New Hope For Recovering Salesmen

Hi, my name is Carey and I’m a salesman. A recovering salesman. And thanks to social media you can recover, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sales. It’s even addicting. But I love making a decent living more than sales, which has put me on the road to recovery.

It won’t be easy to give up the familiar sales rush that comes from enthusing across the bows of busy, preoccupied strangers about opinions and hopes that I hope will move them to action. Unfortunately, prospects knew the game as well as I.

My most important opinion: I deserve to get paid for sharing my employer’s opinions of his service or product. My fondest hope: a prospect will give me money before I can finish my pitch. That way I won’t have to ask him or her for the sale.

Most people don’t have the money or interest to purchase; so there was rarely a snowball’s chance in hell of making a sale. And that’s even before my carefully rehearsed pitch had a chance to kill any interest in me or what I’m offering.

We all know great sales professionals who are making money. For example, my friend and advisor Frank Hurtte of River Heights Consulting does his homework, carefully chooses the best prospects, qualifies them, and presents compelling reasons to buy during his carefully orchestrated campaigns.

Times change, of course; and technology will help ease the pain of recovering salesmen. Because online opinions are often bundled with solid information, we can use them together and “sell” even some knee-jerk opinion to somebody–with a stray fact or two as evidence. And when we pass on a favorite blogger’s opinion, we have their gazilllion followers as proof that it has merit.

So take heart. recover and prosper! In the social media age, we have nothing to lose but . . . the nothing on those commission checks.

How can legions of recovering salesmen make a decent living? Stay tuned. But remember: You’ll only be getting one man’s opinion.

The Pope and Me

I’m not sure who would be more surprised to hear this, but the Pope and I agree. About one thing at least.

His Holiness recently encouraged Roman Catholic priests to reach out to their flocks at least in part via social media sites. He deserves credit for recognizing how much impact the internet has on even our most hallowed institutions. People aren’t coming to Mass like they used to, so the priests must go to the masses digitally.

Barack Obama used social media to help get elected, and companies like Pepsi will use it instead of splurging on Super Bowl ads. The most hidebound institutions have to acknowledge how the world is changing.

Anyone without an institutional mindset is going to be better prepared for the changes. One 88-year-old priest told a reporter that “young priests would have no trouble following the pope’s message, but, he joked, ‘those who have a certain age will struggle a bit more.'”

It’s a shock for many people to watch their once dependable institutions falter, or redefine themselves to benefit smaller groups of stakeholders. “We can count on the media, right?” they always reassured themselves. “And if a few big companies fail us, we can depend on the banks, right? And if the banks fail, the government will make sure we don’t lose everything, right?”

Of course the primary business of the media, big business, financial institutions, and the government has always been staying in business. Now social media sites and the blogosphere are mushrooming as fast as our skepticism about big institutions. They can sometimes offer more viable alternatives, too.

Maybe the Pope would even agree with the Talking Heads song: “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco.” This is survival. Individuals, like institutions, must change and tap into every available resource if they expect to make it through the next few years and beyond.

Make Every Day A New Business Event!

Everyone loves to feel special. So you should make prospects, customers, and employees or other stakeholders feel special by turning business transactions into mini-events.

Just remember to “show, don’t tell.” Anyone will happily follow your marketing messages or business information if you make them feel like they’re at a fun “event.”

Here are five ways this kind of Events approach to marketing will help you build business:

1. Success Is In The Details

You might describe your product’s features and benefits in a virtual “breakout session;” or turn details of a process or system into a technical symposium; and of course you should conclude your event with a compelling call to action. Even dry information can be interesting when presented this way. It will be read, not ignored or scanned, and people will come back for more.

2. “Accentuate the positive”

Holding virtual “events” will make it easier to show your appreciation of employees’ hard work, or customers’ business. You can also applaud what matters most to your company; and deliver stories about your business savvy, management skills, and customer service values.

Recognition always pays off. In the social media age, nothing motivates great employees like recognition. And nothing engages customers as powerfully as authentically engaged employees. Invite them all to your virtual “event,” and stand back!

3. Make your message consistent

A consistent business message will increase feelings of comfort, anticipation and even gratitude. It helps build better lists and social media presence. It also attracts more qualified leads and prospects–even when you aren’t actively recruiting.

Building a business campaign or announcement into an event will enable you to make different kinds of information more intriguing, and consistent with your core message.

4. Monetize your business culture

Inviting someone to participate in your event will make them feel special–even excited. It adds intrinsic value to every conversation, and electrifies that call to action. Customer or employee excitement, and that extra value, are bound to show up on your bottom line.

5. Publicity and Market Share

Media folks and other well-connected people are naturally drawn to well planned events. So tap into the promotional value of your digital version with well written press releases, articles, and even special newsletters or autoresponders.

