Issue 4 / 25 th JUNE 2008
Strategic Prospecting An Exercise In the benefits of Customer Profiling
NETWORKING IN New Zealand We speak to Graham Southwell about why Kiwi’s have flocked to networking organisation BNI
NZ’s fortnightly e-mag for sales leaders www.nzsalesmanager.co.nz
CONTENTS Issue 4
/ 25th JUNE 2008
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INTERVIEW Graham Southwell We caught up with the man who brought BNI to New Zealand
8 THIS WEEKS MUST READ Strategic Prospecting with Ideal Customer Profiling A practical example of how profiling your ideal customer helps generate better qualified prospects.
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10 TWO MINUTE TOP UP Why Motivation Doesn’t Last Long Charles Donoghue explains why the motivational after glow doesn’t last.
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NZSM CALENDER
13 BOOK REVIEW Let’s Get Real Or Let’s Not Play
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14
THE CLOSE
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IN THE NEXT ISSUE NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 3
About /
From the editor
M
ost sales managers can relate to the pain and frustration involved with getting their salespeople to do the things they know they should be doing. Prospecting, networking, expense forms just to name a few. But by far the hardest task is getting salespeople to do anything that might possibly benefit them in the way of learning and development. For example, reading a book, doing a short course, practising their questioning skills… Like professional athletes salespeople rely on their performance at “game time” to earn an income. Yet unlike professional athletes, most salespeople do nothing to work on their game outside of ‘game time’. So what exactly is the deal here? Why are salespeople so slow to pick up on the relationship between input and output? Between learning and results? Have we had it too easy for too long? While the credit crunch, inflationary woes and low business confidence might be bad for business, and bad for commissions, I suspect there could be a positive spin off for the sales profession. For it is often not until we’ve experienced enough pain, that we become motivated enough to start doing the things we know we should be doing. For those who noticed my omission of authors details for Issue 3’s excellent article, “Selling A Payment Not A Price” the author was Alastair Noble, Recruitment Manager at the Rev Sales Network. Feedback can be sent to Alastair at alastairn@rsn.co.nz. Anyone know a decent editor…?
Short, sharp and to the point, New Zealand Sales Manager is a free fortnightly e-magazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, and industry news and information to forward-thinking sales managers, business owners and sales professionals. EDITOR / Richard Liew DESIGNER / Jodi Olsson ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / +64-9-361 1375 or email richardl@nzsalesmanager.co.nz CONTENT ENQUIRIES / +64-9-361 1375 or email richardl@nzsalesmanager.co.nz ADDRESS / NZ Sales Manager Magazine,127a Ponsonby Road, Ponsonby, Auckland, NZ. +64-9-361 1375 WEBSITE / www.nzsalesmanager.co.nz NZ Sales Manager is a Rev Sales Network publication.
INTERVIEW
GRAHAM SOUTHWELL ness and defining what a good referral for you might be. NZSM: Salespeople are always looking for referrals – how does the referral part work? GS: In BNI, a referral is defined as an opportunity to present your business to someone who is in the market for your product or service – where that presentation will be looked forwards to with anticipation. It is not a guaranteed sale but an open door to discuss your business. In other words – what we are talking about is qualified referrals. It is important to realize that you are not seeking to sell your products or services to other members of the chapter – but to train your sales team as to how they can find opportunities for you. Joining BNI gives you in effect a sales team of 20 – 30 people or more, depending upon how many people are in your group or chapter. NZSM: What inspired you to bring BNI to New Zealand in the first place?
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We spoke to networking guru Graham Southwell about Business Networking International and success
NZSM: Graham there are now over 90 BNI chapters throughout NZ - for salespeople who haven’t heard of BNI before can you just give us a quick overview of what BNI is? GS: BNI is an organisation that seeks to increase members business through a structured, positive and professional “word of mouth” referral programme, helping them develop long term relationships with quality business people. NZSM: What in particular differentiates BNI from other networking organizations?
