Monthly Archives: June 2009

Sales 101 – Stop “Venting” and Start Selling!

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Are You Venting or Just Making Excuses?

A colleague recently posted a rant about the quality of the leads she was handling on an automotive industry social network. As a part of her diatribe on her most recent batch of Internet sales leads, she gave some great examples of just how bad the leads really were. Her examples proved that some of the leads (certainly her examples) were indeed crap with a capital C.

In case you’re feeling like you should be the next one to go online and rant, read on…

Venting can be cathartic, and for those of us in your shoes, we know your vent will probably be warranted. After you’re finished venting, however, be sure you’re factoring in the percentages. Once you do this, you’ll likely find that things are much better than you imagined.

Like my colleague’s, yours will probably be a rhetorical venting, but I can’t help but provide a little advice. I’m hopeful you take this in the right light, as the following is the same advice I would give to any sales manager who expresses similar dissatisfaction in the quality of their leads:

“Failures” in the Sports World

  • You should know that the most successful hitter in Major League Baseball history was Ted Williams. In 1941, Williams maintained a .406 batting average. Since then, no MLB hitter has been able to break .400. This means that in the last 68 years, every batter in baseball has failed more than 60% of the time. Are they all failures? Of course not.

  • More recently, Derek Jeter of the Yankees won the Silver Slugger award in 2008 and was an All Star for the 9th time in his career. Should Jeter waste time venting about the 70% of the at-bats he had last year where he failed to get a hit? Of course not.

  • Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time, yet his NBA career shooting percentage is just .497. He missed more shots than he made! Is MJ a failure? Of course not.


A traditional team in my industry handling Internet customers closes about 10% of their leads, a very good Internet sales team can consistently close above 18%, while a great team generally closes above 25% of all leads. This means that even the great teams fail to close 7.5 out of every 10 leads they receive. Wow, those guys are either complete failures or those leads must really stink!

Do the Leads Stink or Does the Team?

Of course, neither statement is true. A team closing 25% of their leads consistently is on the top of their game… and the leads they’re working are of the same quality you’re working.

The truth is that with proper lead counts, a great process and a dedication to that process, any team can be successful closing sales leads.

I’ve always believed you can vent about the bad leads or you can sell the good ones.

Stop Whining and Start Selling

While I’m not sure how my colleague took the advice above, it could be worse. I could have simply recited Blake’s words from Glengarry Glen Ross: “The leads are weak. F***ing leads are weak? You’re weak.”

…

We can always find reasons we cannot succeed… they’re called excuses. It’s time to stop whining and start selling.

Chaggle.com is the Next Big Thing – Don’t Haggle with The Manager

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Chaggle is Cool

Chaggle is the Next (Fill in the Blank)

Last month a colleague told me about this little technology startup that had carved out a pretty cool niche for themselves – and within ten minutes of hearing his description of Chaggle.com, I was happily using what should prove to be the next big thing on the World Wide Web. We’re talking the next billion-dollar company (that’s billion with a b), and that’s not hyperbole; it’s a promise.

Before you think I’ve enjoyed too much Cabernet today, rest assured that I see about 100 new Internet ventures a year, and this is the first one I’ve blogged about – and now I’m giving you a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Ground Floor Opportunity

Unfortunately, Chaggle doesn’t need cash, or I’d mortgage everything just to get a small piece. (If they do look for financing in the future, I’ll have my checkbook ready.) The ground floor I’m posting about is the chance to become one of the first thousand or so to download a service that will soon be used by millions. (Imagine if you were the 125th person on MySpace… you’d have a great vanity domain and a nice story to tell your friends.)

I’m proud to brag that I was one of the first hundred to join Chaggle, and I easily secured the Chaggle handle “Steve.” I had my pick of vanity handles and could have been TheManager, Stud_Muffin, or Roger; but chose Steve because my name is not Roger and I don’t want to use the Chaggle plug-in under those other names. (Though I’ve always considered myself a bit of stud muffin – okay, I may have had too much Cab today.)

