Business Development

Super Bowl Commercials: Julia Roberts Would Not Like You

Yes, kids, it's that time of year. The Superbowl is tomorrow, and the universe is full of stories about the incredibly expensive, production-values-up-the-wazoo commercials that are going to be running. Here is a blog post on the subject. Here's another one. Here's an entire web site devoted to the subject.

Do not watch them.

Here's the problem. These are ads for multinational brands, with gigantic ad budgets, made by the absolute best ad agencies in the world. These people are professionals. The ads themselves are almost always pure branding exercises, designed to raise awareness and position (or reposition) an already well-known brand. One 30-second spot in the 2009 Super Bowl will cost you around $3 million.

If you are running a business that does under $500 million in revenues, or is a professional service, or both, these ads have absolutely no connection with the kind of advertising you should be doing, if any, or the way you think about your marketing. It's like letting a schoolyard bully go up against Mike Tyson, in his prime. It's completely apples and oranges.

It reminds me of some comedian's bit about why Julia Roberts is the most powerful actress in the universe. It's because all men, when they are sitting in the theater watching one of her movies, are thinking to themselves: "You know, if she met me ... she'd kind of dig me." The point here is that the Julie Roberts you see up on the screen has absolutely no connection with any real woman walking the earth. She's an ACTRESS -- get it? Similarly, those ads have absolutely no connection with the marketing that should be done by any real-world professional-services firm.

Yet, because these ads are so good, so pervasive and are typically such good creative, a lot of people think that this is good advertising. It is, but it probably isn't good advertising for them. A law firm with 500 attorneys has completely different needs than, say, Doritos, or Monster.com. However, it's amazing how many of my clients begin their marketing thinking with these ads. Big mistake.

Don't watch them. Don't even think about them. I promise, what's right for you will be something completely different.

Be Easy to Buy From

Many years ago, I got some outstanding sales advice from, of all people, my stockbroker. "Be easy to buy from." By that she meant that sales meant consciously working to remove all the possible obstacles between someone who wanted to buy what you are selling, and actually buying it.

A version of this comes from Friday's Selling Sherpa blog:

Not long ago, I attended a presentation from a very respected author and speaker.  After the morning-long talk, I approached him, thanked him for what he had shared, and asked if he brought any books with him.

He explained that, for whatever reason, he felt a little uncomfortable taking advantage of this forum to promote his book.  Rather than delve into finding out why he doesn’t feel his book is worthy of being promoted, I simply asked how to purchase it and he replied either at his website or the big online book seller.

So, here I am, a willing customer, and someone who might appreciated a signed copy, with money in my hand and he made it difficult for me to buy.  Never mind his discomfort; think about my disappointment!  Why would he want to make it hard for me to give him my money?

The lesson is this: you never know when you will encounter someone who is ready, willing, able and anxious to buy what you sell.  But if you are not prepared to make a sale, you will actually make that person’s life more difficult.

If you are not ready to sell at a moment’s notice, get ready!  If you sell hard goods, could you have some with you?  If you sell a service, is the paperwork necessary for an initial need assessment readily available?  If you sell a treatment, are you ready to show a prospect how it works?

What can you do to get ready to sell right now?

This seems obvious, right?
Wrong.

You would be stunned at how many people who are allegedly in sales make the prospect jump through hoops, wait, sign things and so on before allowing them to hand over money. Every time you do this, even if it's only "Call me and we'll set up an appointment" you create another opportunity for the prospect to object, prevaricate and change his mind.

Don't do it. If you think about it, it's crazy. Make it as easy, simple and fast as possible. Part of the genius of iTunes, and other online sales operations is that all the customer has to do is click, and the money's changed hands. In a similar vein, it's also been said that the single greatest sales line in the universe is "Would you like to Supersize that?" All the customer has to do is say one word -- "yes" -- and McDonald's has some incremental revenue.

