Monthly Archives: October 2013

October 17, 2013 · 8:48 am

Want To Sell? Stop Selling!

Suppose you want to grow your business through marketing.  Let me rephrase, to quote my lawyer friends.

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You MUST grow your business through marketing.  The question then becomes how can I increase sales given the fractionalized and changing nature of selling today.  I’ve watched some clients become increasingly desperate as they realize that all of the “old” tried and true methods don’t really work so well, and newer sales channels such as search and social are really confusing.  This leads to a mindset where every point of contact with a potential buyer seems as if it needs to be used to deliver a sales message.  In fact, the opposite is true.

Repeat after me:  I will provide value in every message I deliver.  That means for the recipient, by the way, not for you.  Marketing today is about building trust and relationship with consumers who in turn spread your word and buy your products.  The heavy lifting isn’t in buying media necessarily.  It might be in creating entertaining and informative content that will accomplish the aforementioned goal.  Your potential customers are thinking about interaction, not about listening to your sales pitch.  You wouldn’t try to sell something to your guests at a dinner party (well, maybe if it was  Tupperware party…) so don’t use other channels inappropriately either.  Use channels in the manner in which they were intended.  That means being social in social channels, being visual in visual channels (and not just by repurposing a TV ad on YouTube) and always providing value and quality.

Good salespeople know that “no” just means “not yet.”  They’re attuned to the cues that their target customer is giving them.  That’s dialog, not monologue.  You want to sell?  Stop selling and start conversing.  Start interacting.  Treat your customers as friends, not as wallets.  Engage them.  Entertain them. It might not feel as if you’re selling but you’re doing so in a manner that’s more up to date than just buying ads.  Happy hunting!

Thoughts?

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October 16, 2013 · 8:44 am

The Early Warning System Is Going Off

There’s always a scene in movies about some epic disaster during which an early warning system goes off.  A young scientist believes a comet will hit the Earth but the older scientists tell him he’s nuts.  A tsunami monitor goes off when there are calm seas and the woman watching it disregards the information.  You know the drill.  As the audience, we know that disaster is coming but those who have the information are blissfully unaware until disaster strikes.millennials-broadcast

I thought of that as I read a couple of articles the other day.  The first is from the good folks at Poynter who reported on some research the NY Times did.  Quite an eye-catching headline:

Thirty-four percent of millennials surveyed watch mostly online video or no broadcast television, new research from The New York Times says.

Now granted, the study was among 4,000 current users of online video so one could argue, like the woman watching the calm sea, that the sample is skewed.  The again, given the high percentage of young folks that are online video watchers, I’d listen.  After all, cord cutting is no longer dismissed as the rantings of some early adopter lunatics.  There are numbers that prove it’s for real, especially since we’re not talking about “cord-nevers” – young people who never had cable TV – just a broadband connection for streaming.  As one report had it:

While 3.2 million new U.S. households were set up in the last three years, the paid-TV industry only added 250,000 subscriptions in that same period.

Not so good.  And if that’s not a loud enough alarm, here comes the near-miss fireball from out of the sky that gets everyone’s attention, courtesy of our neighbors in the Great White North:

The Canadian government will soon require cable and satellite television providers to make it easier for customers to buy only the channels they want rather than pay for bundles, the country’s industry minister said on Sunday.

“We don’t think it’s right for Canadians to have to pay for bundled television channels that they don’t watch. We want to unbundle television channels and allow Canadians to pick and pay the specific television channels that they want”

Sound familiar?  It should, since it’s the same fight that’s been brewing here for several years and which intensifies each time your cable or satellite bill goes up.  Cable executive are rightly scared that their penetration into the household base will fall, making subscriber revenues drop and ad sales impossible.

Young people tuning out in droves.  The fundamental business model under attack.  Have we reached the end of the TV world?  Not yet.  But in my mind the early warning systems are howling.  What do you think?

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October 15, 2013 · 9:01 am

Better

Ready for a two-fer TunesDay? Today I have two songs that deal with the same issue – our approach to the world and, therefore, how we’re likely to approach business as well. The first is from The Kinks, who are probably better known for Van Halen‘s interpretation of one of their songs (You Really Got Me) then they are for creating some of the most innovative music of the late 60’s and the 70’s and 80’s.  The second one is from The Boss, mostly because it hits on the same theme, I love his music, and its my screed!

First The Kinks:

If you’re ever feeling a little down, this might just be the uplift you need.  I don’t know of a more positive song.  The core of it is contained in these lines:

Be an optimist instead,
And somehow happiness will find you.
Forget what happened yesterday,
I know that better things are on the way.

And that’s really the business point as well.  Unsuccessful people tend to look externally, in my opinion.  The market is bad, a competitor cut prices, a key employee just left, what can we do?  There are always things out of one’s control that are the root of the problems the business is having. As the song points out, a positive attitude lets happiness – which in business is often measured by success – find you.

The Boss weighs in:

What’s so interesting about this song – one of Bruce‘s most positive – is that it was written when his life was kind of confused.  He had dissolved the E Street Band and left New Jersey to live in California.  He had gotten divorced and had changed the style of his music and none of this was well-received by his legion of fans (me among them!).  In the midst of that time, this:

These are better days baby
These are better days it’s true
These are better days
There’s better days shining through

Maybe it’s a lost soul trying to convince himself that everything is fine or maybe it’s a man who faces each day sounding a positive note on whatever may come.   It’s the same point Ray Davies is making in our first song – being an optimist at heart leads one further along in life and in business because, as Bruce puts it “it’s a sad man my friend who’s livin’ in his own skin/And can’t stand the company.”

Make sense?  Oh – extra credit:  In September 2010, Ray Davies released “See My Friends”, an album of reworked classic Kinks songs, which contains a duet of ‘Better Things’ with Bruce Springsteen.  The streams converge!

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