Hard Work Wont Get You Ahead


Late last week, I had several different challenging projects on my plate, each with fast-approaching deadlines. Feeling the pressure, I awoke earlier than usual in the morning and got to my desk by 7:00 am.

Four hours later, I was still sitting there, barely having budged from my chair. To my surprise and frustration, I still hadn’t finished my project.

At first, I attributed my failure to the difficulty of the task. But the more I thought about it, the less that made sense.

A Faulty Instinct to Work Harder
Suddenly, it dawned on me. Anxious about all the demands on my plate, I’d defaulted into a way of working that doesn’t work.

I hunkered down, powered through, stayed the course. Along the way, something insidious, inevitable, and mostly unconscious happened.

I started reading emails, and responding to them. I remembered little things from my to-do list, and decided they were actually quite urgent. I made some phone calls. I rewrote my to-do list. Feel familiar?

This isn’t the sort of thing that should happen to me. I run a company called The Energy Project, and we’re in the business of energizing individuals and organizations to be more productive and higher performing by learning to balance work with strategic periods of renewal.

Alas, I’m also human. I violated the very lessons we teach.

Professionals live today in a world of relentless demand. To meet their obligations, their default instinct – including mine, if the pressure gets high enough – is simply to push harder.

The problem is human beings aren’t meant to operate the way computers do: at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time. To the contrary, people perform best when they pulse rhythmically between spending and renewing energy – not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

Unfortunately, rest and renewal get no respect in the organizational world. Most managers view the need for downtime as weakness. The problem is that when their employees work without pause, they very quickly get decreasing incremental returns on each hour invested.

Just as I did, you stop thinking as clearly, creatively, and strategically, and you take more time to get less accomplished.

Though you may not realize it, you’re physiologically designed to operate in cycles of approximately 90 minutes, during which you move from higher to lower alertness. These phases are called “ultradian rhythms.”

Don’t Ignore Your Body’s Signals
When you need a break, your body sends you clear signals, including fidgetiness, hunger, drowsiness and loss of focus. But if you’re like most people, you override them. Instead, you find artificial ways to pump up your energy: caffeine, foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, and your body’s own stress hormones – adrenalin, noradrenalin and cortisol.

Relying on these hormones for energy prompts the state we all know as “fight or flight.” It’s great for escaping danger, and terrible for performance. In fight or flight, people become less capable of thinking clearly and reflectively, more emotionally volatile, and burn down their energy at a rapid rate.

The Value of Working in Spurts
The counterintuitive secret to great, sustainable performance is to live like a sprinter. In practice, that means working with the high intensity, uninterrupted, for periods no longer than 90 minutes, and then taking a break to renew and refuel.

For the first several books I wrote, I typically sat at my desk for 10 or even 12 hours at a time. There was no way to stay fully engaged the whole time, so I found ways to distract myself along the way. Each of the books took me at least a year to write.

For my most recent book, I wrote without interruption for three 90-minute periods in the morning, and then took a break in between each one. I wrote no more than 4 ½ hours a day, and I finished the book in less than six months.

Obviously, it’s not possible for most people in most companies to work in a series of uninterrupted sprints the way I did. Let me challenge you instead to try a smaller experiment.

For the next week, take on your most challenging task first thing in the morning, for 60 to 90 minutes, uninterrupted. Then take a break. You’ll get an amazing amount done – and feel better the rest of the day.  By Tony Schwartz

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2012
05/03
CATEGORY
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Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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Solving the Sales Conundrum…


Jeff Hoffman explains the primacy of data, the gap between interest and desire, the power of introverts, and other things fast-growth CEOs don’t understand about selling.

The relationship between growth and sales seems easy enough: Sell more stuff and your business gets bigger. But it’s not quite so simple—and a failure to understand that could be the difference between success and failure, says Jeff Hoffman, founder of MJ Hoffman and Associates, a Boston-based sales consultancy. Hoffman, who teaches sales at Harvard and MIT and works with companies large and small (he recently created a sales-training program for Google), recently spoke to Inc. magazine executive editor Larry Kanter about what sales-conscious CEOs need to understand to navigate today’s market.

What’s the biggest thing CEOs of growing companies don’t understand about sales?
When you’re going through periods of high growth, the sales are coming in in such a frenzy that it can almost seem as if every deal is happening a different way—say, through a referral, a marketing event, a lead, a list, etc. A CEO can easily come to the conclusion that there’s a randomness to the growth. And that’s very dangerous.

