Parties…  You love going to them.  What’s even better — you love getting that late minute call to go crash your buddy’s friend’s pad to join in the “uninvited”  festivities.

You can’t have hosted a party more than once in the past two millenia without a buddy asked you if he could bring some other dudes to the event.

It goes down a little like this:

YOU: Hey, I am throwing a little party at my place tomorrow night.  You wanna swing by?

BUDDY: Awesome.  I’ll bring some beers.  By the way, do you mind if I invite the other guys?

YOU: Sure.  No worries.  The more the merrier…

What came of this?

I will tell you.  Good times were had by all!

You had more people show up.  Things got louder.  And you didn’t find yourself talking to only that one person in the corner all night.  There was more of everything.  It got crazier.  And people probably had fun.

Back in Virginia, our house got to be called “Schmidty City” because of the memorable happenings that went down.  (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stop that picture from floating around the interwebs of me wearing a pink tube-top…)

Let’s get serious for a second.  Especially as we think about closing out the year.

“MORE” works for parties — not for closing business deals.

For all the opposite reasons that chaos is the key to a great party, it’s the death of a business deal.

So avoid it…  Stop thinking that you are making progress toward closing that big deal because you have the amazing ability to fire off 3 gazillion HTML emails to only-slightly-less-then random Jigsaw contacts.

The only think you can chalk up to success is your tenacity for annoying other people.

Believe it or not, intimacy still matters in business.  The “merrier” part of the equation is most powerful — not the “more”.

So it might seem less than peachy to tell the “Big Cheese” that quantity isn’t your game, but that’s actually the truth.

Here’s a key pointer to help you keep your priorities straight:

Make sure you understand what the person on the other end of the deal thinks they are are getting out of the arrangement..

If you know that factoid and keep it top-of-mind as you work through your business deal, you will find yourself being much more successful.

As you go into 2010, keep an open mind about the idea of “edgy conversations” that I am spending more time defining.  More leads, more potential customers, more busyness — none of these is the answer.  You might find yourself sleeping fewer hours and running a more frenetic schedule, but you won’t find your revenue skyrocketing like you want it to.

Think “merrier”…  all the way to the bank!

This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays.  I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…”

(at least I thought so)

We really thought through the whole process and I am pumped by the stack of “stuff” sitting in our kitchen that needs to be wrapped.

It’s about the relationship, right?

There are people you care about — people around whom you really want to build a history.  It kind of parallels your deal making process.

Makes sense, right?  You want to do business with people that you can stand being around.  People you like.

That’s about building a relationship.  Not seasonal email torpedoing.  But a consistent communication thread.

My inbox got me thinking……….

How special would you feel if you were sent the following e-card from someone that you spent money with this year?

I love the “We hope this communication is welcomed…”  Makes me feel like you really remember who I am.  And are you really giving me the option to unsubscribe from next year’s seasonal greetings?

You tell me.  Maybe I am being picky.

Now how about this one…  Are you feeling the love?

I now have to click on a link to go a site to see all the Christmas warmth you can’t wait to share with me… As if that isn’t enough to do, there is the obligatory signature language informing me that I could be sued for mishandling the email you are sending me.  WOW…. way too much baggage for me to do anything with.  I just have to archive it…

These both ended up in my inbox (along with a tiresome few others…) and I just didn’t have the energy to keep clicking through to link after link so I could get in the Christmas spirit.  It kind of made it all feel like a “chore”…

Like maybe our relationship wasn’t so important after all…

Know what I mean?

It gets you thinking.  What’s the logic behind this?

Who emerged from their marketing “bat-cave” with the fantabulous idea that impersonal seasonalized hyperlink creation was something that made customers feel like “you care”?

Was there a memo in the late ’90s that I missed?

Two words: CALL ME…

I know I’m a little cranky when it comes to this stuff, but doesn’t it seem a little dis-ingenuous?  Even if you give the sender the “benefit of the doubt”, you can’t overlook the general lack of creativity.  The fact remains that in the haste to have another “client touch”, the marketer forgot to put himself in the recipient position.

Here’s reality: No one really reads this stuff.

