Let me look at this from a couple of perspectives. Firstly, does your organisation repeat mistakes? It does not matter if your organisation is large and mistakes are repeated in different departments or business units. If your organisation is repeating mistakes or perpetuating bad practices the chances are it is not learning.

Is your organisation ready to learn? There is a compelling learning theory that posits learning takes place when the learner is ready. If the learner is not ready then a temporary ‘reactive learning’ may occur but there is not stickability. If an organisation is not readay to learn there may be a ‘teflon like effect’ when experience is endured but no penetration is made in psyche, systems or processes to leverage the experience to learning, retention and practice.

I am getting more deeply interested in the relationship between learning and innovation in organisations. This past week I have experienced some interesting insights with both a small business and a huge multi-national in how their organisations learn and innovate as well as the contrary. In both cases there are leaders now recognising that they are repeating past mistakes.

Maybe ‘mistakes’ is too strong a word but these organisations are waking up and realising they are not developing a collective organisational ‘consciousness’ that distributes learning among all its members. In one case this is impacting the return on investment of a considerable marketing budget. In the other case, the organisation is undertaking a large software implementation in business unit silos with all sorts of political ‘cloak and daggers.’ The organisation realised it has so much redundancy of systems and knowledge but there has been no leadership to transmit this learning more broadly.

I am going to write more about learning and innovation. I see these topics as being so critical whether you are a small micro business or a multi-national.

In our experience the people who espouse this one are freaked out about closing. They do not see it as necessary because they are afraid to close a sales discussion. If you never close a sales discussion* you are unlikely to secure much business, the best analogy is fishing with a bait-less hook. If you are in a small pond with lots of fish you might jag one but otherwise forget it.

I suppose closing sales has earned a bad rap over the years. There have been too many so called ʻsales gurusʼ with jingoistic terminology for the process of closing sales. If you were the victim of this crap you might have heard cutesy terms like the ʻpuppy dog close,ʼ the ʻBenjamin Franklin closeʼ among many others. Here is a little tip, these were lousy ideas and do not work in any market and especially Australia.

The fact is if you want to grow your business and approach sales professionally you must close the sales discussions you are having with prospective customers. And you know what? The easiest way to close a sale is to simply ask for the order. You must ask in your natural style and with a relaxed body language maintaining eye contact. It is no harder than this and if this sounds hard for you then start practicing.

If the thought of asking for an order or approval to proceed, remember all the times when you had to summon the courage to close other deals in life; your first dance at school, your first date, getting engaged and ultimately popping the biggest question of all, “whatʼs for dinner.” Just kidding, but you know what we mean.

*[We call these sales discussions since they are two way interactive, information based communications. Sale is not about ʻgift of the gab.ʼ]

2. People buy on price

Guess what many people do when they meet hesitation or a negative response when they try to close a deal? They drop the price! I have seen this happen without any discussion to identify why the prospect is hesitating or choosing not to proceed. In fact, we were told the story of a software consulting company that dropped their price from $30,000 down to $6,000 when they were asked for more detail about their proposal. Guess what? The prospect was prepared to pay $30k but the salesperson freaked out and dropped $24,000**.

People do not buy based on price alone. Price is most definitely a factor in the decision making but not THE factor. In most surveys of purchasing officers, price comes in around 4 or 5 in ranking of importance. What are the top factors influencing the buying decision? • Trust in the sales person and their organisation.
• Risk profile of doing business with the organisation.
• Quality of the products and services.
• References from other customers.
• Conforming to requirements.

There are others and there are differences based on what it is you are selling. If you are a trades person you may win or lose business based on your personal appearance, the quality of your quotation, your promptness and your communications style. If you are a consulting company you may win or lose business based on the interpersonal trust developed with the buyer, demonstrated experience, ability to reduce risks among others.

If you are inclined to compete on price you will surely win some business. You will miss out on so many more opportunities since most purchasers have an in-built suspicion detector for the lowest price presented. The organisation submitting the lowest price must overcome this suspicion and this can cost money.

And speaking of money, do you want to win business to win business or make money. How long can you survive on a lower margin by relying on the lowest common denominator in sales…….price competition.