Why is that?
Because even in the hottest markets, there are trends and shapes to the sales process that can allow you to determine what your optimal customer acquisition looks like. And that is critical when you start to scale your business.

So it’s not just a question of finding customers and selling them things and then finding more customers and selling them more things.

There are generally significant events that occur in a relationship between a buyer and a seller. In the business-to-business world, it might be a meeting or a product demonstration. In the business-to-consumer world, it’s a click-through or a request for information. For a business owner, it is very important to understand which of these events have the greatest impact, which ones really accelerate the sales process. You want to be collecting data on every step of every sale and looking at that data, and constantly fine-tuning the process.

In practical terms, what do you advise entrepreneurs to do?
I like to think in terms of an abbreviation that’s been around for years—AIDA, or attention, interest, desire, action. No matter what you’re selling, you have to guide a prospect through each of those emotional states, and each one requires a different focus, a different language, and a different strategy. In the simplest terms, you want to make sure that you’re building your process so that each of those letters is being represented.

So how are you getting your customers’ attention? Is it through a website, word of mouth, through buying lists, through a direct-sales organization? From there, how do you get them interested? How do you communicate why they should give you their attention? Maybe it’s through demos or free trials or testimonials. Then it gets even harder—most young companies have the biggest hurdle getting from interest to desire, getting someone to go from understanding what you do to actually wanting it. And even if you can create some kind of event or process around that, you’re not done. You have to have another strategy or event around the customer actually buying.

Now, all these things can happen on one phone call or one meeting or one visit to your website. But all four of them have to be contemplated.

And in your experience, that does not happen?
Generally, people make educated guesses. But what’s really important is that you start asking, What is happening here? Am I getting too much drop-off at a certain stage? Am I seeing a bottleneck at any particular point? Do certain events speed things up or slow things down? Capturing these things in real time is the difference between companies that have high growth, stumble, and then die and companies that have high growth, maintain it, and continue to grow exponentially.

You talk about capturing and responding to this data in real time. How do you do that?
There’s a wide variety of CRM and automated tools available. But even without technology, you need to make sure that you’re recording the activity aligned with each of those four stages. So if you believe that the best way to get the attention of a customer is through a database and outbound calling, you have to capture your team’s efforts. It could be as simple as tracking every call in a spreadsheet. But you need to generate numbers that allow you to calculate your conversion rate. Because there are two ways to take advantage of a sales process: You can increase the volume of activity in each of these four stages; or you improve the efficiency of each of these stages.

In other words, how many interests does it take to get someone to actually desire your product? Imagine you’re selling high-level enterprise software that has a starting price in the millions of dollars and takes 18 months to sell. Imagine the power if you can start to shrink the time between interest and desire by 10 percent. The same holds for products or services with much shorter sales cycles.

A-I-D-A makes sense, but it strikes me as being as old as selling itself. You can imagine the same calculus going on in the mind of a rug merchant in the Grand Bazaar in Constantinople. But here we are now in 2012, in a very tricky marketplace.
You have to be more surgical than ever. There is a tremendous amount of consumer fatigue. People are subjected to a tremendous number of attempts, being made by all kinds of organizations, to get their attention. At the same time, the buyer has a variety of ways to self-educate and even self-buy. In the old days, the sales organization owned the whole process. Now, a customer can make decisions and purchases with no company involvement at all. The salesperson’s ability to touch the customer has changed. So you have to be much more creative.

Does this require a different kind of salesperson than we’ve become accustomed to?
I think it may. When I was coming up in sales, the classic great rep was that kind of C student who had three jobs to put himself through school, who wasn’t book smart but was street smart. But I’m seeing a lot of companies doing things differently, moving the profile to someone with extraordinary intelligence. In the current environment, the best reps may be those who are curious, can expand a meeting to talk about things that they may not have been prepared to talk about, who can learn from customers and can get deeply engaged. And those people probably are not the old-style reps.

How do you get someone who is reluctant to sell to embrace sales?
I often coach people to think less in terms of selling than learning. Once you approach your prospects and customers from the point of view of “what can I learn from you,” you will feel anxiety start to melt away. No one wants to talk about what a salesperson thinks will work. But prospects do want to talk about what they think will work. Salespeople need to indulge that.

