Selling C21

It has to be Good

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:57:00 +0000

I was talking to a client the other day about the complexity of building a compelling web presence. I was explaining that it was not just about design of the web page itself (which has to be good) or about the quality of the content (which has to be good), or the way it is promoted with blogs, articles wikis and other social media links (which has to be good), or the strategy which is followed (which has to be good). It isn’t just about the Search Engine optimization (which has to be good) or the management of the Pay Per Click advertising campaigns (which has to be good) or the keyword density and design of landing pages (which have to be good). Or even the way in which the various elements are stitched together in a coherent whole with a clear message (which has to be good).

It is all of those things and more, and they all have to be good. “But that’s not fair” she said, “…how is a small business supposed to do all of those things and do them well?”

I explained that that is the new Web 2.0 paradigm. Having a snappy web site is not enough. The old idea of your web site being a sort of electronic brochure is long gone. Today you must not only be visible on the web but your presence has to compete with the very best and come out on top (i.e. at the top of page 1 for any given search). And what is more, having achieved the no.1 slot you then have to have the mechanisms to convert enquires to sales before you even know that the prospective customer is in the market. This requires a whole new sales approach and methodology.

Another acquaintance of mine has been resisting the idea of having a web site because his business is very much about a very specialized, personal service. I had to explain to him that the brutal reality is that not having a site was actually suspicious and that it was as much a business pre-requisite as a phone or a supply of paperclips.

Today you are competing on a global scale even if you are a one man micro business. It is not just the competitors you have always known who are threatening you. It is the big boys in your industry who have the wherewithal to construct a compelling proposition to two words typed into a Google search performed by one of your target customers. Just think back to the last bit of information you needed about a product or service. Did you phone around, go a directory or look for an advert in your local paper or trade magazine? Of course not. You typed 2 – 5 key words into Google and made your decision from there.

That is the way of the future.

Is it fair? No.

Will your customers make allowances because you haven’t got the resources of a mega corporation? No.

Can you stick with the old way of doing things and hope to get by? No. Sorry.

If Monks get it...

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:16:00 +0000

As a general rule, I am not a big fan of monks. No doubt they are kind, gentle and holy men. For me though, you have to be out in the world not cloistered. But from this monastery, there is a serious lesson to be learned. These guys have posted their plainchant on the internet. They even have a clip on You Tube. They run their activities using email and text and have a great web site. I heard about them after they recorded an album (with the same label as Amy Winehouse! - no kidding) and they were interviewed by the BBC.

OK their Website needs some work. They really need a bit of SEO on the layout, and the content needs some organization - but you know what - they have a mission to get their message out into the world - and by using a large collection of media, they have become world famous, completely accidentally.

Now if a bunch of Cistercian monks can do it, you have to wonder why most Businesses can't. The reason this has been so successful is that they have (unintentionally) used as many channels as they could and it has been astonishingly successful. Focus, application and a little story can do wonders. Just imagine what would happen if they applied themselves and REALLY wanted to make money!

It's a shame that I can't direct you to the interview (although you can read about it here) with Father Karl. Unfortunately the BBC only keep it live for a week- but trust me - a true saint and a brilliant communicator. Hat off to him and his brothers!

Gordon Brown goes Web 2.0 (or tries to at least)

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:30:00 +0000

After having been on You Tube for a year and posted 185 infomercials, Downing Street has finally got Gordon brown to dip his water into Web 2.0. As Ann Ann Treneman in The Times says, its just not convincing.

There is more to Web 2.0 than stringing together a collection of sound bites and uploading them to your web site. And if you are selling a message this is doubly true. Web 2.0 strategy has to be coherent, planned and properly targeted. OK, so Gordon has had 10,000 hits, but I seriously wonder how many have bought his message.

Web 2.0 where you least expect it

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:05:00 +0000

I was chatting to a close friend of mine yesterday. He was bemoaning the fact that he is standing in a communal election but that people were indicating that they wouldn't be turning out to vote. The constitution requires that members turn up in person between 7.30 and 9.00PM to vote.

Of course they won't turn out! Today people expect to be able to vote by text, online and by email. Turn out in person - how very "last century"! The world has changed - constitutions have to change too or don't be surprised if the only people who turn out are in their 60's.

