Revenue Journal®

People buy when they're comfortable that they're making the right decision. If they're uncomfortable, they don't buy. This is especially true when money is tight or people are fearful. Their comfort zone - and how well you stay within it - will determine if you make a sale, or not.

Let's look at what will kick you out of their comfort zone - and how you can stay inside.

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.

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.

The most accurate economic indicator I have ever found is "primary customer motivation." As I interview customers for clients, I learn what is driving them to make the decisions they are currently making. In times of uncertainty, there is usually one big, fear-based driver. In times of economic growth, more drivers come into play, such as the need for status, the need to solve a problem, the need to change one's lifestyle, and the need to experience something new.

I have also found that journalists and economists don't have a clue about "primary customer motivations" until it's obvious to everyone what is going on. And, you can be sure that if the facts conflict with their agenda, the agenda will overshadow the story. That's why any business owner who depends on the press or economists to "guide" him is always going to be a day late and a dollar short. Instead, if he was personally and regularly interviewing customers (or having someone he trusts do it for him), he'd be finding out what's really going on - six months before everyone else (including competitors).

In any economic situation, these primary customer motivation drivers determine what people are buying and how, as well as what they are deciding not to buy.

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.

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.

Personas do have their place. When you're designing a product, you have to make decisions about what to put in and what to leave out. Personas can help with that process.

But once the product is designed, and it's time to create your web page, write selling copy, and train your salespeople, personas can get you into real trouble. They can make you think you're addressing the buyer properly, when in fact you are probably ignoring who the buyer is, what the buyer really wants, and, in many cases, insulting the buyer.

You see, if I'm the buyer, I already know who I am. So I'm not the least impressed if you think you know who I am. Besides, it makes me feel a little creeped out anyway, that you're so determined to know everything about me you can describe me to your buddies around the conference table.

Do you really have to know all those things about me to sell something to me? I mean, c'mon. What does it matter how old I am or how much money I make? I just want to buy something to fix a problem. I don't want my personal space invaded.

Not only that: Is it going to be a fun to buy your product, or are you going to make it a hassle?

There's a joke - you've probably heard one of the many versions of it - that I think of as the "demo" joke. My favorite version is the one starring Bill Gates:

Bill Gates died and found himself standing in front of St. Peter, who was sizing him up.

"Well, Bill, I'm not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you helped society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in America, and you gave away a lot of money. But, you also created that evil Windows program. It's a close call, so I'm going to do something I've never done before: I'm going to let you decide where you want to go."

Bill replied, "What's the difference between the two?"

St. Peter said, "Well, I'm willing to let you visit both places briefly, then you will have to decide."

"Fine, but where do you think I should I go first?"

"I leave that up to you."

"Okay, what the Hell," said Bill. "Let's try down below first."

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.

"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.

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:

John Smith is a typical customer in the market for a fairly high-end product, one that requires a salesperson to finalize the deal. He has done his research on the web - he's spent hours, in fact, researching. Now he has a couple of questions for the salesperson to answer. Otherwise, he is ready to buy. He decides that the best way to get the answers he needs is to go to an industry tradeshow.

I've been interviewing "John Smiths" for a client, and one of them described what happened next, using these words:

"I had to defend my wallet and my family against The Pitch."

He was there with his wife, and as he was trying to get answers to his questions, the salesperson kept trying to close the sale.

From the customer's perspective, this is irritating. Sleazy. Totally inappropriate. You're just asking someone questions, and the whole time, they keep trying to sneak around to the side of you and grab your wallet out of your back pocket.

Lately I've encountered more entrepreneurs who have bought into the idea that they can just set up their search engine marketing and websites, and the orders will pour in. Oh, how nice it would be if it were true!

There are consultants who will say that it is possible, and say that they have made bundles of money doing it. But they sell one type of product (usually a guide of some sort), using one type of marketing method (usually a combination of search engine marketing, and a dedicated website that makes outrageous promises as it offers the guide for sale on the website). The website contains a single long-winded, direct-mail-like page that sells you on all the things that the guide will do for you, filled with convincing testimonials and "scientific" proof. And they let you pay and download the guide right there. This is a perfect product for the Web, and the method works well for that type of product.

