Why Giving Your Customers Strokes is Profitable

Did you know that the most common reason that customers leave suppliers isn’t bad service … it’s lack of nurturing?

A child ignored by it’s parents will develop self-destructive behaviours to get it’s “strokes” even if they are negative. Being ignored is worse than no attention at all. Customers are the same.

Different Strokes
1. Fuzzies
2. Pricklies
3. Rubber bands

A fuzzy is a complement, an unsolicited positive stroke e.g “Good morning Bob, how are you?”, “Ana, you’re looking lovely” “Nice work Bob” or just sending an unsolicited cutting about a customer’s hobby or interests with a handwritten note saying “I saw this and thought you might find it interesting”

A prickly is a negative stroke – “Has anyone seen Marcus’s horrific tie?”, “Why do you always do that Marcus?” or when you say Good Morning, someone blanking and you not responding.

A rubber band looks like a fuzzy but is actually a prickly. “Has anyone seen the lovely tie Marcus is wearing….was it a present from his mother in law?”

Why A Fuzzy File?
I’m sure you get the gist. The point is, have you ever considered keeping a “fuzzy file”? What do your prospects and customers enjoy, what interests them, what do they get excited about. Doesn’t it make sense to get to know your customers and prospects and build up a fuzzy file of their interests, hobbies and family so that you can let them know you are thinking about them (without trying to sell them something).

RULE: All things being equal, people buy from people they like and trust. All things not being equal …people still buy from people they like and trust

It is not a crime to be liked by your customers. If you’re not taking care of your customers, who else is?

RULE: Customers leave you because they are stroke deprived, not because of bad service

What did you do in the last 3 months to demonstrate to your best customers that you appreciate their business?

What have you done to nurture your client relationships in the last 3 months?

What can you do in the next 3 months to protect your best accounts from your competition?

Happy selling!

You Only Have to Be Brave 5 Seconds at a Time

Are You a Chicken Licken?
Do you remember Chicken Licken? “The is sky falling! The sky is falling!” I was reading my daughters the story of Chicken Licken last night and it struck me that this is reflects the mindset of more than 70% of the population. Those who are wage-slaves and filled with regrets are always afraid of the worst happening and they listen to others who are also paralysed by their fears.

My apologies in advance but I’m going to continue offending you! But you probably need this whack on the side of your head if you’re one of those people.

Fear of Failure is the Biggest Cause of Failure
If you’re one of those people who fears failure and as a result fails to take risks, chances are you have no assets (a mortgage is not an asset, it means you are working for the bank, paying out every month, therefore it is probably your largest liability) or you have a few investments that fall into the “Safe” bracket. You are stuck in the rat race. How does that make you feel?

“Remember the Alamo!”
The rich hate failure but grow stronger because of it. They don’t have to like it, but when they do fail, they’re inspired by it, they learn from it; they act. Texans have turned their greatest defeat, the Alamo, into a rallying cry. Texans may be brash, but they don’t hide their failures. When they fail, they fail BIG. And yet, that attitude has meant they win big too. Precisely because they take risks.

Be Brave 5-Seconds at a Time
Most of us are paralysed in the sales process by fear, of not being liked, of hearing a “no”, of the competition, of the buyer’s power over us.

What if you believed you are in sales to go to the bank, not to get your emotional needs met? What if you thought and acted as if you were financially independent and didn’t need the business? What if you actively sought the prospect telling you “no”? What if you never begged for an appointment? What if you never gave anything away without asking for something of equal or greater value back in return? What if you got IOUs for every concession you ever made with a prospect? What if you were willing to walk away from a piece of business or a prospect who was screwing you down to the table and not ensuring your commercial interests were satisfied too? What if you didn’t agree to a deal where you weren’t clear about every aspect? What if both sides were seen as equals – not one the buyer and the other the (subservient) supplier?

How would that make you feel? How would things be different?

How do you do this? Simply, be brave 5-seconds at a time.

What Does That Mean?
It means that you don’t have to be brave all the time. But at the important moments in the sale, plant your feet. Stand your ground. Be willing to say “no”. Be willing to hear “no”. Don’t start from the premise that “I’ve been working on this deal for so long I must get the order” or “They’re the customer, the customer is King”. Think more like Cromwell! Pick your fights.

High Stakes Game
Whether you like him or not, Cromwell changed the playing field for monarchs across Europe. He had everything to lose including his life. But you can be brave and draw on his example. The customer needs you, your services because if he even knew what his problem was, he’d already have fixed it. Take a leaf out of Cromwell’s book and recognise the “King” can only stay in power so long as he has his cronies and courtiers, his armies to support him. Once the will of the people left him, he was human like the rest of us.

