Nicholas Bate

The A to Z of Sales Excellence

S is Sell

Too much selling revolves around qualitative information coupled with relationship building. While valid, you will stand out from the crowd when you build your differentiators, you will create your argumentation when you build your quantitative side.

Letter from Stockholm

Snow is back which may seem a surprising thing to say about Sweden. But apart from blizzards in November, this is the first serious snow they have had. Global Warming? Statistical variation? At least the Swedes are not new to this kind of thinking; they have been re-cycling since time began. Bins everywhere-even in your hotel room-encourage pre-sorting and there is much less cynicism than in some countries about taking such issues seriously.

They are seriously cool on design, too. Why is that? One Swede I spoke to said maybe it's because they spend so much time indoors....And systems thinking. Rarely have I come across such a simple system for ensuring the right person gets the right taxi with minimum hassle.

Cool climate, cool design, cool thinking. Great place. Not been there? Make it a must: May/June is meant to be spectacularly beautiful.

Now off to Paris.

Something to Think About

"Good enough is NOT good enough anymore"

Seth Godin

What are you Reading?

Whilst travelling last week I picked up four great books. I've given their amazon.com references as not all are out here in the UK yet.

I know a lot of people who were helped by Julia Cameron's early books, me included. Her latest-Finding Water-is as good as ever if you are looking for a structured, in-depth way to improve your creativity and remove blockers.

More fun is The Intellectual Devotional. Essentially, read a page a day and develop your brain. Monday is History, Tuesday is Literature, Wednesday the Arts, Thursday Science, Friday Music, Saturday Philosophy and Sunday Religion. It's good.

Then Change or Die tackes that ever tricky issue: we know we need to change, we want to change. But we don't . Much more primary research than usual. Very helpful.

And Hard Optimism is about positive thinking, but for those with a cynical bent and wanting a bit more hard evidence and some reasons for bothering to work at it. Nicely designed and layed out, too.

Read more!

The A to Z of Sales Excellence

R is Rapport

If they don't trust you, if they can't 'get along' with you, then it doesn't matter how magical your product and argumentation is, they'll always feel wary. Build trust. Do what you say you are going to do. Give them attention. Never assume.

Something to Think About

You never know

Our local Safeway supermarket tries hard. But somehow it never quite makes it: the displays look tired. The staff are never around when you need them and it rarely appears to be a haven of deep thinking. But, how wrong can you be? Using the store out of desperation recently I overheard the security guard explaining Jungian archetypes to one of the sales team. And they seemed to be really enjoying the discussion.

Letter from Toronto annd Seattle

It was –5 with snow when I arrived so I was glad I had thoroughly explored the city on my previous visit as this one was going to be fleeting and en-route to Seattle.

The plane was delayed by four hours from Toronto: a noticeable pain for those for whom the Friday evening trip was returning home after a long week away. All credit to the Air Canada pilot who came out and spoke to us all and engaged in several one-to-one conversations. A brilliant way to bring a human side to a complicated logistical issue. As the captain left to get ready I fell into conversation with a senior executive from Starbucks also on his way home. He is based at Pike Market, of course. He chatted about the continuous challenge for Starbucks of innovating without losing the very essence of what so many love about the company: great coffee in great surroundings served by great people, of ‘giving-way’ to the demand for drive-through Starbucks, of the challenge of taking 80% of your business between the hours of 0600 and 0800 at by far the majority of stores. I didn’t detect any complacency on their part.

Amongst my sight-seeing I took in the famous Pike Place Fish company. Despite it being 0700 in the morning, cold and dark, they were in fine form: already shovelling ice, wise-cracking and living up to their reputation of turning buying fish into much more of an educational and entertaining experience. For more read Fish! They have realised that a commodity is not enough, nor a product, not even a service. You must sell an experience.

Around the market not all is well, though. I spoke to a book-shop who is suffering and blaming amazon.com. But that won’t help-the blaming that is. They will need to innovate and become entrepreneurs: someone who regularly re-invents. Static businesses go bust. Entrepreneurs tend to survive. And often thrive.

Next week: letters from Stockholm, Paris and Copenhagen. Not all is well in the French economy as you know.

Enjoy your week-end.

Something to Think About

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

Douglas Adams

The A to Z of Sales Excellence

Q is Questions

What do you need to know? So, what are your questions? You certainly need to know what they want. And what would cause them to choose you and who will make the decision and how they will make those decisions and who else they are looking at. So, get to it. Ask questions. But with skill. Not an interrogation: a professional consultative business conversation.

Ask quality questions.

Something to Think About

".. imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.."

Douglas Adams