Author: Dave J.

Dana VanDen Heuvel links to a Business Week article titled: Five Words to Never Use in an Ad. Hmm, interesting…what are those words?

1. Quality
2. Value
3. Service
4. Caring
5. Integrity

(I already wrote about the problem with the word quality earlier this year.)

Why not use them?
The author of the article, Steve McKee, says “Using common words that have become empty cliches is a shortcut to nowhere. Just because you sell it doesn’t mean people will buy it.” Dana says they are okay to use if they are backed up with specifics.

B2Blog says:
I think these words are actually buckets that the prospect needs to fill up with answers and information before they buy from you. In that sense they ARE powerful words. Dana’s right that you need to give them specifics to put in the bucket. And Steve is right that just mentioning the words only reminds prospects that the bucket is empty–you can’t fill the bucket with the word ‘best’.

So go ahead and use these bucket-words in planning your marketing, but I’d go with Steve’s recommendation and not actually use them.

Last Friday I finished my 5th session teaching one of my twin’s 3rd grade class. I had volunteered to teach a program called “The City” via Junior Achievement. The note from school looking for volunteers may-have-well had my name on it, I felt so compelled to volunteer. Why?

• I love teaching
• I’d love to meet Robert’s classmates
• I’d get to share my business knowledge
• One of the bloggers I read had posted about teaching their son’s class (forgot who, sorry) and said it was an opportunity not to pass up.
• And I knew I would learn more than they would.

The JA material covered some basic business/school/life skills and integrated those into what goes on in a city. My favorite, and one of the most grown-up lessons:

The kids divided into small groups, each opening their own restaurant. We walked thru several decisions that had to be made. It was interesting how most of the groups went for the lowest pricing. Then, when they all wanted to hire the same chef, I told them the team with the higher pricing could offer to pay him more and would get him, a surprising lesson to some. The last task was to come up with two sentences to tell people why they should come to their restaurant–it was interesting to hear how they positioned their business.

Be decision makers:
The lesson I tried to impart over the five sessions was that business is fun and interesting. I told them that I wanted to be a park ranger when I was a kid because who would want to be in an office all day. But over time, business is a whole lot more interesting and satisfying than keeping an eye on a park.

More men:
I’m little disappointed that more men weren’t leading these sessions for the other classes. (Elementary kids see almost exclusively female teachers.) Hopefully I can inspire someone else out there to share their passion for business with kids thru JA…or scouts or church. These kids really need to be prepared for their future in the information economy, and the decision making skills that it requires, and some role models to help set them in the right direction.

Okay, I still link to Seth even though I have to assume everyone who reads b2blog would read Seth. But, remember, I write this blog to/for myself. And this one, called I’m Too Busy, certainly resonates with me.

“But marketers, it seems, have a long list of things they do … that is technically marketing … but is hardly in the sweet spot.”

My personal reaction is to think about the Seven Levels of Change and how we hover around 1-3 (effectiveness, efficiency, and improving).

“Once an organization is up and running, it’s almost impossible to carve out the time to find the marketing vision that will make all the difference.” (Impossible he says? That’s level 7, BTW.)

I’ve got a product-line that’s in the process of a major revision. Despite my interest in GTD (Getting things done), I had a mental list of things I had to do on my end. Update price list, post specifications, send emails to the sales reps, etc. Not a big deal.

Then the boss asks for a written plan. Um, yea, coming right up.

I ended up spending almost a half-a-day writing down the plan. I also made more work for myself by adding a few things. I also documented the things still outstanding that I needed (decisions about certain details, mostly).

So I feel a little sheepish to say that: the boss was right; must use plans and action lists ala GTD; and written plans are easier to get input on.

With that lesson in my brain, I set to tackling the website to update that model series, which means splitting one webpage into several. This is a case where I would normally make a written plan, but this task defies doing so. I could try wire-framing it, but splitting the content up is such detail work that I can’t see any other way than doing on-screen. It allows me to balance my need to explain our product with the user’s experience in learning about it, too.

So I’ve spent several hours staring at my screen, moving things around, and hoping it all comes together…and wishing it was easier. This is real knowledge work, I guess.

This time someone else saves me effort in whining about poor sales techniques. WebProNews caught my attention with Sales Mistakes to avoid Jack Yoest Speaks Out:

“I sat through a conference call/web based sales pitch by Brand X … The presenters made a number of mistakes. I stopped counting at 7.”