A customer does not rule you by Divine Right. You are his equal and he needs you. If you withdraw from a tender or bid because it is bad business or the customer isn’t playing the game fairly, he has to go through the hassle of finding another provider in time to make the tender process meaningful. Withdraw your support and isn’t he a king without subjects?

But What About The Competition & Customer Choice?
Certainly, customers generally have choices. And certainly they have systems designed to protect their interests …. at the expense of your interests. It doesn’t mean you have to accept them a gospel. Did Moses come down from Mount Sinai with the 11th Commandment “Thou shalt be your customers’ whipping boy”? Did Confucious say “The Customer is always right and you should do exactly what he wants you to do”? Did Socrates say “Spill your beans, answer all your customer’s questions and accept a think it over as possible future business”? Hell’s teeth. NO!

You Gain More Credibility From The Questions You Ask Than The Information You Give
Uncover your prospect’s real pains and you have already separated yourself from the majority of your competition. Ask those questions that separate you from the pack, that make you stand apart from the rest of your rivals. Wouldn’t you agree, that you gain more credibility from the questions you ask than form the information you give?

I have never sold high-end leasing on major capital investments that depend on the value of money over a 5 year period for them to be profitable. Nor have I sold high end investments where you minimum entry requirement is that you can afford to lose £250,000 in one hit. Still less have I sold the fulfilment of women’s fantasies (anyone who knows me, knows this is an oxymoron where I’m concerned!). Yet, these are among my broad range of clients.

Pain
What do they have in common? Their pain is that they needed to sell more, they were being frustrated by problems with filling their pipeline, closing business or getting customers to buy more, more often at premium prices.

Was I afraid of failure? Was I afraid they’d say “no”? Well it was always a possibility, as was the chance they’d go to what was familiar, more mainstream. They could have gone to Huwthwaite International and studied SPIN (the best traditional selling system by far in my opinion) or Solution Selling, or a big name like Visual Arts (John Cleese’s renowned sales training company) or some other variant of the 4000+ sales training companies in my territory. But I was brave 5-seconds at a time.

“Let’s You and Him Fight”
I stood my ground. I even encourage them to speak to the competition….because I know the competition will take the bait; because I know the competition will prove my point; because I know the competition will do what I predict they will do. They will tell my prospects why they’re the best. They’ll tell my prospects what they should do. They’ll tell my prospects why they’re wrong to consider my services. And then they’ll have to defend and justify their position when my prospects give them objections and put them under pressure over money.

I equip my prospects with the questions that help my competition hand me the business on a plate. Because I’m brave 5-seconds at a time. I’m willing to take risks, I don’t “play it safe”. This is not a strategy for everyone; in fact you may hate it. But if you risk little, expect scant rewards.

Sandler Rules
• Never beg
• Never justify or defend
• Never close
• Never handle objections
• Always be negative
• Always go for the “No”

Didn’t I say you’d probably hate this article? What lesson do you take from Chicken Licken?

Chicken Licken’s Lesson
As Chicken-licken was going one day to the wood, whack! an acorn fell from a tree on to his head. “Gracious goodness me!” said Chicken-licken, “the sky must have fallen; I must go and tell the King.”
So Chicken-licken turned back, and met Hen-len. “Well, Hen-len, where are you going?” said he. “I’m going to the wood,” said she. “Oh, Hen-len, don’t go!” said he, “for as I was going the sky fell on to my head, and I’m going to tell the King.” So Hen-len turned back with Chicken-licken, and met Cock-lock. “I’m going to the wood,” said he. Then Hen-len said: “Oh, Cock-lock, don’t go, for I was going, and I met Chicken-licken, and Chicken-licken had been at the wood, and the sky had fallen on to his head, and we are going to tell the King.”

So Cock-lock turned back, and they met Duck-luck. “Well, Duck-luck, where are you going?”
And Duck-luck said: “I’m going to the wood.” Then Cock-lock said: “Oh! Duck-luck, don’t go, for I was going and I met Hen-len, and Hen-len met Chicken-liken, and Chicken-liken had been at the wood and the sky had fallen on his head, and we are going to tell the King.”
So Duck-luck turned back, and met Drake-lake.

“Well, Drake-lake, where are you going?” And Drake-lake said: “I’m going to the wood.”
Then Duck-luck said: “Oh! Drake-lake, don’t go, for I was going, and I met Cock-lock, and Cock-lock met Hen-len, and Hen-len met Chicken-licken, and Chicken-licken had been at the wood, and the sky had fallen on to his head, and we are going to tell the King.”
So Drake-lake turned back, and met Goose-loose.

“Well, Goose-loose, where are you going?” And Goose-loose said: “I’m going to the wood.”
Then Drake-lake said: “Oh, Goose-loose, don’t go, for I was going, and I met Duck-luck, and Duck-luck met Cock-lock, and Cock-lock met Hen-len, and Hen-len met Chicken-licken, and Chicken-licken had been at the wood, and the sky had fallen on to his head, and we are going to tell the King.” So Goose-loose turned back, and met Gander-lander.

