EXECUTION!

Wes Welker dropped a pass that him right in the hands. Had he made the catch, it would have given the Patriots a first down on their 20 with only four minutes and thirty second to go, leading by 2.

The Patriots lost.

With only 4 minutes to go and only one time out, the Giants were pinned on their 10 yard line, when Marion Manningham made an unbelievable catch down the sidelines for 45 yards. It was unreal.

The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI

The key to success . . . execution. Those who execute, and get it done win. Those who don’t, well don’t.

Success is that simple. Don’t believe me, ask Welker or Manningham.

Nuff said!

It’s been a weird relationship, but Google Plus has snuck up on me. I’ve come to like it a lot.  What I like is it’s a full social network like Facebook, but doesn’t bind me to the “personal” nature. 

I use Facebook for my friends only. I don’t think about what I say or do on Facebook. It’s like being in my backyard on a summer day or on the slopes in the winter. I can say and do what I want.  Twitter and Linkedin have been great from a business perspective, however the social nature can be limiting at times.

I see Google Plus as a killer combination of all the social networks. I can share most of my personal self and only share it with my friends circle. It can be business and I’ll share with everyone or just my sales and business circles etc.  And of course, the search benefits are an added bonus.

Google Plus is just starting. I’m going starting to invest more time in my profile.  You should too.

If you’re on Google Plus let me know and I’ll add you to my circles.

My Google Plus page. See you there!

During one particular week in the season, like a shit head, I skipped school. I got caught and was suspended for that Saturday’s football game.  I had to stand on the sidelines, in my game jersey, no pads and watch. It sucked.  It was hard. We lost the game.

The next day, I walked down to my grandfathers house. As usual, he was reading the Sunday Paper. I walked in and started some small talk. He just looked at me and asked; “What happened?”

Apparently, my absence on the field was a bigger deal than I thought. The paper made a point to report I did not play due to a suspension.

I asked my grandfather what he was talking about, knowing clear well what he was asking me.

He looked at me and asked again. “What happened?”

Just as I was about to explain what happened, my grandfather blurted out; “Wait! Don’t tell me. I know. It was your coaches fault!”

I looked at him puzzled and wondered to myself. What is he talking about?

He then said, “Wait, I know! It was your teachers fault!”  He paused and then said, “No, it was your buddy’s fault!” he took a quick breath and quickly said; “It was the schools fault.” He then paused again.  He looked at me for just a brief second, but not long enough for me to say anything and said; “Don’t tell me! I’ll get it!  Because, I know it wasn’t your fault!”

I’ll never, ever, ever forget that day.

So, when you don’t make quota. When you lose the big deal, when you miss the RFP deadline, when you don’t make enough cold calls, when you don’t make Presidents Club, when you lose your best client, when the demo doesn’t go well, when your presentation bombs, don’t worry about it. I know! — It’s not your fault!

Our minds and more importantly our feelings require mistakes to learn.  When mistakes are made our mind reacts physically.

Our minds are constantly searching its surroundings for subtle, predictable patterns we can’t consciously recognize. Our mind, using dopamine nuerons automaticaly detects these predictable patterns and turns them into emotions.  These emotions give us our sense of the world. These emotions give us early clues to what is happening around us BEFORE our conscience mind has time to figure it out. Basically, what is happening is our brains signal expected results before they happen.  Our dopamine neurons are constantly creating patterns based on experience. It’s like an acute, if this, then that, system deep in our subconscious. The subtle patterns identified by the dopamine neurons anchor us in our world and creates predictability.

So what happens when this predictability is broken? What happens if inconsistent messages are picked up by our brains? Our brains take notice and say “hey, this ain’t right, warning, warning,” and quickly send messages in the form of electrical signals from center of the brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). This signal is called error-related negativity or the “oh shit!” circuit. These signals happen in the background, away from our conscience mind. Our mind tells us something is wrong BEFORE we know something is wrong and before we know why. It’s the shock or sting of predictability being broken where we learn. When our predictable patterns are broken our mind works effortlessly to find the “new” patterns and anchor them into the subconscience. Every time old patterns are broken and new patterns are established in a particular field, the better you will be in that field.

Physicist Neils Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”

When we make mistakes we give the brain a chance to re-establish the predictable outcomes and the associate expectations. The more mistakes we make, the less time our conscience mind needs to spend thinking. The brain already knows what ISN’T going to work.

To be the best sales person you can, to be the best sales leader, the best sales executive, make mistakes. Let your team make mistakes. Push the envelope. Don’t avoid the unfamiliar and charge ahead. Our minds are built to self-correct. Nature built our brains with the understanding that nothing is completely “predictable” giving it the ability to adjust. Like everything else however, it won’t do it all by itself. You have to be willing to learn, to look for your mistakes, to call them out, to accept them and then learn from them. Our mind wants us to and will reward us for doing it.