I wonder if the negative impressions many of us have about salespeople stem from the way they are compensated. If the bulk of your pay comes from commissions, doesn’t that add a kind of intensity or even desperation to the process?
Ultimately, sales commissions are designed to inspire what most people have difficulty doing—closing. Who would subject him- or herself to hundreds of no’s a week, many of them in a rude fashion, if he or she didn’t also have the promise of great earnings? Now, there are different ways to structure compensation. Some organizations are beginning to tie compensation not only to the sale but to the life cycle of the customer—which mitigates the impulse to get bad deals just to get a deal done and collect the commission.

Speaking of deals, many companies seem obsessed with the big deal: identifying it, chasing it, closing it. And then moving on to the next big deal. Is that a problem?
It’s sexy—you’re the big whale hunter. We all want to know if you closed Ford, if you closed Hilton. It’s a big brand, and there’s also the hope that it can have a domino effect and lead to more sales. So organizations put a high value on these whales. But I often advise companies not to make a big investment in the whale hunting. The most profitable space for many organizations is the next tier down—the large midmarket account space. A $1 million deal looks better than a $100,000 deal. But if the $100,000 deal can be closed with four steps and the $1 million deal takes 30, which is the better path to success?

So I often advise people to go after the big whales but do it judiciously. If you’ve determined that in your market there are 100 big whales and 10,000 midmarket opportunities, you should spend your resources in the same ratio.

Inc.com

Larry Kanter

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2012
04/16
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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You Just Lost a Big Client, Now What?


Learn from four big mistakes. Then get up, dust off, and jump back in the game.

We just lost a big and important customer. We don’t lose customers very often, and if we do, in most cases, I can rationalize why the client made the wrong decision to leave us. In this case, I had no excuses—the client made the right decision, and it hurt.

For the last 18 months, we at the Beryl Companies have been working on a completely new technology platform that will impact all aspects of our current and future business. It is very exciting and will further solidify our leadership role in the health care services industry. Unfortunately, our clients don’t really care what happens two years from now. They have current needs that must be met, and if not, they’ll bolt.

Here are the mistakes and hard lessons we learned this time:

1. We chose not to invest in short-term solutions.

We had a few products that, while not big revenue generators for the company, were not performing well. Our clients were frustrated to the point that it was starting to impact the larger revenue business we had with them. Rather than make short-term investments that might have solved their current needs, we chose to invest the time and money in the longer-term solution. Big mistake. Long-term projects always take longer and cost more than expected, and can’t come at the expense of current offerings.

2. We didn’t deliver on the promises we made.

Clients are generally very patient and reasonable. But when you make a promise and don’t deliver, you lose trust, and credibility. It is unacceptable to let a deadline pass without proactive communication. If you make a promise, deliver on it. If you can’t, communicate in advance, and you’ll likely find a client very willing to negotiate a new date.

3. We were arrogant enough to believe we were untouchable.

By most accounts, we are the best in our industry and have a stellar reputation. We have a client retention rate in the high 90s. Even still, if we let our guard down and lose trust, our clients will leave us. There is a big difference between loyalty and satisfaction. Loyal customers will forgive mistakes and stay with you—they won’t shop. Satisfied clients are open to alternatives, and when things go south and another option presents itself, the risk of a change is lower than the risk of staying with you. Always look to build trust and loyalty.

4. We didn’t listen.

In general, silence is not golden. A quiet client is an unengaged client and should raise a red flag. What’s worse is a client who is engaged, tells you exactly where you stand, and then you still don’t deliver. That’s what happened with us. We should always listen, and always respond to our clients.

What are the positives that came out of this situation? First, we were fortunate that this client doesn’t represent a large chunk of our revenue (less than 1%). We learned that lesson years ago when the loss of a big client took us two years to recover from.

Second, this situation gave our team and me a needed kick in the pants. We’re learning from our mistakes, reprioritizing which projects we need to fix immediately, and putting in place stronger triggers so we know when a client is “at risk”. In the end, I know we’ll be better for it.

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By Paul Spiegelman | Inc

2012
04/11
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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Virtues of the Quiet Entrepreneur


You don’t have to be loud to be a great leader.

Think back to your elementary school report cards. Does this sound familiar? “Linda needs to work on deciding when it is appropriate to speak.” “Malcolm needs to contribute more in class.”

In our culture, expressiveness plays a big role, and people are generally rewarded more for being chatterboxes than silent observers. Being a confident talker and a persuasive speaker can get you attention in meetings, get you the sale, and even get you elected. No one gets kudos for sitting quietly, or saying, “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.” Shy people may end up feeling overlooked, like mumbling Milton with his red stapler in the movie “Office Space;” his desk is moved further and further away until he is in the basement.

