In a change from our regularly scheduled programming, this week we bring you video. The new Merchandise Mania TV channel is now on You Tube and here is our first installment. Yes, I do talk about pens, so please don't hold that against me - there's some other cool stuff in here too!
Thursday 29 July 2010
Thursday 22 July 2010
Being rude saves me several hours a week
At least once a day, I get some kind of email newsletter sent through to me. I have not spoken with the sender in years, and I don’t actually read the content. The email will last less than ten seconds in my inbox before being consigned to the watery depths of my recycle bin. Incidentally, how politically correct is that? It’s not a recycling bin – it’s the trash. It’s not like my deleted files are going to be remade into something more useful is it?
Here’s the thing. Each one of these emails has an unsubscribe option down the bottom, but I don’t want to click on it. It’s not because I believe that, at some point, they might send me something useful – I mean, how would I know, because I’ve already told you that I don’t read it.
The reason I don’t unsubscribe is to spare the sender’s feelings. I don’t want someone to know that I am no longer interested in what he or she has to tell me, but I don’t want to upset them either.
Am I doing them a disservice? Absolutely. Any smart business keeps metrics on everything, and if they’re doing a mailing campaign, they want to keep track on just how many emails they’re sending out.
How proud the firm that can boast that they’ve just completed an email campaign to 50,000 recipients! Yeah, well – that’s lovely, but just how many people actually read the email and took advantage of the information or offer being shared? “We’re delighted to have had 15 new enquiries,” they say.
OK, so 15 is actually pretty good – but it’s only 0.03% - which is not so impressive.
The trouble is that we are a society of polite liars. We reject sales calls by telling people we’re in meetings. We tell people we’ll get back to them when we know we’re not really interested. We tell people we’ll ‘think about it’ when we’ve already made up our minds that the answer is no.
Why must we equate honesty with rudeness? Surely it’s so much ruder to let someone believe that they may be about to do some business with us when we know that they won’t.
Now there are plenty of people who think I’m rude. I tell people I’m not interested, or that I’m not going to take part in a certain activity. It’s not that I’m busy or have something more important – I’m just not interested. Certainly I often get challenged as to why, and that is a good conversation, rather than an attempt to close a sale.
I’m not suggesting that you shut every opportunity down before it starts to blossom, but you know as well as I do that there are whole bunch of things that come into you on a daily basis which simply stir no emotional response. They are blank space, and they’re stealing your life from under you.
Just think about how much of your busy time you could claw back if you just told people “no” instead of “I’ll let you know”. Sales people will stop calling, irrelevant emails will stop arriving and unnecessary meetings will cease to be.
Doesn’t that sound like heaven?
Here’s the thing. Each one of these emails has an unsubscribe option down the bottom, but I don’t want to click on it. It’s not because I believe that, at some point, they might send me something useful – I mean, how would I know, because I’ve already told you that I don’t read it.
The reason I don’t unsubscribe is to spare the sender’s feelings. I don’t want someone to know that I am no longer interested in what he or she has to tell me, but I don’t want to upset them either.
Am I doing them a disservice? Absolutely. Any smart business keeps metrics on everything, and if they’re doing a mailing campaign, they want to keep track on just how many emails they’re sending out.
How proud the firm that can boast that they’ve just completed an email campaign to 50,000 recipients! Yeah, well – that’s lovely, but just how many people actually read the email and took advantage of the information or offer being shared? “We’re delighted to have had 15 new enquiries,” they say.
OK, so 15 is actually pretty good – but it’s only 0.03% - which is not so impressive.
The trouble is that we are a society of polite liars. We reject sales calls by telling people we’re in meetings. We tell people we’ll get back to them when we know we’re not really interested. We tell people we’ll ‘think about it’ when we’ve already made up our minds that the answer is no.
Why must we equate honesty with rudeness? Surely it’s so much ruder to let someone believe that they may be about to do some business with us when we know that they won’t.
Now there are plenty of people who think I’m rude. I tell people I’m not interested, or that I’m not going to take part in a certain activity. It’s not that I’m busy or have something more important – I’m just not interested. Certainly I often get challenged as to why, and that is a good conversation, rather than an attempt to close a sale.
I’m not suggesting that you shut every opportunity down before it starts to blossom, but you know as well as I do that there are whole bunch of things that come into you on a daily basis which simply stir no emotional response. They are blank space, and they’re stealing your life from under you.
Just think about how much of your busy time you could claw back if you just told people “no” instead of “I’ll let you know”. Sales people will stop calling, irrelevant emails will stop arriving and unnecessary meetings will cease to be.
Doesn’t that sound like heaven?
Thursday 15 July 2010
You're on a roll
Have you ever played darts? I don’t mean pinning a photo of some Z list celebrity on a board and aiming for the eyes – I mean proper, normal darts?
If you have, even just once or twice, then you’ll be familiar with the fact that if you throw them very quickly in succession, that the second and third dart are more likely to land quite close to the first one. It’s like your arm has some sort of targeting mechanism that works for very small periods of time.
Professional darts players know this too. If you ever watch them play, you can see that in the earliest stages of the game, when they’re trying to score as much as possible, that they barely pause between throws.
How is this relevant to you? Well the same could be said of sales people. Have you ever noticed that once a particular sales person gets a good order, that another two of three seem to come along almost immediately? To coin a phrase, these people are “on a roll”.
Gamblers have winning streaks, sales people have roles, but it all comes down to the same thing. Positive results have a sort of magnetism to them. You get one great result and you feel good about it. That positive, good feeling feeds back on itself and you grow more and more successful.
But it’s not all tree hugging, hippy crap – sure, there is something to be said for a positive vibe, but in isolation it’s about as much use as a pork pie at a Barmitzvah.