The next time you are afraid to challenge a customer, to hold your own in a negotiation, or push the envelope, do it. What you’ll learn will be invaluable, that is, until it’s not. And that is how you become and expert.

Do you allow yourself to make mistakes?

Source: How We Decide, John Lehrer

Remember the old days of drive by selling? You’d roll up on a prospect, (by phone, or car, or email or direct mail piece) and hit them up with why your company, service and product was the shit and why they needed to buy it. Drive by selling was successful because there was nothing else. All you had was perseverance, a keenly refined message, some slick, glossy product sheets, a “special deal” of day, and maybe a demo. It was a hustle. There was very little selling support. Content mattered very little and everything went through the sales person.

Things have changed. Drive by selling is just about dead. Buyers have shut down to product centric, interrupting messages. Rolling up with a “hey check me out, I’m the shit” doesn’t connect with buyers. It pisses them off. They are too busy. They know more than you in many cases. They know what is out there. They know what their options are. Finding you, products and services like your’s isn’t difficult. Selling requires more now.

Selling requires content, content that educates and teaches. Selling requires tools and information that sell when you aren’t there. I’m not talking about a static website that does what drive by selling used to do. I’m talking about substantial, educational, informative content that your buyers can use. Selling today requires framing your buyers world. It requires capturing their attention when you are nowhere to be found. It requires selling when you are at the beach, with another customer, using the bathroom, sleeping, doing a blog post or recording your next video. Selling today needs to scale. Selling today HAS to happen when you aren’t selling.

The drive by sale is dead. It’s all about scale and scale comes from content, content that actually means something.

Are you still drive by selling?

Unfortunately, most of the time this isn’t the case. There is little differentiation in our products OR if there is, we suck at conveying it. Our customers don’t want us. They could take us or leave us. When that happens, we need them. We are forced to start the sale from the perspective of us wanting them, not them wanting us. That is no way to sell.

The key, build a product that really is different. That your customer really can’t live without.  Then sell it that way.

There are customers who want their sales people more than their sales people want them and that’s exactly where you want to be.

If you want your customers and they don’t want you you’re in the wrong place.

Product, are you listening?

I saw this the other day while skiing.  I couldn’t have said it any better. I’m going to adopt it as my saying of the year.

I can think of a number of times where I worked my ass off to kick someone else’s.

I recall one particular time I read an entire frickin’ 100 plus page master services agreement to “understand” the customer relationship better, only to find neither the customer nor the company were operating to the terms of the agreement and the animosity that was bubbling-up was unnecessary. Reading a 100 plus page Master Services legal document is fucking death, I promise you.

Our customer was threatening to go with our competitor and to stop ordering. After reading the entire agreement (which had been in place for over 4 years) I was able to bring more information and clarity to the table than existed.  I was able to get my organization to move on somethings they had dug in on. I was also able to get the client to recognize their demands were outside the agreement and although we could help them, we weren’t contractually obligated to it.

I remember the first meeting after reading the agreement.  I started the meeting with; “Has anyone read the MSA (Master Services Agreement) lately? Silence. No one had been willing to work their ass off.

Working your ass off so you can kick your competition’s ass is about as good as it gets. Who’s working their ass of to kick yours?  Don’t let it happen!

When is the last time you worked your ass off to kick someone else’s? What happened?

Last week, I wrote a post about the information sale and the importance of being an expert. In it, I shared how being an expert and having more information is the key to successful sales. Here is the key quote from that post:

Information selling is quickly becoming a must. It’s no longer a secret weapon of great sales people. Customers and clients are busy. They won’t give up their time for a “pitch.” They don’t want to do the work themselves. They don’t want to add anything else to their plate. They want sales people to bring a lot more to the table than just a “pitch.”

What makes information selling interesting is it requires a tremendous amount of information. Sales people have to know more than just their product. They have to be experts . . .

To be an expert and have the amount of information required to be successful in the “information sale” sales people are going to need help. That help will need to come from marketing and sales operations.

A new role or division needs to be created within marketing. This new role will be solely responsible for providing sales with the teaching materials required for the information sale. This role will be heavily research dependent. It will be their job to provide sales with deep, robust industry information including; where the market is headed, what’s influencing the market, what’s changing, what’s getting old and what’s coming down the pike and more. This role will need to be THE company’s industry thought leader. The role will need to supply sales and its prospects with all the data and teaching material they can.

The role will have to provide more than data. It will need to be creative. It will need to find information and solutions customers are unaware of. It has to find and provide information that is new, fresh and impacting. The role should look and feel like an internal Gartner Group. If done correctly, the company and its sales people will be percieved as a go to resource for critical, strategic decisions customers and prospects make around your products and services.