GS: One of the key points of difference between BNI and other networking organizations is the fact that we track all referrals and encourage the members to set goals as to what they are looking to receive from BNI and to assess their return on investment. The weekly meetings are structured and whilst they are intended to be fun – the focus is upon business. People join BNI to grow their business – however there are numerous other benefits to be derived from participation including becoming more skilled in talking about yourself and your busi-
GS: I was a member of BNI in London and saw for myself the benefits of being involved. When I moved to NZ I realized how important it is to have a network – something I had taken for granted in the UK – and made enquiries about joining a chapter. At that time BNI was underway in Australia but had yet to make inroads in NZ. I was asked if I would like to start BNI in NZ and decided that I was ready for a change of direction. So I resigned from my position in the Valuation Department at CBRichard Ellis in December 1998 and the rest is history. NZSM: And how has the response from Kiwi business people measured up to your expectations? GS: New Zealand’s response to BNI has far exceeded my expectations – NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 5
particularly when you consider that I started BNI having been in NZ for less than a year and there are now over 2,000 business people meeting in 92 chapters every week across the country.
nothing to substantiate it. In Dunedin for example, we are in the process of launching our fourth BNI chapter – which is a great level of market penetration for a city of this size.
ing with the demands on my time – the early starts, the long days and the travelling. I could not have developed BNI to the extent I have without the support and understanding of my wife and family.
NZSM: Many salespeople think they’re networking when they’re really just going to parties. Do you have any suggestions for using these opportunities more effectively?
In my experience – the members in Dunedin make great networkers and there is real warmth and depth of trust in their meetings and a high volume of business is passed.
NZSM: What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?
GS: When you go to most functions you have the potential to meet a lot of people – however the opportunities to do business at the event are limited. In my view – the real benefit in attending functions such as these is the opportunity to meet new people and re-establish contact with people who are already in your network. My suggestion is that rather than trying to do business at the event, that your goal might be to meet, say three new people and to try and arrange to meet up with again outside of the event.
My feeling is that once you have established your credibility in a smaller community, you can expect a high degree of trust and support. Perhaps over and above that to be found in larger cities. But by the same token that community is not going to open up to you until you have established that you deserve that trust.
NZSM: So “schmoozing” is not networking?
GS: Networking or Referral Marketing is really only just starting to come into its own in my opinion. It is early days – but I truly believe that we are starting to see the emergence of a new paradigm in terms of business – one where competition will give way to a spirit of sharing and co-operation.
GS: Nope – its schmoozing! It is a lot of fun – especially if you can schmooze over a couple of drinks but networking is about building your business and requires commitment, a structure and a plan. NZSM: Do you think networking is something New Zealand business people do well on the whole? GS: My feeling is that based on what we have experience with BNI – NZ business people are excellent at networking. That said – there is still a long way to go and many of the members are really just cruising. NZSM: There’s a perception that the further south you go in NZ, the more important your connections and relationships are for doing business – what’s your take on this? I think that there might be some validity in this view – although I have
NZSM: With world markets becoming more globalised do you see networking as having more or less of an impact on business in the future?
Individuals and companies who in the past would have been in direct competition with one another are starting to look for ways of working together for the greater good of all. This can be seen today in terms of a growing awareness of the effects of business on the environment and the fact that it is no longer acceptable that the interests of the privileged few should be satisfied at the expense of the rest of the world. I believe that referral marketing will have a significant place to play in this new approach. NZSM: On a personal level what have been your biggest challenges in getting BNI where it is today?
GS: One of the common reasons people give for their success is that they were in the right place at the right time. Whilst that is undoubtedly a major factor – in my view the real key is recognizing that you are in the right place at the right time and capitalizing upon that. You may be on the right track – but if you just sit there, sooner or later you are going to get run over. NZSM: What is the most important piece of advice you’d give to readers who would one day like to start a business of their own? GS: Make sure that you do your research, seek good advice, talk to as many people as you can and remember that the secret to success without hard work is always going to be remain a secret. Also, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is! Personally – the best thing that I did in BNI was to take on a Business Coach at an early stage. It is all too easy to get caught up in the day to day running of the business and to lose sight of the bigger picture – and a coach can help with that, as well as offer advice in terms of systemizing a business and setting it up to succeed. NZSM: If there are salespeople reading who would like to join a BNI chapter what should they do next? GS: Visit the BNI website (www.bni. co.nz) and find their nearest chapter – then call the chapter President and arrange a visit. Most chapters meet from 7am to 8.30am although we do have a limited number of lunch time groups as well.
The biggest challenge was simply cop-
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 6
Graham’s Top 5 Tips For Better Networking
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Give without expectation of receiving something in return. In BNI we call this ‘Givers Gain’.
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Understand that Networking is based upon trust and that you need to earn the trust of your referral sources as well as to find a way to motivate them to give you referrals. When someone refers you – they put their own reputation on the line – therefore you are not going go get referrals until you have established a high level of trust and credibility.
Understand the ‘Universal Law of Reciprocity’ – what you give out will come back to you – not necessarily from the person to whom you gave the referral.
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Recognise that people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care i.e. your actions will speak louder than words.
Have an abundance mentality!