What the Heck is Chaggle?

By now, you’re hopefully wondering “what in the world is this Chaggle anyway?”


Chaggle is an Internet Explorer plug-in that allows you to chat with fellow Chagglers (I think I made that up, so I want the credit later) who happen to be surfing the same site you’re visiting. (While we’re making up words, let’s call it Chaggling instead of chatting and Chag instead of chat.)

After a quick download of the Chaggle software you can open a separate Chaggle window that rides alongside your main browser window. As you move from site-to-site, you take Chaggle with you and you have the opportunity to Chag with fellow Chagglers about what you see on the site.

Rather than try to provide an example in detail of what you can do with Chaggle, I’ll let Chaggle.com co-founder Clayton Smith enlighten you:

The aspect of Chaggle that we feel is so special is that it allows you to bring an integrated, interactive chat capability along with you to every site you browse. So if you’re at CNBC’s website and you’re looking at an article on Chrysler’s bankruptcy, on Chaggle you can either chat about it on the CNBC.com main webpage with everyone viewing the site, or you can post comments (or web “crumbs”) that will be tagged to that specific news article’s URL. There is no other service out there that provides this level of interactivity across the web. Our goal is to make Chaggle the perpetual conversation of the Internet. – Clayton Smith

Well put, Clayton. (If you’re still a little in the dark about how to use Chaggle, check out the homepage video at Chaggle.com.)

To give you a sense of how I plan to use Chaggle, imagine I post about a cool new Web service called Chaggle and you happen to be reading the article and you are a fellow Chaggler. If we both have Chaggle turned on, you can tell me what a great writer I am via a Chag and I can respond with a warm thank you. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

What’s the Catch?

Chaggle is cool. Chaggle is useful. Chaggle is free. Chaggle is new… and that’s the downside right now. Since its Beta-version rollout on May 1, Chaggle.com only has about 100 Chagglers. (Of course, I look at this as a bonus: you can swoop in and grab that vanity handle you always wanted. Can anyone say “LonelyGirl15?”)

As a brand new service, Chaggle built their platform for the most popular browser (IE) first. To date, Chagglers can only Chag using Internet Explorer, though Chaggle is working on a Firefox version right now, and they expect it to be released in a couple of months. The Firefox version of Chaggle will work on any operating system using Mozilla’s Firefox as its Web browser (Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, etc).

Chag Me, I’m Chagilicious

Once you download the free plug-in, find me surfing online and let’s Chag about whatever site I’m visiting. (Of course, you can just tell me what a great writer I am, and I’ll respond with a warm thank you.)

Email Etiquette for Message Importance – When “Importance: High” = “Don’t Waste Your Time”

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Quick, Read This Email… Now!

Today I received another in a long line of email messages from a certain vendor touting their newest and greatest product improvement. This email, like all of its predecessors, arrived in my Outlook inbox as a message of High Importance. Because I receive just one in five hundred messages marked “Importance: High,” I generally give these more than a quick glance when they arrive.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed a subject line this morning that read **Special Sneak Peek: (Vendor Name Omitted) New Guided Search**. I thought, “Wow, this is big news! You made an enhancement to your website that will have little to no effect on me or my business, and you sent me the details in a message marked High Importance. Congratulations! I now like you even less than I did five minutes ago.”

The Email Who Cried Wolf

No need to rehash this as a new millennium version of the famous fable attributed to Aesop, except to say that with each email of miniscule importance sent by this vendor that masquerades as a critical Top Secret UMBRA message, I lose more interest in reading anything they send… anything.

In fact, it’s become so bad that I now treat all of their messages akin to how one would treat the proclamations of a ten-year old who brags about what a big boy he is every time he makes “doody in the toy-toy.” We get it, congratulations; you pooped.


