1- 330-413-8552 Mark@NoSmokeAndMirrors.com

Market leadership

“Our Competition Sucks Selling”, one of the signs of a Market Loser versus a Market Leader

One of the things that used to drive me nuts as a VP of Sales and Marketing was if one of my regional managers or a independent representatives used “Why our competition sucks” selling. You know the guy, he talks about the competition more than his own product. He shares “horror stories he heard from other customers” about your competitoin that may or may not be true.

This out-dated style never impressed me, and today with a sales enablement 2.0 environment, it actually creates an interruption. Interruptions  turn customers and possible customers into shoppers. The internet has given buyers the ability to see behind the black curtain of sales product information and they can conduct research without talking to a salesman. When your rep challenges a competitor, particularly when that competitor is a current vendor of that buyer, he is actually challenging the buyer. Do you want your sales rep saying “Hey, what are you an idiot or what for buying ______?” no, I didn’t think so.

The recently published Razor Fish report indicates what influences buyers; “Trust plays a key role in influencing a consumer’s interest in purchasing a product” Peer networks and influencers play a major role in the buying process today. So when your rep is selling against a particular vendor, he is not only challenging the buyer’s decision making, he is also “calling out” that buyer’s peer and influencer network who he went to before he made the purchase.

If you have rep(s) using the “why our competition sucks” method it must end. To turn these reps around use the following guidelines;

· Product knowledge– make sure your salesperson understands your product and more importantly the problems it solves for buyers as well as the process buyers use to buy your type of product

· Listening, as I wrote in warning….. Buyers share why they don’t buy, reps who do not listen was the #1 reason buyers do not buy, NOT PRICE

· Conversation distribution – they say there’s a reason the Lord gave us two ears and one mouth. If you are talking you are not listening. Monitor buyer meetings with particular focus on the amount of time your rep talks in relation to the buyer. A good rep will have no more than 30% of the conversation time

· Echo – when you learn customer pain, echo back what you heard. This does two things; first it tells the buyer you are not like the 90% of other reps calling on him as you are listening. Secondly, it will help clarify your understanding if the buyer corrects your echo of what you heard.

Besides, market leaders are focused on serving their market. They do not focus on what the competition is doing as much as solving customer problems. After all, if you focus on beating your competitor, you are limiting your success based on how good your competitor is. Companies who obsessively focus on competitors assume their competitors are smarter than they are. What if your competitor is also launching products that no one is buying? Following competitors often results in a “follow the leader death spiral” that becomes very difficult to pull out of.

Understand your buyers, their needs, and how they buy and you will quickly outpace your competition.

Let your competition spend time studying and criticizing you instead of listening to your buyers and understanding their needs.

Let your competitor salespeople keep using : “Our Competition Sucks Selling”, while your team listens and solves customer problems…..while breaking sales and profit records for your team.

Do you need a “Plan B”? Or are you betting the Farm on a Stretch Goal?

I have to love whoever drives this scooter parked outside of McDonalds Sunday morning. I had a cup of coffee and as I walked to my car, I see this scooter.

Here’s a person who drives a vehicle that what, gets 500 miles to the galloon and they still have a “plan B”? As I walked by I noticed the 2 1/2 gallon gas can strapped to the back.

As I drove away I thought how in these uncertain economic times it is prudent for leaders to have a plan B in case their business runs out of gas. Nothing sucks the energy out of a team like fear. I find when I am fearful I am not creative and I am in a defensive mode and no longer leading. When I wrote Is your leadership in a holding pattern while your team runs out of gas? I discussed how our teams are more fearful than ever before. The Bible is also very clear about fear. Throughout the Bible we are instructed to “fear not”. As a matter of fact the only thing the Bible talks about more than fear is “money”.

Market leaders develop goals that do not require “all the stars to be in alignment” to achieve them. Market leaders have plan B’s in the event the environment changes to insure they achieve their objectives. You can establish stretch goals, and that is healthy for your business and your team members. When we are forced to stretch we grow. Where market losers blow it is when they “bet the farm” on a stretch goal.

How about your business…

Are you asking your team to strive for a stretch goal that requires all the stars to be in alignment (when chances are your own sales and marketing are not on the same page)?

Do you have a Plan B?

Have you shared your Plan B?

What is your team’s greatest fear? And how do you plan to lead them through it?

