Revenue Journal®

As consumers, we are encouraged to enjoy life, relax, have fun, hang out with our buddies and laugh, drink, eat, travel, be entertained, look for ways to make things easier, more efficient, faster and more cool. As marketers and salespeople, we make claims that our products and services will help people do these things.

Given that the average consumer is exposed to thousands of these messages a week, consumers are immersed in an endless sea of messages encouraging them to "do your thing," "just do it," and do "whatever turns you on." There's also an overriding theme, that you are really, really important, that it's all about "you."

The problem is, in our society, money is the vehicle we all use to pay for those indulgences. We have to make money before we can spend it on our ever-so-special selves.

Some time ago, I wrote an article about how software buyers were mired in the "skepticism swamp." It's even worse now.

If you're selling software, you have to be able to overcome the massive amount of disbelief that has built up in buyers' minds, thanks to all the promises that have been made to them - and broken. Everyone promised higher productivity, increased efficiency, and plug-and-play. HA.

What everyone delivered was installation headaches, integration nightmares, missing-in-action service, and navigation that required that you know the program intimately before you could do anything useful with it.

Today, software buyers and users consider each purchase an investment - of time and grief, as well as the money.

When I got an advance copy of the about-to-be-released book, Tuned In, and started reading it, my head swam. The authors, whom I've known for a long time, were singing my theme song so perfectly that I felt like I was in a parallel universe.

Their basic premise? That the companies that make it - the ones that rise above all others - have one thing in common. They're "tuned in." They came to this conclusion after actually doing research - which is a good thing, all by itself. After interviewing hundreds of CEOs and people at thousands of companies, they were sure that the difference between the Starbucks and the Peets of the world was how "tuned in" they were.

You may have noticed - I didn't post last Friday, the Friday before Memorial Day. It was the first time I haven't posted since I started this blog in December 2004.

Sometimes deadlines and life conflict.

On Thursday, I got two phone calls. One from a girl calling from a windy location, on a cell phone. "Hi, this is Nicole. I'm here with your brother, Chris....oh, it is so windy, I'm sorry. I..." Click. My land line doesn't have CallerID, so I couldn't call her back. What was the call about? Where was Nicole - and what had happened to make her call, in that way?

There comes a time in the course of inevitable economic ups and downs, when "everyone" starts to feel like "things are going to hell in a hand basket." The media is filled with stories of business and industry failures, people start hoarding and cutting back on their expenses, sales that used to be easy become difficult, and company budgets are cut.

There is a sense of impending doom, and financial statistics are reported that reinforce that sense. We are in one of those periods now.

It doesn't really matter how we got here, or how much of it is real and how much is mass hysteria. Having been through a number of these periods, I've come to pay less and less attention to the "why."

When your market changes, your company must change with it. This seems so obvious - when you're an outsider looking into someone else's company. You can plainly see that buyers have changed what they are doing, and conditions have changed, but the people inside the company are behaving the way they have always behaved, as if nothing had changed.

When you're inside one of those companies, you can tell that something is different. You get hints. But it is so much easier to continue doing what you've always done. You would rather ignore the changes you sense, than admit they are happening - and deal with the changes you know will you have to make.

New players will come into the market, while the market is in its new state, and think, Ah, so this is how it is. OK, I will behave accordingly. They don't have to change their current behavior or infrastructure. They will simply start doing what makes sense.

The leaders of the companies-in-denial either wake up and take action at this stage, or continue to sleepwalk. I don't have to tell you what happens to the sleepwalkers. They walk right off a cliff, never to be heard from again.

Sometimes you mistakenly hire someone who turns out to be a rationalizer. Even though you've conducted several interviews and carefully checked references, nobody clued you in. You don't realize they're a rationalizer until they've been with you for you a while.

As they make mistakes, and you point them out, you always hear excuses. You start to realize that they are never going to face up to their shortcomings and make the necessary changes. People either change or make excuses. They can't do both.

Well, that's not strictly true. There are some people who protest at first, but after they've calmed down, they realize you're right, apologize, and then start to work on it.

They're in a different category: "knee-jerk-negative at first, but then comes around." These knee-jerkers just hate themselves when they make mistakes, which accounts for the knee-jerk negative reaction. But they will later admit they need work in that area, and they will take care of it. Outside of the frustration you'll feel whenever you get that initial negative reaction, these folks can improve and get the job done.

Back to the hard-core rationalizer. The fundamental problem is, this person sees the situation in a way that does not coincide with the facts.

I am currently working with a couple of clients whose sales are being affected by current economic events. One client is in the luxury travel business and another is in the recreational boating business. In the former situation, high gas prices, higher food prices, and the fall of the dollar against the Euro are causing their customers to pull back on their buying decisions. In the latter situation, high gas prices and a concern about the economy are causing their customers to put off their next recreational boat purchase.