Feeling good and positive changes the way we act. We speak with more confidence, we smile more, we’re open to new ideas and conversations, hence we essentially become someone that others actually want to do business with.
Armed with this, it’s easy to work out how to turn your losing streak into a winning one. Just tell yourself that it’s finished. It happens to everyone and thanks very much but you’re done with it now. Now take a deep breath and then tell yourself that you are in the midst of another winning streak. Really take the time to believe it, and then pick up the phone and make your next sales call.
If you’ve convinced yourself effectively, you’ll notice a pleasant change in the way people respond to you, and before very long, that winning streak that you just made up will actually become real.
Good luck.
If you have, even just once or twice, then you’ll be familiar with the fact that if you throw them very quickly in succession, that the second and third dart are more likely to land quite close to the first one. It’s like your arm has some sort of targeting mechanism that works for very small periods of time.
Professional darts players know this too. If you ever watch them play, you can see that in the earliest stages of the game, when they’re trying to score as much as possible, that they barely pause between throws.
How is this relevant to you? Well the same could be said of sales people. Have you ever noticed that once a particular sales person gets a good order, that another two of three seem to come along almost immediately? To coin a phrase, these people are “on a roll”.
Gamblers have winning streaks, sales people have roles, but it all comes down to the same thing. Positive results have a sort of magnetism to them. You get one great result and you feel good about it. That positive, good feeling feeds back on itself and you grow more and more successful.
But it’s not all tree hugging, hippy crap – sure, there is something to be said for a positive vibe, but in isolation it’s about as much use as a pork pie at a Barmitzvah.
Feeling good and positive changes the way we act. We speak with more confidence, we smile more, we’re open to new ideas and conversations, hence we essentially become someone that others actually want to do business with.
Armed with this, it’s easy to work out how to turn your losing streak into a winning one. Just tell yourself that it’s finished. It happens to everyone and thanks very much but you’re done with it now. Now take a deep breath and then tell yourself that you are in the midst of another winning streak. Really take the time to believe it, and then pick up the phone and make your next sales call.
If you’ve convinced yourself effectively, you’ll notice a pleasant change in the way people respond to you, and before very long, that winning streak that you just made up will actually become real.
Good luck.
Thursday 8 July 2010
My Supermarket Thinks I'm an Idiot
Now I don't think it's fair to name names here - in fact it may even constitute liable, but I'm getting just a little bit fed up with my local supermarket. I'm faced with aisle upon aisle of special offers - buy one get one free, buy two for only £5, buy three and the cheapest item costs nothing and blah blah blah.
The trouble is that these offers are robbing people of their hard earned cash - buying two perishable items, desperately believing that they'll eat both of them before their sell by date and giving themselves a pat on the back for saving that all important 50p.
But the deals are all wrong, and to illustrate my point - here are three deals that I spotted whilst shopping last night:
Dairylea Cheese Slices - perfect for the burgers that you'll be doing on the BBQ this weekend. 16 slices will cost you £1.86. Not bad. However, 8 slices will cost you £1.25 and this week it's by one, get one free! What moron is going to be buying the 16 pack?
Caffeine Free Diet Coke - my wife drinks it so don't judge me. A pack of 8 cans for only £3.50, or if you prefer, you can take home a pack of 12 cans for.....wait for it.....£3.50!
Fabric Softener - 1.5l for just £3.37, or you can buy 750ml for £1.67. Hold on a sec - doesn't that mean that if I buy two bottles I actually save money? Well yes it does, and this is a major bone of contention for me, because these people are essentially encouraging people to go through more packaging. It's ecologically unsound to encourage us to buy 2 smaller bottles as opposed to one big one, and the argument against that could fill another blog all on its own.
The supermarket's response to these errors? "Well it's the price we're told to sell at," oh come off it, you're a major client to the suppliers, so you should be able to dictate the prices that you charge, don't go fobbing it off on some faceless distributor! Now I want to see how many more of these ridicuous offers are out there, so please send them to me, either as a comment to this blog or on an email, and let's see if we can collectively do something about this.
Remember, I won't name names - but every little helps.
The trouble is that these offers are robbing people of their hard earned cash - buying two perishable items, desperately believing that they'll eat both of them before their sell by date and giving themselves a pat on the back for saving that all important 50p.
But the deals are all wrong, and to illustrate my point - here are three deals that I spotted whilst shopping last night:
Dairylea Cheese Slices - perfect for the burgers that you'll be doing on the BBQ this weekend. 16 slices will cost you £1.86. Not bad. However, 8 slices will cost you £1.25 and this week it's by one, get one free! What moron is going to be buying the 16 pack?
Caffeine Free Diet Coke - my wife drinks it so don't judge me. A pack of 8 cans for only £3.50, or if you prefer, you can take home a pack of 12 cans for.....wait for it.....£3.50!
Fabric Softener - 1.5l for just £3.37, or you can buy 750ml for £1.67. Hold on a sec - doesn't that mean that if I buy two bottles I actually save money? Well yes it does, and this is a major bone of contention for me, because these people are essentially encouraging people to go through more packaging. It's ecologically unsound to encourage us to buy 2 smaller bottles as opposed to one big one, and the argument against that could fill another blog all on its own.
The supermarket's response to these errors? "Well it's the price we're told to sell at," oh come off it, you're a major client to the suppliers, so you should be able to dictate the prices that you charge, don't go fobbing it off on some faceless distributor! Now I want to see how many more of these ridicuous offers are out there, so please send them to me, either as a comment to this blog or on an email, and let's see if we can collectively do something about this.
Remember, I won't name names - but every little helps.
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