“Well, Gander-lander, where are you going?” And Gander-lander said: “I’m going to the wood.” Then Goose-loose said: “Oh! Gander-lander, don’t go, for I was going, and I met Drake-lake, and Drake-lake met Duck-luck, and Duck-luck met Cock-lock and Cock-lock met Hen-len, and Hen-len met Chicken-licken, and Chicken-licken had been at the wood, and the sky had fallen on his head, and we are going to tell the King.” So Gander-lander turned back, and met Turkey-lurkey.

“Well, Turkey-lurkey, where are you going?” And Turkey-lurkey said: “I’m going to the wood.”
Then Gander-lander said: “Oh! Turkey-lurkey, don’t go, for I was going, and I met Goose-loose, and Goose-loose met Drake-lake, and Drake-lake met Duck-luck, and Duck-luck met Cock-lock, and Cock-lock met Hen-len, and Hen-len met Chicken-licken, and Chicken-licken had been at the wood and the sky had fallen on this head, and we are going to tell the King.”
So Turkey-lurkey turned back and walked with Gander-lander, Goose-loose, Drake-lake, Duck-luck, Cock-lock, Hen-len and Chicken-licken. And as they were going along, they met Fox-lox.

And Fox-lox said: “Where are you going?” And they said: “Chicken-licken went to the wood, and the sky fell on to his head, and we are going to tell the King.” And Fox-lox said: “Come along with me, and I will show you the way.” But Fox-lox took them into the fox’s hole and he and his young ones soon ate up poor Chicken-licken, Hen-len, Cock-lock, Duck-luck, Drake-lake, Goose-loose, Gander-lander, and Turkey-lurkey; and they never saw the King to tell him that the sky had fallen.

And realise that the rich get rich because they spot the opportunities others don’t. Be a fox not his dinner.

(c)Sandler Systems Inc. 2006

Happy selling!

A blatant sales pitch

When is a sales pitch not a sales pitch?

When it’s an interview.

Experience in sales has taught me that you’re infront of a prospect to gather information not to give it. How can you possibly prescribe before you’ve taken the time to diagnose?

How often have you seen a sales presentation that begins with the salesperson whipping out his laptop, powering up the machine and rattling off all the features and benefits of their product and service. The prospect sits there patiently, asks questions, shows interest, parhaps throws out the odd objection and calmly asks for a proposal – all good old fashioned buying signals. You leave after an hour or so satisfied you’ve done a good job. Then you never hear from them again or when you try to call them they’re in hiding and you’re in voicemail jail.

I’ve written many times before on the importance of a strong upfront commitment, and of closing at the beginning, and of passing objections back to the prospect but as I train more and more people I discover just how ingrained the culture of telling not selling is.

Selling has been defined as matching their needs with the benefits you can offer. Why do you think this definition may be deficient? Why do you think that type of belief is potentially lethal in the sale?

How can you better sell under the radar? How can your selling prevent the buyer from building up defence walls?

What behaviours you exhibit and beliefs that you hold today sabotage your success and hurt your earnings?

Sell today educate tomorrow

How often do you find yourself talking instead of listening? How often do you find yourself using the time you have to talk, telling and not asking questions?

Are you ever guilty of trying to demonstrate your own brilliance and knowledge by presenting your solution to a prospect before they’ve committed to buy from you? Have you ever invested precious time, money and resources proving to a prospect that you can help them identify their needs, give them solutions to their problems …. and then wonder why you aren’t closing enough business.

You gain credibility from the questions you ask not from the information you give. Your job in the sale is to gather information not to give it.

You’re in sales to go to the bank …. not to prove how bright, knowledgeable, educated or wonderful you are.

If you’re giving information what aren’t you doing?

You’re not gathering information. You’re doing free consulting. You’re telling the prospect what s/he wants to know …. so what reason does your prospect have for retaining your company or your services? Not much.

This lesson learned late in my career cost me over £12 million in fee income and £3.6 million in lost commission.

Rule: Prospects never argue with their own data.

Gather their data and play it back to them in the form of their pain and in my experience and the experience of my clients you’ll sell more, more often.

Happy selling!

W.A.I.T. and See

I came across a very useful little acronym.

W.
A.
I.
T.

Why
Am
I
Talking

It works on 2 levels. Whether you’re infront of a prospect, a network contact or with family and friends, Stephen Covey’s 5th habit of highly effective people is “Seek first to understand then to be understood”. You’ve probably heard the cliche “You have 2 ears and one mouth, use them in that order”. Well if you ask yourself “why am I talking?”, you realise that either you may be talking drivvel or not listening to what your counterpart is actually saying.

