The customer is always right

The customer is always right according Stew Leonard:
- Rule 1 The Customer Is Always Right!
- Rule 2 : If The Customer Is Ever Wrong, Reread Rule 1.

This should be adjusted to:
If the customer is wrong, then they might not be your customer anymore.

In the event

At a moment of time or during:
- The sales process
- A first project with a customer
- A standing relation with a customer

When:
- Increasingly more service is needed without price adjustment
- Harsh terms are imposed
- Changes of direction are required
- Clueless customer is requiring your attention
- The ever complaining customer is wasting your time
- Discussing every item on your invoices
- Decreasing revenue due to less sales
- Utterly important customers generating little revenue
- Not paying after extended payment terms
- Employees feel threatened or abused by a customer
- Ever changing purchase orders

Then
It might be time to think about firing the customer.
Serving unprofitable customers with exhausting relationships is not sustainable.

Math: cost vs benefit

It comes down to cost benefit analysis:
- Cost:
How much does it cost to keep the client and service, support, discuss for each and every item ?
Thus wasting your capacities and resources.

- Benefit:
What’s the benefit of having this customer?
What does this customer bring ?
Revenue, margin, word of mouth, lead generation, referral.

You have to do the math

Not keeping unhappy customers

Maintaining unhappy customers will only cost you money:
- They will consume more time, effort and capacities from your workforce and company
- They will not recommend you to their peers
- They could spread a negative buzz into your market

Whatever you do it will not rape the benefits as you could receive from other customers in the same time, with the same effort or capacities.
So in the end you are losing twice: more time and no leverage.
Hence firing these customers might be your best deal ever.

How to fire tactfully

Firing your customers takes courage, but it is for the best of the company and business.

Instead of increase your prices in order to drive your customer away, it is best to have a meeting or at least a conference call explaining your services are no longer meeting his demands and needs.
If there are any disagreements then they need to be addressed and clarified.
Allow for discussion and explaining their concerns.

In this way you can separate and end the relationship without a fight divorce.

Offer alternatives: other services or your competitors

Of course during the meeting or conference call issues can be explained and understood. Just make sure you take the right decision. One of the main goals is to keep your business in good public standing.

When was the last time you evaluated your customers on cost / benefit analysis ?
How many did you fire last time ? None or one ?

The social media dream

We have been sold the dream that social media is:
- Free
- Available for all
- The users are the contributors adding the content (user generated content)
- The users promote the content – may the best win
A real democratic environment!

The social media business

However the social media sites own the content you create it after you hit share. They will control it and manipulate it for their own benefit.

This is due to the business for social media websites they need:
- Ever more page views
- Getting more users
- Getting more visitors
- Matching content with the adverting proposed to them
- More advertising
- Happy advertisers
They will use your content in order to reach their goals – not yours.

At the beginning of a social media website their goal is to attire crowds massively. Thus they will make sure the popular or eyeballs grabbing content is promoted. Them ore visitors and page views the better.
In a later stage once they have achieved a certain level of audience, they will aim for more advertising revenue.

If the content you are providing by posts, comments is not supporting their crowd attracting or advertising goals, then it will be manipulated in order to be less findable or just omitted. You are not in control.

Hence think twice if you are going to use your social media for your marketing as much of your efforts could be wasted.

Social media marketing in a censored world seems a gamble

The rain: objections for not buying

The rain during a sales cycle are the reasons, facts and objections that diminishing the changes of winning a deal considerably:
- No local or bad client references
- D&B rating is low
- Grammar errors in product sheet
- Small company
- Acquisition prey
- Unknown brand
- Website id off line
- Price is too high
- Price is too low compared to competitors
- Previous event
- Support is doubtful or unclear
- Gossip in the market bad news travels faster than good news)
- Whatever …

Most salesmen will start looking for the exit as the stress for missing the deal increases.

This is where the great salesman will turn the rain into fire as he will turn objections and negative reasons into reasons to by.

Let the customer do the talking on your open questions

Most sales people will give it just one try formulating an answer or refuting the objection.
Instead great sales people will ask questions and listen to the reasons given.
Reformulating or explaining the objections and reasons will require the potential customer to rephrase his statement which will give the salesman opportunities to learn and get insight in the views and perception. Or the source of the objections which can be the CxO or nay other Director.
In any case while explaining people will always tell more than they wanted as they want to bring relevance to their standpoint.
If you keep posing open questions even more information will emerge.
This should give you as salesman a possibility to change the perception and influence the customer and turn the objections into benefits for your product, solution or company.

