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For every ying there is a yang, or something like that.

Check out this list of 10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich, which is a list of improbable ideas which appear to have made a few people lots of money, courtesy of the internet and the Long Tail. Who woulda thunk:

• antenna balls for your car?
• sunglasses for your dog?
• dating service for HIV singles?

Not on the list are pre-internet brilliant-but-stupid ideas of the past such as pet rocks, leashes for invisible dogs. You never know what will sell apparently, so best to try everything that pops into your head.

I’ve been sitting in on interviews with sales people lately, and feel I have to give props to people who practice that black magic art. Whereas John Q Public might not draw much of a distinction between sales and marketing, those of us in the biz know that each is its own distinct field.

The guys who impress me most are the ones I think of as Paratrooper Salesman. In other words, you could drop them in by air to any place in the world armed with nothing but some hair gel and toothpaste, and within weeks they’d have a Mercedes. It really is impressive to see a good salesman at work. One of the guys I spoke to this week said “I don’t sell, you buy.” The idea being that his whole job is to make you want whatever it is he’s selling. Pretty soon, he’s not pushing it on you at all– you’re chasing him down the street trying to buy it from him.

The consistent themes I hear from all of the sales people I talk to are these:

• Persistence is critical
• So is enthusiasm about and knowledge of what you’re selling
• You sell by building relationships. People buy from those they know and those they like. So you need to create a relationship with them so they both know and like you.

Personally, I prefer the marketing side of the equation. I like to build the plan, determine the angles and craft the message. But I do admire those who put their feet on the street to execute the sales.

I’ve been conducting a number of interviews this week. Having run a whole pile of interviews in past years, I have a few tips for those looking to hire for a position:

• Decide in advance what you’re looking for. Create a ‘profile’ for the type of person you would consider the dream candidate.
• Create an interview script. You want to ask all of the candidates the same questions, in order to be able to make as much of an apples to apples comparison as possible.
• Ask good questions. Duh. Harder than it seems. Stay away from the trite questions which everyone has a practiced answer for. Seek questions which will draw out the candidate and get them to expose their true thoughts and workstyle (as opposed to the version they want to present).
• Remember that you’re selling your company as much as they are selling themselves. Be positive! Even if it is someone you’re not going to hire, you still want them to leave with a good feeling. You never know who they know, or how your paths might cross in the future. Eventually, they’ll get hired somewhere, and maybe that company could use your services.
• As much of a pain in the neck as it is, you need to interview numerous people in order to get a good sense of what’s out there. Whatever you do, don’t just hire the first person to come in, no matter how ideal they seem. Experience has shown that this is always the wrong choice, and always something you later regret.

I’ve always been fascinated by cultural differences. Having traveled internationally a decent amount, I’ve been fortunate to experience many of these differences firsthand. As Americans, we’re somewhat sheltered from the rest of the world by 2 big oceans, so it’s easy to forget that not everyone is like us.

Differences pertain to business dealings as much as anything else. For example… credit. It’s remarkable how a culture can manifest itself through its credit-worthiness (or trustworthiness) with credit. I was discussing that today with someone. For example, the methodical, organized Germans might delay payment if you haven’t crossed every T and dotted every I, but you will get paid. The Italians… oh boy. Not so much. It seems like the national business pastime is ducking creditors and avoiding payment.

Good to know about this stuff BEFORE you put your business on the line!

I’m involved in a CRM implementation at the moment. You may have come across statistics that something like 90% of CRM implementations fail (ok, I jest, but it’s pretty high). In my own experience, I’m 0-for-1, so the failure rate is 100%.

Just out of curiosity, I asked the consultant we’re working in what he would point to as the reason for failure in any implementations he’s been involved with. He didn’t have to think very long– “Lack of commitment from sales management.” Zing.  I think you could probably argue that “Software doesn’t perform as one was led to believe by the software sales team” would have to be a contender as well.

It’s kind of remarkable that companies are willing to blow tens of thousands (in some cases hundreds of thousands) of dollars on software packages which are likely to fail… because of lack of leadership commitment!