It’s not just egocentric vendors who misuse the High Importance selection in Outlook, though it does seem to be solely the province of the unintelligent and unsophisticated. Ever get the High Importance email on Tuesday afternoon sent to everyone at your company reminding you that the office refrigerator will be cleaned out promptly at 5:00 PM on Friday? Chances are your CEO didn’t send it.

You Don’t Sell Plasma

Out of every 500 High Importance emails I receive, about ten truly require my immediate attention – and none of these ten ever originates from a vendor. Here’s a quick email etiquette tip: if you’re a vendor who does not sell plasma, stop acting like you sell plasma. The more you try to make your customers care about your (fill in the blank), the less they care.

High Importance status should exist solely for those emails that require both immediate attention and for which there will be negative consequences if they do not receive immediate attention. If your email merely requires that the recipients read and respond, write “RESPONSE REQUIRED” in the subject line. Likewise, if your message requires that recipients take an action based on the email, try placing “ACTION REQUIRED” in the subject line.

What About Tagging Something “Low Importance?”

Here’s a bonus to those vendors who don’t understand basic email marketing rules, and who mark their outbound sales messages as “Importance: Low.” Likely you tagged these emails as having Low Importance out of some misguided consideration for your recipient. Congratulations, your emails are ending up in SPAM filters all across the Web. Quick tip: never mark any email as having Low Importance. If the email is truly of Low Importance, don’t send it.

For that matter, if the message only highlights some unimportant feature enhancement of your website, don’t send that email either.

NY Times Business Hardcover Best Sellers – June 2009

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New York Times – Hardcover Business Best Sellers – June 2009

The big story from the June 2009 New York Times Hardcover Business Best Sellers list has to be that Gladwell’s Outliers continues to dominate the rankings month-in, month-out. As we wrote in January, Outliers could be one of the best books released in 2008, and seven months at the Number 1 spot confirms it. (Damn, we like it when we’re right.)

We, of course, can also admit when we’re wrong; and it seems we were wrong about the cleverly titled 10-10-10, by Suzy Welch. Last month the AskTheManager.com editors bet that this tome and The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide, by Martin Weiss were headed straight for the bargain bin. The simplicity of the premise and the strength of a famous husband not only kept 10-10-10 in the Top 5, but also propelled it to Number 3. Oh well, perhaps we’ll stick to reviewing leadership books.




The best of the books not making the Top 5 this month has to be Peaks and Valleys, by Spencer Johnson. Number 4 last month, this easy-to-read selection from the co-author of the easy-to-read One Minute Manager and author of the easy-to-read Who Moved My Cheese helps readers cope with tough times by understanding how to make good and bad times work for you personally and professionally.

The Top Five – NY Times Business Hardcover Best Sellers June 2009 (to view the entire list, follow this link):

This
Month

Last
Month

1

OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.”

1

2

WHO’S GOT YOUR BACK, by Keith Ferrazzi. (Broadway, $25.) Achieving goals by building close relationships with a small circle of trusted individuals.

3

10-10-10, by Suzy Welch. (Scribner, $24.) Evaluating decisions based on how they will affect your life in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years.

5

4

THE TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, by Dave Ramsey (Thomas Nelson, $24.99.) Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host. (†)

7

5

HOUSE OF CARDS, by William D. Cohan. (Doubleday, $27.95.) The fall of Bear Stearns and the beginning of the Wall Street collapse.

2

Stop Chasing and Start Leading – Leadership Lessons from the NHL

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Last night the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals to win the coveted Stanley Cup. Both teams deserved to be there, both played well throughout the season, and – as evidenced by a Game 7 in a best-of-seven-series – both teams were evenly matched.

