When Giving-up is a good thing

Over the past year this blog has evolved to become the application of methods that are Repetitive, Powerful, and Gentle to the practice of making money. Simplistic approaches to business issues frequently pass the the Repetitive and Powerful tests; however, truly effective practices must also qualify as Gentle and here is where many, like traditional selling, fail.

The largest consumer of motivational materials and methods is the US Sales and Marketing industry. Care to guess who might be number 2? It's the US military. This leads us to wonder, what is it about our traditional approaches to sales that is like the military? Do Sales Departments require a constant infusion of outside motivation because, like the military, they are organizations built around the acquisition and application of force? For those in sales that are drained by its continual churn, or those being pursued by smiling, manipulative salespeople, it seems the answer seems to be YES.

Poor observers of successful salespeople have concluded that they are master of Persuasion. This isn't really the case; however, it's a business myth that is relentlessly taught. Persuasion is verbal manipulation and not at all what we feel comfortable in calling gentle. This is the connection to motivational methods. When I hear a sales professional using them, I have to leave (at least mentally, if I can't physically).

More accurate observers of successful salespeople have started to realize that they have a talent in Qualification, rather than Persuasion. They have a heart for who really needs their products and services (it's never everyone!); and a sensitivity in understanding their prospects enough to know if there is a basis to beginning a sales process. It's time consuming and complex enough to work with someone qualified to be a customer (that is, they actually need, understand, and can afford the product). The efforts spent "selling" someone not obviously qualified is counter-productive.

Working with sales prospects is no different than traders working with options or gamblers with their games. Over and over again studies in these two areas have shown most traders and gamblers win about the same. The successful ones are those that lose the least. They continually qualify their positions and when it doesn't look like a win, they accept a small loss and simply leave. If a sales prospect doesn't qualify, the successful salesperson leaves them alone. The motivated loser keeps on.

Giving up trying to serve is completely different from giving up trying to sell. The highest use of our lives comes from service and we often can serve those who do not qualify as clients by helping them solve their problems in other ways. This can be anything from a simple expression of empathy to a referral to one of your strategic partners. If your intention is to always finish strong, a way to do that will always appear.

Photo credit: bk2204

Creating Products from Services

An objective of The Active Investor blog is to inspire the thinking of small business owners and professionals to create greater lasting value in their business. There is perhaps no better way to do this than to find ways to create products from services.

A product without services eventually becomes a commodity with business going to the lowest cost provider. Selling only services is a bit like selling air. You can't really sell time. You can only rent your expertise for some time. Expertise is intangible and difficult to either prove or differentiate and in the end the amount that can be sold is always capped by a time limitation. If you want to sell the enterprise, because it's your expertise and you're leaving, the residual value is relatively small. However, when the business offers a deliverable solution that can be named plus is easy to understand and refer, you have hit a "value-added" sweet spot. Here is a personal example.

Names are important. They give the offering tangibility. As a Texas business broker, I create marketing plans for my clients, as do many other business brokers. Since most small business buyers come from the internet, this plan includes multiple internet directory listings, which again, other brokers do. So far, we're still at the services level. I've then created a unique product offering on top of these services named Business Opportunities Bulletins (BOBs). With some creativity and technology, each client listing can appear on the first Goggle results page of significant search terms used by potential buyers. If a client wants to be found by potential business buyers, here is a product, a BOB, that does exactly that.

A BOB is easy to understand. The art of selling your business is to be presented to interested parties and still keep the sale confidential. Prospective clients can see how this is already working for existing clients. They "get it" immediately.

In this example, the product's name is a take-off of my own name. If a need for my business broker services gets touched upon by someone in my network, it's easy for them to explain and refer my product (my service).

Building BOBs takes time,  expertise, and technology but their existence adds critical value both to immediate marketability and to the ultimate value of the brokerage practice. A product has been created out of services common to the industry. How many products can be developed from your services? Something with a name that is easy to understand and refer. I can't image anyone who can't develop at least one more.

Image credit: EraPhernalia Vintage (catching up)

An Item of Interest

Networking is popular these days because it's inexpensive and meaningful. Email, the killer app that propelled global acceptance of the internet, was the same way. Today email filtering companies report that over 90% of all email on the internet at any given time is spam. Can networking be headed in the same direction?

Networking advisers universally maintain that the group meetings are just the tip of the networking iceberg. The real work is accomplished at subsequent one-on-one meetings where individuals meet to discuss if the person they are meeting is someone they can refer to others.

We all want to be trusted advisers and the only way to get there is to have a history of delivering results. Even if you do not personally deliver the final solution, if you have started the solution with an on-target referral, you build trust. This means even if your practice cannot solve every problem you encounter in the market, if you can refer to others who do solve them, you build trusted adviser credentials.

As Active Investors meet one-on-one, they seek a knowledge of reliable solutions to problems their business cannot deliver. The size of their referral network will determine how frequently they can help others generate results, and thereby earn trust.

Relationship marketing has also been popularized as a way to build trust. People prefer to to business with those they know. What confuses many in networking is that this is true but incomplete. People prefer to do business with those they know and trust. The objective of the Active Investor's networking activities is not relationship building. It's the sharing of problem solving capabilities.

Salesmen look for items of interest to bring to meetings. These items give the encounter meaning and dramatically increase the chances of a sale. The item of greatest interest that an Active Investor can bring to a networking one-on-one meeting is a credible solution to a problem our networking partner might encounter. Our personal history, scope of practice, family, hobbies, etc. are nice to discuss but they're of little benefit to our partner's ability to build trust.

Preparing for any business meeting, networking or otherwise, could include a simple exercise. Look at both palms and ask yourself a question, "Am I bringing an item of interest, or am I bringing spam?"



(The blog photo was chosen because in a one-on-one meeting with the Texas networking mentor Jeff Weaver I was insisting that items of interest had to be specific to each individual. Jeff told me about successfully using a history of Valentine's Day as an item of interest on a general basis. The picture comments on Flickr also support how interesting many others have found this related image to be. It looks as if love just might be a universal item of interest. John 13:34,25)

Image credit: naama

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