The fire: set fire to the rain

As the explaining of the objections will uncover or disclose different reasons, perceptions and decision patterns in the company, making you learn from. This give you an advantage over your competitors who probably won’t know about these.

Hence you could turn the reasons for not buying and objections into the fire for buying as you will know exactly what drives them and holds them back.

Setting fire to the rain.
Let it burn.

Portals, Google, Napster, MySpace, Bookmarking, Youtube

In the early days of the Internet, portals promised to deliver all possible links to information and entertainment you needed.
Soon Google Search took over which brought the decline of the portals. However the clean interface of Google was not entertaining at all.

In order to fill the missing entertainment gap Napster, MySpace and Bittorrent were all the hype.
MySpace was quickly conquered by music groups bringing entertainment to the Internet.

Shortly during the iPod era, Podcasting came and went away again.

As search on Google is cumbersome for most people (what should you look for in order to get entertained ?) bookmarking (Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, …) became popular as people got direct links to infotainment and the bookmarkers got their ego boosted when scoring high.
The big disruption came from YouTube which brought short entertaining video on demand.
Abruptly MySpace died thanks to Facebook and Youtube.

When Twitter emerged as the massive platform for promoting links in real-time (and without constraints or cheating) the bookmarking era came to an end. However Twitter is not entertainment.

Google+ should aim for entertainment

Now we have Google+ which should challenge Twitter and Facebook – but still it won’t bring entertainment as User Generated Content as well as bookmarking links are not entertainment.
The Hangouts on Google+ could become entertainment places but that can only happen if professional entertainers see their benefit and can make money by creating these Hangouts. making money can only when they get a piece of the (soon expected) advertising revenue on Google+.

The quest for entertainment

Still the real quest is that people need entertainment on the Internet as they want to be entertained.
Currently Facebook, Twitter or Google+ doesn’t solve the quest for entertainment on the Internet.

- YouTube (and Vimeo, Dailymotion)
- Adult websites
- Gossip and Celeb magazines
are still the most entertaining places on the Internet but they bring not the entertainment of a TV show (Oprah, Soap operas).

What shall arise as the first real entertainment platform on the Internet ?
As the Internet is a big place a start-up with a proposition might already be lurking around.
As all marketers will have to become entertainers (even in B2B) the quest for entertainment on the Internet also concerns them.

When a salesman closes a deal in a county or country and the company successfully implements the solution then the rest of the sales team should know about it to replicate the deal in his own region or to contact the client in his region.
More than often a success story remains withing a region due to the fact:
- The other sales people aren’t informed or well explained about the deal or project
- The salesman doesn’t ask for contacts in other counties or countries

Once a deal gets closed or a project delivered successfully then the salesmen in other counties / countries should be able to contact the same company in their region or they should be able to look into similar companies for deals. Therefor information has to be gathered about the project and contacts in other territories should be asked for in order to inform the sales teams and enable the salesmen to contact the company or similar companies.
The information gathered should not solely be about the project but also about the organization of the company:

The client:
- Who is the client ?
- What is his business ?
- Who are the competitors of the client ?

The organization of client:
- How is it structured / organized ?
- Where is head quarters ?
- Where are regional head quarters ?
- Where are the decision makers located ?
- Who has decision power by region ?
- Contacts in other regions: county / country ?

The project:
- What made the client decide for the solution ?
- Who was involved in the decision process: names and title (responsibility and reach)?
- Who where the competitors ?
- What are the functions and features of the project ?
- What is typically local and what is general about the problem that has been solved ?
- What was the budget ?
- What is the size/scale of impact on the organization ?
- How many people (personnel / users) will there be involved in the solution ?
- How fast or slow was the sales process ?

The lead generation:
- Where did the lead come from ?
- What was the lead originally looking for ?
- Who were the initial contacts: names and functions ?
- How was he nurtured ?

All this information will help the salesmen to go and look for similar leads.

Just telling your sales teams the company had another win with Acme Corporation is not enough as you leave the salesmen empty handed with little chance to repeat the success story.