Both teams were so evenly matched, in fact, that the same two teams had faced off last year for a shot at Lord Stanley’s Cup. In 2008, the Red Wings were victorious, defeating the young Penguins in a Game 6 triple overtime thriller. After their heartbreaking loss, one Pittsburgh player, Marian Hossa, was offered a five-year, $35 million dollar deal to remain with the team. He declined; shocking nearly everyone in the hockey world by instead choosing to sign a one-year deal with the champion Red Wings. Hossa, you see, wanted to win a championship.

The Best Laid Plans…

As we learned in the first sentence of this post, Hossa’s old team defeated Hossa’s new team for the 2009 Stanley Cup. Hossa chased the Cup and fell short. The prevailing thought is that he screwed up – that if he’d stayed in Pittsburgh he would be on the winning side. Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum, and Hossa’s departure surely led to other changes with the Penguins that may have contributed to their ultimate victory. That’s only speculation. The fact is that Hossa – so focused on winning a championship – couldn’t see the bright future ahead for the Penguins. He chased the Cup and (predictably) did not catch it.

Leaders Don’t Chase, They Lead

It’s strange that a hockey player would make such a mistake. From very early on in youth hockey, players are taught to skate to where the puck will be, not where it is. Players who skate directly after a moving puck become very tired, very quickly… and they never get the puck. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been,” Wayne Gretzky once intelligently stated. Hossa, we learned, skated to where the Cup had been, and away from where it was going to be.


Leaders don’t always know where the puck is going to be, but they do recognize that chasing things (especially shiny objects like the Stanley Cup) is fruitless and akin to a dog chasing its own tail. Leaders understand the goal and weigh decisions against it. Those activities that take them closer to the goal are good; those that don’t are bad. Leaders also understand their team’s capabilities, strengths and weaknesses; and they are able to project where their team will be at this time next year.

To See the Future, You Have to Look

With arguably the sport’s two greatest talents (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin) and a young stud goalie (Marc-Andre Fleury) already on the roster, one would think Hossa would have seen Pittsburgh’s bright future and stayed. During the six games as a Penguin in the 2008 Stanley Cup finals, Hossa scored 3 goals and had 4 assists. In his seven games as a Red Wing in this year’s finals, he scored no goals and had just 3 assists. Pundits speculate that the pressure of his decision got to him. Understanding what makes leaders and non-leaders tick, we believe he performed poorly because of his desperation to win a championship; the same desperation that led him to chase instead of lead. The kind of desperation common in poor leaders.

Why We Don’t Have Leaders in the Public Sector

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Leadership Lessons from the Public Sector

There are reasons some people are lifelong public servants and others work in the real world. Whether it’s the military, public education, a state legislature or a municipal government: a job void of profit responsibility is generally void of any true accountability. Without accountability, leadership can become unnecessary and the skill set (if it ever existed) will atrophy.

As we wrote in a recent post about school administrators, the people in these roles “are generally not great leaders… They’ve never had to live by a P&L or make real personnel decisions. They spend our tax dollars like Monopoly money, and they do all of this with no real accountability.”

Examples of this abound and we never have to look very far to reinforce this belief. Occasionally, some move by one of these leadership amateurs so shocks our conscience that we feel compelled to comment… much like a recent decision by management at an Atlanta-area county office that actually made us cringe.

Layoffs Happen

Last Friday in DeKalb County (GA), workers in the planning and development office were told there were significant layoffs coming and that they would have to wait until Monday to learn their fate.




Nothing strange here, right? Layoffs are happening all over America in the private sector, so it seems natural that these would eventually reach those working in a cash-strapped county office. The differences, however, between this layoff and those that are occurring in the real world are the communication skills and compassion shown by DeKalb County’s managers.

The 100+ employees in this office were told to return any county equipment and pack up their belongings and leave… without being notified if they were included in the layoff or not. You see, their managers wanted everyone out first, and then they would tell the lucky few (19 to be exact) to return with their things and resume their duties.

WTF?

(Excuse the texting in the middle of a post, but WTF? does not mean Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; and its use is appropriate in this case.)

