talentbuildersinc.com or find her on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also hear Barb speak on Tuesday, April 24 during a live webinar: "5 Ways to Create a Winning Connection with Qualified Prospects." 

John Henry Patterson: The Father of Professional Selling Part I

One of the greatest salespeople of all time was born nearly a century and a half ago on a farm in Ohio. His name was John Henry Patterson, and if he were alive today he'd fire most of the salespeople reading this post.

Brilliant, innovative, dictatorial, and mercurial, Patterson is best remembered today as the founder of the National Cash Register Company (NCR).

John Henry Patterson’s favorite quote: “You must make your mark on this earth, and, if you have never done so, it is simply because you neglected to use the powers you have, or you have neglected to develop them.”

More significant but virtually forgotten is the fact that this mustachioed, bespectacled whirlwind of a man invented modern selling. The sales-training manual, canned presentation, protected territory, and quota system are all products of Patterson's fertile mind. So are sales meetings, direct mail, testimonials, industrial advertising, and publicity.

So numerous were his contributions during his tenure at the NCR (1884-1922) and so vast was his influence that Patterson may rightly be called the Father of Professional Selling. And perhaps even the Father of the Modern American Corporation, for many of those whom Patterson trained went on to found corporations such as IBM, (Patterson’s sales manager was Thomas Watson Sr.) and Burroughs.

Single-handedly and often opposed by business associates and the salespeople who benefited from his genius, Patterson created the greatest selling machine this country has ever seen. It may even be said that no company today approaches the marketplace efficiency that Patterson's NCR achieved in its heyday. Too frequently the practices he pioneered are preached but not followed.

SALES PROFESSIONAL FIRST AND FOREMOST

Few companies have had more inauspicious beginnings than the NCR. When Patterson, at the age of 40, bought controlling interest in the failing Dayton, OH, firm in 1884, there was literally no market demand for cash registers. Fewer than 400 had ever been sold, for several reasons.

The NCR factory employed women who worked shorter hours than men, and they were allowed to bring their children, who spent time playing in the NCR nursery.





Few retail businesses, the targeted market, appreciated the value of a device they viewed as a kind of Rube Goldberg machine. Clerks who felt the cash register represented a mechanical intruder sent to spy on their integrity were openly hostile to salesmen who came through the door lugging a demonstration cash register. Poor craftsmanship sometimes forced the return of thousands of dollars worth of machines.

Finally, there was the problem of the salespeople themselves. Slovenly, disorganized, ill-prepared, and uncommitted to either the company or product, they almost seemed to stand in the way of sales.

These problems would have sunk most entrepreneurs with a fledgling business, but not Patterson. He was one of those rare human beings whose vision and resoluteness enabled him to achieve divine solutions where other men saw only a quagmire of frustration.

It was with the same single-mindedness that Patterson set out to transform the NCR. A salesman dedicated to professionalism, he believed that improving salespeople was the surest path to success, and that was where he concentrated his efforts. Patterson set out to change the art and science of selling.

CREATING A DEMAND

Patterson was one of the first in the country who was sold – through personal experience – on the value of the cash register. A pair of registers he bought for his retail store cut his debt from $16,000 to $3,000 in six months and helped him show a profit of $5,000. It was that experience that led him to buy the company.

But Patterson was virtually alone as a true believer. So when he bought the company that would become the NCR, his first task was to create awareness of and then demand for the product.

Patterson did this in a way that stunned the business community of the day; through the heavy (even relentless) use of advertising, direct mail, and publicity. In so doing, he raised advertising and promotion to unprecedented levels of sophistication and created models still in use today.

THE POWER OF DIRECT MARKETING

Often it was a process of trial and error. In his first direct-mail effort, Patterson spent thousands of dollars developing a circular for 5,000 prospects. "It was a good piece, but it did not contain a picture of the cash register," said Patterson. NCR received not one response from that campaign.

Still convinced of the value of direct mail, Patterson continued his experiments, learning as he went and distributing circulars by the millions. Some circulars were in letter form, some included pictures, and others dramatized the use of the cash register. Many were in the form of publications directed to specific groups of retailers. To thwart antagonistic retail clerks, Patterson devised the idea of using plain envelopes and often had the pieces mailed from cities other than Dayton.

In one of his most inspired moments, Patterson hit on the idea of incorporating praise from satisfied customers in direct mail. These testimonials proved among the strongest cases ever devised to sway prospects. They were “living” arguments to buy.