These vendors often sell guides saying you can sell anything on the Web this way. Newbies have bought these guides and have become convinced that this method will work for any type of product - that all they have to do is set up this type of campaign and website, and then sit back and watch the orders flow in. It simply isn't true.

You are the head honcho at your company. You stay awake at night struggling with unsolved problems. You go into work every day and focus on solving them. Your life consists of finding and solving those problems.

You think you know more than anyone in the world about your company. You're right - no single individual knows more than you. But there is critical information that you don't know, information that is sucking the life blood out of your company's potential for growth. Information that, if you knew it, faced it, and dealt with it, you could remove those stubborn barriers to the sale and start your revenues flowing in new ways and at new rates.

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.

"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.

A lot of entrepreneurs obsess over their search engine marketing and Adwords campaigns, to make sure that they are within view when someone goes searching for their type of product. Nothing wrong with that, but given the bandwidth of the typical business owner, there's a tendency to focus on lead generation at the expense of conversion.

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.

Every business starts with a dream. Every buyer starts the buying process with a dream.

Every business can turn into a nightmare. And, every buying process - especially those involving large, expensive, important purchases - can turn into a nightmare.

These dreams - and fears of nightmares - drive the decisions and actions of both business owners and buyers.

We've all seen this at work in extreme cases, where an individual will let their own fantasy world overwhelm reality to the point where they lose their job or their business, and the people who supported them along the way.

But these situations are rare. The more usual, day-to-day situation is one where the seller and buyer are trying to find common ground, to negotiate a realistic solution where everyone can be happy.

Let's say you're a vendor in a developing country selling some kind of product or service to customers in more developed countries. You know you can provide what the customers there need, but you're not sure how get the attention of the right kinds of buyers, and when you do get a lead, you find it too difficult to close the sale. Something is standing in your way. That something is the negative reputation that your country or industry might have in the mind of the buyer.

This article will address both of these challenges while looking at the process from the buyer's perspective. The advice in this article will help anyone selling any type of high-risk product or service - even in well-established markets - as the dynamics are similar.

It took a while before the Web really changed the way people bought things, but it has happened. Now people go to the Web first and research the heck out of a subject before they buy.

They scrutinize, analyze, and agonize. They Google and re-Google, fine-tuning their search term until they start getting the desired results. They know exactly what they want and they keep searching until they finally find it, then compare their options, read the reviews, and consider the price and the functions. Once they are satisfied they have found the right product and are comfortable with the company selling it, they place an order.

I'm sorry to say that, over and over, I am finding business owners struggling to make sales because their marketers - in-house or outside - are trying to use yesterday's marketing and selling methods on today's buyers, who have definitely moved on.

Buyers have specific questions. If you're not giving them specific answers, you're not going to capture those sales. All technology aside, this is the biggest difference between "old" marketing thinking and "new" marketing thinking.

The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

There's a certain type of entrepreneur who becomes obsessed with a product idea, and sets up a business to sell it. It's always a guy (yes, for some reason, it's always a guy) who can never understand why "everyone can't see the wisdom of this idea" and why "someone can't give me the money to get this business off the ground."

I hear from these gentlemen because of my blog and book, and my consulting company. The most recent person who contacted me said he had also contacted a famous "marketing guru" company, but that "they won't give me the time of day."

This most recent person says that he lost a great deal of money trying to sell websites for a website creation franchise operation. He is now in debt, and is trying to get out of debt selling a gasoline additive. He tells me that he wants marketing help. But when I make specific suggestions, he responds to my email with more detail about how he got into debt and how he is a nice person who was raised to treat people with respect and courtesy, and how he just needs marketing help. In other words, he asks for advice, advice is given, and then he ignores it and asks for advice or sympathy.

