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.
Not obsessing about time is one thing: re-imagining how we use it is entirely another. What can I say yes to, today? Non-traditional scheduling options. Re-imagining your relationship with the calendar and the clock won't just happen. It all starts with you choosing your own narrative about possibility.
You're not alone if you're feeling overwhelmed and broken by the perceived enormity of the challenges. Indeed, if you find yourself struggling intellectually with the entire issue it will, in fact, break you. But the best managers and sellers - the best executives of every stripe - all seem to have the same rhythm. They slow it down. They break it down. They solve one problem and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.
At the end of this stage there won’t be a return to normal or anything close: there will be a transition to a brand-new era. And none of us will ever say, "I wish I’d waited longer to change."
Here at Upstream Group, it’s day 50 of The Siege. Having looked back over these weeks of recovery, reinvention and writing, I’m sharing my bullet list of ideas that have sustained and invigorated me. Hope you find them helpful.
Stopping the Clock breaks the tyranny of the calendar. It allows us to start living again in the present… to focus on the next hour. We can now start visualizing what productivity and joy and excellence look like in our altered world. We have only now. Stopping the Clock let's us make the most of it.
Dwight Eisenhower famously said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." Today I think rather the opposite is true. As we navigate the disconnection, isolation, disruption and anxiety of today’s pandemic and tomorrow’s shattered economy, I think The Plan is what matters. Let me explain.
The smart managers and evolved sellers are adapting by building new scoreboards. They’re not basing them on sales numbers: with no idea where the curve tops out or the market bottoms, that would be folly. They’re building scoreboards around excellence. They’re creating internal competition around learning, and service, and empathy. Understanding that this is not a time to reap, they are choosing to keep track of what’s being sown.
The five percent we remember from rough times are those who showed up and brought something. They didn’t wait for the struggling party to define the need and ask for help. They were the five percent who said I’m doing this for you and then did it. They anticipated what could be helpful and then acted – not because there would be any payback, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have chosen to be polite: instead, they chose to be useful.
Great sales managers have always understood the power of Walking the Floor… being a physical presence in the office by walking from workstation to workstation. These managers understood that looking in someone’s eyes and getting a sense of their mood and energy was vital. It told them I’m here, I see you, and I’m paying attention. It’s the time that a hidden concern could emerge or a spontaneous coaching opportunity arise. So how do we walk the floor today when we’re all on different floors in different dwellings in different cities? How does each of us reinvent and extend our presence to show our employees that I’m here, I see you, and I’m paying attention? I have ideas.
For the next several weeks, I’ll be devoting The Drift to supporting our disrupted community of work-from-home executives. I hope you’ll take the time to comment and share. None of us is alone. When you…
Suddenly everything’s different. The conferences that we used to alternately ask for and grumble about are being rescheduled. The offices in which we claimed we just couldn’t get any work done or ever…
When I lead sales workshops, I challenge teams to diagnose a potential client problem or issue and then prescribe a solution to the client using a single sheet of paper: show them graphically how you would arrange your products and capabilities to solve the problem. Sometimes these charts look like funnels or customer journeys or timelines. But almost without exception, there’s never an arrow or loop that suggests what happens next. If you haven’t thought through how your products will help the client in year two, why would they ever buy them in year one?