The Computer Never Answers Back

When did the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ begin to disappear from our language?

Having been creating and developing businesses for forty years, not always successfully and after advising and coaching entrepreneurs, owners and managers for sixteen of that forty; I noted a change in business styles that began with the general use of the Internet.  As I complained in a recent blog, many of the current aspiring business bosses don’t know their marketing from their selling.  The same group appear to shop around, online, for the lowest prices without making a proper value appraisal and always pay what the seller asks. 

The introduction of digital communication appealed to the lazy side of us all.  We can avoid being rejected by using electronic communication.  At least if we were rejected, it wasn’t us it was our e mail or our Website or our digital newsletter.  We could avoid being invited to go forth and multiply by avoiding any conversation.  The computer never answers back and so never says yes or no to us.

As a sales soldier, many years ago, marching from door to door I made a blinding discovery, the telephone.  Going from door to door I could attempt to persuade four or five people an hour to listen to my proposition.  By telephone I could double or triple that number.  I remembered reading a short story about a man who fell in love with a telephone operator because she had the voice of an angel.  When he finally persuaded her to meet him he found she was, in fact, whatever the opposite of an angel is.  This gave me another idea and I found a lady with the voice of a rather seductive angel to make the ‘phone calls to prospective customers.

I’m sure I wasn’t the inventor of telephone canvassing but it was very novel at the time.  I ceased being a soldier and became a captain, not long after I was a general or at least a colonel.  The sultry voiced lady was saying the same thing as I did at the door but was very much more effective, for reasons every man understands, at getting the door open.

So what was it that we said that got us through the door?  It wasn’t so much what we said but the way we said it.  Something that appears to have been forgotten or never learned, by many, we can only say yes or no in answer to a question.

Which is more persuasive.  ‘My product will save you money, listen to me’ or ‘If my product saved you money, would you listen to me?’  The first will make your eyes glaze over the second gives you an opportunity to make your own decision.

There is a technique to asking questions that offer an easy decision.  This was probably devised by tax collectors around the time of Henry the Second; ‘Do you want to pay your taxes or have your head cut off?’  The ‘offer you can’t refuse’ that did not become famous until Marlon Brando stuffed small apples into his cheeks to play The Godfather.

Negotiation and that includes selling, done well, offers propositions on which the recipient can make an easy positive decision.  There is nothing mysterious or even clever about it; just a learnable technique.  History tells us Henry the Second’s tax collectors were neither mysterious nor clever.

Perhaps we have forgotten or never learned how to influence others and have them say ‘yes’ to us.  Perhaps that is why 75% of all business start ups fail within their first three years of trading.  The basic business equation, revenue minus cost equals profit, relies on customers saying yes to our offers and suppliers saying yes to lower prices, quicker deliveries, extended credit and a guarantee of quality, rarely offered unless we ask for it.  We need to ask the question in order to get a positive response.  We need to ask the question in a certain form to get a positive response most of the time.

That is why The Yes Project has begun, to help British business people hear ‘yes’ more often from customers, suppliers, colleagues and superiors.  To gain more agreement and acceptance of their ideas, proposals and propositions.

So what is The Yes Project? It is a not for profit organisation that has condensed the wisdom and experience of a large number of influencers and persuaders from Harvard Law School to Sugs, the misrepresented, grumpy guru on TV.  All of this is condensed into just three convenient, affordable and fun workshops.  These all have fun titles; The Secret Power of Questions; Discovering Desires and The Only Response is Yes.  All less than a hundred minutes and for under fifty Quid.

If you could get your customers, suppliers, colleagues and superiors to say ‘yes’ to you more often, would that make your life simpler and more rewarding?

If you could learn a way to do that what would that be worth to you?  Would I be right in thinking it would be worth more than £150?

www.the-yes-project.org.uk  Never be afraid of rejection again.

Marketing and Selling in the Digital Age

Marketing and Selling in the Digital Age.

On two separate occasions, in the past week, I have listened to experts tell us how social networking and the World Wide Web will make us all millionaires, or was it zillionaires?  Am I the only one who wonders; if what they are saying is true and they are experts, why are they talking to an apathetic audience of 25 in Leeds on a Tuesday night?

The real truth seems to be similar to the market volume information that is collected and published, numbers in millions but of little relevance or use to the average FSB member.  If social networking is the easy route to influencing millions; why do the habitual users hide behind silly pseudonyms?  You can Tweet me @1975tshirt

I tried online retailing 12 years ago, when there were only 30,000,000 websites Worldwide and not that number of new sites every year.  I found I devoted as much time to the 10% of orders, gained through the Website, as I did on the remaining 90% gained in the traditional way.

What this brave new theory ignores is the abundance of choice.  Another expert has identified, wisely, the change over the past 30 years, once there was plenty of attention time but little choice, now the opposite is the case.  Now we have thousands of stores in our computer but no time to window shop any more than the first ten to appear on our browsers.  Twelve years ago, the wonderful Google stats.  advised me I received one order for every 400 visitors to the Website.  It didn’t matter how much I reduced my prices and subsequently my margins, that statistic didn’t significantly change.  Apparently even today it is much the same.

With this huge, readily available access to prospective customers why can’t the Web produce better contact to order ratios?