Of course, they're not the only ones feeling the pinch right now. If you are too, here's a recessionary rallying cry for you:

If you want more sales, get serious.

Serious about what?

Those persona articles I wrote recently (here and here), created a bit of a stir out there in BlogLand. Adele Revella from Pragmatic Marketing mentioned my concerns about personas and then went on to describe how those problems could be addressed, including not talking to salespeople about personas, but by relating stories about real buyers. Good advice.

Pragmatic marketing also blogged about my persona blog, with a piece about how people find numerous ways to avoid visiting clients.

Brian Eisenberg quoted Adele's quote, then also went on to talk about how to solve persona problems, using a 4-question survey that will help put flesh on the bones of your personas.

Email has become the message medium of our age. Just as we learned how to address and stamp an envelope, just as we learned how to fill out a FedEx form, we are now - still - learning how to use email effectively to run our businesses, and to buy and sell products and services.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time this week talking about how frustrating it is when someone doesn't do what I'm about to recommend. Suffice it to say that stream-of-consciousness, flaky subject lines don't help you manage your business or increase your revenues.

What is really happening - and we all know this, because we are experiencing it every day - is all activities, and all communication about activities, happen via email. It's become the central communication tool for all projects.

You manage others. What do they depend on you for - more than anything else?

The truth.

You sell a product or a service. What do your customers depend on you for, more than anything else?

Yep. The truth.

Nothing is more valued in the business world, nothing matters as much, as the truth.

Employees eat it up when it's given to them, and, when it isn't, conspire amongst themselves to find out what it is.

Customers demand it, and stomp out (warning others to stay away), if they don't get it.

Salespeople (or, I should say, order takers) who are used to taking calls all day are still having a hard time adjusting to the email-driven business world we live in now. The same is true of many small business owners.

The phone is no longer the "instrument of choice" for today's busy buyers. Their preferred way of contacting companies when they are interested in a product or service is via email. And yet, too many salespeople and entrepreneurs are still treating email as an intrusion into their busy day. Because they get so much email and spam, and because they don't want to spend all day typing notes to people, they just aren't giving incoming email buyers the attention that they deserve.

If your salespeople are struggling with, or ignoring, this issue, it helps for them to see the email scenario from the buyer's point of view. It will help them understand how just a few minutes spent responding can make the difference between closing a sale or losing a customer for life. Let's look at this from the perspective of a customer we'll call Jane.

I am continuously amused at the lengths company executives will go to, to avoid talking directly to their customers. They'd rather do their taxes than phone or go face-to-face with a real, live customer.

As a result of this fear, company executives and owners will bet the company on any other data they can get their hands on. They pore over their website metrics. They run web-based surveys. They ask their salespeople (sometimes) and customer service people (hardly ever) what customers are saying. Every so often, they may lurk on an online discussion group.

They demand more and more data from their marketing folks. Every piece of data makes them want more data, because the data they get only raises more questions. Deep down inside, they wonder if it's all BS.

If they found some backbone and focused instead on actually having a few conversations a month with their customers - and listening to the calls that come in from customers - they'd understand what their customers want them to sell, and how they want to buy.

The rise of "personas"

Over the last few years, the idea of customer "personas" has been finding its way into website design. The basic idea, obviously, is to design your website for the types of people buying your product, so it satisfies each type of person's preferences and buying process.

As I was coaching a salesperson recently, we talked about the differences between leaders and followers. It's an important distinction, especially during turbulent, recessionary times, which require all company leaders - and their employees - to meet new, higher standards. In many cases, the survival of their business depends on it. Leaders must become better leaders and their followers must engage in more leadership-like behavior.

I pointed out that if you were to walk into any conference room, and start observing - even if you didn't know anyone in the room before you arived - you would be able to pick out the leader and the followers in about three minutes. It wouldn't matter where that leader was sitting at the table; it wouldn't matter what the leader was wearing or how old or young the leader was; it wouldn't matter what they looked like.

Employees often believe - and behave as if - managers were "born" into management. Sure, someone can inherit a position, but that's rare. On the whole, leaders are self-made, not born. Leadership is a learned skill. I am not talking about the people who rise in the ranks due to political shenanigans. I am talking about people who have rightfully earned the right to be perceived as a true leader, someone worthy of being followed.

"Fast, right, cheap. Pick two."

Print shop owners used to like to post this little truism near the front desk of their shops. There's a lot of wisdom on those five words. If you do it too fast, it's likely to be wrong. If you take too much time obsessing over details, it isn't going to be fast. And if you get it cheap, you might also get it fast, but it probably won't be right.