Web 2.0 Survey report

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:28:00 +0000

Although I had intended to have this report completed by 1st May, pressure of work got in the way. But it is finished now and makes very interesting reading

The response was phenomenal so it has taken quite a long time to collate and analyse the results but the key findings are:

Key Findings
1. Companies are still running their internet presence as a passive marketing exercise with little or no regard for the strategic repercussions implied by the advent of Web 2.0.
2. Many businesses are unaware of Web 2.0 and its implications.
3. The majority of businesses have no plans to update their strategy to accommodate Web 2.0.
4. Half of the respondents attributed no observable change in business performance from the web.
5. 65% of respondents reported that they had an internet browser open all the time.
6. 95% of the respondents confirmed that the Internet was indispensable to their work.
7. 97% of respondents agreed completely or to an extent that the internet was their primary research tool.
8. 60% of respondents reported that their main mode of written communication was by email.
9. Only 64% of Chief executives had come across the term “Web 2.0”.
10. The Wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 was originally an accurate and reliable source of information.
11. Almost half of companies relied on a design consultant or an employee with additional responsibilities.
12. Few businesses had embraced online selling.
13. Only 4% of our sample had commissioned an outside specialist to manage their SEO.
14. Just over half of businesses use the web to distribute sales, marketing & communication collateral.
15. There is a remarkable disregard for the importance of web site optimization.
16. Less than a fifth of businesses have implemented a keyword strategy.
17. Less than a quarter have taken action to ensure that they are “number 1” for their chosen search terms.

The findings reaffirm my view that all businesses need to think very carefully about their web presence and ensure that they have adapted their business model to Web 2.0 or they will find themselves seriously left behind.

You can download the full report here

The Web 2.0 sales model

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:13:00 +0000

In my view, one of the biggest mistakes a business could make is to think that Web 2.0 doesn't have any practical or direct implications. It has both.

I agree absolutely, that client engagement is the most obvious implication, but the more serious consequence is that prospective customers are increasingly relying on search engines to find solutions to real or perceived solutions. Coupled with that, they are rejecting all forms of approach be it by phone, email or letter. Thus the entire first part of the traditional sales cycle has been effectively re-engineered and with it the essential sales skills of matching need to benefit. In some cases this has gone to the extent that customers don’t even bother to do the preliminary search themselves (see the Olympic Delivery Authority’s ‘Compete For ‘site). They are using bots to do it for them (some call this Web 3.0, especially if their bot talks to your bot). This makes it extremely difficult to bring the attention of a prospect to a problem he may not know about or does not realize he has.

So the first consequence of Web 2.0 is that the old selling models (e.g. Quest or SPIN or AIDA) no longer apply. The second is that the sales cycle is likely to be far more reactive than ever it was in the past. Finally and most importantly, when a prospective client does make contact, he is likely to have already done a feature / benefit analysis from published information on your web site (and that means, by the way, that you have to have really strong content on your site or you will get filtered out before you even know he is in the market). It also means that he is likely to be in price comparison mode. Sales 2.0 salespeople are going to have to be far more skilled in taking control of that conversation and turning it around. It also means that they are going to have to be trained in how to get the best from environments where technology cannot intervene, i.e. in networking and exhibition selling situations.

The implications for businesses are huge. Firstly they have to hone their client engagement models to attract customers to their site in the first place. This is not easy and requires a complete rethink of corporate business development strategy. Secondly they have to plan carefully how they will interact with customers, even those who might be interacting with their site in a social networking mode and convert them into customers. This too requires a rethinking of traditional sales roles and models. This is not going to be easy, but companies who “get it” will be long term winners and those that don’t will go the way of all those brilliant things like VHS, squarials, morse code and a million other technologies that have been swamped by the tide of progress.