The ultimate example of this is in Robert Ringer's terrific book To Be Or Not To Be Intimidated? Ringer is one of my favorite business writers. In this book, at one point he writes about the art of closing real estate deals when the buyer is represented by a lawyer (dubbed "Legalman" by Ringer) who seems intent on preventing the deal from going through. Ringer doesn't think much of lawyers. Anyway, here's how he describes the scene:

Old standby "problems" such as needing some obscure document from the mortgage lender -- problems that Legalman has always counted on to stall a closing for at least a week or two in order to give the Fiddle Theory time to take effect -- were dissoved before his very eyes. I accomplished this by merely dispatching one of my secretaries cross country to pick up the document in question and hand-carry it to the party who requested it.

In other words, there's Ringer at a closing, and one of the parties raises an objection. Some document is missing. Ringer would literally turn to one of his assistants, and say "Phyllis, fly to Boston and get that document, and deliver it, personally, tomorrow, to Mr. Anderson." He would then turn to the other side, say something like, "Well, that's taken care of. Anything else?"

The point is that not only did he make it easy for buyer to buy, he made it hard for them not to buy. They'd have to do something, and really work at it in order to prevent the transaction. If you've just delivered a speech, and someone in the audience wants to talk to you about an engagement, it's good if you're prepared to set an appointment right then. It's better if you have blocked out an hour or so after the speech to sit down and talk to them. And best of all, is if you're prepared to walk over to their office, right now, and begin scoping out the work.

Flipping the RFP coin

In her very spiffy Expertise Marketplace blog, Suzanne Lowe had a post Friday on the need for process in marketing professional services. In this post, she describes the presumably insane managing partner of an unnamed professional services firm. Her post reads as follows:
 
For example, I heard the other day about a 250-person professional firm (I'll cloak its industry, but it could be an y professional service enterprise) whose managing partner feels compelled to have his firm respond to 100 percent of all the RFPs it receives.

Yes . 100 percent.

As everyone  knows, and nobody (but me) admits, most RFPs are a massive waste of time. They're frequently inte nded to provide political air cover for a decision that's already been made. In other words, the clie  nt has already decided who they're going to hire, but they send out an RFP to make it look like their decision was arrived at using some kind of rational process.

Hence, my F lip a Coin rule. When I'm consulting with clients about an RFP, before lifting a finger to respond, the first determination that's made is whether they have a better than a 50% chance of winning the business. Without any guessing, or hope, or baloney, relying on cold, hard, humorless analysis, are y our chances of winning this business better than your chance of flipping a coin and getting Tails? If not, send a polite letter to the source of the RFP saying "Thanks, but no thanks."

That's the first, and most basic, step of my RFP process -- deciding whether to do it at all.

And, speaking of process, the hands-down leader in thinking about this stuff is Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth, and founder of a big consulting firm that specializes in  teaching small business about the use of process in day-to-day operations. Visit his site, and learn about his methods -- they really work.

And remember, before you start answering an RFP, flip a mental coin.

It's a New Year -- Call Your Contacts, But Plan the Call

Ford Harding made a good point right before the year ended, one I'm going to kind of borrow and expand upon. In his December 29 post, he suggests calling your contacts at the end of the year to thank them for their business, ask them if they'd like their invoice before the end of the year, and so on. All great ideas.

Another version of this is to call at the beginning of the year (i.e., now) and tell them that you're going through your address book, and trying to implement a resolution to reconnect with all the people you have lost touch with. It's essentially the same approach, but from a slightly different direction.

The point of all this is that one of the most valuable assets in networking is an excuse to call people. However, it's equally important that the call go smoothly, which takes a little bit of planning. So, implement these ideas, but coupled with some idea of what you're going to say. In other words, it's not enough simply to have a valid reason to call someone. You also have to think through -- and this takes about one minute -- what you want to talk to them about, and where you want the conversation to go.

This is Sales 101 -- never lose control of the call. The point is that at all costs, you want to avoid a call that makes everyone feel a little uncomfortable and weird -- one that goes like this:

You:  "Hi, Barack, this is Peter Darling. I'm going through my contacts, and trying to reconnect with people. We haven't spoken for a while, and I thought I'd give you a call and say "hello". How's it going?"
Barack: " Fine, thanks. Good to hear from you."
Uncomfortable silence in which nobody knows quite what to say next.

Use the "getting back in touch" approach, but never just wing it. Plan. The Boy Scouts were right -- be prepared.