The problem is, today's customers assume that they can get "all three" if they just look hard enough. Google has given them a virtual, endless, global shopping mall. If one vendor can't give them all three, they'll just keep looking. Click. Click. Click.

I have a psychic can opener in my briefcase. I use it every day to figure out what's motivating people - customers, partners, managers, business owners, and employees. I figure out what they need and want; what drives them; what drives them crazy; what they love to do and what they avoid doing whenever they can; what freaks them out and what makes them tick. It's the "people" part of the work I do on systems, processes, and people to increase revenue for my clients.

Every now and then, I run across someone who has an emotional problem that is seriously affecting their work performance. My first step is to make absolutely sure that the emotional problem really exists - because it may not. Someone else may be misjudging the situation, slandering the person, or provoking the person.

If the individual does have a legitimate problem, the second step is to sit the person down and kindly explain how their behavior is counterproductive, then see what happens. If the person takes it well, and is actually willing to work on the problem, progress can be made. If the person goes into denial or gets upset in the "lay it on the table" meeting, I'll still do what I can, but the writing will be on the wall. Sooner or later the person and the company will part.

A depression is one of the worst things that can happen to the economy - it affects just about everyone, in every industry, in every country. Recessions, on the other hand, tend to hit a particular group of industries the hardest, with lesser "ripple effects" on others.

What's happening now, as everyone knows, is that lending institutions have stopped lending with wild abandon. The first people to be effected by this are those in the real estate business - real estate agents, lawyers, title companies, and all the others who gain income from real estate activity. Their income - and their spending - decreases. Many decide to leave the business. There is a personnel shift from the real estate industry to other industries, where the money is still flowing. Until they are securely ensconced in their new positions, and have recovered financially, they are still cautious about their spending.

Recessions affect other industries, too, because of the recessionary drumbeat. The news media is always prowling around looking for the latest disaster. As you know, right now they're writing stories about the "subprime lending crisis," profiling people who have been affected. This steady diet of bad economic news affects everyone. Anyone who views their house as their main economic security will be more cautious about their spending. They will take longer to make decisions. They will want more information before making a commitment. They will more carefully compare one option against another, and will be more likely to postpone major spending decisions.

Consumer spending will slow, and so will business-to-business spending. People who run businesses are consumers themselves, and they follow economic news closely. They become more cautious about their spending, too. Their employees see the boss pulling back, and they tell their families, "Things are getting tight at work. Better wait on buying that new car."

This classic, recessionary mass psychology will affect your own outlook, the outlook of your employees, and your revenue stream.

So why am I saying that recessions can be good for you? Because they provide a unique opportunity for improvement.

When someone in business says, "He's a micromanager," it's not a compliment. They say, "He's a control freak," "he doesn't empower people," and "he's obsessed with details." The common wisdom is that micromanagers are not anywhere near as successful as...

It doesn't matter what type of business you run. It doesn't matter how small or large your business is. It doesn't matter what you used to do, before you became the leader of your company. What matters - the only thing that really matters, day after day, year after year - is how well you manage yourself.

Why is it so important? Because true leaders - the kind that other people actually want to follow - have mastered self-management. They instill confidence. They are calm, reasonable, and wise. They can consistently be depended upon to do the right thing. They don't fly off the handle at the smallest thing - or anything, for that matter. They don't obsess about one aspect of their business at the expense of other, just-as-important aspects.

It struck me recently that I have become a commerce code-cracker. Companies bring me in when something is stuck, when they can't figure out how to get from "here" to "there." They know what "here" looks like, and they know what they want "there" to look like. But, they have either tried to get from here to there, and failed, or they can't imagine how to get from here to there, knowing what they know. So they bring me in, and I set to work cracking the code.

I investigate until I understand where the problems are. It doesn't take long, because I have been doing this a long time, in many different situations. I know where to look and what to look for. When the solution is clear, I make recommendations.

What's interesting is how often the problem has been self-inflicted. Actually, thinking through the countless situations I've encountered, I'm realizing that "often" isn't the right word. The word should be "always." This means, of course, that if you don't mess yourself up, your chances of success are quite good. On the other hand, if you're like most people, it means that you're messing yourself up somehow.

The problems that I find fall into three categories:

Every company has a tempo. What do I mean by tempo? It's the amount of time you think you have - to get something done or resolved. It's the heartbeat of your business. It's the tick-tick-tick of your corporate clock.

Your tempo is tied directly to two aspects of your business: How quickly your technology is changing, and how competitive your market is.

Tempo and revenue are joined at the hip. Here are the situations where the tempo/revenue connection becomes critical:

Those who follow through make more money than those who don't. This is one of those absolute business truths. It comes into play in two situations: daily interactions and long-term, transformational projects.