The Black Art of Selling in the Web 2.0 world

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:39:00 +0000

It looks like I have kicked up a bit of a hornets nest about Web 2.0. It seems that people now know about the phenomenon but have no idea what to do about it. So I have just posted a ten minute video to explain a bit more about Web 2.0 and give you some strategies that you can implement, to help you re-engineer your business.
If you’ve been living in a soundproof box for the past few months you may not be aware of this, but Web 2 is coming faster than anyone could ever have imagined, and it is going to affect just about every business. Put simply Web 2.0 is the extension of the internet. It brings a whole range of tools and interfaces which not only make it easier to communicate but actively encourage collaboration between internet users on a scale previously only imagined by science fiction writers.
Now on its own that is interesting but there are two parallel tracks which make this an agenda item for every Board room.
Firstly there are some alarming facts coming out from the Direct Marketing Association. Under the Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2004, businesses are able to register their telephone number to allow them to opt out of receiving telephone marketing calls. There are already a little over 1.2 million business lines registered and 14.6million private lines (which include partnerships and sole traders). And if you think this is toothless legislation, think again, the law allows for a fine of £5000 PER offence. That means that if you have a telesales person making calls at say 80 per day and even 25% are registered, you could amass an unbelievable £100,000 of fines in a single day. Let me make this clear, this is not proposed legislation. It is not being considered or even debated. It is the law now. Today. And it is being enforced. Now you have to be pretty unlucky to fall foul of the regulators and extremely obstinate at not following the enforcement notices if they are served on you. But that is only how things stand at the moment. If the authorities decide to use their powers, at the very least you are going to be seeing an awful lot of your lawyers; and paying their bills, never mind about fines and damage to your reputation.
Both these numbers are growing at a staggering 30% per year. Now you don’t have to be a genius to see what this means. Not only is there now a risk in using a phone to contact a customer, the available market is shrinking dramatically. It will take a couple of years but within a relatively short time it will become economically unviable to use tele marketing as a primary new business tool. Now there are some things that businesses can and should do to limit the risk and I will be talking more about this in the strategy programme that I am working up at the moment, but for the time being the question of new business development needs to be on the strategic agenda.
Now on its own, that is, or should be a cause for concern. The second parallel track is the impact of Web 2.0. Alexa is a web information site that categorizes websites by traffic volume. It has some great tools and provides really useful free information. If you take a look at their ranking site you will find EVERY one of the 21 top ranked sites is built around user generated content and includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Myspace, You Tube and Google. The first commercial site is Autotrader – and that’s ranked at no 22. Now the way the internet works, search engines rank sites by number of visits and back links.

Now lets just take a moment our here for a moment to explain why this is important.
There are basically two ways to be found on the internet. Either you pay to be found using pay per click advertising - or you persuade Search Engines to find you because they think that your site provides good content for their users. Now the algorithms that search engines use are highly secret and constantly changing. There is a massive industry out there trying to second guess the search engines and work out how they decide who is going to be at the top of any natural search. The Search Engine Optimization or SEO industry is the 21st century equivalent of necromancy. Don’t believe a word of it, you could be no 1 today and 385,000 tomorrow because the algorithms change all the time. You may hear a lot of noise about key words, back links, landing pages and meta tags but in the end, the only sustainable way of winning and maintaining a high position is by having content that is highly regarded and sought after.
Now again, this is not guaranteed, but unless you want to pay for every visit to your site, you need to be convincing search engines that you have worthwhile content; and while this can’t be guaranteed, it is logical to conclude that they use a number of indicators to see if you are worth visiting. Firstly they want to see how many real people think your site is cool; so they count how many people link to it and mention it in social media sites and blogs. Secondly they look to see how many people tag it on sites like DIGG and Delicio.us and finally they look at the quality of the content and compare it with other sites to see if the density of keywords on your site is better or worse than other sites that seem to deal with the same kind of issue. Now there are a ton of other variables and we haven’t got time to look at all of them now, but the bottom line is that if you are not working on creating content that the search engines think will be helpful to their users you will be on page 59 of any given search and you will NEVER be found.
Now here’s where the two tidal waves meet. If you can’t approach you customers directly anymore because the telemarketing restrictions make it too difficult, you are going to have to change tactics and rely on you customers finding you.
Now this presents two problems. In the old days you could call up a customer and say “hey you’ve got a problem and I can help”. But if you can’t call him he may not know that he has a problem and may not care. So the first task in this new world is to find out what he Googles when the wheels come off. In the survey we just completed, 82% of you told us that you have a browser open all the time or nearly all the time. And an astonishing 89% said that you used the internet as you primary research tool. Just think what that means. A problem occurs; the customer Googles the problem using a set of words that means something to him, he finds three relevant entries on the first page of the search engine and he sends them an email. Unless you were there; the deal is done before you took your second gulp of coffee. And that’s the way it’s going to be.
Now you can try to stem this flow by commissioning a wizard to optimize your site, but by now you should have realized that this is going to be a never ending story. Even if he gets it right today, it’s going to be wrong tomorrow. The only way you are going to be able to combat this monster is to restructure so that you are consistently producing high quality content that is highly rated by the visitors to your site and can be easily found. Now this is a really big topic and it’s the reason that I have been putting together a strategy package to help businesses reposition their ‘new business’ effort so that they come out no 1 in this brave new world. Make no mistake - this is complicated and that’s why there is going to be a very limited number of places on the programme.
I am going to look at the technologies underlying these changes, provide you route maps as to how to decide what’s important and what’s not, and how to develop a strategy that will allow you consistently generate content in a form that both your users and the search engines will find appealing. We’ll be looking at how to use blogs and social networks and some of the other Web 2.0 media sharing tools. There will also be advice on how to engage the key players in your team and how to train and develop your sales guys to take advantage of this new environment.
The issue here is getting to the top of the list and staying there.
In my next presentation I will be giving you more information on how this is done and will give you a sneak preview of some of the things we will be covering in the programme. Meantime, as a thank you for staying with me so far, just register in the box below and I will send you a free copy Web 2.0 – The Latest Internet Wave. This 37 page e-book fills out all the web 2.0 jargon and has some great links to web 2.0 resources. It’s free and there is absolutely no obligation. It is packed with useful information and insights and will really make you think about your web 2.0 strategy.
So here’s what I suggest you do. Go ahead and register for the download. It’s free, and I guarantee it will really inform your thinking about Web 2.0. And look out for an email from me next week when I’ll be letting you have the results of the survey and will be talking about how to construct a Web 2.0 new business strategy.
Please feel free to post any questions you may have and perhaps list any topics you want to be sure are covered in the Strategy Programme.
I’m off now to work on the course and as soon as I have more, I’ll let you know.
Meantime – happy surfing

