Revenue Journal®

I am your customer. I have a Problem. I am looking for the Best Solution to my Problem. You sell the Best Solution, but I don't know that yet.

I go to Google. I type in a phrase describing my Problem, or perhaps a phrase describing my imagined Best Solution. I may remember hearing something specific about the Best Solution - such as a company name, a product name, or even a model number. I know that the more specific I am, the faster I will find my Best Solution, and the faster I can buy the thing, and then go on to do all the other things I have do to today.

The search results appear. I scan the listings quickly. If it looks like my Best Solution is right near the top of the left-hand search results, I don't bother to look at the paid ads on the right. If my Best Solution isn't obviously on top, I scroll down the page a ways. Not too far, but far enough to see if anything obvious jumps out at me.

[Does your website appear in these results? The ones that appear when the customer types HIS FIRST search phrase into Google?]

I took a book called Mastering the Complex Sale on a recent flight. In it, the author says that the complex sale consists of three main components: Determine, Design, and Deploy. No argument there. Nice way of thinking about it.

But then he goes on to say that most customers of the complex sale are not equipped to make a good buying decision - that the salesperson selling to them must guide them through the process. This is a basic premise of the book. The word that sprung to my mind when I read this was: Bunk!

Is your company or product name a help - or a handicap? It is a set of running shoes, or a ball and chain?

When you say your company name, do people say, "Ah, OK," and nod knowingly? Or, do they look at you quizzically, waiting for you to explain?

When it comes to running our businesses most efficiently, we are our own worst enemies. Every single entrepreneur and CEO I've worked with has an emotional blind spot, which keeps his or her company from being all it could be.

I spent two days last week at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, put on by Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.

There were some great speakers, and a number of vendors specializing in the Social Media/Web2.0/Marketing2.0/Video Marketing/InboundMarketing space. I thought it might be helpful to list these resources, in case it helps you with your own current revenue-growth efforts. I'll start with a couple of "big picture" takeaways:

If the business world were a neighborhood, marketers would be the ones with the nice house and a manicured garden. They would be social, but in a well-dressed, somewhat formal kind of way. Marketers are, on the whole, somewhat reserved. Their job is to show the good sides of a company, and control the "messaging" associated with the company. The public face.

It was pretty easy to control that message back in the stone age of traditional one-way marketing, before the web. It was even pretty easy to control that message after the web and email marketing settled in. If marketing was a party, the party was still dignified and respectable.

Then along came social media. Whoops. Enter the marketing party crashers. Nose rings. Skateboards. Tattoos. Very, very vocal, messy, and demanding.

First, the prediction. I've been through at least a dozen high-tech media cycles, and the pattern is always the same. In fact, I'm pretty sure my husband and I invented the term "hockey stick" way back in 1995, to describe...

Most of my clients are - and always have been - technical entrepreneurs. Yes, I've done a lot of work for Fortune 500 companies, and companies in the healthcare, travel and retail industries.

But my passion is helping the technologist who has started a company, created a decent product, and now needs to get to the next stage in his growth - whatever that might be. He's gotten as far as he can using the methods he's been using.

This pattern is so common it should get special attention in all MBA classes.

A smart technologist creates a great product and builds a company around it. He and his team continue to improve the product and get it out into the hands of people who want it. The technologist - let's call him Mike - is a thoughtful, pragmatic person who understands that you can't build a solid company without creating and constantly improving your internal processes. He learns how to manage effectively. He builds a solid company that grows steadily and stays profitable.

Then, one day, everything changes. One of the biggest companies in his industry - the Monster - becomes a competitor, either by buying a competing product or by opening up a new division. Mike quickly gets up to speed on the Monster's new move. At the very least, there are trademark and copyright infringement issues that he will have to fight. But that's just the legal activity. The real battle will be for customers. His very survival depends on winning this battle.

Here I am again, a buyer. Money in hand. Ready. Eager. Wanting to get what I need, fast, and go back to work. What do I want to buy? International wireless broadband, using a data SIM card that I can plug into a variety of cellular devices and work, on land and at sea. I want to get the right solution, but I also have deadlines - so I don't want to spend a lot of time on this.

She's a brilliant website designer. Her end product is right up there with the best of the best. She can transform an unprofessional, unexciting site into a classy, inspiring site, dripping with ambience. She's also good with clients. She is professional and helpful.