George Lucas, being interviewed recently by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal, was pontificating on the difference between circus and art. He said that YouTube is circus - which the movie industry calls "throwing puppies on the freeway," because you just create something and put it up and see what happens. He then said that art, on the other hand, is "where the person contrives the situation and tells a story, and hopefully that story reveals the truth behind the facts."

This comment really caught my attention, because that's exactly what good marketing is supposed to do: reveal the truth behind the facts. And if you think about how George Lucas spins his stories, you realize how far marketing is from the ideal he describes.

At any given time, in addition to my Fortune 100 and medium-sized company clients, I always have a couple of entrepreneurs on my client list. I enjoy helping startups, and increasing the revenues of existing small businesses.

Typically, someone who starts a business is an expert in a particular area. In other words, their core competency doesn't lie in marketing and sales. As a result, they are constantly searching for any trick or technique that will help them make more sales.

This search - and in some cases it is a desperate search - makes them easy prey for any halfway plausible idea. They are constantly reading articles and books, talking to friends, and listening to vendors selling ad space, website design, direct mail, and so on. I often get questions by email - "I just talked to So and So, and they said..." Or, "I just read an article that said..." The questions are always about doing a specific thing that will supposedly help their sales increase.

The sad thing is, it's never one thing. And it's never the thing that you just read or that someone just told you. 100% of the time, the answer is right in front of you. Yes, I said 100% of the time. Always. Here's how you find the answers you seek.

Here are some of the most common barriers to revenue that we encounter as we help our clients. Are you making one of these mistakes?

Your company name doesn't tell them what you sell. We call our company Zhivago Marketing Partners for this very reason. It would have been just as easy to call it Zhivago & Company or something similar - but that would not have answered the first, most basic question: "What does this company sell?"

If you're just starting out, make sure your name clearly indicates the type of product you sell.

If you've already invested too much in your non-specific name to change it now, then add a tagline to your logo that says what you sell. Keep it short - no more than five words. Tell them what you sell, using the words people would use to find you.

The longer you head up a company, the more it becomes like a private club. You go to work, and are immediately swarmed by messages, issues, meetings, random hallway and instant messaging conversations - all from members of your own club.

Everyone in the club knows everyone else, everyone knows who the facilitators are - and who are the obstructionists. They know the helpful ones and the spoiled brats. You spend your entire day interacting with everyone in the club, people who make you feel good about yourself, your company, how well your people are doing - and how happy your customers are.

Here's the danger: After a while, it gets harder and harder for anyone outside the club to get what they need from anyone inside the club. Your days are consumed by your interactions with each other.

He's smart. He's quick. He understand things long before others do. He likes to talk. Usually, people like to listen, because he often has something interesting to say. He sees opportunities long before others do, and rushes in to capitalize on them.

People who work for him trust his ability to keep the company on the leading edge. For the most part, they like working for him. He's a salesperson who has turned into an entrepreneur and now he's running a company.

Uh-oh.

What's the problem?

Charm is not a strategy. Charm is not a process, a system, or an answer to the many problems that CEOs have to solve.

The customers I interview for my clients range from engineers to programmers to CPAs to physicians to store owners to sailors to dealers to system integrators to women who buy skincare and makeup to salespeople to marketers to CEOs to...well, you get the picture. Just about everybody.

They always have something interesting to say. In fact, you'd be surprised - shocked, even - if you heard how much your own customers have to say about your product and company.

If you interview people skillfully, it's easy to get them started, and once they get started, they can talk for an hour or two about a product, company, and industry. They can tell you what they like about it, what they wish vendors would do, what else they've tried, and what they thought about those products. They will tell you what was frustrating or convenient about the buying process.

They can tell you how they looked for the product, the questions they had, and the tradeoffs they had to resolve before they spent the money. They can tell you the trends they see in the industry, not just based on their own needs, but by observing what others are doing and buying. They can also tell you what would make the most difference for them.

For example, the women I've been interviewing lately for a cosmetic/skin care company have mentioned that they wish cosmetic companies didn't come up with new colors every year.

Marketing is a force. Like any other force, it can be used for good or ill. There are many people who say that marketing itself is evil. Not so.

