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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want more sales, get serious.

Serious about what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

"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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

"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.

There are two kinds of salespeople in the world. One knows that the customer is just trying to get some questions answered, and does what he can to answer those questions. The other sees the customer's questions as "objections" to be overcome - obstacles to his making the sale and getting a commission.

In other words, in the first case, the customer is right - right to be making sure the product will meet his needs. Right to ask questions. Rightfully entitled to getting honest answers to those questions until he has enough information to make a good decision.

In the second case, the salesperson behaves as if the customer is just plain wrong. During the conversation with the customer he is, by turns, evasive, dismissive, and downright rude as he spits out answers. He is combative during the question-asking process. He interrupts the customer, argues with the customer, and treats the customer like an idiot.

A recent experience with such a salesperson convinced me that these salespeople end up in sales because they love to argue but they're not smart enough (or industrious enough) to get through law school. They are wanna-be lawyers.

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.

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

What do I mean by a "balanced company"?

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.

Last week we discussed two of the traits of the perfect sales manager: loyalty (first to the customer, then the company, then the sales force), and consistency. This week we will look at the remaining key characteristics. The perfect sales manager is also empathetic and process-oriented.

• Empathetic

  Note that I said empathetic, not sympathetic. When you empathize with someone, you listen carefully and understand their problem, but you retain your ability to make decisions that are not driven by their emotions.

The perfect sales manager is rare. One person seldom has all of the right traits, and seldom behaves consistently in the most effective manner. My goal here is to describe the ideal. If you are recruiting, you'll want to get as close to this ideal as you can, then work with the individual to improve their deficiencies. If you are still managing your own sales force yourself, you will be well-served if you develop and exercise these characteristics.

Before we get into the details, we should note that most salespeople make terrible managers, unless they are so mature that they have overcome their tendencies toward attention-deficit disorder and shifting loyalties. Most salespeople skim through life, from one conversation to the next, and have no patience for the deep thinking that is required of a perfect sales manager.

The most common mistake made by company owners and managers is to promote a salesperson to management - and expect them to shine.

There are countless articles and books on what you should do as you attempt to grow your business. But very little advice focuses on the aspect of your daily business life that has the most effect on your company's success: your character.

For good or ill, your character affects everything you do every day. It affects every decision you make - or fail to make. It determines how your employees perceive your ability to lead the company - and their enthusiasm or discouragement. It affects how much your customers trust you and how much your competitors fear you - or not.

As we go through life, we develop habits of character.

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.

A group of consultants are in a conference room, pitching a new client. One of the consultants is making the pitch. We'll call him the salesperson.

So far, the client has been alert, sitting up straight, listening, eyes fixed on the presentation being displayed in the conference room. Then the salesperson says something that disturbs the client, and the client shifts in his chair. His brows furrow a little. His eyes are no longer open wide, but squinting slightly. His hand comes up to the front of his face, palm on his chin, fingers over his lips.

The client has just sent a signal to the presenter. It is an unmistakable signal, if the presenter is properly attuned to body language. The signal says, "Hmmm. Wait a minute. This doesn't sit well with me."

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.

Well, it's that time again. People are worried about a recession.

Strange, because according to the US Department of Labor, the unemployment rate is at 4.4%. For historical perspective, ten years ago (April 1997) it was 5.1%, rose to a high of 6.3% in June of 2003, and has been falling ever since.

Average hourly earnings have risen from $12.29 in January of 1997 to $17.10 as of January 2007.

How do I know people are worried? The phrase "How to make money during a recession" has started to become more common again in my search term results. Plus, the bigger companies have stopped spending while they wrangle over budget cuts. And entrepreneurs are focusing more seriously on making more sales.

If we do have a recession, what will happen? What typically happens in all recessions?

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.

We had a lot of reasons for moving from Silicon Valley to the New England coast, about ten years ago. None of them had anything to do with the weather, though we liked the idea of having "seasons." We also wanted to live on the water for less than, say, seven million dollars. We had many family members here, and both of us were born here - although we also both moved to California when we were young. Many of our clients were on the East Coast. And it looked like it would be a great place to sail.

This background sets the stage for my little salesman's story - a perfect example of selling the wrong way, using the "tell, tell, tell" method instead of the "ask then tell" method.

In the course of our search for a house in New England, one April day we were being driven around some waterfront neighborhoods in Connecticut. The real estate broker was a typical congenial salesperson, a large man who had obviously enjoyed his share of drink, food, and smoke. He was chatting away as he drove us around. We didn't say much, because he was doing all the talking.

I've mentioned before that I buy a lot of software online. Recently I undertook an extensive search for software I could use to efficiently build outlines for books and other large, complex documents, because the outlining function in Word is pitiful and slows...the...creative...flow...to...a...crawl, and has a klutzy expand/contract outline function.

I must have looked at 25 programs, and trialed at least 10. For all of you out there selling software online, I have some very specific advice for you, from a buyer's point of view.

We are surrounded by an endless din and clatter of information, in the form of warnings, predictions, stories, statistics, news, and advice.

The longer I'm in business, the more I'm convinced that nothing "out there" matters as much as what is going on in your customers' heads, your own head, and the processes that you create to help your customers do business with you. Everything else - politics, natural disasters, man-made disasters, new inventions, stock markets, and the daily news - is hardly worth your time.

