National Clothesline

There’s never a need for more opportunities to make sales. Never. More than enough are always available. In fact, more opportunities than any company can handle.

“Yeah, sure” you say. “If that’s true, then why are salespeople always looking for leads and complaining that their company isn’t doing everything it can to help them make more sales?”

The problem is that we’re not trained to see opportunities. Even if they jumped up and smacked us in the face, we wouldn’t feel a thing. If they fell in our lap, we couldn’t find them.

The problem is described in a trade association magazine article in which the readers were invited to test their marketing IQ.

The test kicked off this way: The first step in developing an effective strategy is to leverage

What you do most.

What you do best.

What you do best in related services.

What your competition does least effectively.

All of the above.

According to the test’s author, the correct answer is b: An effective strategy will leverage what you do best; your core competency.

The answer seems to make sense. We want to believe what we do best is what the customer wants. But that’s the mistake — focusing on the company instead of the customer.

We spend time trying to get the customer to do what we want. We’re so enamored by what we see in the mirror, we can’t see anything else. Just because we’re the very best at something does not mean someone needs, wants or will pay for what we’re good at.

The job of marketing and sales is not to try get the customer to bow to our will, but to offer what intrigues the customer. In other words, blinded by what we want, we miss the myriad of opportunities that have the potential to increase sales.

How can we turn it around and become customer focused?

1. Overcome complacency. Without question, complacency is the business killer. It surrounds us. It affects how we think and what we do without us even recognizing it. Professor Jagdish Sheth of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School lays down the gauntlet when he says, “People end up believing what they do will succeed forever, and then they become resistant to change. They get locked into one paradigm or one way of life.

When something works well, we want to believe that we have found the magic formula and that it will work well forever. Perhaps there’s a not so subtle component of ego mixed in with complacency.

Examples are everywhere, from the company president who must be the “expert” on every aspect of business, from selecting typefaces to toilet paper, to the head of IBM who, in the 1970s, dismissed personal computers out of hand because IBM’s business was mainframes.

Complacency blinds us to opportunity and kills business.

2. Never ignore inertia. Americans had a rude awakening when they called toll-free help lines and found themselves speaking to someone with an Indian accent. We were indignant that companies were exporting jobs.

This tsunami isn’t just about sending jobs to low-wage nations. It’s about inertia. At the end of “It’s a Flat World, After All” (New York Times Magazine, April 3, 2004), Thomas L. Friedman refers to Bill Gates’ contention that the U.S. is falling behind in education compared to the rest of the world, with our students scoring near the bottom of industrialized nations.

Then Friedman drops the bomb. “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ‘Tom, finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ But… I am now telling my own daughters, ‘Girls, finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your jobs’.”

We like to believe we’re safe, that nothing can touch us. The problem isn’t losing jobs, it’s that we fail to see that others are overtaking us, “eating our lunch.”

Friedman notes there are folks hidden away all over the world armed with knowledge, laptops and wireless who are taking the business.

Here’s the marketing and sales message: We are never set; nothing stays the same. Unless we actively market with a view to the future — two, three and five years down the road — we’re in trouble. What’s killing sales is inertia. We dawdle around looking for the ripe fruit, when we should be cultivating the young trees.

3. Never look back. Business people like to believe they’re visionaries, but their behavior tells a different story. They’re in love with the past. They get excited when they’re telling war stories! And these heroic moments are all about past glories.

The prime example of what we can call “rearview mirror thinking” is, of course, General Motors. As the once “world’s biggest company” heads for the precipice, it continues to follow its founder’s plan: Let customers graduate from a Chevy or a Pontiac, to an Oldsmobile, Buick or LaSalle, and then to a Cadillac. Once they get started, there’s a GM vehicle throughout their life-cycle. LaSalle disappeared 65 years ago, Olds is gone and Buick is waiting for the plug to be pulled.

Ford’s on a similar path. But not Kia and Hyundai from South Korea. Once rejected by U.S. car buyers, they turned it around — fast.

Today, their products win quality honors and fly out the door with powerful guarantees that are far more compelling incentives than GM and Ford’s deep discounts.

Looking forward beats looking backward. Learn from GM, Ford and others. Give customers what they want and don’t hold back, or else the competition will enjoy the fruits of your failure.

4. Create excitement. If customers today are looking for one thing above all else, it’s excitement. That’s what Expo and Victoria’s Secret are all about. How to be more than just a little bit daring is the secret message.

Chrysler’s PT Cruiser continues to excite both men and women, particularly members of the Boomer generation. “I may be getting gray but I can still act like a kid.” Owners have genuine affection for their PT Cruisers. As one who rented a garage for his new vehicle said in near reverential tones, “I’ve got to take care of it.”

There’s even more of a symbiotic relationship between the Chrysler 300 owners and their vehicles, as sales exceed company projections. Once again, the Boomers are busting down the dealership doors to get their hands on these rakish sedans.

What’s going on here? At a time when we feel increased job pressure and the stress of work, family, and conflicting demands, we want to lose ourselves for awhile. These vehicles offer special excitement, letting us fantasize each time we close the door.

Excitement sells. But as Pontiac has learned, it must be more than a motto. If you “build excitement,” you had better deliver on it.

5. Be real. When was the last time you heard a CEO say, “I messed up” or “I sold the company because it was a good deal for me.” The “no-spin zones” are few and far between. Somewhere along the line, we decided that fabrication is preferable to honesty. This is a dangerous sport, particularly since there are people out there on the Internet who spend their time finding ways to trip us up.

There’s no place to hide and no cover-ups, just the illusion of being able to get away with it. Customers who feel they’ve been cheated or dealt with unfairly head for the Internet, a far more potent threat than the Better Business Bureau.

The pharmaceutical industry no longer delays in pulling products; they do it even before the FDA demands it. Stonewalling and foot-dragging only exacerbate the pain.

Failure to deliver on promises and expectations damages and destroys marketing and sales efforts.

6. Reduce risk. Successful marketing and sales strategies are actually ways to help customers reduce risk. A few examples, may help clarify the idea. If a woman is convinced a particular brand of cosmetics will make her look younger and more alluring, she uses the products to avoid the twin risks of aging and rejection.

In the same way, an older couple buys a home in a particular retirement community, they do so to enjoy a certain lifestyle and to avoid the risk of missing out on it. Finally, a 33-year-old professional makes substantial contributions to a 401(k) plan to avoid the risk of not being able to retire at age 55.

Good marketing and sales provides customers with a sense of security by giving them what they believe is important and of value. In effect, they reduce risk. They help us avoid what we view as negative consequences. It may be a pair of shoes, a car, an insurance policy, or a cruise to nowhere. If it enhances security by reducing risk, it’s the right buying decision.

All this leads to a particular conclusion. To succeed at marketing and sales, we need to live inside the customer’s head, to think the customer’s thoughts and to walk the customer’s path. What we think doesn’t count.