(not even your grandma who has unlimited Facebooktime)

Maybe the first one you get (right after Thanksgiving), but right around the second week in December you are left with no other choice but massive select-and-archive.  You even feel a little bad about it, but you justify if by telling yourself that if you have time, you’ll dig them out later at home to look through.

And you never do…  It’s just not a high priority.

Without a relationship, you just avoid all the rest of  the noise coming at you.

And certainly this mirrors a hunch I have had for some time now as I talk with C-level executives and ask about their behavior to inbound messaging.  I decided to test my theory.  About a week ago, I put a poll up on LinkedIn asking the following question:

“If relationships really do matter in sales, why don’t we build better ones throughout our selling process?”

Here are the overall results:

• 40% stated that they didn’t have enough access to the right people to build a great relationship…
• 10% noted that they tried to build good relationships but didn’t know how to keep it up…
• 20% thought that it wasn’t really a good use of their time…  AND
• 30% admitted they weren’t really sure how to build great relationships…

When you study this further, you see that ALL of the CEO’s who responded to this question answered the same — that they had not developed this skill of long term relationship building.

Are you surprised?  You might have thought that senior level executives had “schmoozing” all figured out.  Maybe not.  Maybe there’s more to that cocktail parties and fast one-liners.

The numbers get more interesting when you look at the size of the companies responding.  All of the big guys (who would have the biggest sales and marketing budgets) all noted that they didn’t have access to the right people to build great relationships.

Essentially, the guys with the most advantages toward building the best relationships were the least likely to know how to get the right people.  Interesting indeed.

When you look at the age for relationship building, it becomes even more significant.  The young guys and old guys fall into the same category — limited access to the right executives.  While the mid-life high-performers know the right people, but aren’t really sure what to do to keep their attention.

Kind of what you would expect from life, right?  You work hard to get somewhere; and then once you’re there you push so far and fast ahead that you lose valuable ties to people who could be a valuable resource to you.

Young or old, big or small — we all need to work a little harder to keep our relationships strong.  They are our lifeblood, our lifeline to accomplishing our life’s mission.

So think about how you treat your relationships.

Are you asking friends to triple-click through your e-card nonsense, or are you bold enough to just say “Thank You”…  and mean it…

P.S.  Thank you to all the amazing readers of The DEW View!  Have a Happy Holidays.  I am grateful that I was able be a part of your 2009 selling year.  Take some time to get recharged and then let’s plan on changing the world together in ’10….  Thanks again!!!

I was in a conversation with a close friend last week about some serious matters when I just stopped everything I was talking about and simply summed it up by noting:

“You know? This is the hardest sale of my life”…

Have you ever been there? Are you there right now?

It’s a pretty incredible opportunity to really know that what you are engaged in RIGHT now is the fight of your life.

• Understanding that nothing else you have ever done before compares to the challenge you are facing right now…
• Realizing that when you walk away victorious from this challenge you will have won the biggest battle of your life…

It’s a do or die set-up.

A time when the fork in the road is a choice of harder or hardest. There is nothing easy about this — just a painful uphill struggle.

So what do you do if you find yourself in this opportunity? How do you handle the hardest sale of your life?

