End of the month drag

It's the end of the month and I can't help but notice various attitudes being shown.  Companies are either having a great month and in good spirits or a bad month and seething at the mouth.  Either way, the end of the month is usually the least stressful yet most uneventful period.

I say unstressful because when you hit that week of the 25th, Everything's been done.  Nothing big in particular will change your fortunes for that month.  It's a tough pill to swallow.  You had a:

Great month- You hit status deliverables and sales goals. Now what do you do?

Bad month- You didn't hit goal and deliverables were late by two days.  What do you do?

Answers are you either research for the next month, or you do nothing.  Doing nothing is simply not an option.  A company that does nothing doesn't progress.  Sales and Marketing management become zealous around this time.  If goals are hit, they want goals blown out of the water!  If goals aren't hit, well they look at it as catch up to salvage their predicted forecast. They take pride in their forecast. (control what you can control)

If you decide to wait on the first of the month to hit goals and deliverables, you'll be so far behind it will impact you for several months. (playing catch up sucks)

From a work standpoint, I dislike the end of the month.  The hunger to close out is tougher than the first week of the month where you want to accelerate your initiatives.  In sales I have hit goal more than I've missed it, but the times I missed it resulted from being extremely lazy at the end of the month.  (taking time for granted)

No advice really to be given here.  Everyone approaches their end of the month differently.  Two words will sum up this whole blog post.

Proactive or Reactive.

Tortoise or the Hare?(BD edition)

It's the final countdown!

As a child, we've all heard of the children's book, "The tortoise vs. the hare"  Vivid images of Bugs Bunny and the Tortoise constantly racing to see who wins.  The Hare is fast, aggressive, and overbearing.  The Tortoise-slow, methodical, and a planner.  In laymen's terms, we're talking speed vs. methodical pace.  There are quite a few articles on this concept so it's not original.  I want to provide a different perspective on this oldie but goodie.

Business development in itself has so many different types of people and role positions.  I've been around companies where Business development is treated as solely lead gen people that simply do appointment setting.  I've been in organizations where the role of business development was to create strategic relationships that were beneficial to both sides.  Both roles require the rep having the ability to generate revenue.

For my examples, I will loosely base people to the objects I describe.

The Tortoise

They are methodical and proponents of gaze following.  It's unknown how intelligent a tortoise is but they approach everything with a calm and steady demeanor.  Tortoises learn from other people's mistakes and find solutions to solve problems.  Tortoises are also slow to adjustments and spend more time planning their attack.  If it's a quick race, the tortoise gets smoked by the hare.

The Hare

Hares are fast, agile and able to adapt .  The Hare is known to be  fast in the open and able to react from their large ears.  Hares are not known to be as domesticated as cute adorable bunnies.  They are  hunters out in the open space.  A Hare is great in the short term and because their ability to get from point A to point B, can help you win.  

Who to be?

The most consistent theme you will notice in my blog writings is balance.  I truly believe both of their traits combine can create  what we deem as a "unicorn."  The Tortoise has a great sense of preparing and really understand situations.  The hare has the gumption to just go for it!  One of my favorite words I heard was: "Be a Haretoise" Marketing is cyclical and if you move too slow you can pass the trends.  If you move too fast, you allow another company to take your weaknesses and magnify them.  

"Under Pressure"

It's Friday so you would think it's ironic I'd have a post about being "under pressure."

We create pressure.  By we, I mean society.

We're constantly under it because of  building blocks for "our" future.

I had a conversation with a guy who told me if you aren't making $65,000 by the time you are 30, you are behind and struggling.  I've always believed it's not who starts, but who finishes.  Apparently, this kid doesn't agree.

Client tells you they need results.  The marketing team plan out the campaign.  They introduce digital governance and make sure everyone involved is held accountable for their part of the plan.  The client is also accountable for the work on their end. The team begins to ask questions to each other that ends in uncertainty.  there are a lot of opinions and there's a sense of pressure to show individual quality work to the team.  In this scenario, there's always some unanswered questions

We tend to forget that Clients don't anticipate a campaign will be perfect.  No one is perfect and rather than stressing out, marketing teams are better off communicating and truly asking questions to answers not known.


RIP and respect to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury- "Under Pressure"

Love/Hate with Voicemails

Happy Monday!

So I have a love/hate relationship with voicemail messages.  I love to hear them(when they are from people I know) and I hate to leave them for others.  Leaving a voicemail can reinforce who you are to someone but do they really help you?

If you have been successful with leaving voicemail messages, I salute you.  I just don't feel leaving a voicemail message really gives me progress with people that don't know me.  This is a marketing and sales blogs but even in non sales, I've often seen friends delete voicemail's from number they don't recognize.

You can google search engine results and everyone from Salesforce to Radius want to give tips on why your voicemail's don't get returned.  I still believe voicemails only get returned if:

1. You already have talked with that person enough to build that rapport.
2. You happen to run into a perfect storm of them seeking a product or help. (It's my favorite storm!)

The great thing about social media platforms is they give me optimal opportunities to reach people.  Of course there is a cadence you follow so you don't come off too "stalkerish."  A mix of LinkedIn, phone call, Twitter, and their company blog help you become noticed and reinforce how you can find people.

I would love to hear how other people contact prospects or customers. #Lifelearner

Attrition is the enemy..live with it.

It's a tough moment in any organization.  The word gives a negative feeling no ones enjoys.

Leadership hears this word and they think: "Cover my ass."-I'm DONE for .

Sales managers hear it and think: "More work and less pay for me."

Sales associates use it on their prospects to eventually break them down to take a meeting or buy a product.