Here are the seven, although read the whole story for the dirt:

1. Start the presentation on time.
2. Never let ‘em see you sweat.
3. Don’t tell me how smart you are.
4. Never introduce yourself.
5. Never discuss religion or politics.
6. Never provide backup/proof unless the client is skeptical.
7. Do as I say; Not as I do.”

The CEO was the star of this presentation, but isn’t it the job of his staff to make him look good? Details, details, details. Only commit to the strategy if you can commit to the details, IMHO.

Dogbert: “I like to con people. And I like to insult people. If you combine con & insult, you get consult!”

I won’t go into the details (it wasn’t my project tho), but we’ve been con-sulted, perpetuating the belief that consultants are evil. Said hired gun committed the following crimes:

• Significantly over budget
• Did work out of the scope (the part that we can do ourselves)
• Failed to learn our needs
• Solutions provided weren’t usable as-is
• Sat on information that would have ended the project early

Its cool to be the client calling the shots, but you seem to spend so much time teaching the consultant and they never really ‘get it’ because they don’t have to deal with the results. Sometimes its so much easier (and safer) to do it yourself. Plus your skill-set grows.

We’ll have to check if the next consultant we talk to is wagging his tail before agreeing to anything.

UPDATE: In response to comments, I wanted to say a little bit more. I think what I really blame the consultant for is not managing the project. They weren’t evil, just sloppy, bad listeners. And we were naive enough to think that they would be in control of the process. (And to John, it was an hourly deal with a SOW.)

Don’t like the four choices PowerPoint gives you for printouts (slides, handouts, notes, outline)?

I wanted a handout format, but with my notes typed in (not blank lines like the standard format). Here’s how to do it:

Take a look under the “send to” menu and send to Word. Of course, how obvious! Then you get this handy menu:

Saved by Google again. Found this tip here: Microsoft Office Assistance: Print multiple slides on one handout page.

UPDATE: A 60-slide, graphic intensive PPT presentation brought my computer to its knees trying to do this. Maybe it wasn’t such a neat trick after all. ;-(

Maybe its a sign of the economy, but I continue to get innundated with people selling promotional items like pens and embroidered shirts. The business’s low overhead must be attactive.

What these folks seem to not realize is that EVERYONE is selling the same stuff. Yet they all come in without a prepared sales pitch. They give a quick pitch, find out who I am, that I don’t need anything right now, then ‘hope’ I’ll contact them in the future with my next need. I griped about this back in September, saying these salespeople were caught in a MAZE (maximum activity, zero effect).

Today’s cold-call visitor was different. Yes, the same information was exchanged, but he also did the following:

• Had three bargain-basement specials on flyers that would be available all year.
• Told me he would send bi-weekly emails with more specials.

We’ll see about the quality of the emails, but this is more than any other cold-calling promo salesperson has done recently, and it doesn’t really cost him much time or effort. These are tools that we marketers can put in our salespeople’s hands if they are doing cold calling.

Marketing Eye Fashion Tip: When old styles come back, they often have different names and look a little different so they appear new. They usually come back for a reason, better than before.

And what fashion is coming back? Best Practices, now called ‘Guided Selling”, as this recent article Pointing to Profits (destinationCRM.com) defines as “any repeatable process that helps a sale move from prospect to close. “

While we all understand the concept, the article has specific ‘in the trenches’ cases where guided selling was successful, which is why I recommend clicking over to read it. And, in the spirit of this series, creating or supporting Guides is something the marketer surely should be doing.

Here’s two more bits on the subject from Seth Godin in his post: Why are you afraid of process?:

“What happens when a star salesperson starts tracking her calls, her time spent, her rolodex and her results? Her day isn’t intuitive any longer… just the act of selling is. The result: dramatic improvements. Measuring, and measuring in public, is a piece of process that can’t help but organize and leverage your intuition.”

Marketing Eye Hip Tip: Throw away those trendy and vaporous podcasts and listen to Motivation on the Run. Its a pod you won’t want to ‘cast’ away. (Read in a Carson Kressley style for effect.)

In case you haven’t gotten the hint in the past, I really think you would enjoy listening to Larry Hendrick’s weekly 20 minute podcasts. Last week Larry told us about his granddaughter’s two traits that successful salespeople (and marketers) need. Then he told a sales story about using those traits once landed him his largest customer.

Motivation on the Run » Motivation45 (a link to the page, not the mp3 file):

“Three year olds have many desirable traits that we seem to lose as we grow up. This week I look at two of those qualities and how they apply to sales and life. What are the two traits? You’ll have to listen to this weeks podcast.”

No, I’m not going to tell you either. 🙂