Atlantis. El Dorado. Camelot. Brigadoon. Xanadu. Let’s add one more mythical place to the list.
Top of Mind.
When I train and coach digital sellers, one key building block is what I call Sellers’ Intent. In short, what’s the point of the sales call you’re about to have, and what precisely do you want the customer to actually DO as a result of it? If the answers here are soft, retiring or ambivalent, the whole enterprise is hamstrung – if not doomed – from the start.
I’m going to do a presentation on our capabilities and why we’re a good choice for them. That way we’ll be top of mind when they’re working on their next plan.
Um, no.
There is no top of mind with media planning and investment teams. They’re paid to execute existing budgets and act on immediate needs. They’re focused on what needs to be transacted in the next six weeks. If you’re not filling that order and asking for that sale, you’re accomplishing nothing. And there’s no room for error in the timing.
Bring your Top of Mind show to higher level agency people (strategy and investment leads, Group VPs) or clients and the outcome – or more accurately, the non-outcome – is even worse. If you’re not solving a strategic marketing or business problem today, then you’re just another qualified option waiting for your shot. And these senior customers are not in the market for one more choice.
You have options. Have a POV on the client’s current direction and a specific plan for how you can compliment or extend it. Disrupt. Be prepared to create new value, new capabilities and budget redirection. Do the work to deserve the client’s commitment and then ask for it. Let them tell you that you’re being too ambitious, trying to do too much for them.
To be a seller is to advance a sale, not to go through safe, predictable motions. To visit a customer only hoping to be Top of Mind for some future hypothetical buy is to suffer the subtle bigotry of low expectations.
You can have more. Your intention, your ambition, your preparation and your actions to earn it are up to you.
Original Illustration by Eric Sands.
We all get to decide how we show up. Leaning into these decisions won’t necessarily change the numbers or the circumstances, but they will change the narrative from one of anxiety and randomness to a story of perseverance, growth and personal victory. They may not change your Q3 number, but they will change YOU.
The world of work we shut down in March 2020 is gone. Thinking we can just go back to it by getting on the train and turning on the lights is unrealistic to the point of delusion. Attracting, hiring and retaining valuable employees has never been trickier. What you could solve in 2012 with more money and a bigger title requires much more thoughtful answers today. Your competitive future depends on them.
You are shooting yourself in the foot and it’s clouding your vision, mucking up your forecasts and making your sales cycle longer and more unstable. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are three self-inflicted wounds that can be fatal to your win-rate, but that are also easily corrected.
This afternoon in San Francisco a man named John Durham died after many years of serious health problems. Those are the facts, but not the story. To those of us who knew and loved him so much, he was THE DURHAM: a life force, a gentle soul, a fantastic dresser and a terrible speller. In short, he was THE DURHAM. To his friends, no explanation is necessary. To those who were never touched by him, no explanation is possible.
I wrote this post about the value of attention a few years ago, pre-pandemic and pre-Zoom. Lightly-edited, it seems even more relevant now. Making others feel fully-attended earns us their attention in return. Read on.
Last week I used this space to share several of the leading themes from Write this Down: Memes and Metaphors for a Better Life in Sales, a book that I've begun working on. This week, a few more, including some challenging advice for both managers, individual contributors and their fellow humans from many walks of life.
I've been outlining a book that will be called Write this Down: Memes and Metaphors for a Better Life in Sales. Since fleshing out the book will take a while longer, I've decided to share many of the aforementioned Memes and Metaphors across the next few posts of The Drift. Read on, comment, share, push back and apply them to your own life in sales.
Five years ago, P&G CMO Marc Pritchard called bullshit on the digital supply chain and challenged us to get our house in order. I’ll make it even simpler. Tell the truth. Sell real stuff. Clean up after yourself. Leave the place a little better than how you found it. Create confidence. Now Google and Apple have done us all a favor. They not only locked the door to the digital funhouse; they pretty much burned the place down. What we build now is up to us. I hope we build back better.
While erstwhile sellers may never actually come out and say "Please don't buy anything from me today," these anti-selling clichés may be the next best -- or worst -- thing.
For teams conditioned to their managers spitting out answers and directives, this approach is going to feel strange at first. The VIP manager is forcing strategic thinking and deeper context into decision making that’s too often situational, transactional and unscalable. VIP management will slow down the moments while simultaneously speeding up the growth of your team.
For exactly a year now, each day, without leaving home, we look into the faces of dozens of industry execs: we share meaningful phone calls with managers working to better lead and care for their teams. On a dime, and on a shoestring, we’ve pivoted into the fourth complete reinvention of our company. And we’ve spent this year on earth making a difference for good people. Who's luckier than we are?
The truth is, we’re still mostly interviewing the way we did in 2015 – and 2005 and 1995 – and it has nothing to do with the pandemic or Zoom. Our perspective on talent is compromised not because we are now hiring within the frame of a Zoom screen. It’s because we’ve always used a flawed lens to frame candidates.