Web 2.0 in action

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:28:00 +0000

I suffer from arthritic pain in the left great toe. Last year I had a manipulation and injection to sort it out, but the pain has returned.

So yesterday I saw the surgeon and he offered me a choice of a repeat procedure or (what I thought was) a kylectomy. He took me through the various options but I didn’t feel confident enough to make a decision, so of course I Googled it.

It very quickly became obvious that I had misspelled the word. Changing to chilectomy, Google helpfully asked me: “Did you mean: Cheilectomy “and in just two clicks I knew everything I needed to.

So What? Well until yesterday I had never heard of a cheilectomy. And now I am an expert and can make an informed choice which suits me, my plans and my pain threshold.

So what if I was selling cheilectomies? (Which I suppose in a way my surgeon is).

I believe that to sell effectively in the Web 2.0 world, you need to know how to be found on the web and secondly you need to have the skills (and the infrastructure) to convert enquiries in a single step. As soon as the customer goes away he is lost and it is very unlikely that you will be able to recover him or her.

Compare and contrast this with the conventional selling model in which you would first have to find someone with a problem to solve, get on their radar, establish the details of their situation, propose a solution and then close (handling objections along the way). This conventional model with 5 – 10 steps looks very different to the Web 2.0 model which is much simpler but still needs considerable skill.

There are almost 2,000,000 hits on the subject of cheilectomy (depending on how you spell it) but only about 20 blog entries and it is interesting that Jeffrey Oster, has cornered the market in foot pain advice in that sector. If I was in Ohio, he would certainly be my podiatrist of choice.

Message for today: start thinking about how Web 2.0 will affect (is affecting) your sales effort

Perry Burns

www.sales101.co.uk

The power of persuasion

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:34:00 +0000

There is an interesting, if scary piece in this morning's London Times.

In it Daniel Finkelstein reviews a new book called Yes!: Fifty Secrets from the Science of Persuasion by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Professor Robert Cialdini. Their research shows that as humans we are far more open to manipulation than we might have believed.