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 7
T H I S WE E K ’ S M U S T R E A D
Strategic Prospecting With Ideal Customer Profiling
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A practical example of how profiling your ideal customer helps generate better qualified prospects. By Liam Venter
reating a profile of our ideal customers is something that C we have all played around with, but for many sales people it is little more than just a ‘feel good’ theoretical exercise.
I could have just created some customer profiles for the purpose of the exercises or just picked some companies out of the phone book for the exercises, but I wouldn’t do this in the real world so why do it for a workshop?
Interesting enough though, sales trainers and coaches get asked more questions on the prospecting phase of selling than any other phase.
And besides, I wanted to experiment with a very simple idea I had been thinking about.
For a sales training workshop I ran in Christchurch last year with an accounting software company’s South Island resellers, I needed to prepare some Client Research and Analyses Sheets (‘Crash’ sheets) for use in the workshops.
When prospecting for promising potential customers it’s obviously important that there is a solid correlation between the clients’ requirements and the characteristics of your solution.
Creating a Crash sheet is the easiest part. In the real world, picking potential clients that are worthwhile doing a Crash sheet on is the harder part.
How then to spot customers that would be a good potential match for this particular accounting and business management software? NZSM / JUNE 11th 2008 / 8
Here’s how my experiment went... Step 1. Profile The Solution I obtained a list of the key unique features of the solution and a list of the key things that their resellers and clients think they do better than most of their competition. Sure their accountancy package does lots of other stuff as well as, or slightly better than the competition but the following were the five functionalities that really stood out to me.
I also tried several other variations on this search string such as: branches + warehouses + equipment + sales + service + companies. Within minutes I had assembled a reasonably extensive list of companies that on outward appearances seemed to be good fits for their software. Step 4. Filter The Results
Their software: • Can manage stock in multiple warehouses and stock locations (such as service vans, etc) very elegantly • Allows you to operate multiple companies from a single software installation very cleanly • Manages large stock inventories effortlessly • Has one of the best EDI interfaces available which enables e-commerce and simple integration with other business management software • Has a near legendary rock solid database that ensures the integrity of the data Ok so now what? Step 2. Create Search Parameters
Companies typically purchase accountancy software when they are in active modes, such as expansion, taking on more staff, changing the way they do business, opening offices. A quick examination of these companies web sites ‘home’, ‘news’ and ‘about us’ pages allowed me to further filter the list of prospective companies down to a group of more promising customers. So how did it work out...? Actually better than I expected. The results of this half hour exercise were very promising. I am sure with a bit of experimentation and tuning with different key search words you could substantially improve the process.
I decided to try something a bit different from my usual approach. I ascribed a single descriptive search word to each of the superior functionalities above and came up with an initial list as follows. • branches • companies • equipment • sales • reliability
Key to this approach delivering a valuable return on time invested though, is an accurate initial analysis of the strengths of your product/service.
Step 3. Do An Internet Search On These Words
What is really interesting and truly valuable about this exercise is the focus it creates for sales people.
I then entered these words as a search string in Google as follows: branches + companies + equipment + sales + reliability + Christchurch . I added the search word ‘Christchurch‘ for good measure as that was the region of interest. I was also careful to select the search ‘pages from New Zealand ‘ only option.
If you are unable to identify your USP’s (Unique Service Propositions) then I don’t think it would be very effective. But if you do it right, to me this approach seems several steps ahead of just reaching straight for the Yellow Pages.
Even I caught myself several days later, subconsciously scanning some industry press for partial matches to that key word string… and you guessed it, the matches were jumping off the pages. Liam Venter is principal of SalesFish Sales Training. Visit www.salesfish.co.nz for more.