Supporting sales no longer means providing slick, glossy, product sheets or spec sheets. It’s no longer about providing a cool flash based website.  More than ever, marketing has to bring some substance to the table. Marketing needs to teach the sales team to teach the customer.

Marketing, start thinking like this:

Create videos that shed light on a major external factor such as; a Senate bill, government mandate, new study or economic indicator and how that information could effect their business and the industry as a whole.

Do a study or survey regularly to get the pulse of the industry or it’s clients and publish the results on your website. Then provide an ebook or white paper on how to capitalize on the current industry sentiment.

Produce a monthly “state of the industry” newsletter highlighting what is going in the industry and how it is affecting your customers and their customers.

Do bi-weekly “how to” webinars targeting key industry challenges and how to solve them.

Create a “company college” or resource page on the website and load it up with useful industry information and resources; videos, ebooks, white-papers, links, book recommendations, webinars, podcasts etc. Establish your site as the place to go to LEARN more about what is going in the industry with the products and services you sell AND about the business challenges your company solves.

Teach sales how to use all the information you uncover.

Sales has to change. The information sale is demanding it. Therefore, it’s time for marketing to change. It’s time for marketing to bring some substance to the table. There is still room for flash in marketing, but NOT until there is substance. The substance is, valuable, relevant information your customers DON’T have.

Build a research department. Hire some industry experts, and start teaching your sales team and your customers.

Maybe we should call it the information identification and dissemination department? Nah, but that’s what they need to do. The market is demanding it!

This is a follow up to my post last week where I wrote about the information sale and the importance of being an expert.

Getting this information takes an incredible amount of time and effort and this is why the role of marketing and sales operations needs to change.

Great is an end game. Once achieved, it’s over. Then what?

Better is infinite. It’s not a static. It can be achieved, but once achieved it calls out to be achieved again. Better is continuous.

I’ve met a lot of great sales people. They know they are great. But, they really aren’t, because they aren’t trying to get better. “I’ve been doing this for years.” “I know this stuff.” “What can some blog teach me.” “I’ve read all the books, there is nothing new.” These are the sayings of the great. Of course, because they’ve arrived. They will make their numbers, they will be one of the best on the team. They’re great, remember.

Those who think they are great rarely get better.

I am a good skier. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m a PSIA Level 2 Certified ski instructor. To almost every person on the mountain I’m a great skier. Not to me. Between this year and last year, I crossed a chasm. I changed something in my skiing that has taken me to an entirely different level. I’ve gotten better. I’m 44 in April and I ski better now than I’ve ever skied in my life. I ski faster and more in control. I can ski more terrain. I can ski it better and more aggressively. It was a frickin’ awesome feeling to cross the chasm and get to the next level. It took a long time. It was hard. I wondered sometimes if I was going to be able to do it. Today, I am a better skier than I have ever been in my life.

(This video was taken when I was 38, 6 years ago. When I look at it now, I cringe. I see all the mistakes and flaws. I’ll put up a new one soon and we’ll see if you can tell a difference)

Am I a great skier now? NO!  Thank god, that would mean my journey is over. I’m a better skier and that is awesome. It means my next journey is just beginning. I’m going to get even better.

Are you a great sales person? If so, I am sorry.

Are you a better sales person? No? Then start now. If yes, great! Enjoy it for the day. Because tomorrow, you’re new goal kicks in. — Getting better!

Information selling is quickly becoming a must. It’s no longer a secret weapon of great sales people. Customers and clients are busy. They won’t give up their time for a “pitch.” They don’t want to do the work themselves. They don’t want to add anything else to their plate. They want sales people to bring a lot more to the table than just a “pitch.”

What makes information selling interesting is it requires a tremendous amount of information. Sales people have to know more than just their product.  They have to be experts and or at least very knowledgable in all of these things;

1. The industry -What’s coming down the pike, what works and why, what is influencing the market and why? What is becoming obsolete and why? What are the industry standards, where are they going? What are companies and organizations looking to get from investing in the space/product? Sales people have to know all this and be the industry experts, sharing their vision and knowledge with their clients and prospects.
2. Workflow – Sales people have to understand how their customers and prospects business flow and how they get things done. They have to understand the general business process. Sales people need to understand “how” their customers and prospects do their business and how their product or service will affect their business.
3. Product Impact- I used impact and not value proposition on purpose. Product impact knowledge goes beyond value proposition knowledge, it’s knowing how your product will effect the overall business of your customers and prospects. Will the product cause big disruptions or little disruptions. How much change does it create? Who is impacted, negatively and positively? What is the ripple affect? How does it affect work flow, business process, the user experience, the customer experience, etc. Value proposition is important, but it’s myopic. Our products and services have broader impact to an organization. Knowing what that is, is critical.