The other level it works on is that it helps you to find the time to actually consider what has been said by your prospect, and use that understanding to formulate your next question.

It is a fatal flaw in many salespeople that they spend the time that should be listening, half listening and trying to work out what they’re going to ask or answer next.

WAIT and you have time (at least 3-5 seconds) to demonstrate you’re taking in what was said by the other party and to formulate a better question.

Does this make sense? Think about that for a moment.

Playing the WAITing game also allows you to draw out so much more information from prospects by using listening noises, body language etc than you might otherwise gain.

Remember …. YOUR JOB IN THE SALE IS TO GATHER INFORMATION NOT TO GIVE IT. Telling isn’t selling.

So many of us in sales can’t wait to prove our worth, demonstrate our credibility by getting up and presenting. This is a big mistake and will cost you tens of thousands in personal income, year on year. And when you establish the cost in terms of lifetime customer value lost, modifying this one behaviour, the costs can run into the millions. What are you doing to make sure you or your people are WAITing for your prospects to tell you how to sell to them? How do you make sure you’re gathering the intelligence you need BEFORE you spill your candy and make your presentation.

PRESENTING IS NOT SELLLING. Don’t you gain more credibility from the questions you ask NOT the information you give?

Death By Discounting

The sales floor is a torrid place to be these days. A black cloud of doom has blown in and there’s no silver lining. The prevailing wind says, “no-one is buying” or “everyone is playing it safe.” So to get money in salespeople are dropping their prices and company profits are taking a beating. Unfortunately, the decision to discount leaves more than just a few bruises and a hole in the bank balance. It’s potentially fatal.

Discounting is a disease that eats away at the guts of a company. It kills profits, buys bad business and rots integrity. Discounting is not just dropping your trousers on price. That is only the stuff you can see.

The rest is the hidden cost of sales. Free consulting. Getting paid late. Behaving like the Bank of “1-Born Every Minute” because you either have no credit control or you’re not enforcing your policy. Pitching, proposals and tenders without any commitment from the buyer’s side on what happens next. They don’t appear on the balance sheet, but the results are the same. Profits drop. Shareholders don’t get paid their divvies. Exits are delayed. Jobs lost. Companies closed. Fights. Estrangement. Divorce. Alimony. Stress. Heart attack. Death.

Why? All because you couldn’t plant your feet and tell someone who was pushing you to pay less than you’re worth, “No! My price is my price. My terms are my terms. Thanks but no thanks.”

The figures don’t lie. Discounting by 10% when you work on a 30% GP means that to make up the profit you’ve just handed to your customer requires you to sell 50% more the next time. That’s 50% more prospecting. Given salespeople’s natural propensity to do anything to avoid making sales calls either on the phone or in person, you basically have to double the activity that your sales people probably aren’t doing anyway. Getting cash into the coffers in almost any business is tough enough without making your life even tougher. Buyers know this and rely on you and your salespeople to get emotionally involved in this deal.

Conversely, if you make 30% gross margin and you raise your prices by 10%, you can afford to lose a quarter of your current client base and maintain your current bottom line. In my experience no company that has raised its prices by 10% has ever lost more than 10-20% of its customer base. Experience tells me that when you do raise prices, your best customers stay and the lowest profit, highest effort clients leave to blight someone else’s balance sheet.

Business leaders who allow a discounting culture to develop around them are the architects of their own disappointment. They don’t see it for what it really is – a long term cost that will probably hurt you throughout the lifetime of that customer relationship, disguised as a shot in the arm for cash flow.

Tough times require tough sales people. If customers and prospects are dictating your prices, you’ve just become part of their plan, not yours. Surviving this difficult market requires determination, resilience and conviction. This means a change in mindset.

Do you have a bunch of salespeople and account managers going out with their heads full of crappy programming, e.g. “The customer is king.” “The buyer is always right.” “They’ll buy if they like me, best not rock the boat.” Couple bad beliefs with a poor money concept that says, “don’t talk about money, its rude”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, etc and you get a culture of subservience, where the buyer is in complete control of the sales process because you and your team are projecting fear and neediness.

These are just limiting beliefs. Bad coding that has been passed down to us. It’s nonsense. Moses did not come down from the mountain with an 11th commandment that said that the customer calls the shots. If he did, he dropped that tablet on the way down the mountain.

Retailers came up with the concept of the customer is king. What a crock! The customer is never more than your equal. They may have the cash but that is all they have. Many prospects probably don’t even have that much. What every potential customer does have is a deep stack of problems that they’re incapable of dealing with, without help …. your help. And they’ll pay whatever it takes if you find enough reasons that are important to them. They don’t give a damn about you, your company, your investors, your products, your people – they worry about their selfish self-interest.

You, on the other hand, can take their problems away. That’s why they really come to you. Your job is to help them discover their problems and what they are costing their business. Once they realise how badly they need what you have, it is no longer about the money.

