Richard Denny – Thoughts on sales and marketing

Have you ever used salestarget.co.uk to find a new sales job? I signed up for some email alerts some time ago, and had not got around to unsubscribing. I’m glad I hadn’t as I recently had a very fun email from them.

Have you seen the email describing their “SELL THAT!” competition? It’s a great idea.

The competition works like this. They have listed a few items that, to put it mildly, don’t belong in the “these products sell themselves” category.

So, how would you sell:

• An acre on the moon
• A yellow ‘87 Ford Capri
• Your colleague
• An unwanted Christmas gift
• A timeshare in your hometown

Take a look at the website, and the video entries. Did I mention the prize is £2,000? Might be worth a pitch yourself!

And while you are thinking about your pitch, why not make a list of the questions you might ask a potential buyer of that product. Have fun with your pitch.

And remember, it’s the questions you ask before you pitch that will allow you to close the sale.

I’m glad I am “posting” this blog on our website today, and not posting it through the mail. The media keep shouting at us about the “POSTAL STRIKE”. So, who wins?

Let’s take a step back from the emotion of political rhetoric for a minute and look at this rationally. Strikes hurt customers. By hurting customers, they hurt the company, which loses market share. The hurt company then has no choice but to lay off workers.

So strikes hurt customers, companies and workers.

Is there a better way? Perhaps you have heard of cases of unions in (mostly Asian) countries around the world asking their workers to “strike” by going to work wearing black armbands. They made their point. The armbands were a direct insult to the management for not having solved the workers issues. The managers “lost face”. But, the unions did not hurt the customers, nor the company. And so no-one lost their job.

OK, you might say. But what if the current management at the Royal Mail don’t care what the workers think? What if they couldn’t care less about workers wearing black armbands?

Well, that’s a different story. It is the responsibility of leaders to care. Notice I said “leaders” and not “management”? So what’s the difference?

Management is making people do what the managers want them to do. Leadership is making people WANT TO DO IT.

Let’s go back in history and pick out two really great leaders, Sir John Harvey Jones of ICI and Sir Ernest Shackleton the great explorer, both would be highly visible 18 – 20 hours a day talking, mixing and working with their people, certainly not hiding away from the action.

If the staff trust and believe in their bosses and the bosses in turn earn the workers’ loyalty every issue can be resolved. Without strikes.

P.S. Note to Royal Mail management. We teach leadership skills. Our phone number is 01608 653 868. Please call. I’d give you our mailing address, but the mail might be late!

Yes, I declare right up front I do have a vested interest here.

The feel good factor for the majority of people got up and went walkabout some 15 months ago and in the intervening months some business have disappeared, some people in work have been on reduced salaries or working part time, and some have even been made redundant, (not good for staff motivation). Values and expectations have changed but here lies a really big opportunity and challenge. Our staff and our people must also change, the skills of winning business (selling) must be improved. If companies are actually going to reap the rewards, management and leadership styles must also be improved and then there is the really biggest opportunity of all – customer care and services.

So come on business leaders if you really now want to make some money and take market share your people will do it for you, up-skill them with the latest communication skills. Invest a little in some really good, and I mean really good training. They will repay this investment 10-50 times over. New usable skills and knowledge are very inspiring so leaders, managers, bosses are you the inhibitor to your company’s growth?

August has seen a dearth of highly condemning findings, disclosures, malpractice and incompetence within the NHS. Now we all know that it is only negative criticism that gets into the media, nevertheless with an organisation the size of the NHS there will always be horror stories from time to time. Last week it was sickness and absenteeism.

The NHS is possibly the largest employer in the UK but sadly it has the largest number of untrained managers and supervisors, way out of proportion to the rest of commerce. Here lies the biggest problem that could so easily be solved.

Very few NHS employees, and this includes staff nurses, sisters, doctors and all the numerous department heads, have had any good training in management and leadership skills.

They are expected by some God given right, because they may have an academic qualification or have the job title, or have been promoted, that they should automatically know how to lead, manage, and inspire people in their care. This would cost so little but the financial rewards would be mind blowing and the horror stories would be dramatically reduced. All the horror stories that we hear and read about can be fundamentally traced to weak and poor management. It’s not their fault, the fault lies right at the top.

Simple solution – kinder – obvious really; it only needs a decision but unfortunately that will require focus groups, committees, endless meetings, union agreements, and of course government funding – oh dear!!!!

Would someone out there please tell me why so many sales people are so poorly equipped to win business, while at the same time the government is held to blame for sending our highly trained soldiers into conflict equipped in outdated poorly protected vehicles?

The sales people problem does not lie in outdated equipment but either outdated training or no training at all. Just imagine sending our soldiers into battle with no training, or just as horrific training based on the IRA conflict. Maybe similar but oh so different.

The marketplace has changed, customers have changed, buying behaviour has changed, and expectations have changed, hoped for discounts have changed, negotiation has changed yet most sales people have not changed and it is not their fault but the fault of the employers.

Blame the company for sending their sales people out in Cavaliers with skills that were right 10 years ago, do try not to get frustrated but hold the employer to account.

Now I really must be honest here. I personally get so frustrated by pathetic out of date selling practices. I really do try so hard not to chew the poor individual into pieces and spit them out but I confess this does sometimes happen.

How about naming and blaming the guilty employers? As you know I am passionate about professional selling skills. It is such a winner for the world, for companies, for sales people but above everything else for the customer and it is so easy, oh so easy, to learn the skills of 2009.