1. You hold nothing back in your personal effort — The fight of your life demands the fight of your life.  You really have to lay it all on the line: mind, body, and soul.   And if there is anything else you have to offer, you need to put that in the game as well.   All!  Everything!  Every ounce of effort goes to winning this cause.  (And by the way, don’t confuse “almost” with “all”. One gets you close to the deal. The other is what helps you close the deal.)
2. You don’t stop your analysis until you find real meaning — Things are never as they seem.  Winners today can end up the real losers tomorrow.  You have to keep digging into the “facts” of the case until you get the answers that no one else has.  Here’s a DEW favorite: “remember that it’s always what it’s not – at least the first few times around”.  That means that the standard answers you are getting from your prospect about timeline and budget are the exact opposite from the actual words that you are hearing.
3. You are patient with results and refuse to over-react – Most sales people are their own worst enemy once they sense that they might not be winning the hardest deal of their life. They transform into irrational, paranoid super-sulky panhandlers asking for the prospect’s loose change. They stop thinking like the savvy business ninjas that got them into the game in the first place. You need to remember to be patient with the process. Put in place the “24 Hour Rule” ( i.e. No communication to the client for a full day after you sense bad news from a prospect.)  Use that time to find an alternative strategy that shows your care of the client rather than a hand-out attempt to beg for their attention.
4. You ask for non-judgmental advice from a guru – A guru doesn’t need to be a world-famous author or the biggest hotshot in your industry.  Sometimes that guy is the manager who has been doing this for three decades and has seen a million different deals come and go.  Sometimes that guru is just an article written on a blog or your favorite selling magazine.  The key is that the advice has to be non-judgmental.  You are where you are and asking someone (at this point) how you could have done it “better” is a huge waste of your time and a real “downer”.  Talk about “next steps” from “right here”.  Ask for advice and you will likely get some solutions you would not have considered all on your own.
5. You take time for physically tasking exercise – There is  nothing that compares to kicking ass in the business world like kicking ass in the gym.  It clears your mind and prepares your body for stressful situations.  The world-famous Mayo Clinic calls exercise “Meditation in Motion” and that seems to have been my experience running on the open road.   You need to be physically and mentally prepared for a potential beating and nothing helps you navigate the madness of your schedule like a regular session of body building.  Take 30 minutes and push yourself hard.  You’ll find new confidence returning just when you need it most.
6. You consider the advantages of the “outrageous” — Sometimes you need to break out the “clown suit” and go for broke — I am joking 99.5% here. While you don’t want to be silly, there is some solid reasoning to asking the hard questions you were afraid to ask during the sales competition — like “we didn’t really have a chance did we?” or “we sure seemed to miss the mark with you guys, didn’t we?” or “I’m embarrassed that we were so so self-centered we didn’t think more about the value we should have been providing to you.”  When you get the answers to these questions, you might find yourself with some solid “behind the scenes” information to propose a winning counter-solution.  You have nothing to lose, so go for it…
7. You reverse roles with your buyer and justify “you” – Think about how you appear to your prospect.  Are you a whiner? A bully? A loudmouth? A hot-shot?  A miserable time-wasting, arrogant asshole?  Who are you from the buyer’s perspective?  Consider that….   You can call yourself the superhero of value propositions, but if your prospect doesn’t get it, then you have failed – miserably.  Think about the words you are using.  How would you react if they were being “played” to you?  Reverse your roles and see how you look from the other side of the table…
8. You manage personal distractions by eliminating them first – You can’t execute a masterful strategy while you have nagging side issues beating you between the temples.  Conventional sales books have all made the case for running after distractions after you do your core mission.  I totally disagree.  That’s a horrible process.  It doesn’t work.  Distractions are a part of life.  You have to manage these issues FIRST, before they threaten your ability to perform at high levels.  Don’t half-ass the hardest sale of your life by focusing part of our attention on something else.  Get the nasty stuff off your plate – or at least partly solved – and then go kick ass.
9. You don’t ask if dropping your price will close the deal — At this point (in the middle of the hardest sale of your life) you are way past grovelling for a rock-bottom price negotiation vantage point. Don’t do it.  Double the value analysis of your offering.  Triple your support offering. But do not cut your price.  Customers want the best offer — not necessary the lowest price.  By providing the most VALUE (i.e. explained benefit to the buyer) you become the best offer.  And here is a question for you: Does a price drop really ever increase your odds of winning the deal?  Doesn’t it just make you more frustrated?  So don’t do it.  Force yourself to demonstrate value instead.
10. You close the hardest sale of your life — You face down your demons, put in the effort, and at the end of the day you take a commission to the bank.  You close the deal because you want it the most.  Because you are willing to ask for help.   You wait patiently through the chaos, the client demands, and personal fears.  You close the deal.

That’s what you do.

You close the hardest sale of your life.

And why? Because that’s all there is to do.  That’s why you are in the game — to fight, to win…

I certainly don’t want to gloss over this idea. There’s more to this idea and it’s not for everyone.  It’s certainly one of those topics that is easier to talk about than to actually do.

That’s because deep down some of you think that winning is for someone else.  That you aren’t the one who can win.

But you are mistaken.  You are a winner.  You were born that way.  You can do it. You can win big.  You can close the hardest sale of your life.