**[True story. Would you not be suspicious of a firm that dropped their price like this?]

3. Follow up is not appreciated

At Sales Ecosystem we have found most folks who preach this lie from the soap box are often the same folks who claim you do not have to close. The common theme here is fear. People who do not follow up tend to be fearful of rejection or anger. In a kind of strange kind of paradox, prospects often get more irritated when there is NO follow up as opposed to a polite follow up phone call.

The key to follow up is timing. People like to interact with friendly professional people. if you have submitted a proposal and not followed up with a call to ensure the person received your proposal, what message does that convey? I will tell you bluntly, it tells the prospect you either donʼt give a crap about the business or you are so darned dis- organised that doing business with you is risky.

If you are networking and meet a person with whom you have shared business cards you should follow up no later that 48 hours. If you are a serious networker you should be in touch within 24 hours either by phone or by email. If you are sending an email you should add a piece of value add such as an article or other information your contact may find useful based on what you know about them. Ultimately to advance a relationship you need to either phone or schedule a face to face meeting if that is possible.

You should enjoy the follow up. It is all about mindset. We encourage a new mindset for people who struggle with closing and follow up. This mindset is based on servant leadership. You are providing a product and service of great value and it is in your prospects best interests to do business with you and not others. You are acting out of the best interests of your prospect not out of self interest. It is a bit ʻout thereʻ but it works miracles. Our coaching program helps adopt this mindset and the dividends are enormous.

4.You need to advertise to get new business

If you feel like going retro you can go back a decade or make it really fun and go back to the ʻgolden ageʼ of advertising during the ʻ60s and ʻ70s. Make sure you have lots of money and plenty of booze to drown your sorrows when you ultimately realise you could have used that all that money for a new car or a skiing holiday.

Advertising is one component within the marketing framework. Some business types use advertising effectively and these are typically ʻfast moving consumer goodsʼ (fmcg) and automobile companies. But you can achieve so much more and much more quickly by using tools that are widely available and often free to promote your business and grow your sales.

We see marketing execution as focused on getting your prospects to know, like and trust you. This is a journey that you can undertake no matter how large or small your business is or the market in which you compete. Many of the tactics we use in our marketing strategies are simple processes that do not depend upon hours and hours of time and expertise that is hard to learn and apply. Of course you can also cost effectively out- source elements of your marketing strategy.

Make sure you understand this distinction. Advertising is one way communication unless you have clients that enjoy having a conversation with a magazine, newspaper, television or radio. In advertising you try your hardest to get peopleʼs attention and then hope they will decide to contact you sometime. I guess there is some art to doing this since most people have attention spans less than ten seconds.

Modern marketing is a ʻconversation.ʻ It is at least two way conversation and in many cases it even goes beyond this to include other third parties. You create a relationship when you have a conversation and marketing is no different. In modern marketing you are able to provide information to prospects. This information can include a huge range including your website, Linked In profile, white papers, articles, free seminars/webinars, among so many others.

Throughout the marketing conversation you are offering information and inviting your prospects to give you more information as well.

5. Social media replaces face to face sales

Despite all the good news about modern conversational marketing there is still one common denominator that trounces all other forms of communication. No, it is not your Facebook page. As effective as social media is in connecting and communicating with people it has not yet trumped face to face interpersonal communication for building trust between people and businesses.

Most people interact with friends and acquaintances in an easy and relaxed fashion. When they are in a business meeting with a less familiar person they often become tense and nervous. Guess what? It shows. Being effective in one on one (or more) meetings is essential particularly if your business is dependent upon face to face interactions. For example if you are a trades person you must usually meet the prospect at some point during the quoting/sales cycle. If you are selling consulting services and/or high end software system you need to meet personally with your prospect.

There are companies that refute this and insist upon selling their products and services via phone and web meetings. I still believe the most effective (and efficient) way to gain a trust based relationship with a prospect is face to face. I recall a meeting with a specialised software company based in Brisbane. These guys are successful in their target market and knocking off far bigger competitors in Australia, Asia and North America. I asked the Managing Director and the Sales Manager if they could distill their success to a few elements.