Ask an economist and you will get an opinion, but like all opinions it could be right or it could be wrong. I most certainly would not base my life or my future on an economist’s opinion; “bless them!” sic.

So are we in or are we out? Let’s put aside the official government guidelines or systems of measuring economic performance. It’s all out of date anyhow when it’s published. How about some good old fashioned commonsense? What really is happening in the marketplace? Now this may well be anecdotal and possibly challenged as not being scientific but so what, as far as I am concerned it’s real.

Companies are now back re-employing and redundancies have dwindled to the normal healthy trickle. Consumers are spending again as exemplified by the buoyant second-hand car market, always a good indicator. Our experience has shown a healthy growth of interest in business training. Every business person I speak to tells me they are feeling optimistic, and having got the holiday season out of the way decisions will be made. Executives are fed up with standing still; they are fed up with negative retreat. There is a ‘let’s get going’ feeling in the air.

If you have been delivering outstanding customer care over the past few months, if you have been investing by upskilling your people, if you have kept your most valuable asset – your staff, if you are customer led with your product mix you will now fairly quickly experience the rewards.

So in September step up a gear, really now be proactive in your communication in all its forms to your customers, your prospects and most important of all the real diamond mine the ‘No not today’s‘.

The mind set of so many business people is really quite extraordinary. We have been in, and thank goodness are coming out of, the worst recession in living memory yet so many are missing a trick/opportunity.

We have all heard the two clichés which are, “Our staff are our most valuable asset” – yet they are the first to go in a recession (why not the director’s cars?) and the second just as galling, “We value our customers”.

I have been amazed how few businesses have demonstrated customer care over the past few months. They have been and are missing an amazing opportunity to earn and deserve customer loyalty and customer spend. Via Denny Training I have had the experience of some progressive businesses investing just a small amount of money in skilling their people in customer care and developing an excellent service culture, the result of which is phenomenal increased profitability.

The current trading environment is intensely competitive and will remain so. I have been preaching for some time now, “You don’t have to have the best products and even the best prices, but if you provide an outstanding service you will WIN, WIN, WIN”. Tom Peters is quoted as saying “It is the greatest kept secret in the global economy today that if you provide an outstanding service you will need new suitcases to carry all the money home”.

It is not too late, your peoples attitude and skills in customer care will put you ahead of the competition. Invest a small amount now and in a few weeks see how you will have increased your market share and excitingly your profits.

If not how about joining THE FAILING CLUB who blame the government, the banks, the recession, the economy and of course the weather?

Self help books have been the big publishing success of the past couple of decades but it is not just a recent phenomenon. Back in the 1850s, Charles Darwin’s seminal work on the Origin of Species was outsold by a self help book. In an interview with John Humprhys on the Today Programme Radio 4 documentary presenter Kate Williams emphasized the fact that Samuel Smiles the author of ‘Self-Help’ concentrated on how individuals could improve themselves rather than improve their lives by manipulating others as in many of todays self help books. This immediately brought to mind Richard Denny’s books – Succeed for Yourself and Motivate to Win where he also concentrates on the individual determining their own success and espouses the virtues of Motivation not manipulation

Listern to the interview

On yesterday morning’s Today Programme on Radio 4 John Humprhrys discussed the parlous state of our Libraries with author Beryl Bainbridge and wondered what could be done to improve matters. Richard Denny wrote an article on this very subject for ‘Managing Information’ June 2008 which should be added to the debate as librarians from across the UK meet to discuss what can be done.

Listen to the interview                              Article by Richard Denny

I write this blog on behalf of the majority of business leaders and employers who are decent law abiding citizens doing their very best to achieve success. The frustration, sadness and anger that we are all experiencing with the MP’s expenses scandal continues.

There is a small percentage of MP’s who apparently have committed fraud. If they were employees of any normal company they would immediately have been reported to the police, not to mention losing their job without compensation.

There is a small percentage of MP’s who chose not to claim any expenses at all. That is their right and we can all respect that decision. There is a further group who have abused the system and should be held accountable to repay every penny of their personal gain.

Now we come to the majority of MP’s who have claimed genuinely what they believed to be allowable and were told it is right and acceptable to claim. Here of course lies the problem as we all know. If you create a system that not only allows but encourages people to claim expenses with such a broad remit they most certainly will. For goodness sake it is only human nature to take what is offered regardless as to whether it is taxpayers’ money. As it would be exactly the same in business with any employee. Most employees follow the rules as laid down by their employer. In business most expense claims are checked and of course some are rejected. Just normal business practice.

So the media and the press journalists, who in most cases don’t understand or don’t want to understand, and should lay off beating up those parliamentarians who live by the system. Yes of course the system is wrong. Yes I accept that the parliamentarians themselves created the system. In business we all get our systems wrong and our reward mechanisms have to be changed, improved and developed. In my previous blogs I have said that the salaries are too low to attract the quality of MP’s that we would dearly like to have leading the country. And of course it is wrong for them to stop having either income or involvement from other sources. This, as we all know, builds a far greater knowledge and experience.

The Solution

1. All indications of dishonesty or fraud – let the police deal with

2. Each and every personal gain from expenses should be repaid immediately and I MEAN immediately. Seven days or serve them a writ.

3. Put into place an ethical salary and expense system that all of us in business have to deal with every day of our lives.