Have been thinking about the idea of “how do we better communicate our value?” lately. Was interviewed by David Frey’s group for a sales mastery program–and spoke with my friend John Hirth at Selling Dynamics.

It seems the question always turns to “message.”

What Should My Message Be?

It should be a) focused on the prospect (not on your company and your products), b) focused on the pain they might feel (from your experience) and c) join the conversation already going on inside the prospect’s head/company.

But the reality is that unless you know what their issues/situation is, then you have no idea what your message should be.

So before you rush to creating your message, slow down a little and decide how you bring value to your clients. That will help you communicate a compelling message.

A compelling message is only compelling if it speaks to the heart of the prospect’s problem.

On the resume in the summary it said, “I think differently than most people, and I can bring new ideas—out of the box thinking—to your business.” As I reached over and grabbed it and put it up in the air, I said, “This is part of the problem. A person sends this in on a resume just like the other hundred that you got, but says they’re different. The fact is they aren’t different.

To you, the CEO or hiring authority, all of them look alike.

Which brings me to my conclusion: We all like to think we’re different, but we really are all clones of one another. I know that will piss you off, but think about it. If you’re a marketing person or a salesperson looking for a position right now when the market is crowded with other people looking, you do have to stand out. But you can’t stand out by a longer or more clever resume.

You really stand out by changing the whole dynamic of the hiring process.

I was talking to my friend, Mike Sigers (author of simplenomics), and he went off on a rant about what he would do if he were looking for a job today.

“I would record some of my experiences on an audio-podcast. Then I would hire a high school person to come and videotape me, and I would do three three-minute video-casts that had to do with something I had expertise in. Then I would make a PDF of my resume (include any portfolio samples of work that I’ve done) and put it on a DVD, go down to my local Kinko’s, have them take my picture, make a label out of it, and that would be my handout.”

“I would never hand out a resume, an application or a letter of introduction. All I would do is say, ‘Here’s a sample of the kind of thinking I do and the work that I’ve performed. Why don’t you take a look at it? If you want to talk to me further, I’d be happy to take your call and meet for coffee.’”

Mike has something there.

What about salespeople?

Are your really different? Do you really look different when you show up in front of the prospect? Is your sales process so different that a prospect can pick you out of a group and say, “I want to do business with that company because of how they execute the sales cycle”? Probably not.

So we’re almost halfway through 2009. It’s been a tough year, but still there’s a lot of business out there. So I challenge you over the next 30 days to think…really think…about your business and how different you really are. You can’t say you’re different, you have to demonstrate it.

I was watching the Michigan State ‘upset’ of Louisville last weekend. The camera / mic caught a frustrated Rick Pitino (Louisville head coach) as he was watching his team implode.

Despite all the complicated game plans and strategies I’m sure he implemented, his admonition to his players at that point in the game was, “Stop dribbling. Pass the ball!!!”

As an avid basketball observer that is one of the things that drives me crazy–a player dribbling but going nowhere.

Sales Is Simple Too, If We Let It Be

But in sales and sales training, the admonition we have for our clients gets very simple, too. Here are three instructions I would shout if they had their head phones in during a sales call.

1. Shut up and listen. Stop talking. Stop pontificating. Stop sharing all of your wonderful opinions of how great your service is. (OF COURSE YOU THINK IT’S GREAT–YOU’RE SELLING IT!)
2. Ask a follow-up question. Amazing too me how few questions sales people ask and how even more rarely they ask a follow up question after the prospect has answered the first. Think about how absurd it is for someone to answer a complex question and give you ALL of the relevant information on the first try.
3. Give some space. After someone answers a question, give it some space. Don’t jump right in and think you have to talk. This is an in-law to Shut up and Listen, but a little different in that it’s about “giving space.” In fact, that’s what our entire philosophy is built on ’space for the prospect to sell you on why he needs you.’ As long as you’re talking, you’re taking up space–not making it available for your prospect.

So, keep things simple–never as complex as they need be. And watch your sales effectiveness jump a notch or two.

Granted, the gifts were not big at all. But one thing I noticed was interesting. Four of the five charities didn’t even acknowledge the gift, other than a receipt of credit card email. One of the recipients, DonorsChoose.org, sent a nice note from the teacher whose class received the supplies/money, and it was a wonderful letter. (I would highly encourage this organization that provides students and classrooms in need with resources the public schools often lack.)

Didn’t they miss an opportunity? I keep hearing about how gifts were down in 2008 and how tough it is to get people to give money. Wouldn’t this have been a good chance for them to hire a volunteer to go back and thank every last one of the patrons for 2008?

Isn’t that an easy call to make? It seems like it’s a lot easier than making the call for the “ask” in future years.

Do you thank/acknowledge your customers?

Do you ever call them or sit down with them and say, “Hey, I really appreciate you doing business with us and I value our relationship both as a business relationship and a personal one. And I just wanted to take time out to acknowledge that”? You have to mean it, but wouldn’t that go a long way toward solidifying a relationship at a time when most relationships are tenuous?

If you’re in a mass market business where you have thousands of customers doing business with you, hire an intern to make that call. It can’t take more than two minutes. You’re probably going to get voicemail most of the time, but it still goes a long way toward keeping a customer.

In that post, he bulleted several lessons, one of which was, “People will pay for things that make their life better.”

During slow times, this might just be your secret key to riches. You must be exploring your value deeper to see how you make the lives of your customers better. Do you?

At Your Next Sales Meeting….

Spend 2 hours (that’s right two hours–this is important stuff) on a list of ways that buying your solution will improve the life of your clients. It could be from the standpoint of economics ($$), or reputation, or customer acquisition, or well-being.

But take furious notes. What you’ll find is that you’ll hit on things where you bring value that have been previously undiscussed.

