“Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now.” – Vivian (Julia Roberts), Pretty Woman (1990)

IDC and Gartner recently reported 68.5M consumer PCs were sold in Q3 of this year and volumes could hit 70M in Q4. We’re well on our way to the industry’s next big goal…2B PCs WW. The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) estimates CE sales will hit $48.1 B in Q4 producing modest industry growth for the year. All in all, not bad for a lackluster year.

We’ve done a good job of profiling and targeting the early adopters. Looking at our kids list of “gotta have” stuff, they’ve nailed the teens, tweens and Gen Yers. Watching the Wii commercials with old dudes bowling, they’ve tapped into the boomers+. Problem is we’ve only given lip service to half of the global population…women, even lady geeks. Maybe the problem is exactly as Sean Connery stated…“I like women. I don’t understand them, but I like them.”
This epiphany came to us as we tried to figure out why our 1TB home server was already half full. Turned out the files were typical of most consumers’ home system storage – digital photos, music, video clips, personal videos, etc. Very little of it was ours ! That got us to thinking…and wondering…

Fearing The Unknown
Why is the industry doing such a poor job in reaching the female segment of the market? It might be as Warren Farrell said, “The only men who aren’t in fear of women’s reactions are usually men who aren’t born or who are dead.”

While most firms – manufacturers and retailers – may not fear women, only a few have really tried tapping into this half of the buying public. BestBuy has a separate team that focuses on reaching the female technology/CE consumer. Many of the camera manufacturers have introduced female-friendly devices.
MP3 player producers are doing a decent job.

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Figure 1 - “Look, I’m all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I’m being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.” – Dwight Schrute – The Office, ABC-TV

Seriously… Tim Berners-Lee had no idea how huge his concoction was going to be when he first unleashed the Web on the world. Like the Internet itself, all he wanted to do was make it possible for researchers to share/update information with other researchers. Somewhere along the way, it got “a little” outta’ hand! Well, not really. There’s just a little chasm between boomers, Gen Xers, Gen Yers.

There’s also a little chasm between C-level execs, marketing/communications, workers. There’s little to no chasm between work and home. In “the company”:

• 93% own a cellphone, compared to 78% of industrial country adults
• 85% have a desktop computer, compared to 65% of all adults
• 61% own a laptop, compared to 39% of all adults
• 27% own a Blackberry, iPhone or similar device, compared to 13% of all adults

For the most part, all generations, work levels agree that these and other technologies have had a positive effect on their productivity.

Figure 2 - Technology Helps – Regardless of the generation, company personnel feel that today’s advanced technology has helped them become more productive in their jobs. Source – Kelly Services

They use their computers, use email and most even use an Internet browser. The majority (90%) believes the new technology; new software helps them perform better, faster. C-level executives see the social networking tools as a means of achieving marketing/sales success, but don’t think it’s for use by everyone.

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Growth–too much, too fast, too soon–can be a direct cause of failure. The same is true for organizations that see growth as the only way to survive.

”We must achieve 20% growth at all cost,” has lead to the demise of PC/CE companies throughout the industry. The drive in a down economy is a sure road to disaster.

The problem is, no one wants to stand still. It’s not “The American Way”. Each of us starts a company with one objective: to grow…to gain greater stature and increase profits.

And why not? We’re constantly bombarded with “bigger is better”.

Look at the business pages. You never see an item on a company that’s growing slowly or maintaining status quo. But financial editors aren’t to blame for covering the growth of companies, growth of stocks, growth of industries. People want to be associated with winners. And when they invest, they want their companies to grow in sales, profits and market value.

As a result, the desire to grow becomes compulsive.

It’s also true that there are times that when a business stops growing, it begins to wither and die.

Unfortunately for many management groups, growth for the sake of growth has become the all-consuming objective. If you aren’t achieving the same level of growth and expansion than those in your market segment you are obviously not living up to your fullest corporate potential. Nearly every other consideration takes a back seat to this golden grail.

Don’t get us wrong. Growth is necessary. And growth isn’t necessarily bad. But it takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Your Objective…ROI
Growth and size may contribute to an organization’s temporary well being, but offer no assurance of long-term health.

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Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map.– Wayne Calloway

When Eric Schmidt (Google) said he paid a premium of one billion for YouTube he spelled out part of the strategy companies increasingly use to compete – acquire for growth or to block competition. The old management stigma of NIH (not invented here) has been replaced by the scramble to keep up with or lead the pack at almost any cost. With the world economy showing signs of recovering, companies are positioning themselves for the next phase of growth, the next big thing! Companies that were started two – three and more years ago nursed their activities along paying close attention to their cash flow to bring their products, services and technology along waiting for the business climate to improve. Admittedly the climate for IPOs (initial public offering) is weak – not even considering the fiscal and physical toll it takes on the company – all indicators point to a pent-up M&A activity and enthusiasm for the coming.

Mind-boggling, record-breaking numbers have grabbed the headlines:

• Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion
• Cisco acquiring Tandberg for $3 billion
• Adobe buying Omniture for $1.8 billion
• VMware grabbing SpringSource for a lowly $420 million
• Intuit snapping up PayCycle and Mint for a lousy $170 million each

These are only the tip of the iceberg. Tons of friendly and unfriendly M&A deals are being pursued or speculated:

• HP and Polycom
• Oracle checking out SuccessFactors, Taleo, Concur, RightNow, NetSuite, Citrix, ???
• Dell, Nokia and HP watching Palm’s struggles
• Google promising a buy a month

Many more “discussions” are started and broken off.

