Steve Yastrow's Blog



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–Steve

 

So, have you been in many in-person meetings with customers lately?

Since March of this year, when our world instantly turned upside down, one of the most common questions I’ve heard from sales leaders is that they are concerned about how their sales people will fare when they have to do 100% of their selling remotely.

This isn’t a brand new trend. For years, sales people have been spending less and less time meeting with customers in person, and more and more time communicating with their customers remotely. This trend has, of course, accelerated in 2020, with many sales people having 100% of their customer communications remotely.

No matter what kind of recovery we have from this pandemic, it’s clear that the days of frequent cross-country trips just to see one customer are over. Companies have learned that they don’t need to bear this expense and, moreover, many companies have been pleasantly surprised to see that remote selling can be a very effective and productive use of sales resources.

But remote selling isn’t easy, and brings its own set of challenges. Here are the most common remote sales challenges I hear from salespeople and sales leaders:

“My customers hide behind emails, and I can’t get them to answer me.”
“It’s hard to keep my customers’ attention when we’re on the phone or Zoom.”
“It’s difficult to showcase our products and differentiate ourselves from the competition when we aren’t in the room with our customers.”

 

These challenges are real, but they aren’t new. Customers can always hide from us, it’s always hard to keep their attention, and it’s never easy to differentiate. The real issue is how to deal with these challenges with the extra handicap of being remote.

Close the Distance Gap with Relationship-Building Conversations

Relationship-building conversations are the key ingredients of successful sales. They help you differentiate yourself in your customer’s mind, and earn your customer’s commitment. Yes, that’s harder on Zoom, Teams, or the phone, but it can be done.

During the Great Depression and World War II, President Roosevelt spoke to the American public in a series of radio addresses called “Fireside Chats.” To avoid sounding impersonal as he broadcast to tens of millions of people, the president would imagine he was speaking with individual Americans (waiters, teachers, factory workers, etc.,) sitting with him around his fireplace. The White House would then receive letters from citizens saying “I felt like the president was speaking to me.”

We can all channel FDR and imagine we are with our customers, in person, imagining the technology as transparent. Your goal in every remote customer conversation is to build your relationship with your customer. Sure, the meeting can have other goals – discussing their needs, discussing your products and services, reviewing proposals, etc. But, no matter what else needs to be done in this meeting, have relationship-building as a key goal for the interaction.

In every remote customer meeting, focus on the three elements of a relationship-building encounter, which I describe in Chapter 2 of my book We: The Ideal Customer Relationship:

Devote 100% of your attention to this conversation with your customer. (No multi-tasking!)
Focus on dialogue, not monologue. (Ditch the Pitch!)
Personalize. (Make it about them!)

 

Make the technology transparent. Focus on the conversation. Focus on the relationship.

Say Less to Notice More

Want to close more sales? Want to connect better with your customers?

Here’s a tip: Try talking less. Just do it! Say less to notice more, and improve your business results.

Protect Your Relationship Assets

As you settle into your “new normal” and position yourself for a comeback, the relationships you bring with you will be among your most important assets to help you thrive.

You may not have control over the market value of many of the assets you own, such as any stocks, real estate, or even your business. But you do have control over the value of your incredibly important relationship assets.

Succeeding in uncertain times requires you to act without knowing exactly what’s going to happen, to prepare for whatever might happen. 

As of now, we don’t understand the full extent, or character, of the economic downturn we are hurtling into. In the last 24 hours, I have heard comparisons that range from a 1929-like cataclysm to something more like a snowstorm, that we will quickly recover from. 

The fact is, we don’t know what’s going to happen. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be ready. Being ready doesn’t mean guessing what will happen, but preparing for whatever might happen. 

To prepare for an uncertain future, you need to first commit to acting with focus, not with frenzy. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by this situation, but we all know that won’t do our businesses any good. Take a deep breath, and focus on giving your business its best chance of success in this economic upheaval. 

Then, be clear about what you can’t control and what you can control. 

Identify the things you can’t control and understand how these factors will affect you
Identify the things you can control and take thoughtful, deliberate and strategic  action to improve your business  

Here’s what you can’t control: Economic factors such as interest rate levels, employment, inflation, government debt, the stock market and gross domestic product, to name a few. 