I have to be honest. I used to sell in an aggressive way.  I thought sales was a gladiators game and I ultimately won by over-matching my opponent(prospect)  I obtained this thinking from always hearing the best quality a salesperson can have is persistence.  So I began to persist that people should talk to me and hear me out.  I believed I could change peoples views by imposing my will.  I was setting this up like a war strategy.  I'm using a lot of strong, and competitive words here.  I already broke a rule.

Rule 1: Understand your audience

I was misinformed.  I forgot that you can't sell to every single person the same way.  Sales has come a long way from how it used to be.  Trust me, I don't want to reminiscence like every other sales associate who misses less informed customers that were easier to convert.  Customers are a lot smarter now and abrasiveness has NEVER been the way-Even more so now.

Rule 2: Make the customer feel as if they reached the "Aha!" moment.

With abrasiveness, came a sense of "cocky."  People love confident people but they dislike cocky people.  Who am I criticize an executive with 20 plus years of experience.  One of the few sales books I love "Sales Challenger" helped me realize executive leadership struggles with various changes within their workforce.  No one likes to be told what they have been doing wrong.  There's a way to "politely" challenge people.  One of my mentors that's a consultant always told me, "Make them feel like they solved the problem-not you."  More and more companies face turnover, and problems they don't know how to solve.   Let's help steer them in the right direction.

Rule 3: ABC is not the right alphabet.

Always be closing...No more.

Customers don't like to be closed on and pressured.  There's so many competitor products out there, they will tune you out and move on to the next less pushy salesperson.  I've learned this lesson the hard way and it's helped me understand I can't control the sales process.  If they are going through transition, I shouldn't be closing.  I should be hearing them out and seeing where the obstacles may be for the future.  You can't close an organization if they have retirement, leadership changes, or workforce being cut.

Startup's need a different breed of salespeople

They do.

Some may be angered when they hear me say that but it's true.  Professional salespeople to me, are career sales people that were successful at big companies and have still have great contacts. If you hire them, they essentially give you a book of business that they will carry job to job.  

What's wrong with that?  Nothing, if you are a highly successful company with great exposure. Not everyone has the luxury of getting ready made accounts.  And according to fast company, over a five year span, there were 158,000 start ups in business.  Start ups may not be the most attractive due to a laundry list of concerns, but everyone wants to join the next big company that can impact the world. 

 90% of start ups fail! - This is no exaggeration and ultimately the real reason is not having a strong flexible sales team.  There's a different kind of sales person you need to have for your start up.  I can think of a few traits.

Holistic (Big picture)

You need salespeople that see the big picture.  Professional salespeople must have everything little nuance explained to them and they tend to get lost in the number of stats they accumulate.  Holistic people see the whole situation and do not bog down when "activity" is down.  They find a way to get it done.  In a start up atmosphere, you need the person that will find a way to get things done with limited tools.

Professional's mindset- "I've made my 30 dials and gotten two appointments set."

Holistic mindset-  "I've had 5 really good conversations that were about 15-20 minutes long."

Flexible

Flexible meaning they can adjust to the ever growing challenges of start up life.  There's been no consistent playbook at the start ups I worked for.  You learned by trial and error.  The people used to a routine rarely succeeded in a start up sales environment.  One minute you may need them to be strict hunters the next, people nurturing valuable leads. They need maintain a sense of realizing each day is different than the next. At the same time, leadership of a start up has to be flexible of the methods their salesperson utilizes to close deals.  

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Most start up companies look forward to hiring a superstar who will be with their company for as long as they can.  This just doesn't work anymore.  If you have a start up, you need people that aren't afraid to have conversations outside of their comfort level.  You need people who own a situation or deal.  Entrepreneurial minded salespeople do not stay at a company long, but they make their presence felt.  They have huge ideas for your company or even their own.  I had the chance of meeting people with this trait and they were always the ones that found big deals from just being fearless(and prepared)  I compare this to having two people at a party of 300.  Both are charming and engaging yet each approach people in different ways.

Person 1: Surveys the room and sees if there is anybody there they already know.

Person 2: Looks to connect with every single person they make eye contact with.

You most likely want person 2 for their fearless ability to make their presence felt.

3 Me's-Special productivity

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

The toughest adjustment for me is having a 3-4 day weekend where I get to do whatever I want and then having to go back to work on a 9-5 schedule.  As I've gotten older I've learned to balance the various sides of me.  I had a previous post talking about how you dial your personality up and down like a remote control.  There's different moods that capture mentally, where I am just by using my special remote.  There's also a song, that can describe each Me.

"Work flow" Gabe- 

He's a diligent worker that is constantly looking to improve things and himself.  This Gabe is the Gabe you see at the office who's immersed in music and marketing.  I'm the most pragmatic here, and though I hate to be routine, I wouldn't get things done without that routine.

Now Playing-  "Everybody's workin for the weekend"

"Chill"Gabe-  

Chill Gabe has the vibe of Bob Ross and April showers. He likes to relax, play his guitar, and hit a certain state of the mind.  This is when I'm at my most creative and introspective.  You see this Gabe around 6:30PM M-F, and also a good portion over the weekend.  I like to think this Gabe is the one that's truly genuine.

Now Playing- Middle

"Turnt up Gab"-  

Remove the e from Gabe because all he does is Gab.  This Gabe has high energy and wants to be in every bar or club showing off his Michael Jackson moves and slick skills.  "Gab" becomes the opposite that is a wallflower.  "Chill" Gabe is a creator of moments- "Turnt Up" Gab IS the moment.

Now Playing- "Really? Really? YEA!"

With these 3 Me's, it takes a balancing act and half the time, I'm unsuccessful.

C'est la vie.