If we listen to other marketing experts, those who wouldn’t know a Meta Tag from a ring pull; we need to stay close to our customers, listen to their feedback and review and revise our strategy.

It’s only a guess but if you had a salesperson who brought in one order from every 400 contacts and excused this by telling you they spent their time staying close to customers and listening to their feedback; you would still fire them.

Could it be that everything is different but nothing has changed?

Do people still prefer to buy from people?  Do buyers prefer to be valued by sellers they know, can trust and rely on?

Both schools of marketing theory are probably valid but which choice offers the smaller business and entrepreneurs the greatest opportunity to retain some degree of control over their sales, margins and growth?

A small businessman told me, again very recently, he is connected to 1400 people directly and over one million indirectly through Linkedin.   I asked him how many of those were regular customers and he gave me a pitying look, he is a marketing consultant.  I asked him a few more questions and he has joined ‘The YES Project’, a series of short workshops and Master Classes to help those seduced by the concept of easy online success and wealth, to learn why customers buy and how to sell to them.  In a recent blog I advised that marketing is not selling.  I meant that good marketing will identify prospective customers and possibly make them aware of your products.  Marketing alone will produce orders in much the same proportions as visitors to a Website

I started my business career walking from office to factory to office persuading owners and managers to talk to me.  When a prospective buyer talked to me I would build a compelling business case for my piece of high technology, an automatic tea and coffee maker.  That would take about 90 minutes.  If I made 10 appointments a week I could rely on two orders and on that average I bought my first house.

I have never lost the belief that ten realistic prospects, birds in the hand, are better than one thousand contacts, birds in the bush. 

This is 2011 and millions of people own mobile ‘phones, have access to the Internet and digital TV.  We can see many of them talking on their ‘phones, in the middle of the day, wearing track suits and shopping in Netto.  Are they all nailing down a deal?

Does social networking and the Internet help you to talk to your prospects?  No, unless you can build a business case for an order in 140 characters.  Selling is about capturing interest, listening to the prospect’s needs and matching the benefits of your product to those needs.

Online marketing is a one way conversation, similar to those salespersons who continue to talk at a prospect even after the prospect’s eyes have glazed over.  You can’t get close to a customer and listen to feedback unless there is a conversation to listen to.  Why would they talk to you in the first place?

The only growth industry in SME Britain in the past three years has been networking groups.  Thirty people, carefully groomed, in a small room, before dawn; trying to remember how to articulate their USP in sixty seconds.  At least they collect ten business cards.

Did anyone meet a buyer at a networking event?  Don’t worry, everyone you met knows a buyer, apparently.  Right!  So why are they not staying close to that buyer and listening to their feedback?

There is no doubt marketing is a mysterious art, like all art, it helps if you have a wealthy sponsor.

I’m the guy with the 1975 T shirt, I know nothing about digital marketing, or so I’m often told.  I do know that younger business people have never learned how to sell, Sugs, (Lord Sugar to you) and I agree on that much.

Smaller business operators need to learn these lost secrets, contacts are not always customers, selling is not talking at someone and you can’t get close to customers until you make them customers.

Start with The YES Project learn why and how prospects say yes to you.

www.the-yes-project.org.uk

The Yes Project: The Secret of Questions and the EPD

The Yes Project: The Secret of Questions and the EPD: The Secret of Questions and Easy Decisions. Whether art or science, the ability to ask a question that offers an easy decision, has been...

The Secret of Questions and the EPD

The Secret of Questions and Easy Decisions.

Whether art or science, the ability to ask a question that offers an easy decision, has been lost.  The age of e mail, Tweets and text has buried this, the most effective business tool.

It is now a secret known only to a privileged few

Would you like to work less and earn more?

Obviously, unless you have recently been certified as insane, your answer is ‘Yes’.

Why did you answer so readily and positively?  Because it is an easy decision to make; the proverbial no brainer; it offers an Easy Positive Decision.

I ask many people in business if they know there is only one way to have someone say ‘Yes’.  They frown and think very hard but give up in exasperation, they don’t know.

You can only say ‘Yes’ in answer to a question.  We can only agree if we are asked to.  We can only accept a proposal if someone asks us ‘Do you accept that?’

In life and especially in business we succeed by having more people say ‘Yes’ to us than our competitors yet most of us, until now, didn’t know we need to ask a question in order to have anyone say ‘Yes’ to us.

That is how we can say ‘Yes’ but we don’t say yes to every question, idea or proposal only those that offer an Easy Positive Decision an EPD.

The first Bite Size Workshop in the series of three from The Yes Project explains all of this and what makes an EPD.  It will surprise you to learn there are only four conditions.

As one delegate commented; ‘How can something so simple be so life changing?’

The Yes Project’s course of convenient and inexpensive Bite Size Workshops will explain the EPD, it’s conditional components, how to meet the conditions and finally how to create proposal to which there can be only one response, ‘Yes’.  The irresistible proposal.

The Yes Project is available only in the U.K.  The whole series requires an investment less than the average British Road Tax.

http://www.the-yes-project.org.uk  The Yes Project is the philanthropic foundation of Keith Williams.  It does not seek to make a profit.