Call me, I’ll help you.

]]> http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/12/edgyconversations/the-hardest-sale-of-your-life/feed 13 http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/illogically-help-me-be-your-customer http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/illogically-help-me-be-your-customer#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:03:23 +0000 Dan Waldschmidt http://thedewview.com/?p=1278

Think through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer.  Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful?  Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a home run by working with you?

It’s not logical.  In fact, it doesn’t really make sense from a “nuts-and-bolts” perspective.

But like anything, when you swing the opposite direction, you get a better perspective.  Instead of being illogically helpful, let’s look at being illogically awful.  Let’s look at the bad emails we send and see how we can make them better.

The endless onslaught of crappy emails has accelerated.  It has gotten serious.  For some reason, crazy sales people who need to have a strong Q4 all decided that they need to mass email the world in the hopes that we will magically take an interest in their nonsensery.

There is no interest in a relationship or learning what might be important to you or me.  It’s all about their email and how they have access to an amazing service that we “can’t miss out on”.  I want to drag them into my office, throw them on the floor and let them know this simple fact that they are overlooking:

We have thoroughly enjoyed not “enjoying” your service; and if your current care of us is any indication of your future care, then we are best served to not be your customer….. ever — for the sake of our health.

It is such a horrible experience to get these emails.  It’s like a sudden nausea that has me tasting a little stomach acid in my mouth.  I feel sick but my head’s not warm.  I just don’t feel well after reading this chicanery.

I had one such illogically awful encounter earlier this month when I received the following email in my inbox…

Of course, I was more than a little surprised and then annoyed at the premise of the email. (In this case, “annoyed” is a code word for “enraged”).

1. There is no mention of my name in this entire email (I am not totally sure if she sent this to the right person…)
2. There is value statement (I can’t figure out what really sets Melissa apart as being worth my time…)
3. There is no call to action (I am kind of confused as to what logical action Melissa expects from me…)
4. There is way too much content (I immediately start skimming because it “appears long and boring…)
5. There is different color font in the email (I start wondering “why” and if there’s a special reason…)

So I emailed Melissa back.  And yes, I was in a funk.  My time had been wasted.  My intelligence had been insulted.  I was upset with myself that I had even given Melissa time in my busy day.  I was irate and so I shared my thoughts:

I just asked Melissa why being “illogically awful” was a reason why I should care. And not to be outdone or undeterred she let me know.  She wasn’t trying to woo me as a customer.  She was throwing data at me and hoping that I might be interested.

AWFUL!

A truly “illogically awful” experience.  Melissa clearly did not want me as a customer.

A lot of sales books tell you that you qualify and don’t take chances with customers — that you do exactly what Melissa did:

• That you refine your questions to only work with prospects who have money and time…. you get then give…
• That you only build a relationship once you see that your prospect has something “in it” for you…  you prioritize based on immediate perceived value…
• That you trade enough negotiable points and win a deal without taking any risks…. you never appear vulnerable or genuine…
• That you explain all your moves logically in a “I always win” matrix… you need to appear important and in control…

But let’s not belabor the illustration.  We can learn how to be “illogically helpful” by doing everything that Melissa failed to do.

1. Be personal — Start the email by calling me my name – my first name and leave off the “mister”….
2. Be brief — Keep it to 5 sentences max.  If you need to tell me more, don’t…
3. Be thorough — Tell me something you know I don’t know… and convince me you’re bad-ass…
4. Be creative — Leave me wanting to hear the rest of your idea…
5. Be different — Remove any buzzwords and industry “gibberish” that make me tune you out…
6. Be inspiring — Combine what you want from me with what I care about.  I might actually get involved…
7. Be important — Leave me good contact details so I can return your call or email and add you to my address book…
8. Be neat — Proof read your email to make sure it is grammatically “mostly correct”.  Bad punctuation is distracting…
9. Be safe — Don’t go nuclear on a random idea until we have a relationship. (i.e. politics, religion, etc…)…
10. Be vulnerable — Admit it if you want help.  If you claim to have it figured out and don’t I lose respect…
11. Be About Me — Rewrite your email if there are more I‘s and me‘s than you‘s.  You are writing to me so make it about me…

And here is the kicker: If you follow all the traditional sales rules (like Melissa did) you might never really ever lose a big deal.  You’ll never be in a position to question whether you made the right decision.  You’ll never have to take risks….