Are You “Spinning” the Wrong Marketing and Sales Formula and getting nowhere fast?

I have been trying to lose weight for years as I discussed in my post: Do you need to “Detox “your business before it can hit your goals? If you have struggled with your weight as I have, you know it is very frustrating. I have tried a number of diets and workouts independently .One of the workouts I tried was “Spinning”. If you have not tried it, spinning is a very intense workout on a stationary bike. It was not unusual for my heart rate to exceed 160 beats per minute and the calorie counter would show 600-750 calories burned in each workout

When I first started spinning, I did lose some weight. After a few weeks of spinning my weight loss hit a plateau. So what do we do in situations like this? Well type A’s like me…we work harder! I added more resistance to the stationary bike and after the 50 minute spinning class I would go into the weight room and work out for another hour. Again, I saw some weight loss and again I quickly hit another plateau…very frustrating.

What I lacked was the right formula for weight loss. To have sustainable, repeatable weight loss the formula is 65% your food intake and 35% your activity level, your workouts. One without the other and you will not reach your goals.That explained why working out harder and not significantly changing my diet did not help me achieve my weight loss goals.

This reminded me of how most businesses lack or have the wrong formula for sales and marketing. I have worked with businesses in different industries and varying sized revenues; from under $1 million to $300 million, as well as over a billion and I have seen teams frustrated in each. They keep working harder, spinning faster and faster in sales adding more training but 40% still miss achieving their sales goals. They lack the correct formula to feed (marketing) their sales  in relation to their selling activities.

When I worked for Frito-Lay I was fresh out of college. I would say the formula back then was; 30% marketing and 70% sales and service. Marketing did research and generated brochures and sales would pick and choose the tools we thought would work. Frequently we would create our own tools borrowing what we liked from what marketing created. This model may have made the marketing team at Frito-Lay cringe, but it worked in the 1980’s. My Unit of route salesmen realized huge sales gains year over year and our team was recognized in Frito-Lay’s national magazine with yours truly standing in front of a bridge display we sold to Giant Eagle stores that spanned the entire back of their store for July 4th weekend.

That formula; 30% marketing/70% “bare knuckle selling” worked in the 1980’s The problem today that is the 30% marketing/70% sales formula is dated and backwards. The change that caused this formula to flip flop was the internet. The advent of the internet changed how buyers gain information. Salespeople are no longer the” keepers of the product knowledge keys”. Buyers now demand; instant, accurate, authentic information at their finger tips 24/7. Not only must we provide this, but we must provide product information in the voice of the buyer so they quickly can find solutions to the problem(s) they are trying to solve. Fail to clearly state the problems you solve and the buyer “clicks” their way on to the next website.One of marketing’s key roles is now sales enablement.

Today the formula for most businesses should be 70% marketing and 30% sales and service.

Peter Ducker said: “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” To achieve this definition a considerable amount of time must be spent in understanding your market.

Buyers like to buy; they do not like being sold. (Truth be told they probably didn’t like being sold a bridge display that spanned 15 isles) Sales today have a responsibility to start conversations and lead buyers throughout their buying process until they are ready to buy. Salespeople must now “serve” their clients as opposed to “sell” them. I discussed the top concerns buyers had with salespeople in my post titled: WARNING: Buyer’s say what salespeople do wrong? PRICE is not on the list! Buyers today want salespeople to listen and understand their problems before presenting what’s in their bag.

When I speak of “sales” and “marketing” I am discussing the roles and not titles and people. In some of the smaller companies I have served my title was “VP of sales” but I performed a marketing role in identifying customer needs and pain points. The smaller companies I have helped did not have marketing departments and we outsourced the development of sales tools to ad agencies. As companies grow they segment and define roles more clearly. I really do not care what you call the person that does it, but someone must understand your market and how your buyer’s buy.

How your buyers buy has changed since the 1980’s and market leaders have already made the sales and marketing flip flop to insure buyers move quickly through their process to a sale.

Stop “Spinning” the wrong sales and marketing formula, working out harder and harder only to miss your goals.

Find out how your buyers buy and create a winning formula for how your buyers buy today…

… or keep spinning with your heart rate racing while your competitors adjust their formulas to the market of today and leave you in their dust.

How about your company…

If you had to guess, what % is your companies’ energies are spent in the roles of sales and marketing?