They discuss the principle of reciprocity and show that when you give something, people are more likely to give something back (Business Network International - BNI - call this principle "Givers Gain"). Similarly Cialdini and his colleagues show that if people believe that they are doing what others do, they are more likely to follow suit. They give an excellent example of reusing towels in a hotel or throwing coins in a fountain. Apparently if I tell you that most people who read this blog click on the link above and buy the book, you are more likely to do so too.

In the same vein they talk about people choosing professions linked to their own names, hence there are many more dentists called Dennis than there are called, say Jim.

Salespeople have known this for years of course. If you articulate a benefit by answering the question "What’s in it for me?" you are far more likely to win the sale. Therefore focus on personalizing benefits and make sure that when you explain why someone should buy your product, you make it as relevant to them and as personal as you can.

Perry Burns
www.sales101.co.uk

Why are screen writers striking?

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:59:00 +0000

2 Questions.

Firstly what is this strike all about and why does it matter to people wanting to improve business performance in general and sales performance in particular?

Hollywood writers have declared a strike because they want a share in the residuals for work they produced which is then streamed over the web and to to mobile phones. They also want a piece of home video sales and protection of their rights viz a viz their contribution to reality shows.

Meantime management argue that that because the market is changing, they need to use new channels to promote their wares, that it is too early to start designing compensation programmes around new technologies.

I started watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip with high hopes because I really like Bradley Whitford (Josh in the West Wing) and Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing in Friends). However I found after 2 episodes that I couldn't care less about the stresses and strains of writing, producing and directing a TV show, however iconic. Compared with the drama of The West Wing or the pithy humour of Friends it was irrelevant. That said I am very worried about the writers because they have exactly the same problem as the rest of us. The world they have known for years is crashing about their ears and they can suddenly see that others are enjoying the fruits of their labour while they are struggling by on relatively meagre pay scales which have become an accident of history.

Meantime Management is realizing that unless they find new ways to reach the market, they will find their business struggling to remain profitable. This is especially exacerbated by the moves by big production companies like Warner and Universal to make their product available on demand over the internet.

So why does this matter if you are trying to adapt your sales model to the new reality. Because it is an indicator that the shift is happening and that the consequences of not finding a new way to sell are serious.

I have been very influenced by a video on You Tube called Shift Happens. Although many of its assertions are questionable, the underlying message couldn't be clearer (actually the update is more accurate and believable but the music isn't as cool).

For businesses to perform better they need to be using the web more effectively to drive demand and make customers come to them. I am interested in documenting the shift in selling strategies to confront the challenge of Web 2.0 and next week I intend to look at some of the small steps that can be taken to start driving Web 2.0 business.

Have a great weekend

Perry
http://www.sales101.co.uk/

Why the title?

noreply@blogger.com (Perry Burns) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:41:00 +0000

The world has changed. Dramatically!

Many of the things that made me a lot of money when I was a salesman pounding the streets with NCR are no longer true. Make no mistake, I don't think sales or selling are redundant.

But I do believe that we are all going to find new ways to do business to engage successfully with our customers.

The internet has changed everything and in this blog I hope we can share ideas and best practice about how to use the internet to sell better, manage better and use technology in new and inventive ways. So this is about how we sell in the 21st century which is already very different to the way it was done in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In those days the job of the salesman was to identify customers who could benefit from his product or service, approach them, understand more about their business, show them how he could improve that business and then obtain a commitment to go ahead.

He did this from a basis of knowledge about his product, his industry, his competitors and business in general. And customers wanted to hear from him because he knew more about the problem and the solution than he did. Today, information is available at the click of a mouse.

Want to know how to stop friction in a bearing - there are 1.7m entries on Google. And HPC Coatings of Chandler, Arizona have done brilliantly to get to number five, the first commercial entry (at the time of blogging) below the academic entries and free patent listings. So what hope does a small player have? And what if you need bookkeeping services in say, Kendal (which happens to be a charming, but very tiny town on lake Windermere, Cumbria, in the North West of England? ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX T H OU S A ND entries. Wow! Imagine calling say Andy at The Rainbow Tavern and trying to sell him bookkeeping services. And even if you did, guess what he will do right after you have spoken to him?

So if you sell something, anything; you need to get sharper about it and pronto. Selling C21 is going to be very different and in this blog we will be exploring how we refocus the old skills into new and profitable ways of generating new business