Your action step: Understand these macroeconomic factors and take steps to determine how they will affect you. 

Here’s what you can control: The experiences you create for your customers, your suppliers and team members that will encourage them to commit to you during tough times.

Your action step: Take thoughtful, deliberate and strategic steps to earn the loyalty and commitment of your customers, suppliers and team members. 

Although the economy is going to hit most of us pretty hard this year, we all still have significant untapped potential to earn more loyalty and commitment from our customers, our suppliers and our team members. By focusing on what you can control, you can blunt the effects of the factors over which you have no control. 

Join me for a free webinar on April 9th to learn an approach to navigating your business through the uncertain times we are facing, so you can achieve your best possible outcomes in 2020 and 2021.

Steve

Facing today’s challenges: Are you in the driver’s seat or the passenger seat?

Here we are, mid-March 2020, facing a new reality. The streets are emptying, people are hunkering down, and most businesses are facing significant uncertainty about what’s going to happen next.

So… how are you dealing with your business situation? Do you feel in control? Or do you feel that the situation is controlling you?

Yes, there are many factors you can’t control that will affect you. And yes, you need to evaluate, assess and understand things. But it’s up to you to decide whether or not you let these factors control you. The results you create over the coming months depend – largely – on how well you address the things you can control.

Sit in the driver’s seat, where you can navigate and steer, instead of in the passenger seat, where the route and destination are out of your hands.

Here are three things you can control during this uncertain time:

 

Think of your business with focus, not frenzy

Your job as a leader is to address the immediate issues that confront you, but to never lose sight of the big picture. Your job is to be measured and consider many different factors simultaneously as influences affect your business. Have a firm grip on the steering wheel, and encounter all challenges thoughtfully, deliberately and strategically.

Action Step: Carve out time to work on your business. Ask questions such as:

What are our biggest opportunities and vulnerabilities during this period of upheaval?
What priorities should we focus on that have the greatest opportunity to benefit our customers, our employees and our bottom line?
What metrics should we aim to produce over the next six months that would demonstrate that we managed this crisis period effectively?

 

Be the best thing your customers experience today

All customers will be buying less in the near future. But that doesn’t mean that your customers need to buy less from you. Create clear, compelling and unified brand experiences for your customers. Ensure that every interaction customers have with your company is part of a meaningful story that helps them believe they are better off because they work with you.

Action step: Collaborate with your colleagues to enhance your customer experience.

Come up with 20 different answers to this question: what can we do to improve the experiences we create for our customers, so they feel more committed to us?
Then, prioritize these ideas and focus on implementing them, one at a time.

 

Inspire a committed team

Remember this undeniable fact of business: Your brand’s strength in the marketplace can never be stronger than your brand’s strength inside your company. As you are communicating clearly with your team about how your organization is dealing with this situation, are you also working to inspire them, and bring them closer to your company and its mission? Talk to your team about their role in delivering powerful experiences for your customers and thank them for their contributions to the company’s success.

Action step: Create a forum for your employees to share their thoughts.

Gather ideas about how your company can best serve its customers, suppliers and team throughout the duration of this situation.
Then distill these ideas down into 5 – 15 themes that you can share with your team.

Customer Attention: Your Scarcest Resource

When you think of scarce resources in your business, what comes to mind? Time, money and people. Here’s another scarce resource: your customer’s attention. And customers don’t give up that attention easily. Think of all the demands on their attention: emails, meetings, their personal life, their customers. If you are just another one-way message assaulting your customer, don’t expect them to notice, and don’t expect them to care.

We humans are much more attuned to devoting our attention to conversation than we are to being on the receiving end of a monologue. Think of yourself. What’s more likely to hold your attention? A friend monopolizing a conversation and doing all the talking, or a back-and-forth, participative dialogue with that friend?

This contrast is so obvious that it’s incredible to think about how our most basic models of sales and marketing are based on one-way messaging. No wonder people ignore most of the 5000 marketing and sales messages that bombard them each day.

Customer attention is one of your scarcest resources. If you want to use this resource wisely, engage your customers in conversation.