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The word ‘Autoresponders’ has been used more and more over the last few months and pretty much all of us have now experienced them even if you don’t yet realise it. 

But just what is an autoresponder and why should you think about using one in your business? 

Well, let me explain. 

The simplest form of an autoresponder is when you send a message to someone and you immediately receive an email back that tells you that person is out of office. This email will have been sent automatically (no human response was required) and it will have responded to you – hence the name autoresponder. 

You will have also probably seen an autoresponder if you’ve purchased products off of a website. Take Amazon for example or Ebay. If you’ve purchased something from Amazon or made a bid on Ebay, the chances are high that you will have immediately received an email from the company confirming your purchase or your bid.  

And you may have seen autoresponders at work if you’ve subscribed to a newsletter from a website. In most cases now, you will have immediately receive an email from the company concerned welcoming you to the website with a copy of the newsletter. 

Now, trust me when I say that a human is not sitting there at all times of the day or night responding to messages that come in from a website or order confirmations – these emails are sent automatically from you by a computer programme that has been specifically written for this purpose. 

But, why should you care? What has this got to do with your business? 

Now (hopefully) you’ve got your head around what an autoresponder is, I want you just to think for a minute about the power of autoresponders and how they can help your business. 

Imagine that while you’re on holiday, a potential customer visits your website.

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Perhaps you’ve heard that sharing Features, Advantages and Benefits is a more effective approach than just feature dumping on our prospective customers. But do we effectively do that in our sales conversations?

Let me share a simple experience where a young shoe salesman did this well. We need shoes and since we are on our feet a lot, we select some that are comfortable, yet stylish to wear at work.

I was window shopping in Puerto Vallarta. Along the way a very stylish, yet simple pair of Italian, two-tone brown loafers caught my eye in a little shoe store off the cobblestone street. Thinking I was only looking, I stepped into the store to check them out. I picked them up and quickly put them down, as my initial reaction was, “Wow…that is not cheap!”

My young and very wise shoe expert approached and engaged me in conversation about my visit to the store, to Puerto Vallarta, and what I did for a living. I made the mistake of telling him I was a professional speaker who traveled sharing ideas on how others could be more successful in their lives, careers, sales, etc. (Guess he figured I could really afford them… smile.)

Picking up the shoes and holding them with reverent care, he said, “You know, when you wear these traditional Italian loafers, in these rich spring hues, you’re going to have a big smile on your face because ‘one of the great things’ about these shoes is they’re soft calfskin leather with a full leather lining. And as you wear them, they will mold to the shape of your feet, giving you a custom-made feel.” He continued, “It would be fun to walk around in custom-made shoes, don’t you think?”

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As a selling professional, I would expect you have created a simple system to record your sales activities and results. Hopefully you are recording and measuring these areas on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.

• Sales to new customers
• Sales to repeat customers
• Sales presentations and closed sales (closing ratios)
• Sales to referrals vs. cold calling or walk in customers
• Other metrics of importance as discussed with your manager

Like many of you, I am not a fan of paperwork. I have learned it is necessary to help me succeed in achieving what I want in life, and so I invest my time to improve my ongoing results.

Recording your activity on a consistent basis gives you some solid metrics to evaluate and will often reveal areas that you can work on to enhance your selling abilities and results.

You can’t improve what you can’t identify.

I challenge you to invest time (5 mins a day; 30 minutes a week; an hour a month; or a day at the end of your year) evaluating your activities and your results.

I can guarantee you’ll be more in touch with the ‘reality’ and connections between your activities and results. In addition, you’ll be in a good position to make productive changes that will increase your closing ratios, earn more money, and build a better repeat and referral customers base.

Remember, what gets measured gets done. Make it a point to reward what you want to see. Treat yourself when you increase your results.

What do your activities and measurements reveal?
As you evaluate your measurements, ask yourself a few ‘honest’ questions:

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What kind of buyer are you?
If you are normally a ‘price’ buyer and your prospective customer raises objections to the price, you may be more open to accept their objection as real.

If you are the kind of person who tends to ‘think it over’ before you buy and your customer says, “I want to think it over;” you may tend to go along, as this objection makes senses or sounds rational. After all, that is the way ‘you’ buy.

The objection you will normally find the most challenging will be the one that is the most‘consistent’ with your own value system and past track record.

By accepting sales objections that make sense or resonate with you, because you can relate to them, you are essentially projecting your personal attitudes into the sales process. Hold on!

This is not your role as a selling professional. And, for the record, just because someone says the price is too high, does not always mean ‘they’ believe it. I’ve had folks say ‘that’ and go on to invest even more in the final results.

When you project your personal bias into the sales process you wrongly assume that everyone buys like you do and for the same reasons. And, conversely, that they don’t buy for the same reasons.

People make decisions to buy for their own reasons. Sometimes they even buy items they don’t need. And, as you probably know they don’t always tell you (the sales person) the truth.

This erroneous attitude and action will cost you customers and money.

Your role is to be a neutral in the sales process, there to help, to provide solid resources, to guide, and to nudge for a buying decision.

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