2009. A Year of Value

We’re living in a year of value–people will pay for it if it’s there–and will skip it if it’s not. Lowering your price does not bring value. Doing “going out of business sales” doesn’t either. Spending your energy claiming victim won’t either.

Communicating the benefits of your product does.

It has to do with text messaging—and the promise of your brand.

It used to be that when a coach came to recruit a kid from high school, one of the things they’d talk about is playing time. After all, what kid wants to sit on the bench for two years waiting for “his chance”?

So coaches would promise all sorts of wacky things like, “You’ll get playing time as a freshman!” Or, “We’re building for the future so freshmen will be a key part of the strategy.” (Whatever that means.)

But then when he got to college, the story changed. And most freshmen who got big promises—got no time.
But what could they do? Nothing.

Now it’s different. Now, all of these high school seniors know people from all over the country due to the AAU schedule. These relationships have been built since 7th grade—and they text them constantly.

So now, when a HS senior is thinking about going to a certain college, all he has to do is text his buddies to see what they’re hearing about playing time. And the frame of reference is set.

It doesn’t matter what the coach promises anymore. It’s what the kids hear from their friends.

And isn’t that the way it should be in marketing? Don’t listen to the promise of the company trying to sell you something. Listen to the buyers who have experienced that promise.

Which brings up the lesson: Are you treating your clients like they’re texting your prospects? Because they are.

It might be casual. And it might be infrequently. But in the next 10 years, you’ll begin to see a quickening in the connection between the value you bring a client and the referrals coming from that client. People won’t refer average solutions. But they’ll talk forever about valuable solutions.

So read our blog. Find the pain. Link the pain to the solution. And make damn sure that you don’t leave that client until he is ecstatic with your value.

And if you have a sales team, make sure they are competent at problem-finding and problem-solving.

You may have a suspect masquerading like a prospect. You see, people can come into and out of your prospect funnel. If you expect people to be prospects all the way through the sales process, you’re naive. I know you better than that!

Like we say, “Don’t expect much and you’ll never be disappointed.” (The arrogant hate that saying, coz they think that means you’re giving up. Quite the contrary–but that for another post.) I never expect anything–not because I want to cushion the fall–but because when you begin expecting something to happen in a certain way–then you close yourself off from being flexible–or to having it happen in other ways.

So, when someone who you thought was (and I mean “was”) a prospect, now tells you they’re in “think-it-over-land,” you have to handle it correctly. Don’t beg. Just say, “Kind of thought that was the case since I didn’t hear from you. This is not unusual when considering a purchase like this. Sounds like you’re having second thoughts. Let me ask you this. Are you having second thoughts about solving the problem we discussed or second thoughts about who you want to help you?”

Now this assumes that you’ve been following my process–that you can’t sell someone something unless there is a compelling reason for them to change (problem they’re wanting fixed, or a solution they’re urgently dying for).

If you have neither of these, then you never did have a prospect. But that gives you something to work on.

If someone followed you around, unbeknownst to you, for a week, what would they see? What would they observe? What impression would your methods leave them with?

Kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? The actual “following you around” might cause you to behave differently, so it’s probably not an option to engage someone to do that.  However, the thought of “what would they see?” is an interesting one.

They would probably see things like how you keep your workspace, how you keep your word, how you organize your thoughts, how you respect people, how you communicate your ideas and many other things. And chances are, how you do any one of those things is how you act in front of a prospect.

How you write is how you think

There are exceptions to this rule, but I find that how people write is typically how they think and therefore how they communicate. If you can’t pull your thoughts out of your mind and put them on paper in a cohesive, logical, understandable, compelling way, you’ll probably not be able to verbalize those thoughts any differently when you get in front of a prospect.

Yet sometimes when I ask our clients “to write it out” they come back quickly with “I’m not a writer.” Bob Bly, who is a friend and colleague and has written many books on writing, told me a secret once that confirmed a suspicion: The better you are at writing out your thoughts, the better will be your verbal communication style. End of discussion.

So my encouragement to you–go write something. Write a letter–a letter to a prospect, but don’t send it. How would you introduce yourself? How would you expose your vulnerabilities? How would you logically lead them from not knowing who you are to believing they need to invite you in for an appointment? How you write that letter will be how you speak and the vibes you give off when you get on the phone. Good luck.

Okay, full disclosure. I’m not a detail person. In fact, on any personality chart, my “attention to detail” quotient is off the chart - on the low end.

But there are times that every sales professional needs to be a “detail person” in how they approach the prospect and the message.

I recently assigned one of my clients the task of writing a 300- to 500- word article about a case study of a solution they recently implemented. Now, I know that writing an article is not what you hire a sales professional for, however, I find that if a person cannot put in words their thinking and their methodology, they’re going to be hard pressed to verbalize it to the client.

As I started getting these articles back, I realized that I had missed a key instruction (okay, another detail) in the assignment, and that instruction was to “Be Specific.” Most articles were written from the standpoint of “we sold ‘em some stuff, they liked it, so you should buy from us.”

Not nearly enough detail. When writing a case study or article (or communicating your message), you have to lead the customer step-by-step through the sequence of events that happened between the time they felt pain, explored the solution, and are ecstatic with the results of that solution.

Every good copywriter will tell you that “the value is in the specifics” not the generalities. So, when you’re writing a message, a letter or an article, be as specific as you can. You can always go back and cut out what is irrelevant, but I find that’s seldom the problem. Usually the problem is we just don’t pay enough attention to the details.

And that hurts your customer, because they fail to understand the value that you bring to them.

I recently interviewed Dan Heath, Made To Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. It was on our Advanced Selling Podcast. I thought Dan had some salient points. He talked mainly about how to communicate with people–so that they actually hear you! Novel idea, huh?

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