So the last time I was picking up reading materials in the airport, I was surprised and pleased to find both a new bestseller called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain, plus an issue of Time magazine with the headline “The Upside of Being an Introvert (And Why Extroverts Are Overrated),” by Bryan Smith. Suddenly, reserved people are having a moment in the sun! In her book, Cain battles the “omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.” In his article, Smith says, “It may be time for America to learn the forgotten rewards of sitting down and shutting up.”

The louder people of the world tend to treat the quieter people of the world as if there is something wrong with them that they must surely want to fix. In my experience, however, quiet people are quite content to be as they are. When Judith Warner reviewed Quiet in The New York Times, she said: “My neighbor…once told me I was the most introverted person he’d ever met. I took this as a compliment. Who wouldn’t?”

I can tell you who…corporate America and many organizations. I’ve been working in business for more than 30 years and in many ways there’s still a gap between the value of expression and how it’s perceived, just like in those elementary school report cards.

Our culture has over-simplified what it means to be quiet with what it means to be social (or non-social). So far I have put many different words into play in this article, including “quiet,” “shy,” “introverted,” “gregarious,” “bold,” and “extroverted.” It was deliberate—these terms are related, but they are not interchangeable, and they are not opposites.

A typical introvert is often expected to be reserved, solitary, and focused inward—but are there not introverts who are also entertainers? A typical extrovert is supposed to be people-loving, outgoing, and talkative—but can’t a people-lover also be reserved? Some quiet people have very strong feelings, but they don’t wear them on their sleeves. Those who enjoy solitude may in fact also be quite social. You don’t have to be loud to be a good friend.

“Introvert” and “extrovert” lumps two different brain functions—thinking and behavior—into tidy, corporate-ready packages. Either boldness and people-power (“extroversion”) or data-driven, quiet focus (“introversion”).

People are far more complex than that, though, and really these characteristics are like apples and oranges. Your social thinking is an apple; it’s your level of interest in being empathic, compassionate, caring, and supportive. Your expressiveness is an orange. It’s a behavioral attribute anyone might notice about you, and is the amount of energy you bring to explaining to the outside world what is going on inside your head.

This thinking and behavioral mix means a lot for you as a leader as well as your business. I think about a CEO I worked with whom I heard give a rousing speech to his employees. He did a fabulous job and seemed like an energetic, fascinating man. When he left the stage and sat next to me, I was thrilled. I love a good conversation, and I was sure we would have lots to talk about. It wasn’t the case. He barely even spoke to me. Obviously he could be highly expressive, but—without a strong degree of social thinking in his makeup (which I’m aware of because I read his Emergenetics psychometric thinking and behavioral workplace profile)—he wasn’t innately attuned to personal connection.

This CEO had worked his way to the top by using attributes including his behavioral expressiveness (prototypical “extroversion”) and conceptual thinking, but not necessarily an empathic connection to others (social thinking).

It’s often harder to realize how to be a quiet leader, so here’s a few tips for you (and your employees), especially if any of the descriptors above sound like you:

  • Be aware that other people are not mind-readers
  • Remember to speak up
  • Maximize your influence in writing
  • If you need time to reflect, ask for it
  • Schedule your socializing for the mornings when you      are fresh, and leave solitary tasks for the afternoon
  • Try business breakfasts instead of business lunches
  • Even though it will tire you out, dial up your      expressiveness for phone calls, meetings, or teleconferencing

People will appreciate that your solutions are always thought out well. Your calm demeanor and ability to listen will serve you well if you can harness it. You don’t have to change who you are in order to be a successful entrepreneur…no matter what your report cards used to say.

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Your Brain at Work | Geil Browning

2012
04/09
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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The Best Way to Silence Your Critics: Offer Them a Job


In life as in business the best way to silence a critic is to involve them. Sometimes they surprise you, but usually, they realize they don’t have a better way at all.

There is an old joke about railroad worker that gets stuck cooking because he complained about the food. Realizing he hated the job he set out to get someone else to complain about the cooking. So he made a pie out of moose turds. A giant of a miner came in and sat down and took a big bite! Can you guess what happened?