Are you still “bare knuckle selling” or are you helping buyers find you, and supplying what they need to buy from you?

Do you know how your buyers buy?

What if you could have a daily tracking poll for your customer satisfaction like the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index?…You Can!

So the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index came out today showing only 30% of the nation’s voters strongly approve of the way that President Obama is performing in his role. 38% said they strongly disagree providing a net index rating of -8. 43% say he is doing a poor job. It turns out men more strongly disapprove than women. You can read the full report here at the Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

The purpose of this post is not to bash our President. As a Christian businessman I pray for him as we are instructed to do in the Bible. I pray the Lord gives him wisdom and discernment. The reason I wanted to discuss this report is a “what if”.

What if, as the leader in your business, you too could have a report that frequently showed your “voters” (customers who vote every time they buy from you or your competitors) approval rating? How valuable would that be, particularly in this economy?

The good news is you can…it is called Win/Loss analysis and if your team is not doing it now, get started! In Win /Loss analysis you contact customers you win and ask why they bought, how they came to buy and so on. You also call those accounts you lost. You know, the ones your sales team said you lost “because your price was too high”? Well as I shared in my post WARNING: Buyer’s say what salespeople do wrong? PRICE is not on the list! The top reason buyers do not buy is your salespeople are not listening to their needs; they don’t follow up timely and as a result do not understand the problem the buyer is trying to solve.

Aside from having personally done win/loss over tie years and realized the benefits, it is also a Biblical principle.

In Proverbs we learn ” the tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pour forth foolishness” So there you go, will so start win/loss today and be “wise” or will you keep making strategic decisionsthat add no value ( and may hurt your business) and be a ….( I don’t need to remind you, you just read the passage)

Once you start conducting win /loss you will have a wealth of information to keep your voter approval ratings high among your internal and external customers.

Are “No-See-um’s” costing you revenue?

One of our favorite family vacations is to go to Hilton Head Island and stay in Sea Pines. My family and I rent bicycles and we go to the beach every day. My routine includes waking up at sunrise and fishing in the surf each morning before my family is awake. Our first year at the beach left me with welts that looked like mosquito bites but I did not remember seeking any mosquitoes on the beach. I thought that perhaps I received jelly fish stings, or I was having an allergic reaction to the suntan lotion.

I went to the gift shop looking for some calamine lotion and the clerk said “I see you found our “no-see-ums.”I found what? She said “no-see-ums” (like it was some biological term) and she went on to describe small sand fleas that are so small that you often do not see them however their bite later becomes an irritation. If left untreated these bites can become infected and some people have allergic reactions to the bite.

Does your business have any “no-see-ums” that bite your customers? It can be things you feel are little like not accepting American Express credit cards because their fees are higher than Discover card. It could be little irritants like not being able to make a reservation online or packaging that requires your customers to repackage your product before distribution. It could be requiring customers to complete incoming inspection of quality or you will not honor returns as they may have been freight damaged. It could be a number of small quality problems and your technical service line is always busy because you have not staffed it properly. “No-see-ums” are inside out processes that only serve you and actually cause your clients pain.

In one of the companies I served we supplied plastic video cassette packaging for video rental stores. We sold our products through a network of video distributors. To help make our product price competitive we offered free freight for orders of $2500 or more. We analyzed our costs to process and stage orders of $500, $1000, $2000, and over $2500.At one point we decided to gain a larger percentage of our distributor’s business we would increase our free freight requirement to $5000. (That way our clients would buy more from us to get free freight)One of our first distributors was a company called Island Electronics on Long Island in New York. After increasing our minimum freight I noticed their sales had decreased substantially so I booked a flight to determine why sales had dropped so quickly. When we arrived we noticed a warehouse bursting at the seams with products. Since my last visit, Island Electronics had picked up a number of new lines all competing for the already limited space in their warehouse. As I walked past my competitors master cartons as we walked to the owners office it hit me…raising our minimum freight requirement was an inside out strategy that did not meet the need of my buyer. My competitor who produced product in Edison New Jersey visited this account every other week and offered free freight on orders of $1000. My competitor understood the bigger challenges Island Electronics faced (SPACE). Our new freight program was a “no-see-um” and it also bit us. No-see-ums always bite more than once. First they bite your customer. If your buyer’s irritation becomes painful enough, the bite will negatively affect your revenues.