But you’ll never have the illogic to support yourself landing big deals.

]]> http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/illogically-help-me-be-your-customer/feed 5 http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/the-language-of-people-and-your-success http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/the-language-of-people-and-your-success#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:12:29 +0000 Dan Waldschmidt http://thedewview.com/?p=1294  

There’s a secret language that many of us don’t understand.  It’s deliberate but very real.  It’s hidden but in plain sight.  It’s how we work but rarely what we think about.

It’s called “humanity” and it’s the key to making the impossible very real.  It’s the difference between the unbelievable happening and almost “getting there.”

When you understand people you understand the possibilities.  You get to be a part of this language of “humanity“.

But it means your mission – your calling in life – is not about YOU:

• It’s you feeling deep loss and quiet tears even when you’re told “I’m fine”…
• It’s you reading the lines of worry on a tired face …
• It’s you hearing the silent call for help when there is no sound…

It’s going on around you.  It was you yesterday and maybe today.

Chances are it’s your client tomorrow…

What happened to the art of caring about the success of your customers?

What happened to caring in general — about your own success, about what wakes you up in the morning, about a higher calling than your 9-to-5?  Is it costing you millions of dollars and you don’t even know about it yet?

“Sir, that’s the fee we added recently to anyone returning their vehicle at the end of their lease.  It’s helps to offset our recent losses.”

That was the response I got from a customer support rep in India answering my frustration over a $800 bill from GMC after returning my vehicle at the end of a 36 month lease.  Do I even need to tell you my response?  I was livid (and so are many of you just reading this).

Not only did I pay several thousands dollars up-front to buy my way into the lease, but Bank of America did a super job of auto-paying the bill each month — from my piggy bank to the coffers of GMC’s “bean counters”.  And now that my lease is done, some one decides to change the rules and charge me because they horribly mismanaged their own affairs.  (That puts me in a bad mood.)

There’s more to this story actually.  It gets better…

About 10 hours ago, I got a call from a Senior Customer Service Rep named Debra in Midland, Texas who “humored” me with a call back to help me with my concerns.  When I asked why I was getting charged $800 for a “Disposition Fee”, I was told”

“That’s a fee all of our customers pay…  It’s only if you decide not to buy the vehicle at the end of the lease.  It’s kind of an incentive thing… “

I kindly asked her where this was mentioned in my original agreement.

“I don’t know if that’s in your agreement, sir.  I don’t know if it’s mentioned there…”

So then I just got personal and I asked her the logic of demanding I pay a fee that was added three years after I signed paperwork.  I just asked why none of this made any sense.  What if this was happening to her?  Would she think this was the right way to be treated?

“Sir, I am sorry; we can not waive that fee, regardless…”

And then I got the real answer.  The fee right now was more important than I was.

• She didn’t want it to make sense.
• She didn’t need it to make sense.

At the end of our discussion — at the end of getting no answers, no clarity, no reasons for these fees — Debra summed it up by simply noting that regardless of the fairness of the situation or her inability to explain the logic of the bill, she simply did not CARE….

That’s what it came down to.  She represented a company that did not care about me.

Two things I know:

1. I will not ever pay this $800 fee until someone can clearly show me my rightful obligation (which at this point seems a long way off)…..   AND
2. I will never (in my lifetime) ever buy another GMC…. (ever, ever….)

What does that mean?

It means that GMC loses horribly over a lack of caring.

Think about this with me.

If I buy a new vehicle every 5 years for the next 40 years (until I am 70) and pay roughly $45,000 per vehicle  (like I did with this Envoy), GMC lost out on $360,000.  And with a 2-car family, that’s about $750,000.  Now what if I buy the boys a car or two (like a generally insane parent)?  Are we close to a million dollars?

Are we beyond a million dollars?  Probably.

So what happened?

GMC forgot that CARING is the ultimate CAPITAL…..