When my kids were young I coached T-Ball and Coach Pitch Baseball. Those with this experience will tell you the kids are seldom a problem. One day during a critical game one of the parents, a consistent magpie and critic, was in rare form. He criticized the coaches and the kids as he sat on the sidelines. Growing frustrated, I decided I had reached my limit. I walked to the third base coach and told him he looked ill and should sit out. He assured me he was fine and I assured him he was not. He got the message and sat down. I went straight to the critic and told him to coach third base. I did not wait for a response as I turned and walked away. As I got to the pitcher’s mound I turned and saw him approaching his new post.

We played the remainder of the game and not once did he utter a single word to anyone, not even the players who made it to third base. At the end of the game I politely noted that he had not coached the players and to let me know if he wanted to work with one of the real coaches in the future. He attended every game after that and never made a sound.

In life as in business the best way to silence a critic is to involve them. Sometimes they will jump in and surprise you, and you may have to eat a little crow and say, “Thank you.” Usually, they learn enough about what’s going on to realize they don’t have a better way at all. But everyone benefits from the experience and it can bring a team together by removing the barrier of unfounded criticism.

So how did the giant of a miner react to the pie? He jumped up and knocked over his stool and screamed, “THAT’S MOOSE TURD PIE! It’s good though!!!”

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THE TURNAROUND SPECIALIST | Glen Blickenstaff

Inc. Magazine

2012
04/04
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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Stop Markeing Your Company and Focus on PR?


Magazines © by Hector Alejandro (2009)

Whether in architecture, dry cleaning, plumbing or legal services, it is critical business owners understand the importance of marketing their brands. Marketing, after all, is a central mechanism for business growth.

Too often entrepreneurs get lost in the decision of which marketing channels to choose. Direct mail may be effective for local businesses, while national television ads tend to suit large corporations well. Most recently, online marketing tools like websites and social media have taken center stage.

Entrepreneurs with limited budgets must choose which marketing mix best suits their particular businesses. If implemented well, any marketing channel can be effective. Unfortunately, high costs are usually associated with strong campaigns.

The most powerful and cost effective marketing tool is publicity. Publicity, the art of attracting media attention, directly increases a brand’s target market visibility, which directly boosts sales.

While advertising is paid for, publicity is prayed for. This is easy to understand. As an entrepreneur, would you rather pay $100,000 for a Forbes back cover ad or be featured on the front cover editorially at no charge? Would you rather purchase a $40,000 commercial ad during the Daily Show or be an invited guest on the show?

Unlike the paid science of dollar-per-inch advertising, publicity is an art of skillfully presenting and persuading journalists to cover stories. Ad space is sold, while editorial space is earned. Getting featured depends solely on newsworthiness and compel, not payment.

The publicity appeal is clear for young entrepreneurs, whose greatest asset is often business savvy and greatest hindrance is usually cash availability. Since advertising requires tremendous monetary investment and publicity requires only time investment (and sometimes minor costs), the latter is clearly preferable.

Passionate entrepreneurs who lack cash can successfully market their ventures with publicity. And those who do so will find additional benefits that no advertising campaign can deliver:

  1. Credibility. A      cover story in TIME magazine or interview an on CNN brings      tremendous credibility to you and your brand. Being featured in the media      establishes prestige and an implied sense of endorsement from the network      that covers your story.
  2. No tune-outs.      With the advent of online and social media, consumers have learned to tune      out ads and focus on content. People are more likely to remember an article      on your firm than an advertisement. Marketing campaigns that focus on      content (publicity) attract viewers, while those centered on ads      experience high tune-out rates.
  3. Ability to use as marketing collateral. Once featured in a media outlet, you can incorporate      the coverage into your marketing package. Whether reprinting a magazine      article to include in your marketing presentation or embedding a      television interview on your website, showcasing your coverage in the      media can be a great marketing tool for impressing potential clients,      investors and other stakeholders.
  4. Tremendous cost savings. Being featured in the media is free. While there may      be minor costs associated with a successful publicity campaign, the      overwhelming required input is time.

Zach Cutler is a dynamic entrepreneur and communications expert that founded Cutler Group in 2009. He has expertise in helping high-tech companies achieve major media attention. He is also a member of The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization
comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.

2012
02/18
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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Payday Loans Becoming More Popular With Middle-Income Earners


 

As many middle-income earners struggle financially, payday loans are becoming a more popular source of money. Are they though the best option for a short term loan?

With prices on the rise across many staple household needs, including gas and electricity, petrol and food, many families face falling into debt as they struggle to keep up with their outgoing payments.

And it’s not just low-income families who are struggling, it’s middle-income families too. According to This is Money, around 57% of payday loans provider Instant Loans Direct customers, are people earning between $35,000 and $65,000 above the national average wage.