 

Market leaders are constantly in their markets observing, listening and sensing their buyers’ needs. They identify each “no-see-um” and create processes and procedures to prevent future negative experiences.

 

Market losers are focused on their internal needs with little regard for customer challenges and limitations.

 

Do you have any “no-see-ums” when clients deal with you?

 

How often do you visit your buyers? Your users, and observe their use of your product?

 

Have your salespeople identified “no-see-ums” only to be quickly dismissed?

Is your leadership in a holding pattern while your team runs out of gas?

At one point in my career I traveled a great deal spending four nights per week away from home. I lived in North Canton, Ohio so a number of my flights were small commuter airplanes to major hub cities. You learn to accept the slow baggage claim, fueling delays, and needing to run through the hub airport to make your connection. However one aggravation I never seemed to get used to was the plane going into a holding pattern as we approached the Akron Canton airport. If you fly a great deal as I did you know how long it should take to fly from Cincinnati or Charlotte, it was predictable. You know that a flight from Cincinnati should take just under an hour and when you notice you have been in the air for 80 minutes you become anxious. You look out the window and you can often see the runway lights, and then the moon, and the moon again, and again. Why? When will we land? I have flown this flight plan for years and now I do not know what to expect and I am getting frustrated. Eventually the pilot announces “we are cleared for landing, please put your tray tables up and your seats in an upright position…” and we land.

I had a phone conversation with a midlevel executive this week who was very frustrated and his emotion reminded me of the feelings I experienced when planes I was on went into holding patterns. He said that deals that the executives have historically signed are no longer being signed. His competitors are making a run at his key accounts, and management seems to be in a “holding pattern” not knowing what to do, so we are doing nothing.

When I wrote Attention leaders: Don’t look now but your lack of market knowledge is showing… I discussed how employees are more fearful now than ever before. They want to follow leaders they believe will lead their team out of this current situation and come out on the other side positioned to be a market leader. However I am hearing executive doubt in their leadership teams who have their business in a holding pattern. Employees, like me on my flight into the Akron airport are frustrated. They want to make decisions that add value however their leadership teams are stuck in a state of indecision. These mid level leaders just want to know the plan. (Or that there is a plan)

The Strategic Sourceror blog they discuss: Indecision is not an acceptable decision. The author points out “In every business decision situation, whether organizational, tactical, or strategic, there are two acceptable answers; Yes and No. Indecision is the cornerstone of faulty, short-sighted, C.Y.A. management philosophy. It’s the prized virtue of the mediocre and a tattered safety blanket for the incompetent.” Yet some large and small businesses are choosing to be in holding patterns today and their teams are growing more frustrated each day.

Why do you find leaders chose to be in a holding pattern? The above blog sites two main reasons;

 

There’s Not Enough Information

 

Happy Enough with the Status Quo

 

Next I went to the Bible, I was curious what advice it had regarding a lack of leadership and what could occur if a holding pattern lasts for too long…

“In the days with no King of Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes”

Judges 17:6

“When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, before long moral conditions sink”

Judges 19:25

If leaders choose not to lead, their teams will do what they feel is right. If left unchecked, employees doing what they feel is right will erode the core values of what’s left of your culture.

 

Indecision is a tool of the incompetent leader. Determine what you know. Do you know what you don’t know? Admit what you don’t know and put a plan in place to gain the knowledge you require. Your team is counting on you to take them out of this holding pattern and have a flight plan that leads to a future landing as a market leader.

Does your senior leadership team have your team in a holding pattern, a let’s wait and see, plan?

 

Have you experienced your company’s indecision hurting your relationship with loyal customers?

 

Do you find senior leaders or mid level managers with more indecision today? Why?

 

Is a holding pattern ever a safe strategy?

Is a bad decision worst than indecision?

Weight training and Sales training, how doing them wrong adds no value and may even hurt you!

Each morning I start my day with a workout at the gym. I like to start each workout with the elliptical machine. I listen to music and watch others training on the various machines to make my 30 minutes go by quickly. One machine almost everyone does wrong is the lower back machine.