Let’s talk about earning your customers’ attention through a unified brand experience.

Get in Touch with Steve

Target: A Unified Brand Experience Case Study

I recently read an article in the Washington Post titled “How Target won back its customers: By going all-in on bricks-and-mortar.” The article highlighted Target’s successful strategy to refocus on their brick-and-mortar stores and unify their brand experience.

In 2017, Target’s chief executive Brian Cornell proposed a plan to invest $7 billion to remodel and revamp the chain. And, earlier this year, “Target celebrated its best year since 2005. Comparable sales in 2018, a measure of sales online and at stores open more than a year, grew by 5 percent. Comparable digital sales alone climbed 36 percent — marking the fifth consecutive year in which that figure grew more than 25 percent.”

“Going all-in on bricks and mortar” did not mean only investing in their physical stores. In fact, I would argue that if they had just remodeled their stores, the strategy would have fallen flat. A key part of the strategy was offering consumers a variety of shopping options including same-day delivery and curbside pickup. “Target has focused on giving customers options for how they shop. Its physical stores work in tandem with online shopping and delivery options.”

In other words, Target has unified their brand experience. All of the interactions that customers have with Target blend together to tell a consistent, compelling, differentiating story that makes sense to them. It is clear that Target understands what their customers care about, and that they have made essential enhancements to their brand experience to deliver what their customers want.

The results speak for themselves: this unified brand experience is motivating customers to shop at Target. Through these customer experience enhancements, they have earned more of their customers love, loyalty and purchases. You too can unlock your business success by creating a unified brand experience.

Let’s talk about creating your unified brand experience.



Get in touch with Steve

Create a Unified Brand Experience

You’re missing out on business because your customers aren’t giving you all of the business they could. Don’t leave money on the table. Motivating your customers to give you more business will take your results to the next level.

The key to motivating your customers to give you more business is to create a unified brand experience. When all interactions customers have with your company blend together, everything about working with you will make sense.

To create this unified brand experience, you have to think about 3 things:

Develop a clear brand message
Ensure your customer-facing team communicates that message in their conversations with customers
Inspire your entire team to embrace and live the brand in everything that they do

You need to develop a clear brand message that helps your customers think: “I get it, I want it and I can’t get it anywhere else.” This means that they will understand what you offer them, they will value it and they will know that they can’t get it from your competition.

Once you have a clear brand message, your customer-facing team needs to communicate that message in every conversation they have with customers. Customer conversations are a critical part of a unified brand experience that will motivate customers to give you more business.

A unified brand experience goes beyond your customer-facing team. Everyone on your team contributes, in some way, to creating a unified brand experience for your customers. All of your team members need to develop the habit of embracing and living the brand in everything that they do.

When you create a unified brand experience, your customers will give you more business and you will be more successful. Make this happen in 2020 by focusing on creating a unified brand experience now.

Let’s talk about creating your unified brand experience.



Get in Touch with Steve

The Brand Story Conversation

Customers commit to you when they believe clear, compelling and powerful stories about how you make them better off. If a customer’s personal narrative includes you helping them get to a better state, they will commit to you, and your business will be more successful.

One of the most persistent myths of marketing and sales is that we can tell our customers our stories and, through this telling, we can change their minds. Yeah, right.

If you’re telling your story to a customer, it is likely that the customer isn’t actually listening. They’re probably doing something else, or thinking about something else. Of course, storytelling is a wonderful thing. We all love to hear a good story, told well. However, most of the most powerful stories in our lives weren’t told to us. We co-created them with other people.

Think of one of your close friends. The story of your friendship grew out of the shared experiences you’ve had, over the course of your relationship. One of you didn’t tell that story to the other person. You co-created it.

The same holds true with our customer relationships. We can’t tell a customer a story about why they should love us. But we can co-create a shared story with our customers. We can have conversations with customers that help them form beliefs about why they value us, and why they want to commit to our relationship.

Your brand is not what you say you are, it’s what your customers believe you are. A conversation is the perfect setting for your customers to form clear, compelling and motivating beliefs about you. Stop telling your brand story to your customers and start co-creating stories through conversation.