Ready to turn every business conversation or activity into a mini event?

How To Monetize Brilliant Ideas

Of course you have brilliant ideas. But to monetize them you need a responsive team of expert advisors, and a doable process that allows you to tap into their expertise.

This isn’t new. Almost a century ago, the sainted Napoleon Hill told businesses to create a kind of Mastermind group.

Business incubation companies usually help established companies. Sole proprietors and startups often rely on Mastermind support groups, or agencies like SCORE.

You know a little about business incubators and how well they work. Wikipedia says:

“Business incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts. Incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure, and in the types of clients they serve. Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a start-up company will stay in business for the long term.

“Historically, 87% of incubator graduates stay in business.”

Wow, 87%? That’s about the same as the depressing percentage of new businesses that close within their first few years. Incubators clearly help, and could do even better if the business had a home grown Mastermind group, and was ready to fully tap into its skills and talents.

You could hire an incubator company, or invest time and effort into working with SCORE and SBDCs. But most of their experience is in industrial age business. Even if that approach still worked in the internet age, you’re probably not ready to follow their suggestions without educating yourself first.

Every day you spend hours online educating yourself. It’s quick and easy because so much information is modularized and partially filtered by super-widgets like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon.

Why don’t more businesses create greater value from all that information? Why can’t they organize and tap into this unlimited pool of expertise? Simply because they lack the right implementation strategy and plan; a customized “Social Media Business Incubation for Dummies” process.

One simple, disruptive-technology process helps transform raw ideas–yours or others’–into productive, sustainable action. Why not start “incubating” your own business this week?

First, create a clear vision of what makes your business unique. Not what you do, but why you do it so well. You’ll stay focused, and easily screen out unhelpful bits of information and false prophets. Next, build authentic, long-term engagement with your stakeholders, tapping into all their wisdom and experience. Finally, plan and execute world-class communications that will really build your business.

The tools you need for viral success are already familiar to anyone who uses social media. Begin your new business incubation program and thrive.

Radiation That Heals

Image by ☂bitzi via Flickr

On behalf of everyone you know, allow me to thank you for not cluttering up our lives with stuff we don’t need.

We don’t need reminders that what you do is unique and invaluable. Or demands for our attention, when we can barely find time to do what’s already on our plates.

Or reminders of why life is so hard for you, and that you “deserve” better. Or rehashed opinions that you heard on TV, repeated as if each is breathtakingly original and factual.

You can do better than that, and do.

You decorate our lives with your smile, powered by your sincere interest in how we’re doing. You acknowledge our family members and best efforts–even our names! And all those thank you’s. God bless gratitude; it’s the surest sign that you manage to stay happy despite it all.

Thank you for radiating that signature joy and optimism, every chance you get. It’s a gift the rest of us can never repay, but that the universe surely will.

“Just Keepin’ On”

Last night a 90 year old gentleman–who still limps from an injury sustained when he was serving with the ‘Go For Broke‘ Infantry Regiment during World War II–was thanking a roomful of well-wishers for their pile of birthday gifts.

Many guests were busy socializing and barely heard him. But George kept on telling everyone how much he appreciated their kindness anyway. Thanked them in his astonishingly clear voice, until every gift had been acknowledged.

He finally took a load off and sat down. Someone asked what kept him smiling after all these years and travails. He shrugged and murmured modestly “Just keepin’ on I guess.”

There you have it folks, straight from someone who knows. Third generation Texan George Fujimoto’s secret of happiness. Unflagging gratitude, humility … and just keepin’ on.

The University of You

Image via Wikipedia

Every entrepreneur and small business owner should feel energized by famous stories of new-paradigm businesses that were born in universities.

Many great modern companies, even entire industries, started out as class projects. Think FedEx and Google. And James Watt, who invented the steam engine, worked at the University of Glasgow (possibly alongside my great-great-great-great-granduncle).

What made such historic success possible wasn’t ivy covered walls or cavernous libraries. It was the university’s culture of ideas.  Genius emerges with the support of other students and academics, both inside and outside the classroom.

This should encourage anyone to develop a vision and a better idea in 2010. Why?

Because just like a university, the internet provides lateral-thinking stimulus and collegial support. Our electronic version just happens to work on several dimensions–and on steroids.

Think. What have you been doing online over the last week? Found entertainment, shopped, socialized, educated yourself? A lot like when you were in college or university!

Next, think of your life since graduation. By sharing your acquired knowledge with other people on the information superhighway, in a sense you become an international one-man or -woman university built around your total value.