You can spend millions on marketing and billions on branding, but if you don’t care, you can’t replace your customers fast enough to stay in business.  In face, it’s worse than bad.  You just don’t upset your community; you create an army of vigilantes who go out-of-their-way to make sure you fail.  They actually invest in your demise….

Now before you get too indignant over GMC, think about your customers and the amount of money you lose because you don’t take the time to care.  Think about how much money you could lose by not caring to invest in your relationship with them.

And the amazing thing about caring is that when you really do care — you really empathize — you can screw up pretty bad and your customer will forgive you.

Because caring is really what matters most in a relationship.

———————–

“Caring is the different between the struggle for survival or the the passionate pursuit of excellence.  With one, you succeed at living and with the other you live to succeed… (DEWism)”

Since when did we as business people decide that having conversations was too much work?

Instead of discussion with our customers and the community we decided that SHOUTING at the world was the “latest and greatest” in sales-marketry…  That being annoying was a great replacement for providing value to the community around us.

(If you see the guy who switched the playbook let me know so I can slip him over the border into North Korea.)

I want a lifetime ban on boring HTML newsletters.  They just suck.

At least pretend to know my name.  I feel like the other side of a bad date.  Like I am being used for just another number in your “see my 10 gabillion readers” quest for encyclopedic  nonsensery.

And here is the ironic part about the craziness of your bad content:

I really want to be inspired by what you have to say to me.  I want to get a rush of adrenaline and nod my head at the end of each paragraph as you rock it out.  That’s what I want from our conversation.

Instead, you think that your fancy picture (which I have now officially deemed “Lame 2009 Clipart” or L2C for short) does a better job of telling me what you really want me to know.

Here’s another paradox:  We all hate the loud dude in the office who just won’t shut up (which is usually me).   But then we turn around become the sales people of the world who fight fearlessly for our loud and impersonal emails that just do the same thing.

We need to stop thinking about emails as sales tools and more as conversation tools.

If you wouldn’t kick down your customer’s door and start spitting sales facts in his face in person, then don’t do it with your emails.

Stop shouting….

Start sharing.

Two stories.

One central theme.

It all started on Friday with a call from my friend, Jill Stelfox…

The Bad Movie

Between a mix of tears and laughing she told me how she had been working to secure a vendor to tape video footage of one of her clients.  Her client is a financial planner who is on MSNBC as a leading source of “money talk” and so she wanted to get a copy of all his appearances to add to his website.  (Sounds like a good plan to me…) So she reached out to several different vendors who quoted her prices between $125 to $150 per tape clip.  One vendor though struck a different tone.  He offered to provide the service at $85 per clip – provided she bought 25 up-front – and even suggested he send her a sample of her client on video.

Pleased, Jill provided more information, and a short bit later the vendor sent over the video.  After looking at the tape Jill called the vendor with a serious problem — the audio and video were synced horribly like a bad Chinese Kung Fu movie.  Jill’s client was talking and his lips were moving “out of timing” with the audio.  The video quality itself was “super spotty”.  Still — this was a FREE sample.  Maybe there was a good explanation (or not).

The vendor listened as Jill spoke and then professionally admitted that there was a problem.  He then went on to note that he “knew there was a problem and that was why he was asking for 25 up-front purchases – so he could upgrade his equipment”… (all true, I promise).  He then went on tell Jill that “he was broke and needed the money to do more work for other prospects.”

It took little time for Jill to hang up the phone in disbelief and end a shockingly bizarre buying experience.

Stolen Shoes

Saturday evening Sara and I were “first person” to our own outrageous buying experience.  It went a little something like this:

There is an children’s arcade/amusement center called Frankie’s Fun Park about 10 minutes from our house in Greenville that my two boys (Bryce and Dustin) love for me to take them.  I just went there a few weeks ago when Sara was out-of-town and found the scene morbidly un-engaging.  Employees were frowning and yawning –  like we customers were a chore that they were forced to take care of.   Needless to say, I took the boys home without spending any more money.  I also took the 15.4 seconds necessary to “tweet” to the world about my poor experience.  And then told the boys that we would never be heading back there again…

But, alas, the allure of winning tickets and climbing through indoor jungle gyms was too much for the boys to accept.  They wanted to return and I wanted to make that happen for them.  Besides, Bryce had won almost 2,000 tickets that he had not cashed in for prizes yet.  And so we made our way back into the den of sweaty over-caffeinated kid-dom.