Pressure kills success
Many people claim they perform better under stress and pressure. However that is not real pressure.
The real pressure comes from:
- CEO or sales manager threatening to fire you when missing your (sales) target
- Spouse – which in most cases relate to financial problems
- Credit cards debts or mortgage

When you are under real pressure then:
- Coming up with the next marketing campaign will be a failure
- Selling and closing deals will falter

In marketing under pressure you will:
- Not come up with great new ideas for campaigns
- Miss out on creativity as your mind seems to be blocked
- Compelling marketing strategies are beyond you
- Only re-vamp previous campaigns
- Miss to show any innovation or imagination

In sales under pressure you will:
- Get less leads as you are running to catch every suspect thus wasting your valuable time
- Call every possible prospect way too often that hey will start avoiding you
- Push the potential buyer to hard to get to the closing
- Show and obtain less trust that is required removing the risks involved in buying
- Trying to sell with too much discount (decreasing your commission)
- Be too eager to close your deals and spoil the deal
- Get a bad attitude

Slowly your world – even if it was almost perfect before – will fall apart. This will drive you under even under pressure. Pressure kills success.

The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
(Queen & David Bowie)

Solving the problem
Just hoping for a magic strike is not likely to happen in your situation as your mind is blocked, you have become much too desperate for success and you have probably lost your confidence.

In order to become successful again you need to get the pressure off you. Somehow you have to remove pressure.
- Not by drinking or taking drugs: these will only make it worse
- Not by taking high risks: chances of losing is bigger than winning
- Not by acting if nothing is going on: people will see through you easily and not trust you
- Not by staying home and doing nothing: this will not avoid the problem you are facing

You should remove the real cause of the pressure:
- Change job or change boss. Both hard to achieve.
- Try to live positively with your partner or separate – there is life with or without
- Financial: sell the expensive car or the house or whatever burns your money – ask for bankruptcy
Removing the financial pressure might be the easiest in some cases: you just will have to do with much less (a lot less).
Still it won’t be easy or simple to change your job, business or life.

You have to care about yourself, be relaxed and believe in yourself in order to cope with your life and to live without pressure as it might shorten your life.

The need for iPod, iPhone, iPad – non-existent before

In 2001 or 2002 you wanted an iPod as you couldn’t imagine life without music all day long.

In 2007 or 2008 after several iPods (as they broke down) you wanted an iPhone as you couldn’t imagine life without all the apps (including Fart).

In 2010 you needed an iPad as you couldn’t imagine life without this multimedia device on your couch (although you have a TV set in most rooms).

In 201X you will need an iPxxx as else life will end.
(while you forgot what you did with all the different versions of iPods, iPhones and iPads in your life)

How to sell like Steve Jobs ?

How does Steve Jobs accomplish it to persuade fairly intelligent people to buy

Curiosity (killed the cat)
Rumor the product before the announcement – let their imagination drift in order to make them curious.
Then show the product and functions but don’t let them use it in order to keep them curious.
In the end the curiosity kills the cat.

Rehearse
Just like a stand-up comedian the presentation / sales pitch needs to be rehearsed until it is perfect. Nothing should be left over to coincidence: all hazards to be avoided.

Matching appearance & style
Appearance and style needs to match the people in the market you are targeting.

Slow
Speaking slowly is a must so all can understand. People need to get into your story or sales pitch. Jumping too fast the story or getting too fast to conclusions will spoil the effort.

Tease to feel
Tease with the product as if the probable customer already has it and experiences it.
The benefits of the product beyond their imagination.

Ammunition to buy
Almost all people need to give and explain the reasons for buying. Hence prepare a series of reasons to buy which they can use and fire off like ammunition. Even if nobody exactly understands the benefits or improvements over competitors.

Trust
The more trustworthy your company and the more trust you can relate to the product the better as nobody wants to buy a failure.

Emotion
It is not only facts, figures and tangible benefits but emotion that is the main driver for selling. Connect the product with emotion or achieve generating emotion when showing the product.
Emotion will sell the product better than anything else.

The Tribe
People want to be a part of a tribe.
Once people buy it they belong to the same tribe (Seth Godin on tribes) owning the same exclusive and expensive product.

Apply the most suiting

In most cases you won’t be able to apply all of these for your promoting and generating interest for your products, but just try, experiment and find out what is feasible and works for you.

Social media is no longer social

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and many others all started out as communications and online relationship building platforms without ads.
Now all social media have become advertising channels for highly targeted ads based on the user intelligence as they need to make money for their investors.
Just like soap opera’s they have become carriers of advertising under pressure of the investors.
In both cases the content draws in the crowd and the ads are carefully targeted.

However the more focus on advertising the less evident it becomes for users to communicate and build relationships as the platforms have become:
- Increasingly more complex in functions and features.
- Cluttered by ads
- Slower in loading the pages due to all of the above
The advertisements are becoming distractions from the real purpose of the people using it and the simple and clean layout is gone.

Social media is no longer social as it is just has become another advertising channel like soap operas.