With the current project, I think we just might beat the jinx. Time will tell…

I had dinner with clients at a well-known, rather upscale steak chain restaurant. Let’s call it ‘Chuth’s Rris’. My first time at this particular establishment. Our waiter made several recommendations. Oddly enough, each of his recommendations just happened to be the most expensive item in the category. Glass of wine? (not that he was asked, and not that he asked my preferences)… “I recommend such-and-such” (at $20 a glass). He actually capped that one off with “It’s our best, and believe me, I  know a lot about wine.” Me too- there’s red, there’s white, and don’t drink it out of plastic cups or add ice.

Steak cut (not that he was asked)… “I recommend this one”… Appetizers, salads, on and on it went, with not-so-subtle nudges towards the priciest item, with no justification other than the nudge itself.

You wouldn’t expect to feel nickel-and-dimed at a place where steak entrees run $35/per, not including the potato. But there you go.

I relate this story today because I think it says something about how (not) to upsell, and it goes back to the primary rule of marketing - “What’s in it for me?”, with ‘me’ being the customer, not the salesman. It’s not enough to tell someone what they should buy. You need them to believe that they want it. In fact, if you’re really good, you can make them believe they chose it. And if you’re great, you would know them so well, you’d be bringing them what they wanted before they knew they wanted it.

Another potential lesson from the story is that you can put together a great marketing plan, and build a great reputation, but you’ve got to deliver on it day after day. And every day, you run the risk that your plan will be undermined where the rubber meets the road by the people who have contact with your customers. Your reputation precedes you, and so they enter your doors expecting to be blown away, and leave feeling a little bit used. Ouch.

I drove 5 hours tonight, so I don’t have any recommendations for avoiding this, just observations.

PS The steak was great, albeit overcooked.

I got a voice message from a guy trying to sell me something:

“Hi, this is So-And-SO from Company X. I do such-and-such, and I wanted to discuss with you whether it would be in my interest to send you a promotional package. Please give me a call back at 555-1212.”

Something struck me as odd about the message, and then I realized he’d said “… I wanted to discuss with you whether it would be in my interest…”. In HIS interest? Hasn’t this guy ever heard the golden question of marketing:

What’s in it for me?

Perhaps he HAS heard it, but got confused about who was supposed to be asking the question… the CUSTOMER, not the SALESMAN!

Maybe it’s a Freudian type of slip. Saying what meant. Every salesman naturally cares about his/her own interest. But the whole trick is to make people feel that you’re really working in their interest. I mean, hopefully, you are actually working in their interest and not just selling them snake oil. But it’s the way they feel about it which makes the sale, not the reality. It seems like the best salespeople are the ones who really do actually care about their customer’s interests. People can sense that, and they respond to it.

I’m not sure how people respond to someone who outright tells you they’ll put in an effort only if it’s worth their while, like my caller did. I know I didn’t call him back.

I started off my career with a B2C company, which sold directly to consumers. I later made the jump over to a company on the B2B side, selling to businesses. At the time, I was aware of this distinction, in fact the challenge of the change was one of the reasons I did it.

There are some critical differences in selling B2B vs B2C, some of which may not be readily apparent. These differences were outlined nicely in an email newsletter I got the other day from a marketing company called MediaBrains. Here’s a brief summary of the differences they draw up, with some of my own comments on these:

• Fewer potential buyers. Depending on how specialized your business is, you might literally have a total market of 50 or 100 potential buyers. This has implications for the effort you must put into targeting your marketing accurately.
• No impulse buying. It doesn’t matter if your product is clever, or if it can save me thousands. If I don’t have money in the budget, I can’t buy it. Period. (In fact, I recently turned down a salesman for that exact same reason.)
• More decision makers. You might have to work through a few levels of authority, spread across different job roles, in order to make the sale.

A few others I would add to this list:

• Tougher negotiators. You’re dealing with pros. Professional buyers spend all day, every day, chiseling vendors, beating them down for the best price.
• The relationship-building problem - job change. Companies don’t build relationships with companies, they just claim to. In reality, people build relationships with people. And when the person you just spent 2 years building a relationship with goes back to grad school, you may be starting from scratch with that company.
• Contracts.  Sure, consumers deal with contracts too, for example every time they sign up with a new cell phone provider. But the difference is that businesses actually read the contracts before signing them.