Because her sites are so beautiful, and because she is so good on the phone, she is able to pick up clients easily. They have high expectations of her, simply because all the indicators point to a high satisfaction rate.

However, after working with this designer for a while, the client begins to realize that the designer has too many irons in the fire, and is simply too busy to find the time to complete the his site so that it can be launched.

He does everything he can to make it easy for the designer, but parts of the project that should be completed in days, take weeks instead.

This scenario is quite common now.

"I know, I know," the child says, grabbing a tool from his father, who is partway through showing how it works and what to do with it. But something goes wrong after the child tries to use the tool. He stops and mumbles, "Must be broken." He is reluctant to admit that he really didn't "know," and that he really hadn't thought it all through, and he shouldn't have been so hasty. He doesn't want to admit that he could have learned something from his dad after all.

Fast forward thirty years. Now the child owns his own business. "I know, I know," he says, interrupting the customer. The customer, an expert in his field, is trying to explain his needs. But the business owner doesn't want to hear it, because he "knows."

Of course, he really doesn’t know.

What should a marketing VP be responsible for in an organization? And, how has the role changed over the last few years?

The first big question asked by every CEO, especially in times of tight budgets, is whether the marketing and sales functions should be combined under one manager. The answer is yes, and no. They can be, but only if you structure the rest of the organization correctly. I even think it can work better than the two-VP approach, when it is done the right way.

But, before I go down that road, we need to face some facts about how the buying process has changed the whole selling process, and how those changes have affected what salespeople should be doing.

Think of any situation where you have purchased something, and, at the end of the purchase experience, things got nasty. Assumptions you had made at the beginning of the process turned out to be incorrect. Promises that the vendor made were broken, and the vendor was very reluctant to make it up to you. The enthusiasm you and the vendor had at the beginning of the process was gone, and in its place were raw nerves, legitimate concerns, and a lot of haggling over "what we must do, now that we know what we didn't know before."

This is, unfortunately, a very common state of affairs in any complex sale. It's also completely unnecessary. Most, if not all, of the typical end-of-sale-process disappointments can be eliminated altogether, if expectations are set properly up front, and reinforced as the purchasing process proceeds.

But, there's a catch

For obvious reasons, I was thinking about "thanks" this week. And, because I never stop thinking about revenue, the two subjects came together. There's a saying, "To him who has, more will be given." I think that saying is often misinterpreted, because of the unstated truth underlying the statement.

The only way you can truly "have" something is to be satisfied with it and appreciative of it. If you are thankful for what you have, you will take good care of it. You will cherish it. You will look for ways to add other similar things to your life. This is how that "to him who has, more will be given" promise comes true.

How does this apply to revenue? In just about every way.

People who run companies tend to obsess about getting leads in the door. They are petrified that they won't be able to keep the pipeline full of leads. Before the web, their efforts were focused on PR, advertising, and sales tools. Now they focus their efforts and their resources on search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and so on.

They also assume they have to convince their prospects to buy their product. So all their marketing copy - online and off - is designed to convince someone to buy.

The problem is, the way people are buying now, they are mostly convinced by the time they get to your website. A large percentage of today's buyers have already decided what they want, and all they want you to do is answer a few remaining questions that aren't answered on the web, to make sure that your product will perform well in their specific situation.

I ran across this recently when placing an online recruiting ad for a client. His company is in the Bay Area (San Francisco area) and I was placing the listing on BAJobs.com.

My husband was watching an "instructional" video, online, showing a sales guy for a marine rope company. The sales guy was supposedly showing how to make a particular splice in one of the ropes that his company sells.

A splice, for those not familiar, is the joining of two pieces of rope by interweaving the strands from one rope with the strands of another, so the two ropes are joined. For example, you can create a loop at the end of a rope by splicing the end of the rope back into itself. Splices are important. If they fail, you can lose your boat. The splice has to be right. No BS allowed.

As I watched the salesman in the video, I could see that the BS quotient was really high. Not only did he not really know how to clearly explain what he was doing, but he was doing a poor job on the demo. He was showing "how easy it is to splice this rope," but not how to actually do it. For example, he would be pointing to the strands, explaining how they were oriented. As he pointed, his fingers came between the strands and the camera, so you couldn't see the strands.