 

With credit cards maxed out, credit rating unattractive to lenders, payday loans can appear attractive as a short term loan. After all, for what seems a small amount of money you can borrow a few hundred dollars for a few days – that’s what they’re designed for, to get you out of a hole until payday comes.

Few credit checks are made and you can get the money into your bank account very quickly.

The issue is, for this convenient access to money, interest rates are very high, and can be equivalent to over 1,000 per cent.

 

If a loan is not repaid in the agreed time, the charges can be significant and you can easily find yourself with further debt that you have little chance of being able to repay.

The payday loans industry is already worth over $1 billion and growing rapidly as more and more people need quick loans and are either denied access to or are not prepared to approach conventional lenders, such as banks and building societies.

 

MoneyHighStreet comments: “When your salary runs out before the end of the month and yet you still have bills to pay, turning to a short term loan to ‘tide you over’ will be a welcome option for many.

The issue is though unless you address the underlying problem of your outgoings exceeding your income, you will find yourself in the very same position next month. In fact it’s likely to be worse in that you’ve added to your outgoings by the cost of your short term loan.

 

So can you set a budget so that your income exceeds or at least equals your outgoings? Can you save money anywhere?

 

If not, or you can’t totally balance your money, is there another option you can use for a short term loan? For example do you have any assets, such as a car, watch, jewelery or perhaps some art, that you can use to secure a loan?

 

In this way you are making your assets work for you. Of course you still need to pay the cost of the loan but in a worst case scenario you can sell your assets to cover the loan – or rather more positively get your assets back once you have improved your financial position with your better money management and sticking to your budget.

 

Another option may be to turn to family for a loan. Many are seeing this as an easier option and in certain circumstances it can work well.

 

If you are facing mounting debt though that you have no chance of clearing, even if you manage to get a loan for a period, you really need to tackle the route problem sooner rather than later – debt will not go away on its own, you need to take steps to clear it, getting advice from a professional organization.

2012
02/03
CATEGORY
The Wonderful World of Lead Generation
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Five Things to Absolutely Avoid While Negotiating


Every entrepreneur spends some time haggling, whether it is with customers, suppliers, investors, or would-be employees. Most business owners are street smart, and seem to naturally perform well in negotiations. You probably have a trick or two—some magic phrases to say, perhaps—that can help you gain the upper hand. But, often, the moment you get into trouble in a negotiation is when something careless just slips out. If you are new to negotiation, or feel it is an area where you can improve, check out these tips on precisely what not to say.
1. The word “between.” It often feels reasonable—and therefore like progress—to throw out a range. With a customer, that may mean saying “I can do this for between $10,000 and $15,000.” With a potential hire, you could be tempted to say, “You can start between April 1 and April 15.” But that word between tends to be tantamount to a concession, and any shrewd negotiator with whom you deal will swiftly zero-in on the cheaper price or the later deadline. In other words, you will find that by saying the word between you will automatically have conceded ground without extracting anything in return.

2. “I think we’re close.” We’ve all experienced deal fatigue: The moment when you want so badly to complete a deal that you signal to the other side that you are ready to settle on the details and move forward. The problem with arriving at this crossroads, and announcing you’re there, is that you have just indicated that you value simply reaching an agreement over getting what you actually want. And a skilled negotiator on the other side may well use this moment as an opportunity to stall, and thus to negotiate further concessions. Unless you actually face extreme time pressure, you shouldn’t be the party to point out that the clock is loudly ticking in the background. Create a situation in which your counterpart is as eager to finalize the negotiation (or, better yet: more eager!) than you are.

