The Buyer's angle: Create Engagement

Here is the first insight I gained as a buyer:

The best seller I have come across in this assignment is the person who Engaged with me patiently and Energetically. From our very first interaction, this gentleman has been continuously probing our NEEDs while also trying to learn the WANTs. He has spent a lot of time trying to provide me adequate and not excessive knowledge and information about his products, services and the marketplace.
He did this regularly which led to a certain relationship being formed between us.
He fertilised the relationship with a lot of genuine and honest help in various matters. He shared open insights about his own company, sharing with me things which would work in his company and things which would not. He continuously tried to read the same about my company. This clearly helped in defining expectations about each other.

So what has this engagement done for the Deal to go through?

1. It has built a certain familiarity about each other's company. Expectation management.
2. It has helped him understand my customer, which will hopefully give him an opportunity of customising his offering to our specific needs.
3. It has withstood some of the other competitors, who risk a chance of loosing out as they did not engage often enough.
4. It has built respect. If he is keen to sell, I also am keen to buy. The engagement creates value for both of us.

Now this is important. Every salesman has a certain desperation to clinch the order. This purportedly gives the buyer the 'upper' hand. Both forget that the customer gains value and utility from the product he buys. Hence there are no favours that a customer really does in giving the salesman an order. I think an Engagement with the right contents ensures that both sides understand VALUE.

How many times and how long do you engage with your customer? Very often, we believe that the follow-up for the order is Engagement. Well I don't think so.

Dwell on this. Share your views on this. I too intend to create this discussion with many other contacts. In my next post, I will try to crystallize this distinction.
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The buyer's angle

I have been playing a new role these past few months. That of being a buyer.

I am in the process of sourcing some new accessories for our company. These deals will be pretty large ones, so there is much at stake for both sides.

Through the next few days, I hope to share some insights I gain and experiences I undergo. Will this new point of view make me a better salesperson?
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At your service ...... If I wish

Some days don't work out very well. I mark them as learning days in my calendar. Yesterday was one such day. It showed me different shades of attitude problems among service providers and how it impacts their customers. Though this is a service related issue, I am writing this post in a Sales blog since attitude towards customer service is critical.


Pic Courtesy - Imageshack

Morning 6:30 am: I travel to Pune Railway station to catch the Deccan Queen Train to Mumbai. At the station, I discover that my wait-listed ticket has not been confirmed, so I cannot take the train. Reason – The person in our office who booked my tickets showed a callous attitude. Inspite of my calling him on Friday @ 5 pm, with more than 3 hours available to book the tickets on Friday, he finally booked my tickets on Saturday evening. The reason for delay, he never checked the requisition about which date tickets were required. Outcome – tickets with wait-list of 40. Further, no attempt was made to try alternatives.

My perception of his Attitude: Callous, Insensitive and Indifferent.


Morning 7:30 am: I then returned home to catch a cup of tea and rush to office. I decided to use the opportunity to drop my daughter at the bus-stop, something which I rarely get to do with my hectic travel schedule. At the bus-stop, I encountered one of the strangest behaviors seen from service providers. As the bus approached us while we stood at the bus stop, the driver saw us standing at the stop, but decided to pass us by, for some strange reason go to the next stop, pick up those kids, then come back and pick up my daughter. This took around 10 minutes during which time we kept wondering whether the driver is going to come back to pick us up or we are expected to reach school ourselves. His reason in his own words – So what if we had to wait another 5 minutes and keep wondering about this?


Attitude seen: Contempt for the customer, not acting in the interests of the customer.


In both cases above, the outcome was the same. I have taken steps to begin the process of replacing the service providers. They have lost my trust. Neither of them intended this outcome. Neither of them started the day saying they are going to attempt to loose their jobs today by treating their customers badly. It was their attitude which was their un-doing.


Do your customers ever get this feeling? I often look back at interactions with customers and think if any aspects of my behavior contained shades of poor attitude. Poor attitude is never by desire. It is by habit. In most cases, it is unknown to the person who exhibits that poor attitude. The difficult part is that one only gets to know about poor attitude when it is too late. Sphere: Related Content

Appreciating Your Customers

I came across another very interesting site today, Simply Gourmet Bistro referred by Chris Brogan in his daily posts.