The boys headed straight for the “jungle gym”.  Shoes off and stowed in cubby.  Borrowed socks on.  Fun everywhere with mom and dad cheering on the mayhem (I wish they made one of those for adults…).  It was when the boys got out that the problem began.  Dustin (my 2 year old) had his bright yellow crocs stolen out of his cubby — cubby that his mom and I were standing 5 feet away from the entire night.  Sure — someone might have accidentally picked up the bright yellow crocs by accident (hardly….) — but it was the way the employees handled it that made this a story.

Of course I mentioned this to the 17- year old staff member in that kids area who took a few seconds away from texting to look at me with one eye raised.  ”Steal your kids shoe?” she repeated back to me incredulously — like I was making the entire story up for.  Further outraged, I moved on to the front of the establishment to look for management.  Maybe someone old enough to have a car payment would care about my son’s bright yellow crocs.  Sadly I was mistaken.

When I reached the front desk the manager came hustling out to meet me, chattering in half-tones into an ear piece about some food cleanup.  Without any eye contact, he briefly stopped to tell me that he had “everyone looking for my shoe and that he was sure no one had stolen my sons’s bright yellow crocs.”  To which I kindly refrained from sucker punching him in his face and left with Sara and the boys.  I came to spend money and was left shoeless and insulted.  Another horrible customer experience at an establishment that should be completely focused on user satisfaction.

What’s the point?

It’s simply this.

It’s all about the EXPERIENCE your customers are having!  You can’t explosively grow your revenue when you are pissing off the people who have the revenue to help you grow.  You invest in them FIRST so that they will invest in you FOREVER.

And remember – It’s not about their trial period

…………………………or your proof-of-concept expectations

………………………………….or the support ROI you are factoring

…………………………………………..or “who is right” when a prospect complains.

It’s about how a prospect FEELS while interacting with you.  Michael Ports (what a great author…) made the observation that: “Long after people forget what you said or did, [customers] will remember how you made them feel.”

It’s feelings that we need to change.  Not facts!

By the way, that means that logic or facts have nothing to do with this discussion.  At the heart of this is the concept of “relationships” — which happen to be completely illogical.  You can’t build a spreadsheet around a customer experience strategy or “doing the right thing” (which is why so many companies just hire more schmucky sales dudes to find more prospects rather than get religious about creating an outrageous experience for their “community”).

You can’t even explain how you are going to make more money doing this.  But it works.  It’s the stuff of legends.

• It’s the pricing and staffing economics that make Southwest Airlines the only profitable airline in the US and the most enjoyable (non-luxury) traveling experience….
• It’s what takes the idea of outrageous customer fulfillment and ten years of consistent performance to build a billion dollar online site like Zappos…
• It’s the detailed online client “do-it-yourself” tools that catapult a small franchise like Washington  Mutual into a leading insurance powerhouse…
• It’s the efficiency of client  purchases and delivery that propel Amazon.com to be the leader in online purchases…
• It’s the foundation of an ACE Hardware franchise that continues to “delight” even while getting smashed by larger Home Depot and Lowe’s franchises…

It’s easy to call this “too intangible for action” and just add more dollars to the CRM budget next year.  This takes guts. And faith.  And obsessing about the details of everything you do and every word you train your people to say.  It is a religion.

But “strangely”, when you invest in your customer’s experience, you emerge as the alpha-standard.  You don’t just improve mediocrity.  You set the standard for the new “impossible”.  You are invincible!

Your ability to achieve explosive revenue growth is directly proportional to your obsession with providing an outrageous customer experience.  Suck at one and you’re guaranteed to suck at the other… (DEWism)

Sneak up behind someone and poke them with a safety pin and they jump.   Do it 100 times to a 100 different people and you will get the SAME result.

It’s human nature.  It’s a reaction that all people have.  Going a little deeper — it’s a subconscious reaction to feedback from our nervous system.  Millions of impulses every second tell you that you are in pain — to move your body away from the source  of pain.