3. “Why don’t you throw out a number?” There are differing schools of thought on this, and many people believe you should never be the first person in a negotiation to quote a price. Let the other side start the bidding, the thinking goes, and they will be forced to show their hands, which will provide you with an advantage. But some research has indicated that the result of a negotiation is often closer to what the first mover proposed than to the number the other party had in mind; the first number uttered in a negotiation (so long as it is not ridiculous) has the effect of “anchoring the conversation.” And one’s role in the negotiation can matter, too. In the book Negotiation, Adam D. Galinsky of Northwesten’s Kellogg School of Management and Roderick I. Swaab of INSEAD in France write: “In our studies, we found that the final outcome of a negotiation is affected by whether the buyer or the seller makes the first offer. Specifically, when a seller makes the first offer, the final settlement price tends to be higher than when the buyer makes the first offer.”
4. “I’m the final decision maker.” At the beginning of many negotiations, someone will typically ask, “Who are the key stakeholders on your side, and is everyone needed to make the decision in the room?” For most entrepreneurs, the answer, of course, is yes. Who besides you is ever needed to make a decision? Isn’t one of the joys of being an entrepreneur that you get to call the shots? Yet in negotiations, particularly with larger organizations, this can be a trap. You almost always want to establish at the beginning of a negotiation that there is some higher authority with whom you must speak prior to saying yes. In a business owner’s case, that mysterious overlord could be a key investor, a partner, or the members of your advisory board. The point is, while you will almost certainly be making the decision yourself, you do not want the opposing negotiators to know that you are the final decision maker, just in case you get cornered as the conversation develops. Particularly in a high-stakes deal, you will almost certainly benefit from taking an extra 24 hours to think through the terms. For once, be (falsely) humble: pretend like you aren’t the person who makes all of the decisions.
 5. “Fuck you.” The savviest negotiators take nothing personally; they are impervious to criticism and impossible to fluster. And because they seem unmoved by the whole situation and unimpressed with the stakes involved, they have a way of unnerving less-experienced counterparts. This can be an effective weapon when used against entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs tend to take every aspect of their businesses very personally. Entrepreneurs often style themselves as frank, no-nonsense individuals, and they can at times have thin skin. But whenever you negotiate, remember that it pays to stay calm, to never show that an absurdly low counter-offer or an annoying stalling tactic has upset you. Use your equanimity to unnerve the person who is negotiating with you. And if he or she becomes angry or peeved, don’t take the bait to strike back. Just take heart: You’ve grabbed the emotional advantage in the situation. Now go close that deal.
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By Mike Hofman

2011
11/12
CATEGORY
The Wonderful World of Lead Generation
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The “Client Lifecycle” Reality or Urban Myth


Wiki states that the average person remains at their job for 13 years.
Sounds good, right? I mean 13 years. True, it’s an unlucky number for some, but
better to be employed for any time in this economy. Heck, Uclue.com states that
the average US marriage only lasts 8 years.

So, maybe it’s the advertising industry that is averaging down the 30-year
gold watch anniversaries. A Spencer Stuart Blue Paper cites that: “It’s jarring
to note that the average tenure for CMOs at the top 100 branded companies is just
22.9 months. Based on our data, only 14 percent of CMOs for the world’s top
brands have been with their companies for more than three years — and nearly
half are new to the job over the last 12 months.”

Just as in the lifecycle of a marketing manager, I often hear about the “lifecycle of a client” with an ad agency. I took an informal poll with some peers, and most stated that they expect to work with a client for about 4-5 years and then poof – the client goes off to perceived greener pastures. In fact, a client of ours stated that 4 years for an agency / client relationship is long, (pause for reflective swallow, as we’re in year 3).

So, does a client have a lifecycle and why? OK, this is where the stats stop
and theories start, so jump off the bus now or open your mind…

Let’s say your contact at your favorite client makes it past the 22.9 months
and actually wants to make a career out of it. That doesn’t mean that everyone
else there does and he or she probably reports to a COO or CEO who may in fact report
to a Board or Shareholders. Results have to keep coming. Here is why they may
not be…

I hear things like, “the creative just wasn’t exciting anymore” or “no new
ideas” or “just time for something different”. Yes, often, the creative goes
stale, but it is not, in my opinion for a lack of creativity. Sounds weird huh?
I’ll explain. By year three, the creative should be more on target and yielding
much better results. I mean, you’ve been doing your unaided and aided branding
research studies every year right? What client doesn’t want to pay for
research? Never heard of such a thing…but, I digress. We’ll post about that
later.

Here is my theory…The creative is there, the account is known better than
ever and results should be increasing. But, you are now working in fear. What
fear you say? The fear of losing the client.

When agencies go after a new client, one of my most and least favorite parts
of being an agency principal, most go all out – balls to the wall – creative
juices flying everywhere. We do. Why? Because they’re really not invested
financially in the account. The revenue they could earn is “hope to get” money.
“Hope to get” money is fun. It’s like a lottery ticket before you check the
numbers.

But when an agency lands a client, it needs to staff up appropriately, buy
needed research studies/tools, join relevant associations, upgrade some
software, spend some time meeting with some new subcontractors – it’s time and
money. So, the new “hope to get” money gets spent quick. You start servicing
the client with all these tools, are in the new-relationship love affair with
the client and integrating the new tools or new people into your team.

