Trust is easy to build and even easier to lose
Do what you say you’re going to do.
One Moore Thing: Don’t overthink it. People try to play games and use different psychological tactics to “earn” trust when all they’re really doing is trying to trick somebody. Trust is built over time and earned by simply doing what you said you’d do.
Congratulations to my little brother, Brian, who was married yesterday. He and his new wife, Debbie, have given themselves a new beginning for a future filled with promise and love.
As a society, we celebrate the new beginnings that weddings, births, and graduations signify. But why is it that in personal relationships we are typically quick (sometimes too quick) to make changes, yet in business we drag out important decisions because we are afraid of the unknown? Because we don’t trust ourselves.
One Moore Thing: If you consider yourself successful at personal relationships, then use same decision-making criteria to flourish in business… your gut.
When you’re feeling your in a rut or experiencing a lull in performance, take a little time and give:
Give Time: Go to lunch with a customer. Talk about anything except business. You’ll learn new things, build a deeper connection, and be under no pressure.
Give Back: Take a day and volunteer at a homeless shelter or swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At the end of the day you’ll be dead tired, but thankful for what you have and refreshed to tackle a new day.
Give Ideas: Come up with three ideas that will help one of your customers increase their business. These ideas should have nothing to do with your offerings. You will be forced to look at things from a different view and your customers will start to view you as a trusted adviser.
Give It A Rest: Take a day off. Go see a daytime movie, enjoy a great lunch, and surprise your wife with dinner when she gets home. Don’t check your email or take phone calls all day.
Give Thanks: Take the day and drive to as many clients as you can. Show up without an appointment and tell them you just stopped by to thank them for their business. Have a brief conversation (don’t overstay your welcome) and tell them to have a fantastic day. They’ll always take your call after that.
Give Hugs: Show some love to people. Hug your husband, your kids, your friends, your assistant, or your customer. How can anybody feel bad after a good hug?
One Moore Thing: The more you give, the more you get back from the universe. It may not always be in the way you expect, but good always comes back to you.
It’s more fun that it looks…
I love shopping. I know I may lose my Man-Card for that, but it’s true. It doesn’t matter of I’m buying Christmas gifts, clothes, electronics, or even groceries… I just like to shop.
One reason I like shopping is because I like “stuff”… who doesn’t? But the other reason is that I find it cathartic; the process of buying something is relaxing to me. I know what I’m looking for and when I find it, I’m typically ready to purchase. Rarely, if ever, do I buy the lowest price because for me it’s more about value and service. And because I value those things, I also don’t negotiate prices. I want my seller to make money. I want them to be around next year. I want them to look forward to me walking in their door because I’m a friendly and profitable customer.
I don’t have to be sold, because I’m a buyer.
One Moore Thing: Are you trying to sell to people or talk to buyers?
Speed equals sales
Today’s prospects are handling hundreds of emails, dozens of phone calls, and several meeting each day. They don’t have time to do an in-depth analysis on every single item they’re working on. That’s the downside.
The upside is they are so incredibly busy that if you can answer questions, return calls, and schedule resources faster than your competitor, you can save them time… and time is more valuable than money in today’s economy. So it stands to reason that if you can save your prospects time, you will win more business.
To capitalize on that advantage, you need a killer app. What is a killer app? Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:
In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.
This has nothing to do with software. Although the iPhone has a killer app (Siri), so does Zappo’s (customer service), and Walmart (low prices). In today’s hectic sales world, your killer app should be speed.
Imagine if you needed a plumber or a moving company. You call on Monday and customer service schedules an appointment for Thursday. The salesperson meets with you for an hour and then moves through the rest of their daily appointments. On Friday, the salesperson goes through their process to get pricing, and after engaging their resources, they email pricing the following Tuesday. You’ll probably receive a follow-up call a week after the email seeing if “everything looked good” on the quote.
What started as a pressing issue to you was just relegated to mediocrity by the salesperson. Instead of having the same sense of urgency as you, they went about their business at their own speed. You needed immediacy and instead had to wait 1–2 weeks to get an answer.
Now you know how your prospect feels.
One Moore Thing: Every business is different, but in most instances, speed can be a competitive advantage that can increase your win rate by 10–20%. You just need to determine the best way to streamline your sales and customer service processes to ensure you are faster than your competitor.
Entertainer? Yes. Salesperson? No.
Giving people the shirt off your back is a selfless act if you’re doing a favor for somebody. But if you’re giving them the shirt off your back when selling something… you’re just losing your shirt.
A common complaint I hear from salespeople is their prices are too high. Instead of selling the value of their offering, they want to win business by offering the lowest price. They beg and plead with their boss to lower the price just this one time… and if they can win just this one sale, they are sure there will be more work from that customer in the future. There are two flaws in that argument:
Selling solely on price is for lazy salespeople. Low pricing doesn’t build loyalty, because the instant a competitor beats your price, you lose that customer. Stop giving them the shirt off your back and instead focus on the value you offer.
One Moore Thing: It costs 5–10 times as much to find a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer. Why not reward loyal customers with pricing incentives instead of giving it to a stranger?
You must fill your own inbox
Many people make their work fill their day instead of their day fill their work. It’s human nature; if people don’t have something to do, they will work slower, waste time, and become easily agitated. They will also be more prone to mistakes, less creative, and eventually become disgruntled enough to either leave or cause others to leave.
So rather than waiting for work, these employees should create their own work. They need to find things that will make a difference and begin working on those items, not mindless tasks meant to make chew up chunks of time. My first career was doing computer graphics and if I didn’t have work in my inbox, I would sit around all day figuring out new ways of doing things, or read trade journals, or take extra-long lunches. Before I could do something that affected the bottom line, I had to wait for somebody to give me work.
That’s how I got started in sales… I was bored with sitting around doing nothing and instead decided to go sell my services, then go back to the office and do the work I just sold. It gave me a tremendous amount of satisfaction to start a relationship, convince them to let me do their work, and then go do the work. My productivity went up about 400%. It was a great feeling, but required a much different mindset to leave the cave, find something to kill, and drag it back. But by doing this, I was able to give myself and the people around me something meaningful to do in our jobs.
It’s amazing to have that feeling of freedom, but it’s also scary for most people. Honestly, most of the population doesn’t have that instinct. If you’re in sales, you have the ability to fill your own inbox. If you don’t have anything to work on, you go find a new client. That process gives everybody else around you things to work on, because you just filled their inbox.
One Moore Thing: Creating work is hard work, and it’s not for everybody. If you find somebody that can create work, find ways to motivate them to continue creating work. They can be the lifeblood of your organization.
Congratulations New York Giants, Super Bowl XLVI Champs
You don’t become a champion because of your lineage (Eli Manning) or your model-like good looks (Tom Brady). No, you become a champion because you have the guts to ignore the critics, put in the effort, and pursue your own brand of excellence.
One Moore Thing: You can’t be given a championship; you must earn it. What are you doing to earn your championship today?
“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” –Peter Drucker
One Moore Thing: Which are you focusing on?
We can be connected to almost anybody with a few dozen clicks of a mouse. This confuses people into thinking they’ve made a real connection, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The “click connection” may actually distance you even more because you’ll start to prejudge them based on photos, tweets, and employment summaries.
By the way, if you don’t engage them in a conversation… that’s called stalking.
One Moore Thing: Follow up “click connections” with a conversation, lunch, or a beer. Get to know people instead of pixels.