The Author John showcases a very unique way of building lifelong relationships. He writes about his customers. He has a post called "Customer of the Day" each day. In every post, he writes about 1 customer, sharing something about the customer, his profession, the servies that the customer provides and also puts in a kind word or two about his past experience with the customer. At the end, he writes about what food the customer ordered. This way, in a single post, he builds a bond with that customer, creates win-win by promoting the services of his customer, and also promotes dishes in his menu. What better way to Adding Value?

Think about it. We get so many opportunities to do this every day if we so wish. Have you ever done this to your customers? If yes, write a post about it here. Share and learn.

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Selling OBAMA

I started typing this post as I watched the inauguration of the 44^th US President – Barack Obama. And like thousands of other people who have been writing about him for the past few months, I too am going to write about this event, this person and this outcome.

As I write this, I remember all that I have seen, heard or read about the great marketing campaign to catapult Obama to the presidency of the US. There have been enough and more articles about his great positioning, his terrific virals, his e-mail campaigns, of Obama's Twitter presence, his digital marketing, his websites, his TV campaigns…. and much more. For those who are interested, his social media statistics are mentioned at the end of this post, duly acknowledged.

But importantly and finally, Obama had to be "SOLD", and not just "Marketed". So as you can guess, this post is about "Selling" the product Obama, and not just "Marketing" it. I was privileged to hear and read highly respected marketing "Gurus" speak about marketing brand Obama. And all through, I kept on trying to get the answer – how did the Obama "Sale" finally happen? I am sharing here how I have perceived this whole process as an ever learning "Salesman". Readers will have to pardon me if I refer to Obama as "Product". I use this phrase only because I am looking at a purely "Sales" perspective here.

Once posed with this question, I began digging more, and came out with not only the social media statistics, but also importantly, the on-ground statistics of the two campaigns. Of the many statistics, I am presenting 2 interesting ones:

1. The table below shows the number of campaign offices opened by the 2 candidates in certain states:

State	Barack Obama	John McCain
AK	4	0
MI	40	No Data
MO	30	10
MT	6	No Data
OH	18	8
PA	18	No Data
VA	20	6

2. The second table below is even more interesting. It lists the number of events within 100 miles of specific US zip codes:

courtesy: www.thedailypage.com

US Zip Code	Obama Events	McCain Events
45416 (Dayton, OH),	492	22
43963 (Tiltonsville, OH)	231	21
48701 (Akron, MI)	205	22
45203 (Cincinnati, OH)	435	23
6607 (Topeka, KS)	54	6
75968 (Pineland, TX)	3	3
44127 (Cleveland, OH)	243	33
95903 (Beale AFB, CA)	320	23
12985 (Schuyler Falls, NY)	55	4
73503 (OK)	21	6
73105 (Oklahoma City, OK)	30	7
62205 (Centreville, IL)	84	4
12979 (Rouses Point, NY)	41	3
81152 (San Luis, CO)	22	1
29105 (Monetta, SC)	84	1
50660 (New Hartford, IA)	103	0
76105 (Fort Worth, TX)	67	12
84314 (Honeyville, UT)	389	1
61605 (Peoria, IL)	30	0

CONCLUSIONS: What do the statistics above suggest? Obama clearly had more Effort going in. Whether it was on the ground or on social media. Obama was clearly OUT-SELLING McCain. On election day, more Obama followers were voting than McCain voters. Obama garnered support of more volunteers than McCain. He was more visible to customers – not just through TV or print campaigns, but importantly through his volunteers, meeting people one-to-one, braving the heat, the cold the rain.

They were his SALES TEAM. Meeting more customers. Generating a larger pipeline. Improving his chances of conversion because of sheer numbers.

Brand OBAMA was as much created through a great strategy, great positioning (Yes We Can), as through Superior Execution, a focused, more coordinated effort, more calls being made, more sms messages being sent, creating more followers ..... everything was more.

Well, tell me what you think about this, if you are not already bored with reading the reams and reams of articles already written about OBAMA.

Annexure : Social Media Statistics for US Presidential Campaign.

Courtesy: www.web-strategist.com

Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters  McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161   McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

1,000: The number of phone banks organized by volunteers using MyBO in the final week of the campaign.

150,000: The number of other campaign-related events organized on MyBO over the course of the campaign.

1 million: The number of phone calls supporters made using MyBO on election day alone.

35,000: The number of groups created by supporters on MyBO. These were clumped by geographic proximity and shared interests.

1.5 million: The number of MyBO accounts created by election day.

$650 million and counting: The amount of money Obama raised, more than half of it through his website.

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