Barry W Thornton Blog

I have a friend who used to be a great salesman and is now a virtual failure. He has confidence, will charge in, will persist, has energy, can say the right things, and still fails. I used to think the problem was an issue of fear, now closer observation and consideration makes me think the problem is more one of the misplaced need for acceptance. Needs and wants are very different drives. Emotions can drive needs, wants are intellect driven. The passion of need leads to comprise, the passion of want leads to structure. Needs limit perception, wants expand them.

Assuming that what I offer you has value to you, if I need to sell it to you and you won’t buy it, the need emotion overwhelms and generates desperation that stinks, you will smell it and dominate the situation thus control me.

If I want to sell you something and you won’t buy then I will likely go away, you will have to call me back thus we have parity, neither of us will dominate the situation and there is no control, just a transaction.

My friend’s need for acceptance has swamped out his wants, try as he might, he is a victim when he should be a participant. No sale is made.

Needs are irrational, wants aren’t.

Oh my gawd!, look at my in-box. Given hard times everyone is trying to fill it. The spam level has exploded and I am getting bombarded with more promotions that ever. The result is of course I spend a bit more time killing this stuff and don’t look at any of it. These folks are getting desperate and the only solution to their very limited marketing imaginations is to turn up the throttle, which is increase, the volume of their customer communications. A simple answer, send more e-mails to your customers with more offers.

Does this really work? A Does it make sense?

Heck no!

I am so busy getting rid of junk communications from people I have done business with and expect to in the future that I don’t even read them anymore. I find myself hitting the UNSUBSCRIBE button more just out of spite for their stupidity.

I have my own stresses, don’t add yours to the pile. There must be a better way. And of course there is.

First, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says, in friendly letters, DON’T PANIC!

This is the time to create stronger bonds, not alienate the customer. Here are some thoughts on how to do that.

1 – Don’t Broadcast Your Panic. It stinks. The customer can smell it and is repulsed, usually permanently. Control yourself, the big push isn’t going to save the day so get smart, stop and think . . don’t stampede with knee-jerk reactions. Calm down.

2 – It is all changing, the market and your customers. Define the change so you can adapt your approaches to fit it. In theory the ultimate skill of mankind is to adapt and evolve quickly so try to be a good functional human. This means the first thing is to find out the new rules. Take time to ask the customer what is going on and where they are going. Get feedback, answer questions, be useful and maintain those good relations you worked so hard to get.

3 - You are scared, they are scared, get above it even if you think the ship is sinking, get their input and project your wisdom. Be strong, not overbearing, show wisdom and strength. Become a bastion of hope, it’s what Obama did and worked for him, you still don’t hear a plan but the belief that one is coming keeps people tuned in and listening. Follow that path.

4 – Dialog with your customers. Engage them. Write content that encourages dialog, get their ideas and publish them to other customers. Timely, entertaining, relevant, hopeful content shows that you are on top of it, experts with strength. Listening shows you care, spreading the word, answer to questions and smart advise, all show that you are responsible, trustworthy, and concerned for them.

5 - If there ever was time to be social, this is it! Don’t run off into the ‘WEB.2” illusion, get real. Your customer’s have a desire to do well for others, figure out how you can get into that flow. If it is sales, give some of the cash flow to charity and make a point of it, it is really your customer who is helping out, make sure he knows it and can be proud that when the chips are down what is good for him (your stuff or service) is also good for the community. There a thousand variations on this, find one that works for you.

6 – If you have a local presence, partner with local companies to make an event. Simple things, take your internal expertise, your Financial, HR, Ops, Procurement, even Execs public. Set up a simple “ask the expert’ table top in a bookstore, supermarket, where ever, and offer up their experience and knowledge to those who want to learn or need knowledge. Take those dialogs, now questions from the common man, and use them as content for your email. Practical stuff that can get you newspaper and radio exposure as well as tell you customers you really care.

Use your imagination; push out with who you are, not just your “deals”. Build trust and show concern. It is cheap to do, just open your heart and show you have one.

Copyright 2008 Barry W Thornton all rights reseved

The other day I was reflecting on office space. The reason for this is that my newest company, Austin Medical Research has no offices, we all work out of our homes. We have labs and engineering space, but that is confidential and thus not open to anyone other than select employees, it is not public space. It is because we are about to do a big expansion in people that I reflect on this issue.

My last start-up (ClearCube Technology) was started in my garage, as we grew we moved into a rented apartment complex on the lake (it had a pool and gym, great view, water access, patio, etc. – all benefits for the employees). After that we moved into a strip mall office space and then we got a new CEO and it all changed. Suddenly our image required a big public space because our customers were Enterprise, Fortune 100 companies and we had to do the dog and pony show all the time.

Do we really need that now? We use a Contract Manufacturer for production and fulfillment so what are the real office needs? Who will come to our office other than people trying to sell us stuff? Who needs to be impressed and why?

None as far as I can see for the near future but let’s look at that closer.

How about the most important people, my customers? We do direct sales to Distributors, Doctors, and Patients. We can stage local events for the Distributors and the Doctors in a rented-by-the-hour presentation office space when needed. We have budgeted visits to them for everything from training to schmoozing, after all this is an Entertainment Economy so we do it right, rent a real stage.

How about Investors? No, if I can impress an investor with my office building and not my balance sheet then I am dealing with morons. They invested to make money, not to satisfy their ‘edifice complex’. As long as they understand that we will stage what we need when we need it (again, this is after all an Entertainment Economy), they have no reason to complain.