Yet don’t we usually do the opposite. If we look at how we train, manage and pay sales people in this country, almost everything that we do is like a Government policy before an election. On paper, it looks good, smells good and makes for a great bit of news. But if you look under the bonnet you can see just how divisive and crappy it is.

We teach our sales teams to go after revenue instead of profit. The problem is that if we don’t have much cash, then we go after anything. We buy bad business. We allow our salespeople to state their price and then tell their customers that they don’t believe it. Their credibility is shot to pieces. It’s no wonder prospects take advantage of them. If you buy business at a loss the one certainty is you will go bankrupt. Every percentage point you discount comes of BOTTOM line and requires much more effort to just stand still.

If your salespeople don’t believe that they have the right to play at top table and ask for a lot of money, they are never going to ask for a lot of money and will probably discount like double glazing salesman. When they get down to negotiations and the pressure builds, they’ll probably cave and give away just as much as you, their boss, have allowed them to.

Now is the time to break the bad programming. That means getting out of your head and into your gut. Listen to what it tells you. If you want to be successful in sales you have to be tough, determined and resilient. No more pussy footing around. Don’t worry whether the prospect likes you or not. You have to qualify for both sides. They never bring you the real problem, just a mishmash of symptoms. Dig deep. Find their pain. Do they have the conviction to do something about it? Force the issue. Drive the process forward. If they are not able to make a decision, then they are never going to buy.

Onanistic Management in Advertising Is to Blame for Crashing Revenues

Was anyone honestly shocked by last month’s league tables?

If you “sell” at cost or at a loss how can you be surprised when there’s no money in the bank account and you’re crashing down the league tables.

Agencies have got it into their head that it’s better to pay their big brand clients to have them in the portfolio than to make a profit. It might stroke the founder’s ego to get Dior, P&G or Astra-Zeneca as a client, but tell me how this makes any business sense.

What do they expect?

You operate on a 15% gross margin, then discount by 30% to be “competitive”. You tie up £millions worth of your highly skilled creative and operational account management time in unprofitable business, then throw your hands in the air when you can’t pay the bills and blame the economy for having to make swingeing cuts to your talented team.

Owners, founders, chaps at the top, lend me your ears. You’re in the profit business. Not a creative business. Not advertising. Not design. Not search. Not media. You are in business to make money. To make a profit. It’s better to make £10,000,000 and £1,500,000 profit than £1,000,000,000 and lose a penny.

But apparently the media industry is different. Moses came down and prescribed pitching as the only way to win business. “Open – Present – Close” he said and sure enough the faithful did what they were told. Well, that was over 5000 years ago folks. Things have moved on … a lot.

Imagine closing up front, then qualifying and then (if they qualify and have committed to buy from you), you present and they pay you what you’re worth. I know, it could never happen. God himself made the rules and anyone who bends or changes them is destined to a fiery afterlife and worldly damnation.

Shareholders of publicly listed companies should fire their senior management team if they allow a culture of discounting to prevail. Fire their account teams if they repeatedly over-service accounts without getting something of equal or greater value back in return. And if account managers see an opportunity to help a client that goes beyond the brief, issue P45s with alacrity if they dare fix the problem without at least getting a firm IOU or better still getting paid to fix it.

The time for pussyfooting around is long dead. Agencies are dying as you read this. Are you the cause of the problems you’re facing?

Funding bliss, how to get past the heavy petting and find good investment bedfellows

Here we go again. Another bubble bursts and billions in investment goes down the Suwannee. Don’t be fooled by what you read, we’re in this one for the long haul.

It is inevitable that getting investment in the next 5 years is going to be tough. Banks aren’t lending. Governments have to cut spending but are printing money fuelling the risk of inflation. Investors are cautious and withholding. Building a better mousetrap isn’t going to be enough. Unless you are meeting your commercial targets and giving your investors a ‘Ready Brek Glow’ that they will exit, you probably won’t get funding. You are more likely to get a date with Cheryl Cole. If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment, you better know how to get out into the market, sell and bring home the bacon.

Experience tells me inventors and innovators simply don’t see themselves as salespeople; they’re technical experts, engineers, technologists and professionals. The problem with these entrepreneurs, as VC and storyteller, Dr Gerry Lemberg once said, “They create elegant solutions for problems that don’t exist”. Herein lies the cause of the problems. Their goal is to produce a ground-breaking product or high quality service, not to be commercially strong. Many would prefer to be thought of as an expert than go to the bank.

Then, like any victim, they blame investors for asking for too much, lacking in imagination and muscling in on their masterpiece. Now of course they’re right. But most entrepreneurs are in a distress-purchase situation and they are showing they’re afraid. How? They offer too little for too much, for the wrong reasons because the numbers are based on guess work, not systematic research and testing. When you sup with the devil make sure you eat with a long spoon and know your numbers.