Patterson spent a fortune on paving the way for his salespeople through the mail. Stockholders and employees tore their hair out at that expense, and the post office had to hire additional postal clerks just to handle the influx from NCR mailings. Not content to rely on direct mail, Patterson turned his attention to print advertising. At the time, advertising was most notable for its stuffiness; reliance on baroque graphics; and lengthy, tedious copy. Patterson did for advertising what Frank Lloyd Wright did for architecture – simplified it and made it easier on the eye. Not incidentally, he vastly improved its effectiveness.

Patterson's motto for NCR ad copywriters was "be direct and simple." The copy was kept brief and to-the-point. Ads were printed in plain type styles and were broken up with ample blank space. Patterson liked pictures galore in his ads, provided they were pleasant, upbeat, and "something out of the ordinary" to attract attention.

Patterson wanted his ads to sell the need, not the product. He insisted on simplicity and single-minded focus, saying, “No ad is big enough to sell two ideas.”

In conjunction with direct-mail and print advertising, Patterson also developed the industrial publicity release. "Business is news," he believed, and so he hired publicists to generate articles by the score on NCR products and activities.

In the end, Patterson's "wild ideas" about promotion were upheld. Prospects who had never before heard of the cash register, let alone NCR, were regularly bombarded with a cleverly coordinated mixture of direct-mail flyers, print ads, and NCR articles. Those who had previously been unaware of the product suddenly began to develop a need for it.

Unfortunately, the sales force wasn't always in shape to take advantage of Patterson's ingenious efforts. Many knew less about NCR products than did the copywriters. (See part II tomorrow)

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How the Apple iPad Will Change How you Sell, Work and Play

In a few days, you will be able to hold an iPad in your hands and experience a similar rush that people get when they hold a newborn baby. Over the last three months, Apple’s market cap has steadily grown ahead of Google’s. Today, Apple is worth a whopping $33 billion more. While Google delivers what we want to know, Apple creates magic that we can hold in our hands. The magic of finger-surfing the Internet, expanding photos with two fingers, flicking through emails, and making spam disappear with one touch – wow, what a great feeling!

Here is a great demo of the iPad:




Here is my prediction of what the iPad will do for salespeople:

1. It will give you instant star power. The moment the first iPad leaves a store, the world will be divided into those who own the iPad and those who don’t. The iPad holders will be seen as the thought leaders, the innovators, and the super-cool people.

2. The iPad will change your life. Emails will be faster, photos will be bigger, movies will be more fun, music will be easier to consume, Web surfing will be more enjoyable. Reading books, newspapers, and magazines will be far more enjoyable. (I have not used my Kindle in more than two months).

3. The iPad is the first computer that doesn’t make you wait. It comes to life the instant you turn it on. This is a vast improvement over the traditional PC, which keeps users staring at a screen for two to three minutes before anything happens.

4. Touching your iPad is a huge leap forward in customer engagement. Salespeople can quickly access all the information the customer wants to see. Imagine going on a sales call with an iPad, showing video testimonials or product demos. Soon you’ll be able to conduct a Webinar on your iPad, sharing your screen with customers on another continent.

5. The iPad will become your surfboard for cloud computing. You can expect amazing iPad business applications that will span lead management, marketing, sales process, analytics, comp management, sales enablement, sales strategy, and sales training. Imagine sitting on a park bench after a client visit, flipping through your online configurator, creating a proposal, and sending it to your customer with the flick of your fingers.

6. All iPhone apps will run on the iPad. Google Earth, Salesforce, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter will be available on the iPad. Our new application Sales Strategizer Pro will run on the iPad to help salespeople design a completely customized account strategy. (Disclosure: This is a Selling Power technology.)

The probable downside:

The iPad will accelerate our rapacious desire for more. The core philosophy of IT designers is to deliver more. The Internet delivers more pages than we can consume in a lifetime, more movies than we can watch, more books than we can read, more music than we have time to listen to, more images than we have time to admire, more games than we can play.

What we don’t get from the iPad is “enough.”

While books have back covers that let us know that we’ve had enough to read on a subject, the iPad will feed us more in the most pleasant and effortless way, whether we need it or not. There is no shutoff built into the iPad that is automatically activated when we have had enough.

Who will be the master, we or the iPad?