Google Plus has started out without advertising while still under invitation only but it won’t take long before ads will appear once the gates are open for everybody.

Social media will go like portals

The question now becomes if it is still interesting for a company to:
- Advertise on social media
- Invest time and effort in social media

At the end of the nineties portals were all the hype. They were competing with each other by adding more and more functions and features in order to capture more market share. Their user interface became cluttered and load times increased.

At the same time the Google search engine became popular as it presented a clean user interface without any clutter. Then the decay of portals was evident.

Now the decay of social media is near as they:
- Are competing heavily on functions and features: Facebook vs Google plus / Twitter vs Tumblr
- Are more and more populated by bots
- Have become advertising channels just like soap operas

Moreover the content in social media is not getting any better as more and more companies post their editorials on social media and try to promote their products and services: companies take over from people on platforms intended for people.

Next after social media

If a new communications easy and convenient channel for the public emerges then social media will decrease in importance just like it happened portals.
The new communications or relationship building platform needs to be:
- Accessible easily and convenient in use for all without complex user interface like Facebook
- Bot free – unlike Twitter that has more bots than humans tweeting and re-tweeting
- Capturing the attention and be interest generating

Maybe the new communications channel it is already available – like ChatRoulette ?

Do you still use social media for business or product promotion?

In the course of a sales cycle – even with the best product in the market – a salesman can be stopped by any of these Deathly Hallows:

Client references
All of your client references are in a foreign country which have no value to us. As you can’t provide us with local references we will buy from another vendor.

D&B rating
Dunn & Bradstreet credit rating (D&B rating) of your company is to low (or non-existent) to deal with you.

Small company
Your company is too small to be in business with a major corporation like ours

Grammar errors
Your product sheet and website contain grammar errors which makes us doubt about the quality of your products or services.

Acquisition
it is very likely your company will get acquired during the course of next year, hence we don’t want to proceed with the purchase of your product as we are uncertain about the continuation and support of your products.

Brand
Although your product is best suited for our company / gives better value for money / matches best our requirements, still we won’t buy from you as we prefer a trusted source with a known brand name.

Complexity
Your solution fulfills all of our requirements but is too complex to implement and maintain, hence we opt for a lesser suited solution with less features.

Price
Although you offer a solution at the lowest price we received, still we don’t proceed with you as we don’t trust the low pricing and will buy at a higher price.

Sympathy
We do like you a lot, but we don’t like your company / CEO. Hence we choose another supplier.

History
Ten years ago we had a bad deal with / a bad product from your company which has cost the company a lot of money. This made us decide not to buy from you for  now.

Support
Your product is outstanding, however we have our doubts about the support or even the lack of support due to small company / foreign company.

In any of these cases you won’t be able to close the sales deal as convincing them from the contrary is nearly impossible due to the perception.

What are your deathly hallows in sales ?

Feedback for Marketing

Marketing should have feedback from the market and the customers in order to know:
- Why people want or don’t want to buy again
- What to improve
- What the buyers desire next
This will allow Marketing to define and imagine the next product or an upgrade only.

Product life cycle estimation

Marketing needs to estimate the product life cycle
All products have a life cycle – even B2B products and solutions. In the optimal case the start of the developing the new product should be when the old one is at its’ height. The new product should be released when the old one is showing sings of aging and lesser sales.

Competitor watch

Marketing needs to watch competitors closely as any sign of success with a new product or innovation (as small it can be) can be a good indication of the future of the products required by the market.

Future vision

Marketing is about thinking ahead – at least 2 or 3 years – as it needs to envision future needs, requirements and demands. It is about spotting trends and changes in society.
Looking into the future or have a vision of future is the hardest exercise as:
- This becomes quickly very subjective
- Trends are hard to quantify and weigh their importance
- Subcultures can influence the population, but equally leave the majority indifferent

Marketing is late

However in most cases marketing is just too late due to:
- Missing the feedback as this requires organizing feedback inquiries and getting customers to inform using surveys
- Planning the next product is hard to do when the current product is profitable
- The CEO wants to optimize the profit of the company now instead of spending for the future
- Successful products are expected to have an eternal long life cycle – which is not
- The products of the competitors are only analyzed when it becomes a success while your own product falters
- The shorter the time horizon, the better the estimation for future needs, requirements and demands
- The future vision is for tomorrow is easier and more accurate than a future vision on 2 or 3 years.

If a company wants to stay ahead of competitors it needs good marketing which is not lead generation marketing.

A company might have the best product in the market today, but the company might miss completely if it is not proactive in their marketing actions and thinking.

Is your marketing on time or late ?