History is littered with the corpses of companies slow tortured to death by technical experts and amateur business people. Embittered investors view inventors as machines that turn cash into toilet paper. The market is littered with their great ideas that never took off; Dasani (Coca Cola’s water), Sony mini discs and the Sinclair C5 amongst the more famous. This is why entrepreneurs seeking funding almost without exception look unattractive to investors. It should come as no surprise then that only 0.2% of applications achieves funding.

No clearly defined target market, many entrepreneurs produce a product and then try and find a customer. They have never asked anyone to put their hand in their pocket to pay for it, to see if it is economically viable. They research, they develop, they brainstorm, they educate and burn through money as if it is someone else’s…oh wait a minute, it is.

Don’t think that investors are without blame. There are not. According to the Chairman of the BVCA average annual return pre-crash was a very disappointing 8%. Many are the architects of their own losses. They compensate entrepreneurs for making bad decisions with their money. They incentivise the wrong behaviour. They get emotionally involved in the progress being made on the technology and R&D. They parachute in talent that failed in the last 3, 4, 5 ventures and the team that failed along with them. Then they fire the CEO for failing after having fired the sales director and the salespeople, the commercial and marketing people. Investors beware, in all your dissatisfying investments the one constant is you.

Investors fail to invest. They throw money at ideas claiming it’s about management management management, then behave like its like exit exit exit. They don’t set the business up to be successful. They are focused on the wrong end of the problem. They chase revenues rather than putting in the systems for sustainable behaviours for success. Then they focus on the numbers rather than building a business that has a purpose, empowers its people and sells. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Daily investors hear the cries of biz owners and executives complaining abut their cash flow problem. They haven’t got a cash flow problem. They have got a not selling enough problem. I challenge investors to look at their portfolios. How many times have they made an investment in a company that has hit its Rand D and marketing targets but has failed to hit their commercial targets?

Why is this? History tells me the reasons are nearly always the same. Their emotions got the better of them because they didn’t want to lose what they had already sunk. They went to the counting house when they should have gone to the abattoir. They gave second round funding when they should have had mercy on the poor dead beast and pulled the trigger themselves. But why did the horse go lame in the first place?

Some entrepreneurs don’t have systems for anything other than for what they are good at. They can put clinical pathways in place. They can put manufacturing process together. But they don’t have processes that tell them why they are doing what they are doing; the ‘Reality Check’.

They don’t have a selling system or a marketing system. They don’t have a recruiting system or a system that identifies whether their behaviour and that of their staff is helping or hurting their business. In short, they are not commercially strong. Entrepreneurs need to build a business as if they mean to sell it from day one. That means that they have to have the right systems, strategy, structure and skills.

If you don’t already know who is going to buy your product or service, go and ask the people you think might. If you can’t get enough people interested, stop. The product or service needs to be something that people want to buy. In my experience, unless what you have can take away the pain of an identified group of customers, the likelihood is that it won’t make much money or survive for long. Do not seek gratuitous advice from people who are not in your target market; your professional network, your friends, etc. This is another common mistake. The only people whose advice matters are those that will pay you.

Recruitment systems need to predict whether a new hire will work out before they come on your payroll. The average cost of a bad hire in sales is at least £300,000 and that’s before you take into account the relationships that they may have butchered over the next 1, 3, 5 or 10 years.

The forecasting system must be accurate and tell you when the good times are going to roll and also, months ahead, when the train wreck is going to hit. It doesn’t just show the red light after the event. You need a marketing system that attracts genuine prospects and disqualifies tyre kickers, time bandits and time wasters.

You need selling and management systems that hold the top team and staff accountable for delivering the behaviours that lead to the commercial results. You need to track and measure where you are in the plan you should have written and the behaviours you should be encouraging. Not ride bareback on wild spreadsheets and flatulent financial forecasts. Planning should translate into day-to-day activities that generate profit. Having a product that people will buy is one thing, but it is more important to have a system and to do it well.

The benefits of having these systems when it comes to negotiating with investors are worth it. If you know the size of your target market; not in terms of those that might buy, but in terms of those that will, think of the conviction that you will communicate to investors. Investors respect people with conviction. If you don’t have confidence in the future success of your business, nobody else will. You will also be able to ask for all of the money you need, having to only negotiate on equity once, rather than having to repeatedly go cap in hand to investors to ask for more.

Attracting investors is about projecting your conviction that you can make your interests deliver the investors interests. That requires building your business on strong commercial foundations. Attracting the right talent who attract the right customers and behaving like you intend to build a business not a practice to fund a lifestyle. No investor wants to pay your salary. No investor wants to buy your risk. Make your prospectus speak to the investors interests not about paying your mortgage.