The responses to this question are a good lesson. The Managing Director mentioned ʻgreat software and consulting expertise.ʼ The Sales Manager said ʻwe go to the client and present in person.ʼ This guy spends a lot of time in planes and sees this as a necessary fact of life to achieve the kind of success they are enjoying. This company could do online software demos and give their prospects free trials without ever leaving Brisbane. But do you really think they would have achieved their market dominance if their competitors met personally with prospects yet they did not?

In my experience the answer to both of the above scenarios is usually yes, there is awareness but beyond that it gets a bit more dicey.  I have recently had this experience and strangely enough it has occurred twice in less than a month.  In one case there was vague recollection that ‘HR was doing something in that area,” and in the other case there was knowledge of the LMS implementation and its relevance to some pressing compliance issues.  One out of two is the score up to now but even the senior executive with the knowledge of the system did not inspire me with his interest in the team undertaking the implementation.

Well enough inspiring me, but imagine what it is like for the learning and development professionals in the organisation?  Could a dialogue with their executive like the one I had encourage them and make them feel connected to the organisation’s strategy?  The LMS is usually a system that is accessed across an organisation with high visibility.  This visibility begs for contribution from senior executives to communicate vision and purpose to solidify the alignment of the LMS and the organisations strategic objectives.

In many cases content marketing is the use of white papers, articles, biographies, product information, case studies and other types of documents.  These different types of documents may be available from a web page, an email or in hard copy.  If they are well written and provide a benefit to the recipient there is a measure of effectiveness achieved.  If you are very effective you will find your content marketing being distributed by third parties who believe your content will be beneficial to others in their network.

I like to extend the definition of content marketing to include learning.  I have found that changing the terminology to learning based marketing changes the way that one approaches the design, development and deployment of the content.  With my clients this has meant a change from a copywriting focus to an instructional design focus.

Learning based marketing includes a wide range of options for content development and deployment.  Two of my larger clients have deployed learning management systems, others are using content management systems and other simply use slide-shows using Powerpoint (Articulate) or Prezi.  The clients using the learning management systems have created a range of options for prospects and clients to engage with the company across a range of dimensions including courses, discussions, surveys and user groups.  The LMS has become an all encompassing portal for introducing prospects to their business, keeping existing clients engaged and offering the chance to give feedback and participate in new product and service launches.

Another plank to the learning based marketing strategy is memberships.  One of my clients has added memberships to this LMS environment.  The members pay a very small fee for full access to a range of learning content that includes courses on natural health, supplements, lifestyle, and other related topics.  This natural health practice has expanded its business with revenue growth in professional and therapeutic services as well as their retail channel.

If you would like to explore learning based marketing for your business please contact me.  I am happy to help you decide if this marketing strategy is right for your business.

If you are a sole operator you need to get an education partner.  This person can be another business owner, trusted advisor, coach or mentor.  You meet this person at least twice a month and you ‘churn’ your learning.  You discuss ideas and topics you have read or experienced and look for ways to apply this information in your business.  For example, as a coach I have a few clients for whom I am the education partner.  While reading the Steve Jobs biography we also reviewed Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.  We churned through behavioural examples in the Jobs biography, explored the results and used Multipliers as a guide to our own behaviours.  It was a fantastic process and one in which we all learned a great deal.  We took it to another level with an overlay of an extended disc profile.  I encouraged my clients to use a journal to capture our observations and ideas.

If you are a leader in a larger business you have another option.  You may still opt to use a coach, however I recommend you ‘anoint’ a team member as the ‘Learning Leader’ or whatever name suits.  You may opt to have this role on a rotation.  Choose a person who shows a propensity for learning and discussion to get started.  You may identify some key areas of development and then set up a learning plan.  This can take all sorts of paths.  For example I have a client who initiated a learning program for Salesforce.   The team meets every fortnight (twice per month) and explores ways to use Salesforce in new ways and solidifies the knowledge of basic work-flows.  My client reports higher levels of enthusiasm for the CRM, greater utilisation and shared ownership of the information integrity.  Recently they implemented the Content Delivery tool in Salesforce with great early results. This program will continue through April and then they are moving to a learning program focused on personal and interpersonal leadership skills.

• Don’t take your learning journey alone.
• Set up a learning plan with goals.
• Appoint a ‘learning leader’/educator in your organisation
• Use a journal to capture ideas and insights
• Sustain the process with measurement