Each morning I watch people plop themselves down on the machine without making adjustments based on their body. Some sit too high in the seat and some are seated too low. Some move the weights very quickly and some let the plates slam in-between repetitions. Not executing the exercise correctly not only fails to isolate the area you are trying to develop, but may also cause injury to the individual and the machine. There are two older gentlemen who train together each morning and not only do they fail to adjust the machine settings for their body size, but they do the exercise, (the training) completely wrong. They select the maximum weight and they begin.( double the weight I use) The weight is so heavy they are no longer sitting on the seat midway through the movement, and they are pressing the weight with their legs as they aggressively pull the weight back with their arms. Once one gentleman finishes I see his training partner execute the training in the same way. My guess is they have used this machine in this way for years and each assuming they are doing it correctly. They are so focused on looking impressive with the amount of weight they are lifting they lost the original objective of using this machine.

This machine was designed to provide training for an isolated area of your body, the lower back. To use this machine correctly and realize the maximum benefit the first thing you should do sit and adjust the machine settings so you are exercising in the proper range of motion. You are supposed to slowly push the resistance back, hold, then slowly return to the starting position while not allow the weight being lifted to rest. If done correctly, and balanced with lower abdomen exercises, you will develop a strong lower back and core.

As I watch these two older training partners each morning, I am reminded how most companies execute sales training wrong. I can speak from experience as I have done it wrong myself. A new product is about to launch so we bring in all the sales troupes to corporate for training. Marketing presents PowerPoint slides covering the market size, and they share the creative support materials, the sales tools they developed to help my team hit their goals. Then the product manager presents the product and reviews each feature and sometimes shares the benefits of the particular features. Far too much time is spent discussing why our product is better than our competitors and not enough time is spent helping my team understand the problems this new widget solves. We may visit the manufacturing facility and see the product being assembled.

At some point I would present our team goals, and each region’s individual goals. Over the years I would develop specific regional play book drafts with objectives by market by account. These play books would illustrate the opportunity in their market my current and targeted new accounts and if every tactic was completed would result in the salesperson achieving 150% of their goal. I would ask each salesperson to review the plan for then report back on how they plan to achieve their revenue targets. We would have specific discussions that resulted in adjustments to the play book. I would often present some competitive information, and share how to overcome objections we may face when trying to displace our competitors, and or gain placement for this innovative new widget. We would establish key indicators the team would be tracking that we believed would drive our desired revenue targets.

About 15 minutes into the training you can see salespeople checking their emails and excusing themselves for incoming calls from “one of their key clients”.

WE HAVE ALREADY LOST THEM!

How do market leaders conduct sales training to produce the maximum revenue in the shortest amount of time?

· Share what market problem the new product solves

· Explain how big is this problem

· Share market data

· Explain what buying criteria buyers use when making buying decisions

· Share the process buyers go through when purchasing

· Position the sales tools developed for the specific steps of the known buying process

· Provide the sales team the buyer persona(s)

· identify the key influencers to the buyer personas, and who also may be involved in the buying process, and provide guides on how to start discussions with them

 

What I am describing is not “Sales Training” (like I did in the 1990’s) but “sales enablement”. Sales enablement is defined as:

Sales enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force with access to the insight, experts, and information that will ultimately increase revenue. It is a term that has gained momentum in the last decade. It is often used to describe a variety of tools, processes and methodologies that are applied to enable a sales force, both direct and indirect. The terms “sales effectiveness” and “sales readiness” are sometime used interchangeably to denote Sales Enablement as well.

In David Daniels’ recent blog he states:” According to the “Business-to-Business Launch Survey Executive Summary” conducted by the Center for Business Innovation at Babson College and Schneider Associates, 55% of companies rank sales enablement as critical to product launch success.”

When salespeople were the “keepers of the keys” for product information one could argue how the way most companies conducted sales training was OK. However the internet and the instant accessibility to information have changed sales forever.

Salespeople must become experts at starting and keeping conversations going with buyers. Today salespeople must be experts at understanding the buyer’s process, and what sales tool to use when.

Market leading sales organizations teach their salespeople how their product or service solves market problems.

Market losing organizations continue to spend more time convincing their sales teams how easy their goals are …”even a monkey could do it.” Market losing teams practice “marketing roulette”. They create a ton of sales tools and sales is supposed to use them ALL until they figure out which one works. If none of the tools work, sales will create their own. (A REALITY, BUT VERY DANGEROUS) Market losers are still teaching their teams how to overcome objections.