Yes this is the boring bit of business. It is the sickening detail that many entrepreneurs being big picture idealists do not want to get bogged down in. But as always, the devil is in the detail. With detail comes confidence and with confidence the power to deal with investors on your terms and at your price.

10 strangely simple solutions to funding bliss: How to get past the heavy petting and find good investment bedfellows:

1.Good management team
2.Good existing systems
3.Commercial focus
4.Measuring and tracking what matters
5.Take advice and direction
6.Get commitment to a common purpose
7.Honest communication
8.Ability to learn from failure
9.Knowing when to let go
10.Recognising you may be the problem

Why cold calling is tough for normal people

You’re 3 years old; your mother is warning you not to talk to strangers. You see the expression of worry on her face; you sense that she is saying this for a reason. It’s not like “Stop picking your nose Richard!”. This time there’s a pleading, worried, emphatic tone in her voice. “Don’t talk to strangers; they can take you away and hurt you, and mummy will be so worried if that happens. Please be careful darling.” Remember that conversation.

Now this is awesome advice in the context of the world of a 3 year old ….. but not so good if you’re 40, self-employed and trying to pay a mortgage, school fees, car payments, credit card debt, service the loan you took out to set up your business, perhaps pay monthly royalties or interest payments … oh, and put food on the table.

Got young kids? Does your mother-in-law live miles away? So it doesn’t matter what the kids look like then?

Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse

They f*** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f***ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself

OK, another mental script on permanent loop in our brains many of us run is …….

“Don’t interrupt” sometimes with the additional “I’m busy”. You came in from school and your father was reading the paper, balancing the cheque book (my personal phobia because he was so miserable and grumpy all the time when he was doing this and for several hours afterwards) or watching the news for the umpteenth time that day. Or your mother was busily involved doing something for you to prepare you for the following day at school and you wanted their attention. Instead they sent you away with a fly in your ear because what they were doing felt more important to them than what you wanted to talk to them about.

Now this one is a biggie. Are you ready for it? Think about this …… when was the battle of Hastings? Which year?

Did anyone not get 1066?

Ok, why do we nearly always answer questions? Gatekeepers’ questions, prospects’ questions …. we always seem to be answering them, don’t we.

RULE: ‘The Gatekeeper is not your mother’

This means you don’t have to answer the gatekeepers’ questions but we do. Why? Imagine you’re about 5 or 6.

Mum: “Tom, where have you been?”
You: “Nowhere”
Mum: “Don’t lie to me Thomas, where have you been?”
You: “Nowhere!”
Mum: “Thomas, for the last time answer my question. Where have you been?”
You: “Hrrrrrmmmppph! Just outside playing on my bike”
Mum: “Didn’t I tell you to come in and finish your homework half an hour ago?”
You: (sighing) Yes!
Mum: “Then why haven’t you done it? Get upstairs now and finish it. Then come downstairs, wash your hands and tell me why I shouldn’t tell your father!”
You: “Oh OK. Please don’t tell daddy.”
Mum: “Well run up stairs and do as you’re told. Be a good boy!” (as she shakes her head)

This scenario played out countless times in different contexts time and again in many of our childhoods. Or was it just me?

Our high need for approval is a killer. One client of mine, a lovely guy. He’s bright – an IQ well above mine – articulate, historically very competent worked for a global engineering brand had a punishing father. Not physically punishing as far as I’m aware, but nothing “Frank” (name changed to protect the innocent) did was every quite good enough. A “b” grade should have been an “a”, coming 2nd wasn’t good enough despite the fact he’d tried so hard and worked his way up from 5th or 6th last time ….. and he carries this baggage with him to this day. He spends his time seeking approval of strangers because he can’t get it from his dad. And his mother tells her friends “Frank used to work for Rolls Royce … but now he sells some consulting thing!” Apparently she actually does this. “Frank” has doubled his income in 3 years going self employed but because of his need for approval he holds himself back.

Put these scripts and the many others “It’s rude to talk about money”, “he’s busy, he must be important”, “children should be seen and not heard”, “be nice”, “CHEER UP!” and so many others have messed us up. They don’t mean to mess us up but they do …….

Larkin’s right. (You always knew it was your mother’s fault!!) they do f*** us up. Unintentional, well meaning scripting embedded from childhood holds us back. And in cold calling and selling, all these fears, phobias, prejudices, paranoia come flooding together to paralyse us. They hobble our legs, our tongue goes dry, we get butterflies in the pit of our stomach and we go to pick up the phone to make our cold calls, but then you hear that you have mail on your PC …. and you just have to check you emails. that pan is in the wrong place on your desk, the dog wants water, the cats want feeding, then the bell rings and it’s the postman …. actually I’m thirsty, let’s get a cuppa, now where was I oh yes this email, how shall I respond ……. oh look its 10:30, … got to go out for my next meeting. I’ll get back to making those cold calls tomorrow when I have more time ….. but tomorrow you find more excuses, more ways to avoid making them, more ways of “notworking”.