How about Employees? All my managers would rather work from home. They get more done without giving up over a hour a day to drive to work. More important I get people who would not relocate anyway. Communications – well we are Skype-nuts, I can see and talk with each on the computer at any time. Meetings can be done at my house or we can rent a space when needed. Skype is the water-cooler and the conference room. All have an equity stake and are motivated. If I hire intelligently most all the rest of the staff can also work at home and Skype to work. Jobs that fall below the independent worker level and require daily supervision can be outsourced as needed, they are so well defined that metrics alone can drive them. In general I get greater efficiency and happier folks. It is a new culture based on the Internet, why not take advantage of it?

How about my bottom line? No office overhead, no receptionist, no facilities person, Outsourcing IT is a gigantic help, office politics and social issues go away, time is used better, where do I stop?

How long can we do this? I think we can do this until fear sets in and we need organized waste for self-validation. I think I am too old for that, are you?

I had noted in an earlier Blog that the key to marketing is to make someone unhappy, it is then the job of sales to them make them happy again, that’s how the two work together. - - So what are the tools of unhappiness?

Try F.U.D. the acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt!

If someone is happy with what they have you clearly aren’t going to sell them a replacement. Only when you break the relationship between what they have and how they feel about it can you expect to get new brain space, and brain space is what you need to convert them into a customer.

So F, U, and D are three great pry-bars or tools you can use to loosen up some brain-space. All of them start out as probes, until one hits a chink in the armor and gets some traction you have nothing, you just slide around on the outside of someone’s “satisfaction shield”.

You must probe with constant FUD questions to elicit response that will start someone thinking. Do this and in most cases a door will open.

Is this marketing or selling? Maybe it’s both.

Anyway, you must do a series of probative adverts, always asking questions that center around ‘what makes you think you are happy?’. Maybe you communicate a message that shows why they should be unhappy or happier. Maybe you do positioning statements or explanations that are really questions in disguise. Statements with words like ‘new’ or ‘better’ or the like are really questions, they ask ‘why don’t you have the newest or the best?.

Ever consider that the opening of any sales pitch is a marketing message or proposition? You bet it is! Every opening sales pitch is essentially an advertisement. Even if the target says no and walks way, just how is that different than having looked at an ad in a magazine or on TV ,and passed on it? It only becomes a sales pitch when some brain-space opens up and an idea enters the mind that can feed the unhappiness and start a change to occur.

In most ways technology marketing and sales is the easiest. Technology offers an addictive solution. Whatever the customer has, it is on the way to being out of date, not enough, too slow; whatever was good about it making the customer happy is now fading away. Technology is about change and change means something better is coming. It is only a matter of time.

What does this mean to the entrepreneur? - - It means two things. One is that the range for new ventures is almost unending and virtually unlimited, it is as wide as the scope of human endeavors and ideas. The second is that you only need to change one thing to make it new; only one problem has to be solved to tap a market. Your business will be based on what makes someone unhappy.  It really is simple after all.

copyright 2008 Barry W Thornton all rights reserved

There is an old story/saying that goes ‘Sit down and don’t rock the boat, I trying to drill a hole in the bottom’. Trying to scuttle the boat, or business, may not be intentional, but the action or conduct that does that may be all that people can figure out to do.  This is part of the problem of the Entrepreneur inside a company has to face. Businesses die today because, in the now common business vernacular, the DNA is wrong (we know it really is the MEMEs (1) that are wrong but the folks with bad Memes think of it as DNA, how foolish, everyone knows you can’t change DNA, Memes on the other hand are fluid and can morph with degree of ease).

The internal entrepreneur’s problem is changing the way the business thinks and acts. Like different DNA in a body, he (or she) is attacked as a fatal threat by the rest of the business unless he is shielded or camouflaged.

Protection or shielding does not work that well because it permits all the ‘antibodies’ to focus on a clear target. And example would be a CEO deciding that he needs to change the course of the business to grow so he puts a spot light on the group trying to change the way people think. Targeting, simple targeting. That spotlight makes it clear to all who has to be wiped out to maintain the status quo. It is the guy rocking the boat that everyone can hate.

Camouflage on the other hand is surreptitious and a bit sneaky, doesn’t attract a lot of attention and in the internal entrepreneurs case lets him win converts, even gets the sympathy vote by the very people who will eventually be changed. By not putting the change mechanism in people’s faces you offer a way to adapt that is not confrontational.

Traditionally new ways were developed in a skunk works, a place that was simply not visible where the Standard Operating Procedures could be tossed out and newness could happen. Problem is that skunkworking doesn’t allow the newness to infect and drive the oldness to change, It leaves the oldness in isolation. You may get a neat new product but you don’t necessarily get a new way of doing things.

The point is that the internal entrepreneur’s job is really to adapt the organization to treat the customer in new ways. To do that his act must be visible and infectious to all but not threatening. Quite a trick, takes special guts, and in the end a love for both the business and customers because in today’s market place this has to be a continuous process.

Too bad GM can’t figure this out.

Question is, can your company figure it out?

(1) DNA are the units of biological knowledge that set the pattern for the entity containing them, Memes are units of cultural knowledge the set the pattern for the way the entity thinks.-

Copyright Barry W Thornton 2008 all rights reserved