Daily interactions

I recently worked on a project with a team. One person on that team didn't bother to go the extra mile. She didn't double-check. She didn't think for a second before answering a question. She acted as if she was thorough, but in fact she was not.

Everyone else on the team always went the last mile. They double-checked before considering something final - even a simple email. They were thoughtful, and deliberate. Very few mistakes were made, and the few that were made were minor and quickly corrected.

There are two types of situations where, in your business life, you are faced with a decision that tests your integrity: the big decision situation, and the little decision situation. We'll look at these one at a time, but before we do, let's look at the root of integrity: our conscience.

Now, there are a lot of people who say that there is no "right" and no "wrong." But I believe that most of us - with rare, pathological exceptions - have a conscience. That conscience is that little ping we get when we are faced with a decision. We intuitively know what the right thing is, and what the wrong thing is. What we decide to do after we get that internal message is the true test of our character.

What does this have to do with revenue? Everything.

"That does it. I've had it."

That declaration is provoked by someone "stepping over the line." They've "gone too far." It's "too difficult."

All of us - low functioning and high functioning - have these lines, drawn over many years of interacting with others. I have an autistic brother, who is considered "low functioning," because he has no concept of the danger of traffic, the need for money, or the need to work. I could point to all sorts of areas where Michael is higher functioning than many "normal" people, and he has shown me more than you can imagine about human behavior, but that's not the subject of this article.

What is important here is that one of Michael's low-functioning traits is his inability to ignore or move beyond his demarcation lines.

It's so easy to rationalize. We are so eager to think of ourselves as successful, to have others think of us in as successful, and to want things to turn out a certain way, that we are willing to ignore all the signposts along the road and keep driving, full-speed, until we realize that we have driven right off the cliff and we are on our way down. Even then, we rationalize.

"Gee, this isn't so bad. I'm sure I'll survive."

When it comes to generating revenue, rationalization is one of your biggest enemies. It's especially common for entrepreneurs to ignore what their own customers are telling them. "Oh, they always say that," is a common response we get from the rationalizing entrepreneur or CEO. In other words, "I don't think this problem is worth worrying about, it's always been that way, and I'm still here."

Many rationalizers manage to limp along for years, in spite of themselves, when they're lucky enough to have a product that people actually need. But when things get tough, or the market shifts, or buyers become more skeptical, those rationalizers start to slide downwards. As they slip, they start to panic, and do all kinds of crazy things. They become deceptive and manipulative, desperately pulling vendors and customers down with them as they start to swirl down the drain.

When you run a business - no matter how large or small it is - you have a certain amount of energy available to apply to the long list of things you must get done. How you apply that energy will determine how successful you are.

I have been watching companies invest that energy for years. One conclusion I came to early on was that management fads were very distracting and expensive. They seldom, if ever, result in tangible, positive results.

The problem with marketing and sales is that they are the functions inside companies most likely to be driven more by emotions and anecdotal "evidence" than they are by facts. The result is never as profitable as it could be.

If salespeople dominate decisions, without the benefit of qualitative customer research and buying process analysis, the atmosphere is always dominated by fear of losing the next sale, and activity is always frantic.

The salesperson will send an email to the marketing person: "I just closed this sale. I sent this fax to them, and they read it while we were talking to each other, and the person loved this fax. We need an email and landing page that uses this copy!!!" The marketing person will comply. The salesperson will then talk to another customer, who will react positively to something else, and the salesperson will send another email to the marketing person, demanding another email and landing page.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Entrepreneurs use fear to motivate themselves; CEOs often use fear to motivate themselves and their employees. After a while, it's easy to consider fear as a valuable tool, a friend. Too bad it isn't true.

As you probably already know, the most important aspect of time management is deciding where you will spend your attention.

It's difficult to practice good attention allocation because anyone with a need can interrupt you at any time, using a variety of methods to access you and hijack your attention.

One of the most famous, and still-relevant self-management tools is Stephen Covey's four-quadrant matrix for importance and urgency ("important/not important, urgent/not urgent").

We all know we spend far too much time on the urgent/not important tasks; and, if we are totally honest with ourselves, we also spend too much time in the "not important/not urgent" category.

Why?

If you own or run a company, you're passionate. Certain things matter to you. Every day, in every interaction, your passion determines how you manage yourself and those who work for you - employees and vendors.

Your passion is a powerful force. If you manage it correctly, you will:

• Make the right decisions about what is important and what is not
  
• Allocate the right amount of energy to the important things
  
• Convey the right messages to employees and vendors about what matters
  
• Create and run a balanced company
  

What do I mean by a "balanced company"?