Some sales trainers tell you that you can avoid making cold calls by becoming good at networking and asking for referrals. And you can. 98% of my business comes from referrals. BUT IT’S TAKEN 3 YEARS TO GET HERE!!

Could I have reached that point faster? Possibly. I could have been to more than 5 networking events a week for 2 years. I could have done more than ten 121’s a week for 2 years. I could have not missed my daughter’s nativity play because I was in a networking meeting and too embarrassed to leave early during the speakers talk because of my need for approval by my peers (largely total strangers) and let down my pride and joy, my eldest daughter as she’d probably forget (actually she didn’t and still reminds me two years on!!). I could have asked for more referrals from my friends and allies.

But it takes time and it takes effort to build up that momentum. Cold calling is simply the fastest and most efficient way of building a sales pipeline to get you in front of potential buyer but most people don’t know how to do it well and fear making those calls. They fear rejection. They fear disapproval. This isn’t like asking for a dirty magazine or for men putting condoms in your trolley and looking for the male checkout worker because you’re embarrassed enough for it not to be a woman. Your dirty little secret that you avoid talking about with your mother is that you’ve become one of those people who make cold calls … or doesn’t as the case may be. If you don’t make them, then mum can’t be disappointed in you for becoming one of those nasty salespeople.

According to the DTI survey I read a couple of years ago, in 2005 43% of all new business was generated via an initial phone call. 47% via word of mouth referral, leaving all the other media 10%!!

If you’re not cold calling at all or effectively, you’re potentially leaving behind 43% of your business. Suppose it was only half that. If you grew your customer base by only 20% what would that do for your business? Your cashflow? Your lifestyle?

I teach people mental strategies to eliminate their fears and create effective behaviours, to rewrite their mental and negative emotional scripting around selling, account management and cold calling. I teach managers how to get their teams to perform better and motivate then for the behaviours that will make them successful. But the starting point always has to be the seller’s mind. That’s where the sale is won or lost. That’s where the meeting is booked. That’s where the customer establishes confidence in you as a seller. It’s not during your superb presentation. It’s not during your close.

Victory happens between your ears long before your customer ever meets you or hears your voice on the phone.

Cold calling should and can be fun. I do it but I still don’t love it. But I don’t need to. I just have to do it.

A couple of pointers to help you on your way ……

1. Mentally prepare for making calls
2. Remember the gatekeeper isn’t your mother. You don’t have to answer her questions
3. The call you make to that prospect could be the most important one s/he receives that day, week, month, and year or perhaps in their life (I genuinely believe that if I don’t get through then I’m doing them a DISSERVICE because I know I can help almost anyone who has to sell, manage, motivate or recruit salespeople.
4. Notice your mental scripts that hold you back. Whose voice is it? What’s their tonality? How do you feel?
5. Notice how you feel about making cold calls?
6. Identify your call avoidance strategies and behaviours? What triggers them? How do you act on those triggers?

Seek help. Get a cold calling buddy. Call together for support …. regularly. Become accountable to someone for your prospecting behaviour. Call each other’s prospects so you’re not emotionally attached to the outcome or the product and book meetings for each other. Obviously I’m going to say get some training (I would!!) but make sure it’s not the same old claptrap about elevator pitches and having a strong opening benefit statement – you’ll just sound like a salesperson. When you hear a cold caller on the line, what’s your reaction? Total joy? Excitement? Or you want to get him or her of the line as fast as you can? “Send me some information?” “The timing is bad call me back later” (knowing full well you won’t take the call or be there when they do call back).

Learn strategies that take the pressure off you and your prospect. Learn how to break the buyer’s pattern of behaviour and forces them to give non-stock answers and rebuttals. Find ways to get invited in, so you don’t have to ask for the appointment …. so you go as a guest not a supplier (think about that, what’s the dynamic of a guest-host relationship (who serves who?))

In conclusion, get your head on straight. Realise that much of your behaviour is driven by subconscious processes developed in your early childhood by well meaning significant others – parents, grandparents, teachers, relatives. Mark Twain said something along the lines of “The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember”. Being unable to forget the feeling of rejection, the fear of making the first call, the feeling you were doing something dirty or unsavoury, the fear of interrupting or talking to strangers may be limiting you from growing your business and providing for your family or your future.

Make a decision to be master of your own destiny. And give yourself permission to do the necessary behaviours you need to do consistently, well, over time without the need for seeking the approval of others. Life and business are tough enough as they are without having to satisfy your need for approval of an ageing or even dead parent for whom our best was never good enough. And rewrite your mental scripting so they serve you not hold you back.

Happy cold calling!

(c) Marcus Cauchi & Sandler Systems Inc 2007