It’s not even something you think about.

Which brings me back to the topic of my recent angst — sales strategies based on stats…

Sales research is cool (our teams do a ton of it), but building your sales strategy around market perceptions research is absolutely senseless.  I am not sure where we business people went so wrong, but the practice of “wind sniffing” is eroding the foundations of our businesses.  We happily produce neutered sales teams while happily sharing the stats around why we are making stupidly uninspired decisions.
We attempt nothing grand, challenging, or edgy.  Instead we “grow a set of stats” and use them as a billy club to keep the sales guys in line and unoriginal.

Here is how it works:

1. “Business A” wants to generate more money in their marketplace…
2. Executives research what people are buying and doing in the “Business A” marketplace…
3. Sales team tasked to deliver on getting more people in the “Business A” marketplace to buy more…

Seems harmless.  In fact, you might be thinking: “this sounds like a great idea to me; why so much frustration, Daniel?”

But here are the problems:

1. You can’t improve something by executing a “more of the same” sales strategy… (i.e. Bad people doing bad things produce bad things in bad ways.  Copying that is bad too.)
2. Multiple snapshots of buyer activity produce vastly inconsistent data… (i.e. Like 5 blind dudes with a elephant you get a difference perspective every time you roll out of bed and check your numbers.)
3. People don’t want what they say they want… (i.e. People don’t want to pay a “fair price”.  They want to pay “their fair price.)
4. Stats bear “builder bias” not facts… (i.e. You can’t escape that you will already have most of the answer before you start working on looking at your “viral stats”.)
5. Everybody else is equally as motivated to improve mediocrity (i.e. Improving your hustle over your competitor just means that you look like an idiot more times to more prospects.)

Building on mediocrity still has the failure of mediocrity at the foundation — which really negates the “building” part of the scenario…  (DEWism)

Watching what people are doing or how they are acting is a good operational practice but quite limited when it comes to sales.  It breaks down to Maslow and understanding people.

People do what people do because they are people  and that’s what people do…

Instead of researching what already exists  – what people are already doing — spend time on what you WANT people to be doing.  That should be your ONLY concern.  What people are doing is already the past.  Your vision for them promises a new and better future.

Here is a stat for you:  99.99% of people want to live and love… Lose your sales stats and sell that with passion…

[...and a Happy Birthday to my mother who taught me to live with courage, to strive for excellence, and to never back down from my obsession with changing the world...]

Do you write a lot of emails?

Do you find that that most of your “targeted emails” never get answered?

Are you tired of having your emails ignored?

Here is my advice: try writing something that is worth reading…

Seriously!  (and, NO, I am not mad about this — I just sound that way)

I got the following email in my Gnoso inbox and after about 52.5 seconds of having my life wasted went into a tirade with the team at Gnoso.  Stunningly ridiculous content from a marketing company…

Take a look:

What?

You want to meet because you read an article in the newspaper….  That’s your value proposition.  Nothing better?  No ways that I benefit other than supporting your business with my money (and feeling good about it)?  Nothing?

(By the way, no one here is named “Steve”…)

Here is the scientific formula for that crock of menagerie:

Bad homework + boring content = boiling readers…

Next time you stop to write your “target customer” an email, stop and think about what you are doing.  Take the opportunity to communicate seriously.  And think of the benefits — people won’t hate you and you might make some sales.

Here are 7 DEWlicious conversation observations:

1. Stop trying to impress me with your name drops of big companies (that I don’t really know or care about)…
2. Don’t make a lame reason for why I should keep reading or schedule you on my calendar.  When I do meet you, I already think you’re lame…
3. Thanks and appreciation should be for what you have done for me not for how you “feel” about me…
4. ummmmm….. please, please, please do some research on me, my name, and what I care about…. (I own www.danielwaldschmidt.com so it shouldn’t be too hard
5. No intrigue = no interest (I don’t want to know the “why” and the “how” – just the “what”)….
6. More than 5-6 sentences and I start getting bored…
7. I don’t care about you.  I care about me.  Care about me too…

Great email content is a skill that we all need to work on.  This is a start!

And here — in case you missed it the first time:

I don’t care about you.  I care about me.  Care about me too…