Here is an interesting question: Will we be able to use the iPad so it will add more value to our lives, or will the iPad turn into a subtle thief of time that reduces our chances of reaching our goals?

Getting new, shiny objects like the iPad creates, in a very small way, the illusion of getting a new baby. Our future is filled with hope. The big question is, what are the chances of the roles being reversed, where grownups turn into hopelessly dependent babies? Will our spouse or significant other require an iTaser to shock us back into reality?

In case you’re interested, I just ordered my iPad online.

Question: Are you planning to get an iPad? Share how you will use it to drive up sales productivity.

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The Ten Causes of Sales and Marketing Misalignment

Every year CSO Insights surveys more than 1,800 sales organizations, and every year the survey indicates that many sales and marketing organizations are operating in separate silos. Here are the 10 obstacles that stand in the way of sales and marketing alignment:

1. The CEO who does not insist on unified reporting on the company’s sales pipeline. Why? Because most CEOs don’t know that CRM technology offers pipeline visibility and marketing software offers a clear insight into the results of each marketing campaign. The best part is that the marketing software can be seamlessly integrated with CRM.

2. Salespeople who complain that the sales leads generated from marketing are useless. Why? Because their sales manager is unwilling or unable to diagnose the root of the problem. Many companies have cured this problem with simple solutions such as A) have marketing people spend a day in the field with salespeople, and B) have sales and marketing people spend one hour together to define the word “prospect.”

3. Marketing people who believe that they know what’s best for the sales force. Why? Because some marketing managers are proud of their analytical faculties. They trust their “instincts” and therefore believe that they know best how to fill the top of the funnel and why leads get dropped from the pipeline. The solution: Collaborate with sales and establish a shared responsibility model for pipeline dynamics.

4. Salespeople try to reduce complexity; marketing people tend to move in the opposite direction. Why? At the end of a series of engagements, salespeople want their prospects to say one word: yes. Marketing people want to find many different ways to presell prospects through a complex arrangement of stories and messages that resonate in the carefully targeted prospect’s mind. The simple solution: Let your customers tell the story in person, online, through social media, on video, in virtual reality.

5. Sales and marketing can’t agree on the barriers they face in the market. Why? In many instances the barriers are self-imposed. For example, in one large company, a strategic decision made at the top called for a bundling of solutions. Marketing launched a massive advertising campaign, salespeople received new playbooks and training, yet the campaign failed, since salespeople sold individual units that earned them higher commissions. The solution: Create a premortem analysis prior to large initiatives.

6. Both sales and marketing lose track of how customers buy. Why? Because sales managers cling to sales models that worked in the past, and marketing managers feed into the established (but obsolete) sales process. The solution: Align the sales process with the customer’s buying process.

7. No clarity about the value proposition. Why? When you have few customers, it is hard to define what your customers value. When you have many customers, it can become more difficult, since each market segment values your solution differently. The solution: Ask your customers, “How are we doing?” Spending a day with customers leads to more clarity than spending a week studying market-research reports.

8. Inability to speak the same language. Why? Salespeople are concerned with closing deals; marketing managers are concerned with opening opportunities. Salespeople believe that a lead is a prospect who has a need, a budget, the authority to buy, and is willing to buy within a short time frame. Marketing believes that a lead is someone who is supposed to buy based on marketing research and demographic information.

9. Inability to agree on the best tactics and strategies to win in this economy. Why? Nobody can figure out where the economy is headed. Chief sales officers are preoccupied with getting better leads into the pipeline so they can drive up sales. Marketing managers get often sidetracked by shiny objects, such as new marketing software, building online communities, new advertising messages, analyzing the competition, creating a social-media strategy, etc. The solution: Create a monthly review system for the simple purpose of aligning priorities.

10. Sales and Marketing managers tend to forget their mission. Why? In the heat of the battle for higher sales and greater market share, we forget the noble purpose of our company. Peter Drucker once said, “The purpose of business is to create a customer.” Without a customer we don’t have a business. The solution to sales and marketing alignment is to remember who signs our paychecks: the customer. This is a good enough reason to take the initiative today, reach out to your counterpart, and align sales and marketing around your company’s original mission and vision.

More solutions: Sam Reese, CEO of Miller Heiman on the subject of alignment. It’s only five minutes, but these ideas could be worth five million.

Question: What ideas would you like to share from your extensive experience with sales and marketing alignment? Please contribute. Click on comments and share your thoughts now.

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