Marketing is only evil when the power of marketing is used to misrepresent or hide the truth.

I supposed I could stop here, because that really is the essence of it. But I'll go a little further to and provide an example.

Whenever you read an article about a merger and acquisition, it's usually a lightly edited version of the official press release. What you don't read about are the bloody backstage battles that took place as the stakeholders maneuvered, and manipulated the detailed terms of the deal. Nor do you read about the mess after the deal.

Usually there's a big dog and a small dog, whether the parties involved admit it or not. The small dog is hoping to line his pockets, and the big dog is hoping to pick those same pockets.

After the deal is signed, the revenues that were roaring along at the small dog company often come to a screeching halt.

If you want to see a perfect example of a company that makes it easy to buy, take a look at Home Reserve. What an exceptional site this is. Let's look at what they do right.

First, the home page.

What's the first question when you're shopping for furniture? Cost. Most people have a specific budget in mind for a given room or situation. And, that's the first big question Home Reserve answers, right on top.

As you come to this site, first your eye goes to the two people, and, immediately, to the prices. Then to the pictures and the fabric swatches.

Home Reserve uses the circle motif to draw your eye to important areas of the site, including the shop button, the photo gallery, and the swatches. One thing I find interesting about this is how the first circle you see is emotionally comforting - the two people obviously enjoying each other as they look at color swatches. Does this encourage you to assume that all circles will be emotionally satisfying? Hmmm."

Working with CEOs and entrepreneurs, I identify and eliminate barriers to revenue and turn stalled or slowing companies into revenue-growth machines. I have become a revenue engineer. I am an industry of one, and happy to be here.

I'm bringing this up to talk about self-reinvention, a skill that all of us must master in this age of fast-moving markets. As you learn more and become more experienced, and apply those lessons and that experience to your next job, you need to know what you are good at, what you can provide, and what you should call it.

As the leader of your company, what you decide to do is what gets done. At least, that's how it should happen. What you have control over (to a degree) are your own decisions, your own actions, and the management of your employees. You have some influence with your business partners. You have no direct control over your customers.

Of course, without customers, you wouldn't have a business - no revenue, no employees, no partners. The people most important to your business are your customers.

Whom do you spend the most time with? Employees.

The people you hire can make a big difference to your revenue growth. That's why I help CEOs find and hire the best people for each position. I've been building a marketing and sales team for one of my clients for the past few years. The people we have found are making a difference. The company's revenues are way up. The marketing and selling efforts are bearing fruit.

All of the people we've brought in are contributing. The webmaster/IT guy is technically brilliant, as well as productive and pleasant. The head of marketing loves marketing online, has a great sense of the big picture, and understands how to optimize marketing and tracking efforts. The head of sales has been working with each salesperson to improve their outgoing efforts - and has set up programs to consistently interact with existing customers, at just the right time in their buying process. Sales to new customers has increased along with sales to existing customers.

One of the most satisfying hires is the data-oriented person we brought into marketing.

When I'm hired to help a company increase its revenues, clients come to me assuming that the answer will lie beyond existing products and markets. However, what usually happens is we find significant growth opportunities for existing products in existing markets.

There are several benefits to finding new revenue in existing products and markets:

It doesn't matter what size your company is. I guarantee, at this moment, that your "comfort zone" is keeping your company from getting bigger.

What is your comfort zone? It's what you do best, and what you typically turn to first, when it's time to "do the next thing."

Here are some one-person-shop comfort-zone examples:

The president of a small company recently sent me an email. "We've done well in a lot of areas of business, but what we haven't done is sorely inhibiting our growth. We need to master marketing and are committed to doing just that. Will you point me to the best learning tools?"

I'll bet you can guess where I pointed him…right back to his own customers. Here was my reply:

Well, it's that time again. Elections. Always causes a bit of a dip in productivity, and a slowdown of the buying process, while everyone waits to see how the election will turn out.

Welcome to Distraction City.