Market leaders understand the importance of listening to objections.

Stop sales training and start sales enablement today.

Remember people like to buy, but do not like to be sold.

Tell me about your organization.

How does your organization conduct sales training?

When salespeople leave your training do they understand when and where to use the sales tools in the buying process?

Is teaching salespeople how to overcome objectives smart?

How many minutes into your last training were salespeople checking their Blackberries and excusing themselves for an “important call?

Attention leaders: Don’t look now but your lack of market knowledge is showing…

 

 

I had coffee with the president of a local business this week. A friend from church recommended he buy me a cup of coffee and chat. I seem to be meeting with a number of business leaders and owners these days that are struggling. Their businesses are in different industries yet they have common problems;

“My business is down, struggling, this economy is killing us. I have our team doing what we did in 93’, but this time it just isn’t working…”

As a leader in your business your entire team is watching you,looking to your leadership.What is new today is your team’s level of fear. Their 401k’s are down. They have many friends and others in their network now unemployed. Your team deals directly with your customers, and they hear their concerns about the economy. They feel the decrease in activity staging orders on the shipping dock. They prepare the financial statements for your leadership team meetings. They are trying to get extended terms from vendors. They are receiving the calls from vendors with past due balances. They are tracking your team’s key indicators more closely than ever before and they are wondering…

 

Will I lose my job?

Should I wait for the shoe to drop, or should I find something else? Should I work on my “plan B”? “Plan C”?

Do our leaders know what they are doing? Will their leadership take us out of this storm?

 

The good news is your team desperately wants to be led. They want to follow a leader who will quiet those inner fears. They want and need a leader to step up and set a course that pulls the company and them out of the current poor performance.

The common problem, regardless of industry that I hear is a lack of current market information to make good decisions. Media Post just released an article by David Koretz titled Cheating Your Way To The Bottom and he discussed how leaders must use facts to make good decisions .Leaders describe how they used to lead sales “back when they ran the North West region…” I am sure the strategies and supporting tactics they described worked back then,….but here’s the common problem:

The market and your buyers have changed. They have changed how they buy and how they shop for solutions to their problems. Yet the plan you are managing with corresponding activities is based on the buyer needs of the past.

Below is a summary of my recent meeting over coffee. By no means am I poking fun at  this struggling leader nor minimizing the troubles he and his company are having. When I decided to start blogging as I stated in my about page it is my desire to discuss real issues.

So I started our meeting by asking;

“When you ran the North West region and realized so much growth, how did you come up with such good ideas?”

“Well I just knew what to do…it was easy, my customers told me what we needed to do and I went back to corporate and fought for them.”

And now you are corporate?

Yes,… I guess I am, hadn’t thought of it that way

Is anyone fighting for their customers right now and you are shutting them down?

Well yah…

What are they asking for?

You know sales guys…our prices are too high, our quality sucks, and if we would only change the product by adding one more feature….

When was the last time you were in the market, “belly to belly” so to speak with a customer? A user of what you sell?

It’s been a while, but I get weekly reports, and I talk to my sales guys, I feel I am up to date with what’s going on.

Really? What are they telling you about your customers and the problems they are experiencing?

The usual; business is down, no money to invest in their business, just trying to keep their heads above water…you know

Anything new they are struggling with they did not struggle with last year?

Not really, just that business is bad, and they want a lower price and extended terms, I think we have a pretty good handle on what’s going on

When you ran the North West, did you think your boss knew the market and your customers as you?

Well…no (he became noticeably uncomfortable)

I asked a more questions and we agreed he did not have current nor first hand data to answer my questions. Given the importance of turning this business around, we agreed we needed market data.

These conversations seem to have the same next steps…”get out from behind your desk and get into your market and understand it today. After two weeks of meeting with customers and users you will know what to do in today’s environment. You will have first hand, timely market data, and you will be able to make strategic, market driven decisions and provide the leadership your team desires.”

We agreed to meet again when he returns.

What happened next I did not expect, he smiled and said; “you know this would be fun, I have not been having much fun lately.”

How about you?

Are you leading a team?

When was the last time you were “belly to belly “with a customer? A user?

You have the ability to lead your team out of this current economic condition and emerge as a market leader once you have good market data.

(Have you ordered you plane tickets yet?)

