Back in 2011, as I was still trying to figure out this business of speaking at a national level, I came across a live program that promised to help me figure it out. It was called “The Odd Couple – Marketing for Professional Speakers,” and it was hosted by experts in the subject matter named Patricia Fripp and Alan Weiss. Even better, it was being held in Las Vegas, one of my favorite places.
The problem was that, at the time, the fee for attending was enough to have made my finances a bit tight. The scheduling would have been tight as well; I had a training program scheduled the day after I’d have had to take a late flight home from Vegas. Neither the finances nor the scheduling were prohibitive – just a little difficult. I decided not to go, and figured that they’d have it again the next year – after all, this was the third annual. I would be there for the fourth.
You might have guessed the rest. There was no fourth annual. After the third, both Fripp and Weiss decided that the event no longer fit with their respective business models. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of money and time taking advantage of Fripp’s expertise in speaking skills, and I’ve availed myself of Weiss’ work as well. I even bought the MP3 audio of the last Odd Couple (the one I decided not to go to). All of those things convinced me of one fact.
I missed one hell of an opportunity by not going. I’ve gotten quite a bit out of the audio. And Fripp has become not only a valued mentor, but a good friend. But I’m quite confident that, had I been in the audience, asking questions, hearing things live, that I would have accelerated my career by a good 2-3 years at least. This opportunity was a non-renewable resource.
If there’s any trend that I’m seeing in the world of small to medium sized business, it’s a growing conservatism in decision making. I’d like to put this at the feet of the Baby Boomer generation aging and being more careful about spending and investing, but I can’t; the conservatism doesn’t seem to be isolated to any one age bracket. More and more, business owners are allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and waiting for ‘the next time’ to come around. Oftentimes, it doesn’t.
In business, life, and sales, the equation of success looks like this: Success = need + solution + opportunity. There’s a moment in time when opportunity is presented, and we need to take advantage of it.
In selling, one of my good friends, Marc Lonesk, says “any selling is useless unless the customer’s window is open.” (I.e., if the customer isn’t willing to hear your message, they won’t.) He’s not wrong about this, but more importantly, I’ve found that the entire buying process culminates in a moment in time where the customer is most motivated to buy, is on board with the solution, and just needs to be asked.
This is where all too many salespeople have to run back to the batcave to develop a ‘formal proposal,’ or ask permission from a manager for something, or otherwise follow a sales process that doesn’t sync with the buyer’s buying process. Then they wonder why that sale no longer happened. It’s simple. Opportunity knocked and the salesperson failed to open the door.
Even something as simple as having to run out to your car for a contract or an order form can be a deal-killer. The best salespeople are always prepared to do business when the customer wants it to.
A few years ago, a business owner I am acquainted with had the opportunity to buy his biggest local competitor. He engaged me to do a bit of analysis, and I came back with the opinion that, while the competitor’s operations were lagging behind, he had just made some personnel moves that resulted in a potentially great sales department. He should, I opined, buy them NOW, not later. My rationale was something you’ve probably read before: SFE. Sales Fixes Everything.
As that great sales force ramped up, I explained, they would create pressure within the company that would force the operations to fix themselves. Once that happened, this company would eat his company alive in the sales arena (I should point out that this was the first engagement with the business owner – his sales force was very small and not very good). If he didn’t buy now, his only alternative would be to beef up his own sales force to defend their accounts.
The owner of company A chose not to buy and not to invest in the sales force. Instead, he stood pat, figuring that the poor operations of company B would continue to drive customers away and thus drive the price of company B lower. Instead, the scenario that I previewed played itself out. Company B is now the lone survivor, having bought company A three years later at a fire sale price. I now work with company B from time to time.
I’m going to give you another example, and this involves opening my business kimono a bit. I stopped doing recruiting, for the most part, two years ago (I still do a bit for selected favored customers). At the time I stopped, my recruiting services started at $20,000 per search, and it was worth it. We got winners. Still, the time demands were such that handling a few searches at the same time became difficult. So I dropped the service, but I’ve been looking for ways to monetize a very effective hiring process.
A few weeks ago, I attempted to do just that. Partnering with Kirk Young of Job Match Assessment, I hosted a two-day training program designed to teach managers and business owners my hiring process, with nothing held back. Since hiring is such a hot topic (and we were only charging $995 per person – $845 if they registered early), I figured we might sell out a 30-person class. We did not. Suffice it to say that attendance was very small and it was not a financial success. But, as one attendee said, “I can’t understand why this isn’t sold out. This is a great program and hiring is the #1 thing that’s discussed when I talk with other business owners.”
Still, I felt the market had spoken; this wasn’t a desired offering. Then came a few calls and emails asking, “When will you be having this one again?” The truth is that we probably won’t. But the “best” response was one owner who said, “Well, I wanted to get some first hand knowledge from someone else who attended before I committed those resources.” Really? This person operates a $15 million business and wasn’t willing to risk $1000 to find out how to staff his company appropriately? In fact, if all of the “When are you doing it again” people had stepped up and registered, we probably would be doing it again.
If you’re thinking that I’m venting a bit of frustration, you’re probably right, but to me it’s a commentary on our business climate. The irony is that the businesses that are owned by these people weren’t built on conservatism; they were built on risk taking.
My message from this article, if you’ve read this far, is this: Any business decision can be made on 80% of the applicable information, and your accuracy on those decisions will be near 100%. Whether you are in Sales, Operations, Management, or Ownership, at 80%, stop dithering and pull the trigger. You’re going to be right nearly all of the time, you’re going to save yourself many hours of hashing and rehashing, and your company will be growing while your competitors are trying to figure out what happened.