I heard someone say recently that you should spend 80% of your time on the top three most important things in your life. The sad fact is, it's incredibly easy to get sucked into spending 80% of our time on the least important things in our lives, which is why Stephen Covey's 7 Habits book continues to be a best-seller.

As a CEO or entrepreneur, customers should be on your "top three things" list, because if you have no customers, you have no revenue. If you have no revenue, you really don't have a sustainable business. So the first order of any business is to understand what customers are thinking and doing.

In reality, how much time do you actually spend, every day, focused intently on your customers?

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.

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.

In any sales situation, the seller wants the buyer to buy. The buyer, meanwhile, is considering the purchase - and alternative courses of action. Most sales training gurus would call those alternatives "objections," and salespeople are trained to "counter" those objections.

But this usually backfires.

Here are some typical "alternative courses of action" that could be floating around in the buyer's mind as she listens to a sales pitch:

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.

True story, happened this month.

A man has recently taken up the game of golf. He is working hard on perfecting his swing, visiting the driving range every few days to hit a bucket of balls as straight and as far as he can.

As the fall has turned to winter, he has found it necessary to wear some sort of winter gloves while practicing his swing at the driving range. Normal cold-weather gloves are either too thick or not "grippy" enough to hold a club properly. So the man decides to make a special trip to a "golf warehouse" store. It's a bit of a drive, but he goes there because he knows it has a large selection of golf clothing and accessories. He is expecting to find all of the different models of winter gloves, and try them on.

Let's stop this specific, real-life story for a second and look at the broader implications. Here we have someone with a definite need. Someone who has decided what would meet that need, and is going out of his way to purchase the best solution to that need.

This is the beginning of the buying process, a moment in time that happens literally billions of times a day across the globe.

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

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.

I was evaluating at an attractive-looking website while talking on the phone to the entrepreneur who created it. As I clicked around, I realized that the website suffered from a common problem. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but this whole website is about 'dead chicken parts, fried in grease at 200 degrees,'" I told him. "What's missing from this site is 'finger-lickin' good.'"

In other words, the entire site was all about the process behind his product, rather than the satisfaction his customers will get from the product.

He's going to change the site, after he interviews some customers to find out what they consider to be "finger-licking good" about his product.

What is "finger-licking good"?

There's a conflict between the information you want to get from your potential buyers - in order to market to them effectively - and the fact that asking for that information can prevent them from interacting with your website or making a purchase. Asking for too much information too soon is like the owner of a retail store "greeting" you at the entrance and forcing you to sign a guestbook before you can start shopping. Most people would decline and leave the store, which is exactly what is happening on your website - except you can't "see" them leaving without resorting to in-depth web stat log analysis.

How do you find out what you need to know without placing barriers in their way?

As part of my work helping CEOs to re-engineer and rejuvenate their revenue-generation efforts, I help them with their employee issues. We always start by trying to bring their current staff up to a new standard or, if needed, we find a new person for a particular job. I help them recruit, screen, train and manage people in marketing, selling, web, and product management positions. I've been doing this a long time.

Here are a few key lessons I've learned about the difference between people who are a drag on revenues and people whose contribution is exceptional.

Kimberley Deane makes beautiful, reasonably priced jewelry. Her photography skills are top-notch. Her website and printed materials are stunning.

The only problem is, Kimberley hates to sell. She'd rather spend most of her day creating her wares, not "selling." Most artisan entrepreneurs, especially those who open up one-person shops in order to sell what they love to create, hate to sell. Selling is a distasteful, intrusive activity. It grosses them out and causes them to break out in a cold sweat.

Kimberley wants to increase her sales, but she didn't want to have to sell in order to do it. Once I understood her problem, I was able to tell her that she doesn't need to "sell" in order to increase her sales. She just has to make it easy for people to buy from her. That was a comforting thought for Kimberley. Then we started working on exactly how she would do this.

Entrepreneurs, listen up. You may feel like you are alone in your struggle to increase your sales. You're not. Every single entrepreneur struggles with the same issues. And every conversation I have with an entrepreneur follows a similar pattern, and has a similar happy ending, once I show him where his solution lies.

The first conversation always starts out with the entrepreneur telling me what he has been doing about marketing and sales, and what he thinks he wants to try next. His options always involve decisions about marketing vehicles ("Should I do PR? What about my website? Should I follow the advice of this person selling direct mail services? What about this local agency that is trying to get me to run radio ads?")

I listen until he has given me the whole picture. It doesn't take long, because 35 years of selling every type of product helps me fill in the blanks--if he's selling direct, I know what his business model looks like; if he's selling through partners, I know right away the problems he's having in that area.

After asking him a number of questions - including "Are you interviewing your customers on a regular basis?", I can see why he is struggling with his marketing decisions. The problem is, he's focusing on his selling process.

Every day, potential buyers are calling your company for the first time. They are also calling competing companies. This is the "first contact test."

If you are like most companies, your first-time callers will be confronted with a recorded voice that tells them to "select from the following options."

They must then pay careful attention to the options presented. As the voice rattles off the choices, #2 may sound hopeful, but not quite right. They try to remember #2 while they listen to all the other options, still hoping that one of them will lead to what they need. When the voice finally gets to #9, then says "press pound to hear the menu again," they realize that none of the options were appropriate and they are not going to be able to get human help by pressing zero.

If this is how your company's current system works, and you'd like to grow your sales, scrap your system.