If you are indeed a university, your next blog or comment might even inspire someone to create the next FedEx or Google. The question then becomes, why waste time and attention on entertainment or super-widget sites like Facebook?

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The Internet as “Experiential Marketplace”

Image via Wikipedia

(Dedicated to my friends at Jobs Ministry Southwest)
It makes the news when an 89-year-old man straps himself onto the top of a plane for his 20th wing-walking jaunt over the English Channel (http://bit.ly/7IQpwR). He’s one example of the growing experiential marketplace.

It’s not as newsworthy when a laid-off executive sees his or her job status as “just another stage of exploration” and actively begins “tossing aside presumed limitations” by creating or enriching opportunities on the internet. But these men and women achieve much more in the long run than aging thrill seekers.

Their families, industry and community all benefit every day from their vision and bravery.

It takes guts to put aside years of identifying yourself with a title or job description, and adopt entirely new modes of communication. It’s scary to join in the hunt for online success alongside much younger people. First you have to unlearn many outmoded “secrets of success” that you learned over your long, often illustrious career.

You have to see yourself as a leader rather than one more cog in some corporate machine.

You do whatever it takes to stand out, because you’re determined not to fade out.

God bless all those old-timers who challenge their physical limitations to try something completely different. But let’s also honor those who reinvent themselves and transform society into a new and better experiential marketplace.  These pros are charting a more elusive and uncertain territory, and helping improve the life experiences of millions of us uppity “younger folks.”

How not to connect

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One evening many years ago I was standing in line at the train station in Maebashi, Japan. A middle-aged man came up and started practicing his limited English with a rapid-fire series of unrelated questions.

I answered in fluent Japanese, so he knew conversation was possible. But that wasn’t what he was after; he finished his half dozen questions and disappeared down the boulevard; mission accomplished.

For years I laughed at the memory. How could anyone confuse irrelevant, unsolicited phrases with meaningful engagement?

I’ve stopped laughing. Millions of social media users do the same thing and think they’ve accomplished something. The internet has come to resemble an enormous room full of strangers busily talking over each other, and believing they’re maintaining real relationships or selling teeth whitener.

The latter group even thinks they’re trembling on the brink of money for nothing. No really, nothing.

Yet this is how engagement doesn’t happen–it’s “empty calories.”

As our traditional safety nets and sources of recognition evaporate, we all need more personal validation and growth. And belonging to a supportive new culture or “tribe” is what most Americans are seeking. Always have, always will.

The internet is history’s greatest engagement tool. It will also help businesses tap into the greatest asset we could dream of: our internal and external customers. We just need to use it better.

Every tool you need to make authentic engagement your business‘s hallmark is available and waiting. But to paraphrase the Zen saying, you must stop confusing the tools that point toward real engagement with engagement itself.

Stop being unwelcome and irrelevant like that guy in Maebashi. Get in touch.

Time to Reinvent ROI?

Today’s business news included a stark report on the American workplace. Only about half of our country’s workers are happy with what they are doing–a 22-year low.

Workers under 25 are the most unhappy demographic group, apparently. And unhappy older workers are less inclined to share their knowledge, skills and experience with younger counterparts.

Both facts relate to workplace education and training. Younger workers, who spend the most time online, are educating themselves and feel less dependent on corporate training programs. And older workers’ decreasing contributions to overall worker development will add pressure for a company to invest in high quality training programs.

But the biggest losers will be large, well-established and very expensive internal programs such as Quality and Safety. Even before the recent business downturn, companies were dealing with an erosion in employee commitment to these initiatives. And the more unhappy and demoralized a workforce becomes, the less likely its members will be to keep their workplace safe and their output quality high.

Given the soaring Cost of Quality figures that most companies face–even those using Six Sigma, Lean or similar management improvemnt methodologies–such news can only have a negative impact on ROI. And where Quality standards go, so goes customer satisfaction; more bad news.

If the downturn was almost over, finding solutions to these significant problems might be easier. But most signs point to a full U.S. recovery being weak and far off. Some immediate action to initiate meaningful change and increase real engagement of rank and file workers is called for.

The first place to look may be our traditional definition of ROI.

Would new measurements and standards help executives develop strategies more pertinent to our changing business landscapes? What would it take for corporate leaders to tap into the positive aspects of social media (sense of ownership, new willingness to teach and learn, a more dynamic engagement model, etc) while presenting viable alternatives to some of social media’s inherent weaknesses?

Some type of change is already on the way. More and more Americans are accepting responsibility for their own success, and uncovering innovative ways to ward off failure.

Tweetups and Meetups, Stumbling and unfriending, viral posting and roasting . . . a whole new generation of investment opportunities and potholes is emerging. How well companies can get some bottom-line return on such changes may determine the severity and longevity of our current business malaise.