By now you've seen the ridiculous Seinfeld ads (shoe ad and family ad) that Microsoft is running. And, additionally, there's this ridiculous article in the NY Times about how Microsoft is tired of being kicked around and isn't going to take it anymore.

The article includes these quotes:

Apple executives have been "using a lot of their money to de-position our brand and tell people what we stand for," said David Webster, general manager for brand marketing at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

"They've made a caricature out of the PC," he added, which was unacceptable because "you always want to own your own story."
The campaign illustrates "a strong desire" among Microsoft managers "to take back that narrative," Mr. Webster said, and "have a conversation about the real PC."

You can almost hear Mr. Webster sniffling as he makes these remarks.

Back when most people lived on farms, there were "snake oil salesmen," who came around to tell residents, one by one, about a cure-all elixir. The salesperson had to be very convincing, and sell as many people as possible in a short time, because the stuff didn't actually work. He had to be in the next town before the people in the previous town discovered the truth.

Fast forward to when people moved to the cities. Buyers saw ads, and then used any means they could to determine if a product was right for them. They would visit a store, call a salesperson, get a brochure, read an article in a "consumer reports" magazine, and so on. The salesperson, and the company's ability to get covered by the press, played a large role in the completion of the sale.

Fast forward to today, when most buyers have access to Google.

Labor Day weekend. A great time to ponder the bigger picture, to think about what really matters. All of this came home to me in a new way, watching a video. It's twenty minutes long, so you'll probably want to watch it at home.

The part we're going to focus on comes fifteen minutes into the video. But, if you fast forward, you will miss seeing an example of a great teacher. Since a big part of successful management is teaching, the 15 minutes are well-spent. But enough about the video...take a look.

In all my years of musical education, from the time I was 8 through college, no one even came close to communicating the essence of music in the way that Zander manages to do in this one video. Even better, what he says about shining eyes captures so much of what I try to communicate in this blog every week. It is the essence, the capstone, the critical element that is exceedingly rare in all business articles.

One of the most important skills of a marketing strategist is to know "where the heat is." What matters now? Who matters now?

One of the things that matters now is your buyers, trying to get relevant, useful answers in a sea of irrelevant, self-serving blather. Anyone can publish a blog and post a video. Almost everyone does. Every company has a website. Publishing companies that used to have a monopoly, those large lumbering newspapers, magazines, and networks, are now surrounded by swarms of publishing gnats. The giants are dying, one gnat bite at a time.

Meanwhile, the gnats - the bloggers who publish text and video - have become the kings of Influence Hill. Of course, as with all media, bloggers who provide useful and relevant information get more attention than those who publish self-serving or silly content. Well, that's not entirely true. A lot of very silly content gets its share of attention - but not for long. The blog authors that get the long-term attention are like lights shining in the darkness, and they shine for a long time.

If you are trying to make sure people know about you, you should be courting these bloggers.

Last week, over a 5-day period starting on Thursday, I flew to from Providence to San Jose to meet with a new client, then to San Diego and Tucson to visit family, then back to Providence. I flew Southwest all the way. It was pleasant, as it always is. Whenever I fly domestically, Southwest is my first choice.

Southwest is famous for its "love" theme, tenuously connected to Love Field in Dallas, where they started. It's such a departure from the other airlines, whose snarly bureaucratic behavior I've covered here before. What I want to focus on this time is how that "love" manifests itself in the customer's interaction with the airline.

Of course, it starts at the top.

It's hard enough to get customers. In tight times, the last thing you want to do, after you've gotten a customer, is to lose them. Not a good idea. But, it happens all the time to lots of companies. Why?

One reason. Yes, that's what I said: ONE reason. In every situation, for every type of product or service, in all the thousands of customer interviews I've conducted, it's obvious that there is really only one reason why customers leave. The reason:

"You stopped caring about me."

You want to grow your revenue - you need to grow your revenue - but the big question is: How?

Do you take what you've already done and try to do the same thing in another location? Do you partner with others who are doing something related to what you're doing? Do you offer more products and services - to current customers, or new customers? Do you continue doing what you do now, but expand your distribution channel - selling through more portals, distributors, resellers? Do you make it easier for people to buy from you, on your current website? Do you increase your marketing spend? Do you hire more salespeople?

The real answer is not what to do, but how you go about figuring out what you should do.

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.