While leaders in the private sector are often (rightfully) accused of being less compassionate than their public sector counterparts, employee relations as practiced by DeKalb County went the way of the three-martini lunch in the real world. Thankfully, the fear of lawsuits or bad public relations helps to keep this behavior out of the for-profit companies. When it happens in the public sector, we have little recourse but to strongly denounce it.

Okay, We Denounced It

We didn’t raise this example to simply call attention to the lousy leadership provided by government entities in the Atlanta area. Rather, we believed this instance was simply another glaring illustration of how the lack of a profit motive coupled with a promotional system based on tenure (instead of ability or merit) leads to poor leadership, morale and employee effectiveness. (If you’ve ever had to get your driver license renewed, you know exactly what we mean.)

Leaders need accountability, goals and responsibilities – complete with consequences – in order to grow and deliver value to their organizations. Where we fail to provide these to our middle managers, you can argue we end up operating like a government agency.

What About the 100 People Carrying Boxes Filled with Desk Chachki?

DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis stepped in and said he was dissatisfied with how the process was being managed and ordered a delay of the layoffs. (We’re not sure why a county needs a CEO, but we’re glad someone with authority in the county has a little common sense.) The delay, however, will be a short one. Plans are in the works to save more jobs, but DeKalb’s planning and development office will deservedly lose more than half its current workforce… they’ll just do it with a little more dignity.

The Effect of Ego on Leadership

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The Effect of Ego on Leadership

At AskTheManager.com we’ve always held to the belief that you can learn more from bad leadership examples than you can from the good ones. It’s not really cynical to think this way; in fact, we believe it’s quite healthy. It’s like seeking out the silver lining. We’ve learned so much from the poor, ineffective and insincere leaders in our lives, we feel we should thank them. And, when we closely examine the failed leadership examples of our collective past, we are faced with an overwhelming preponderance of overactive egos at work.

Of course, there are a few in the leadership development community who believe that leaders must possess the largest ego in the room to be truly effective. We disagree. Enlightened leaders – by their very nature – are as egoless as enlightened clergy. They serve, and as servants they deliver incredible results through the efforts of their entire team.

Even if you balk at the suggestion that effective leaders keep their egos in check, you cannot debate the negative impact of ego on team dynamics. Unhealthy ego is the single greatest barrier to teams working together effectively. Ego wears away the effectiveness of teams, and creates an agenda-driven environment where those with the uncontrollable egos put their needs ahead of the goals (and their teammates).

Ergo Ego

It’s not much of a stretch to understand that if the human ego can damage the dynamics of a team, and if teams are most effective when they have effective leadership, then leaders with too much ego can be damaging to their organizations.

Businesses need people to work as teams to meet their goals. Teams need effective leadership in order to function properly. When the leader makes it all about themselves, the team (and the organization) suffers.

Think about every bad business situation you’ve ever witnessed: What effect, if any, did ego play? Chances are that for most of the negative business situations in your memory bank, you can pinpoint the cause as ego-driven.


What’s a Bad Leader to Do?

If you’re an ineffective leader who recognizes they bring too much ego to the table, congratulations. Admitting you have a problem is always the first step. The next steps are a little harder.

In order to become an enlightened, effective leader (yes, this is a little redundant) you first have to realize that you don’t have all the answers. Even if you’re the owner of your company, you must understand very early on two important facts about industrial knowledge:

  • Those closest to the customers have the answers; and
  • Two heads are better than one.

As a leader, you are generally not the closest person to your customers (and you only come equipped with on head). Assuming you know it all is asinine and can be destructive to any organization. Seeking advice and answers from others not only makes you appear more genuine, it also means you’ll make better decisions.

Your next step toward shedding that melon-sized ego is to instill some humility in your routine. Humility, for those egomaniacal loons reading this, simply means that you’re humble; that you lack the pride and arrogance that makes you believe that everything is all about you. It also means that you see your major contribution as building and maintaining a motivating work environment that engages your team. (Leaders without humility believe their major contribution to the effort is the greatness that is “me.”)