I’ve been playing around with implementing a SPIF program lately. Many people have heard the term, but it turns out few know too much about it, including what it stands for. I hunted all around the net, mostly in vain, and after seeing a few similar-but-different interpretations, eventually settled on ‘SPIF=Sales Performance Incentive Fund’.

Basically, a SPIF is a commission paid by the manufacturer directly to the sales person who is face to face with the end customer. Here’s the thing - that sales rep is not employed by the manufacturer, but is instead an employee of a dealer or retailer.

So what’s the idea behind a program like this? Well, it’s a means by which a manufacturer can reach around the many barriers separating it from the place where the rubber meets the road (a sales person deciding what products to emphasize to steer a customer), and attempt to influence that process.

Consider the chain of companies (and people) separating the manufacturer from the person making the buying decision:

Manufacturer — Distributor — Dealer — Dealer Sales Rep — Customer 

The manufacturer ultimately stays in business based on whether Joe Consumer decides to purchase its goods. However, the manufacturer has limited ability to influence Joe Consumer directly, especially at the critical point of purchase where many buying decisions get made. Even worse, the manufacturer is several layers of Kevin Bacon removed from the scene. In between might stand a distributor (with its own sales force), a dealer/retailer, and the dealer’s sales rep. At any point along this fragile chain, a bad attitude or bad impression can kill the manufacturer’s chance of making the sale.

The SPIF program is clever, in that it is price/promotion/place rolled up into one. The SPIF may encourage a commissioned sales rep to offer a better deal than usual, knowing the back end payment will come. The SPIF is also a promotional tool- what better way to get the attention of a sales force than to send them cold hard cash? And finally, it’s ”distribution insurance”, in that it ensures distribution. The dealer’s buyer might not be too eager to purchase a particular company’s widgets, but he HAS to if the sales force keeps selling them. And hell hath no fury like a sales rep told his favorite product is being phased out.

The SPIF buys salesperson mind share. For some product categories, that is critical- generally, wherever the product tends to be an after-thought item. Sales reps are going to focus on the items which pay the most return for their effort. A car salesman wants to sell cars, not auto wax. An electronics salesman wants to sell plasma TV’s, not surge protectors. They can’t be bothered with the small ticket items. The SPIF might just get you a piece of a very harried and fragmented mind. (Not that I know any sales people with harried and fragmented minds!)

The dealer’s management often doesn’t like SPIF’s. They have their own organizational goals, and these may not mesh with a particular supplier’s goals. The dealer may be trying to push Widget A, in pursuit of a negotiated back-end rebate, and may thus not want its sales reps pushing Widget B for the extra cash-in-pocket offered by the manufacturer. But in certain industries (office furniture comes to mind), SPIFs are a somewhat common tool, and might be worth a look for a company with limited marketing dollars trying to gain market share.

With domain registration, a number of other decisions need to be taken as well, like finalizing internet phone services. One should go with that internet phone software, that suits him. Usually packages offered by vonage and skype suit everyone. Rarely, one needs to go for a different voip deal. This is usually because of various voip calling softwares offering discounts.

Why do so many people not understand that marketing is a long-term, strategic venture? It is not the means by which you boost sales next week. That is something I would refer to as sales.

OK, OK, there are exceptions I know. Business online compresses time to the point that next week might seem like the long term. But in general, I think you can draw the line between marketing and sales like this: the marketing guy is thinking 6, 12, 18 months and more down the road. The sales guy is worried about tomorrow. The marketing guy needs to think about the long-term implications any move will have upon an (ideally) carefully cultivated market position. The sales guy may just sell out his mother to close the deal at hand, damn the torpedoes.

We could also look at it in parable form: a beekeeper and a farmer go into business. The beekeeper has to go out to the hives every day and risk getting stung to claim the honey. The farmer has to care for the orchard, so that next spring there are blossoms for the bees to do whatever it is they do with blossoms. You can’t ask the farmer to take care of the hives– he’s allergic to bees. And you can’t have the beekeeper messing around in the orchard, cause he’ll start weeding with DDT. They each have their own important roles, and if one slacks off, eventually, no one gets any honey- I think that’s the moral, anyways. 

So if you spend your days worrying about closing particular deals and the here-and-now, and you don’t have time to think about the big picture of your marketing plan, you’re not really in marketing at all. Coffee is for closers, dude, you’re in sales.