In our news-dominated culture, distractions interrupt buying patterns. The larger the distraction, the larger the interruption. I tend to think of these periods as distraction-driven mini-dips. If there are a number of them in succession - especially those involving armed conflict or a terrorist attack - the dips can turn into a recession.

During these distraction-driven mini-dips, it's more difficult to generate revenue. Everyone still goes to work, meetings are still held, contracts are still signed, but if you're on the selling side, it always feels like the world is sliding sideways. As you attempt to finalize a contract, it's like talking to someone who is talking to someone else on a cell phone. Or who is pretending to be paying attention to you while simultaneously watching a movie. Sure, they will answer your questions, but they're not "all there." People are no where near as adept at multi-tasking as they think they are, especially if they have an emotional stake in the other task.

It's not just the buyers who are distracted. Sellers are distracted, too.

Major opportunity for you

As I help CEOs increase their revenues, I often find that they are not aware how inefficient their companies are, from the point of view of their buyers and business partners. They don't realize how much their own systems are broken - and how much those broken systems reduce their sales.

Why is this? Because CEOs depend too much on their employees for information. When I interview their buyers and business partners, the picture painted by those interviews is completely different than the picture painted by the employees.

It's not that the employees are being deceptive. It's that they assume that the CEO is aware of the problems, and is not going to change them. They try to make the best of their situation, devising workarounds for some of the inefficiencies, and just accepting others. They are also insulated from the effect that pitiful processes have on buyers and business partners. Sure, they hear the complaints, but they aren't aware of anything they can do about them.

One of the biggest barriers to your company's revenue growth is the battle that goes on every single day between marketers and salespeople. Each has legitimate grievances. Each group pays lip service to getting along - especially in your presence - but they really don't respect each other and they usually work at cross-purposes to each other. The smallest and the largest companies have this problem.

There is a solution, however. And if you implement it, the squabbling will cease. The two groups will begin working toward the same goal. And, your customers will respond positively to your coordinated, customer-centric efforts. Your revenues will go up.

In this three-part series, we will reveal what is happening when you're not in the room - and in doing so, help you recognize the problem. We will tell the salesperson's side of the story first,and in the second part, the marketer's story. Both stories are based on personal experience. I can do this because I spent many years as a salesperson (dog), became a marketer (cat), and now help CEOs improve the effectiveness of both types of people. This gives me the freedom and perspective to speak the truth about cats and dogs - and, more importantly for you, to describe a solution that works.

In the third article, we'll describe the solution and how you can put it to work.

This is part number three of a three-part article.
First we told the salesperson's sad tale, then looked at marketing and selling from the marketer's perspective. This week, we provide a step-by-step solution. If you actually do this, your dogs and cats will finally find common ground and start working together to increase your sales.

How to stop the squabbling and supercharge your sales
The secret to getting your salespeople and marketing people to work together is to stop the interdepartmental, political arguments about the selling process and start focusing everyone's attention on the customer's buying process. This is the only way to stop the political tug-of-war.

Here's how you do it.

If you haven't been to the launch site for NXP, a spin-off from Philips, take a look - and prepare to be blown away.

The site is beautiful. Breathtaking, even. The Guy in the Green Shirt (below), who will talk to you while you're on the site, does a pretty good job of being professional and yet friendly, in a geeky/retro kind of way. So friendly, in fact, that when you return to the site he will welcome you back.

Most business activities can be managed in a fairly straightforward fashion. You decide what you're going to do, you create a project plan - complete with cost and timing - you get the right people to execute the plan, you build in checkpoints, and then you set the wheels in motion.

The chances of these activities being successful are fairly high. The barriers to success are internal politics, unrealistic expectations, and mismanagement or ineptitude as the project progresses. These problems can be overcome with effective management. Politics can be squashed by managers who are forthright and goal-driven. Unrealistic expectations can be avoided by seasoned managers who have "been there, done that," and they know what can go wrong. Mismanagement isn't a problem when the managers gather accurate data and make sound decisions. Ineptitude shouldn't get in the way - even when it is well-disguised - because good managers can spot ineptitude a mile away.