This Millennium
The other day I was having breakfast with my kids at a local diner where we were entertaining ourselves with all the photos scattered about the walls serving as a pictographic history lesson of that diner and especially that corner of our little neck of the woods. One picture that featured a phone booth located in the parking lot between the diner and the highway really struck me that morning. My two teenagers have never been in a phone booth or had the need to use one. They had a chance to see hordes during a trip to London where they still exist plentifully, but I think purely as ornaments for the tourists. My kids are so wired with their mobile phones and wi-fi that the concept of a phone booth is just on the edge of surreal. It is a great manifestation of the differences between our current millennium and the one just completed 7.5 short years ago.
I recently ran across another similar juxtaposition in the March issue of CRM magazine (yes, loyal reader it is the second time I have cited that specific issue of the trade rag recently). You will find there a few top ten lists which, when comparing the marketing and sales content, become fairly interesting. What I find particularly interesting is that the advice given in the marketing list is taken straight from advanced thinking of marketing experts right now. It is extremely current – social networking and the whole nine yards.
On the other hand, take a look at the top ten list for sales. If we were to get in the locker room at IBM when they were coaching sales people how to get more results during the great depression, we might have heard the same advice. This is vintage stuff. If it were scotch it would be really expensive.
So what is up with that whack? Are you telling me that there is no new advice for sales folks? I’m not buying it.
One thing for certain is different today. All the extremely sophisticated stuff that marketing is doing on the web is for sales benefit. Leads are coming faster and better as a result of the web 2.0 revolution. Lead fresh dates are much shorter as a result. A lead that may have been fresh for a month a few years ago is probably measured in hours now. If nothing else, sales folks need to have a mechanism to act fast. If they don’t the lead goes stale and they blame marketing for poor qualification. Everybody loses, except the competition.
Anything else new? You betcha. How about buyer intelligence? You don’t stand a chance today if you are not better prepared than your buyer. They know amazing stuff about you and your product when you do finally show up. They also just read a blog written by one of your unhappy customers. This is serious bananas. We can’t sell like we did in 1937. They might know more about your competitor than you do if you don’t prepare well.
We need a new top ten list for sales. Any takers?