After a year, you’ve produced some results, the client is loving you, but
you’re also loving the new tools, team members etc. Now, the money is still
there, but it’s no longer “hope to get” money, it’s “need to have” money. It’s
need “need to have” money because you’ve made all the commitments to service
the client and it’s not like you were out there going after more “hope to get”
money because you’ve been busy trying to get your new relationship off to a
good start, and your team was already running thin anyway in this economy and
you may not have the manpower to win new business and win over your new client
at the same time. You made a choice.

In your second or third year with a client, you’ve now gotten accustom to
running your shop with the new tools / resources etc. and have forged personal
relationships with your new team members. They are really part of the team now
– your family. You’ve met their families, understand their hopes, dreams and
really care for them. Now, you’re afraid. You’re afraid of letting them down.
You’ve put yourself in a position where the “need to have” money is “gotta
have” money. You know that if you lose the client, you’ll lose the revenue and
ultimately may have to lose some of your team members.

So, you as a manager may stifle the great ideas that are on the edge in
favor of more conservative ideas that are “mainstream.” You don’t push the
client anymore. You agree too much. You say you think “their ideas” are good
whether they are or not. All, because you’re afraid to lose the client and by
doing so, you do just that. You lose the client. No client wants a “yes man”.
They want new exciting invigorating ideas. That is why they came to you at
first, right? Are you afraid to give them what you feel they may not want? Are
you afraid to push the envelope?

Like most things, it revolves around money. I hate that part of the
industry. Really, I do. Most people who think they know me, think I’m all about
the money, but the people who really know me, know I’m not. I’m about family,
first, second and last, and my team at the office is part of my family.

Do I think there is a client lifecycle? Yes, for some clients, for some
agencies. But, I believe it is not because of the talented team of people in
your agency. It comes from fear and we, as leaders, need to be stronger,
bolder, more willing to take risks – even in today’s economy, especially in today’s
economy.

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By Larry Meador

2011
08/10
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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Optimizing the Call Center through Improved Targeted Data Analytics


Are you confident that your call center’s lead generation activities are targeted to reach out to the prospects that are more likely to respond positively? Often times, the answer turns out to be “What is targeting?” Let’s take a look a case study featuring call center lead generation efforts for commercial banking loan products.

In this case study, among the available prospect data records, only half were contacted each month, leaving the other half of the prospect data records untouched. The initial list selection was based on annual sales/revenue, which succeeded in eliminating the poorest performing prospects. However, those prospective customers were not further prioritized for their call center representatives to focus on the best prospects.

Adding marketing analytics to the mix improved lead generation results. Here’s a snapshot of the data analysis and recommendations made with the intent to increase the lead generation conversion rate:

Added filters to the prospect data to combine any call disposition history,

Created metrics that would track and measure lead conversion data,

Introduced third party demographics into the data to determine if prospect record prioritization
based on predictive modeling could improve their lead generation rates.

This analytical approach focused on leveraging important customer/prospect data history that the client maintains for each business. The historical data they were already capturing included: call outcome detail by month and lead disposition outcomes. As with any call center, leads could not be generated until a sales rep initiated a live discussion with a decision maker or buyer.

By incorporating an estimate (score) of each business’s likelihood to generate a live contact, the sales conversion model expected performance (aka “model lift”) to improve. The resulting scores enabled ranking that was not only reflective of the best prospective businesses but also of those most likely to generate a connection to a live person (instead of voicemail, ring/no answer, wrong number, and the like).

The initial results were quite encouraging, with a projected one-year increase in profits of $1.5+ million from the lead generation efforts. While maintaining consistent staffing and call activity levels, lead referrals for this client have increased 28%. In addition, the successful close rate of those leads has improved 10% and is expected to climb higher with additional time to book pending business. While a traditional method for building a customer look-alike model or a conversion model would have enhanced results beyond random calling, additional improvements were achieved by turning call disposition data into additional insights.

This is just one method of marketing analytics you can apply to your customer data to increase ROI through your call center or sales efforts. Optimizing your customer and prospect data before reaching out and scoring your prospects based on their interaction history and likelihood to respond can create efficiencies and enable your sales force to work more effectively on targeted lead generation efforts.

 

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Paul Raca is the Vice President of Marketing Analytics at SIGMA
Marketing Group

2011
06/21
CATEGORY
Best Practices for Direct Mail Marketing
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