TW O M I N UT E T O P - U P
Why Motivation Doesn’t Last Long The Need To Reprogramme Your Brain
By Charles Donoghue APS, FNZIM
any people after they have either read an inspirational M or motivational book or heard a motivational speaker, become very excited and enthusiastic. Within four to six weeks the enthusiasm wanes and their suddenly new found excitement disappears. Why does this happen when the author or speaker was probably first class and very successful? Why does the motivation not last? The reason for this conundrum is because the human mind is programmed at a very early age and most of the programming is of a negative nature, which restricts achievement of the human potential. As a result of this disinformation the person develops a very limiting belief or expectation of themselves and performs accordingly for the remainder of their life unless they are fortunate enough to learn how to reprogramme themselves. It is almost like that same person deciding to refurbish their entire home because they want a new type of living, being that they are fed up with the old style as it doesn’t do much for them. So they move all their old furniture into the garage with the intention of looking at a major change by purchasing new and exciting furniture and fittings. Over the next few days, and before they have a
chance to really refurnish the home, they look around at the bare rooms and decide to bring back in at least a few chosen items to fill the void. First it is a picture perhaps, then a chair, and before you know it everything is back as usual. Do you get the picture? Why do they do this? The old stuff feels more comfortable and familiar. How does this relate to the human mind? It is important to remember a person will always perform and relate to others consistent with the picture they hold of themselves. If that picture has no limitations and is full of positive expectation for their future then they can achieve almost anything. If their picture is limiting then they will be restricted in their achievements and their personal relationships until a major change takes place in their belief system, which requires that person to reprogramme the human computer called the brain. Performance Psychology Coach and Author, Charles conducts programmes on the psychology of Performance and Personal Development. Visit www.donoghuedynamics.com or email donoghuedynamics@clear.net.nz for more.
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 10
NZSM
WED 25 JUNE
THU 26 JUNE
FRI 27 JUNE
Sales Development David Forman Auckland
CALENDAR SAT 28 JUNE
MON 30 JUNE
TUE 1 JULY Customer Service David Forman Auckland
SAT 5 JULY
SUN 6 JULY THU 10 JULY Key Account Management NZIM Auckland
Customer Service David Forman Auckland
Prospecting and New Business Development David Forman Auckland
SUN 29 JUNE FRI 4 JULY
WED 2 JULY
FRI 11 JULY
MON 7 JULY
TUE 8 JULY
Business Acumen University of Auckland Auckland
Business Acumen University of Auckland Auckland
Customer Relationship Management NZIM Hamilton
Customer Relationship Management NZIM Hamilton
SAT 12 JULY
Key Account Management NZIM Auckland
THU 3 JULY Words Change Minds Sales & Marketing Institute Auckland
WED 9 JULY Time Management Richard Gee Christchurch
MON 14 JULY
TUE 15 JULY
Account Management Skills NZIM Auckland
Account Management Skills NZIM Auckland
SUN 13 JULY WED 16 JULY
THU 17 JULY
FRI 18 JULY
SAT 19 JULY
SUN 20 JULY TUE 22 JULY Negotiation Skills NZIM Auckland Sales Development David Forman Auckland
WED 23 JULY Sales Development David Forman Auckland
THU 24 JULY Sales Skills University of Auckland Auckland
FRI 25 JULY
MON 21 JULY Negotiation Skills NZIM Auckland Key Account Management NZIM Auckland Sales Development David Forman Auckland
SAT 26 JULY
Sales Skills University of Auckland Auckland
Sales Development David Forman Auckland
SUN 27 JULY
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 11
B O O K R EV I EW
Let’s get real or Let’s not play The Demise of Dysfunctional Selling and the Advent of Helping Clients Succeed. By Mahan Khalsa Review by Paul Newsom
This is probably one of the most aptly named books in any sales library. Let’s Get Real begins by clearly setting the familiar scene of buyer frustration from quota driven sellers focussing only on themselves, and seller frustration at combating the buyers defence systems. In a very engaging down to earth style, Khalsa vividly explains how these dysfunctional behaviours work against everyone and give rise to the notion that selling carries a lot of negative baggage. The book defines the only option for mutual and sustainable business results: if your focus as a seller is on making the customer more successful, then it will inevitably result in your own success. Amongst Khalsa’s definitions of ‘getting real’ is to ‘open your belief systems to examination’. This book is more about mindset than it is about how to sell. It is about changing the paradigm from selling to succeeding. Unlike many sales books that get bogged down in theory and multiple step processes, Let’s Get Real presents simple yet very powerful concepts. A favourite is that we should not be guessing our way through the sales opportunity. Here Khalsa uses the metaphor of traffic lights to teach us some road safety on the sales highway. When the customer shows a yellow light, we should be asking them to turn it red or green, rather than speeding up to beat the lights and hastily try to close a sale. He says ‘if we can’t slow down for yellow lights, it’s hard to get real – either with ourselves, our clients or the solution.’ A great read, Lets Get Real contains many valuable messages for us all.
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 13
THE CLOSE
“I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights” Muhammad Ali, Boxer, Champ
I N T H E N E XT I S S U E
*Charles
Donoghue
We talk to performance psychologist and stalwart of NZ’s sales profession Charles Donoghue about what holds sales people back.
*When ‘Do Nothing’ Is Your Biggest Competitor How to prevent your proposals falling victim to the status quo.
NZSM / JUNE 25th 2008 / 14