Once you understand that you don’t know it all and that it’s not all about you, you can begin learning. Enlightened leaders have a voracious appetite for learning. They learn from books, from seminars and they especially learn from others. Truly enlightened leaders believe that everyone, even the receptionist and the janitor, has something to teach them. And they understand that the best way to learn is to listen.

A Spade is a Spade

Without some outside help, of course, it will be nearly impossible for the ego-driven leader to change his ways. We recommend assigning a peer or even a subordinate to call you to the carpet when you fail to provide humble, servant leadership.

Ask someone you can trust (and won’t resent) to call you an egomaniac when you step out of line. Encourage them to stand on your desk and shout at you whenever you fail to remain humble. You have to be willing to permit these constant course corrections or you have no chance to recognize and repair the destructive effects of ego on your leadership style.

The bottom line is that can’t let your ego get in the way of the goal. Your ability to overcome self-serving tendencies will determine your team’s effectiveness and anything you can do to give up your desire to be the center of attention can only help.

Stop the Madness – Social Networking is not a Panacea

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You’re Not Ready for Social Networking

A colleague who operates a retail franchise asked me my thoughts about incorporating social networking into his Internet sales efforts. Currently, he tracks about 35% of his sales directly to customers who first contacted his store via the Internet.

As I explained to my colleague (without trying to sound like a killjoy) I have no doubt that franchisees can and do sell their wares using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The question, however, should not be “How do I use social networking to drive sales?” but rather “Am I ready to use social networking to drive sales?” For 99% of the franchised retail locations out there, the answer is that you’re just not ready.

“Internet sales” (let’s not call it Internet marketing just yet) is an evolution. Think of your Internet sales approach as a “crawl-walk-run” strategy and determine where your store is using this scale. For example, if you’re not closing 20% of the leads generated by your website, then you’re still crawling. Put some processes and training in place to make sure you’re selling all of the low-funnel buyers before spending hours maintaining a Facebook page to possibly attract high-funnel browsers.

I Think I Can Fly

Social networking, you see, is in the flying stage of the crawl-walk-run continuum, because it takes roughly 100 times the effort to generate one sale as a good old fashioned salesman following a good old fashioned process working a good old fashioned lead. The ROI is just not there. Spending time managing a company MySpace account without successfully managing the leads and calls you’re already getting is like skipping first, second and third base on your way to home. It’s just not a homerun if you don’t touch all the bases.


I gave him a few examples to help him determine where his store was on the crawl-walk-run continuum:

You’re still crawling if:

  • You don’t have a written, clearly defined Internet sales process that includes at least 90 days of follow-up;
  • You’re not actively managing your store’s online reputation; and
  • You don’t currently collect 99% of customer email addresses in your store.

You’re just walking if:

  • You’re not logging at least 90% of your inbound sales calls in your CRM tool for future follow-up;
  • You’re not sending monthly, targeted email messages to your database (and I’m not talking about an e-newsletter here); and
  • You don’t have a clearly defined SEO strategy that includes managing your presence on the local searches.

You might be running if:

  • You’re consistently closing 20% of your Internet leads and phone ups;
  • You employ an effective SEM strategy; and
  • You’ve exhausted all the traditional leads sources available to you and you are actively seeking new ways to drive customers into your store.

But Twitter is Cool

The sad truth to all of this is that the cool stuff you can do on the Internet in the retail business, like social networking, is useless to an Internet sales department that has failed to do the heavy lifting first. We all want to do what’s new and glamorous, but there are no magic bullets in sales – it all takes work and 99% of that work is not glamorous.

This is not to say that social networking can’t have a huge impact on a brand, because it can. As I explained to my colleague, leave the bulk of the social networking to the manufacturer (the owners of the brand) until you’ve successfully harvested the low hanging fruit for your store.