Are interruptions “transforming “your customers into shoppers again?

I am a big fan of action movies and the more Sci-Fi the better. I really enjoyed the first Transformers movie and I was anxiously awaiting the second: Revenge of the Fallen…how will they top the first? New villains, maybe 3-D special effects, and so on? I was convinced, based on the first movie I would be captivated again. They helped me establish a brand for the Transformer experience from the cartoons I would watch with my son years ago to their recent special effects of their last release. They set an expectation of a story line that flowed. I expected a great deal of action and special effects and some humor to give me a chance to catch my breath.

However what I experienced was a painful interruption. Unlike the first movie, this one threw in characters that did not support the story line and were actually a painful interruption for me. Interruptions are those elements thrown in to cause a response that add no value other than shock. They create a momentary interruption to grab your attention like a bikini clad model in an ad for spark plugs. Yes, your attention is momentarily grabbed, but for the wrong reason. At one point when one of the transformers were “humping” Megan Fox’s leg they lost me. They lost me because they did not live up to the brand they so carefully established in their cartoons and the first movie when I became a customer, and a fan. They lost me when they tried to get too cute, too funny,” because they could and not because they should”. They lost me when they added adult humor in a movie theater full of young children holding their favorite transformer toys.

 

How about your company…has the desperation to make your numbers caused you to compromise who you are?

 

Can you think of other examples of companies that strayed and could make a comeback?…not made a comeback?

 

What brand broke its promise to you?

 

What are the best ways to find out if you are transforming your loyal customers now shopping for another partner?

 

If you find out your interruptions are transforming your customer base to shoppers, what can you do, if anything to bounce back?

“Blame-storming” … a sign you work for a market “loser” not a “leader”

Direct TV has launched a number of very creative TV ads that resonate with me. Over the weekend I saw a new commercial that caught my attention. The scene takes place around a board room table with what is perceived as a senior leadership team trying to figure out how to solve a business problem. Whoever led the creative for the development of this advertisement has spent time, as I have, serving in dysfunctional teams.

For example, one of their more recent TV ads depicts a senior management meeting and the CEO says “what should we do?” And one team member quickly says “we should have a Blame-storming session…I blame Eileen …”

Market “Losers” choose to blame team members verse understanding the problem. Years ago I had a wise business coach and mentor named Bill Clarke who would say “focus on the problem not the person Mark,.. Very rarely do people choose not to perform well (particularly if poor performance adversely affects their income),… people are not broken, processes are…” Market losers and losing teams look quickly for a fall guy, someone to blame so that whatever was just discovered does not attach to them. If Market Losers spent as much time focusing on the real “why” behind the problems they discovered, verse “piling on team members when they have made a mistake”, they would become market leaders and grow profitably.

What makes this commercial connect is I have been in the meetings in which one team member finds a problem in another team members area, and as opposed to constructively trying to help, they “throw the other team member under the bus.” (trust me , I have plenty of tread marks on my back, and will probably have many more in the future)In truly dysfunctional teams other managers pile on. After all if we are playing the blame-storm game, if the focus is on one of my peers then the odds are people will not find nor focus on my shortcomings. (we all have them)

Market” Leaders” are excited when they find problems as they view them as an opportunity to improve. Every uncovered problem is an opportunity to better serve your market through creating a process that overcomes the issue(s) you have discovered. Market leaders have developed a culture deeply rooted in trust, common values, and aligned around a cross functional goal.

Market “Leaders” seek out roadblocks to success and they rally team members to build processes that help their other team members win in the future. Market leading teams have real discussions about topics that matter as they know they are safe to share mistakes and ask for help. Market losers quickly learn to hide mistakes and blame others.

The blame –storm game adds no value to the organization. Those who focus on someone to blame take the easy way out. It takes little skill to find problems in business today. Market losers want to pile on and lead a lynch mob do so in fear that their shortcomings will be discovered. They focus the beam of attention on others in hopes of building their credibility and importance to the organization by pushing others down. Leaders know we gain power by helping team members identify broken processes and creating new procedures that lifts struggling team members up.

 

What kind of organization do you serve? Market leader or market loser?

 

Have you been the victim of “blame-storming”? Did it help?

 

How do you deal with coworkers who try to gain power by pushing others down?

 

Does your culture condone “we eat our young” behavior? How’s that working for you?

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