Defying economic gravity: the Euro crisis has lessons for us all

Whatever your politics, you're probably pretty worried by the fiasco now developing in the Eurozone countries as the one-size-fits-all construct of the Euro starts to look more and more shaky by the day. At the outset, it looked like a rational and practical means to simplify trade between national neighbours, and was sold to the populations of Europe as just that: hey, you won't have to convert your currency when you go to Italy for a holiday, what's not to like?

Increasingly, it's becoming clear that having a single currency across multiple sovereign states, each with quite different econonmic circumstances, is probably unsustainable, at least without some radical pooling of financial and political power at the centre - and that means Eurozone countries handing authority over their economic levers to Brussels, and by turn, to the most powerful Euro nations, Germany, and to some extent, France. And given the poor track record of the EU in respecting local demoncracies, it's no wonder that large swathes of the European populace are getting a bit panicked: they're on board an out-of-control train piloted by an unnaccountable political elite, determined to use the crisis as cover for irreversible political and fiscal union - and that train looks like it's heading for a tremdous crash. We can all see it, but our European leaders appear unable to.

In my view, it's not that they cannot figure out what the problem is, but that they are terrified of admitting it. Suddenly the emperor would have no clothes. Suddenly, the vanity and ambition that has kept the federal European project levitating in defiance of economic gravity is starting to dissipate in the face of reality: in particular the reality of Angela Merkel standing her ground, unwilling to allow German taxpayers to write blank cheques to support the less sober Euro economies. Yet still Manuel Baroso claims that the Euro crisis is nothing to do with Europe, but is all the fault of the Americans.

It might be stretching a point a bit, but the willful blindness of Eurozone leaders to the simple economic truths about their project do remind me a lot of the situation companies sometimes get themselves into with projects and initiatives of relative equal size and grandeur. As the Global Corporate Transformation project (for example) gathers momentum, staff, prestige and budget, everyone's a fan. It almost beccomes a corporate cult, and the compexity, cost and effort can get out of control. It takes a lot of courage to point out that it's not delivering genuine, practical business benefit. It's easier to let the thing meander aimlessly on, in the belief that it might soon turn the corner and show some positive results - easier than chopping back the plans and agendas of senior people with a lot of 'skin in the game'.

Even at the level of individual salespeople, it's terribly easy to believe too much in your pipeline, populated by lists of 'very interested' prospects........harder to see that our natural optimism and (over) confidence in our abilities is blinding us to the reality - the wrong strategy, the wrong pitch, the wrong propsects.

The sales equivalent of 'keeping the Pound' might be then to rigorously defend your self-reliance, expect no-one (not even the Marketing department) to come up with the leads, and constantly test the resilience of your forecast by examining the real metrics - your actual conversion rates, for example, and have the courage to change tack, even at the cost of some wasted effort and a short-term knock to your reputation.

Maybe sometimes, we all have to be like Greece - default, leave the Euro and face the consequences: short-term pain and turmoil is surely better than endless suffering?

The Basics of Value Selling

It's always worth reminding oneself of the basic concepts of selling, and for those new to sales, you can do no better than keep these core 101 principles front and centre when you're out meeting customers:

A few years ago, when the world of business was gripped by the internet boom, it was fashionable to predict an end to traditional selling done by humans. Michael Dell, to name but one example, was showing the world how to sell complex technology over an internet site. The tantalizing prospect of doing away with expensive, demanding salespeople was seriously entertained.

But ten years on, professional selling is just as vital to the conduct of good business as it ever was. And over the twenty-five years that I have been selling, the skills and techniques have evolved with the development of technology and markets, so that now, it’s a highly sophisticated profession.

It has always surprised and amused me that there are so many business people out there who think selling is a science, and want to find (or be sold) a mechanical formula which will always work. Actually, although there are indeed proven techniques and methods that you can learn, selling is much more of an art – it’s about behaviours, emotions, communication and people.

Buyers are just people like you and me, and if they are to be persuaded or helped to make a purchase, they have to feel that the result for them will be some kind of positive change – in their lives, or in their company’s life.

It’s amazing how many people think that selling is just about the product and its price. Offer something with a fancy new feature at an attractive price and it will sell itself. But that’s just marketing, not selling. It completely omits the role that a buyer has in considering how important the positive change will be to them – that is, what the value will be of that change. Value is the most important concept in selling.

It’s highly likely that a positive change is needed or wanted because the customer currently has some kind of problem or difficulty. It’s helpful to think about these problems as business ‘pain’ from which the customer seeks some relief. Depending on how painful the problems are, the value of solving them will increase, and our opportunity to provide a solution will develop.

There are three basic types of value: Financial value is defined in money terms, Personal value relates to the buyer’s own personal agenda or interests, and Business value relates to more general or strategic business aims, not necessarily quantifiable in money terms.

Unless the customer can see that the value of your product or service outweighs its price, they are unlikely to be motivated to buy.

Do these companies have a death-wish?

Well, you can't say I don't practice what I preach: I've been putting aside at least two half-days every week recently to get some prospecting and target calling done. And that means spending a few hours relentlessy dialling numbers and making a concerted effort to make contact with the right people in the right organisations, and then have a conversation with them that leads to a next action. We all know how tough it can be to stick at this kind of work and achieve a result, and the major challenge is often overcoming one's own reluctance and fear. But each small success drives you onwards.

Anyway, the point of this post is to wonder aloud whether if some of the companies I am calling, far from needing sales skills training, ought perhaps to go back to very first principles of operating a business at all - because the level of basic human communication at the very first point of contact for any customer, potential customer or partner is in many cases utterly, incredibly awful.

I have half a mind to name & shame a few of these (in all cases, large, often technology) companies: what happens is, you call their main switchboard number and either a) it simply rings for ever and no one picks up or b) it goes straight to a voicemail message to the effect that we can't be bothered to answer the phone, please call back, or leave us a message or c) there isn't even a coherent welcome message , just a standard fob-off generated by an answer machine. One such company, when you call them, routinely answers its main switchboard with the message "This is the general delivery mailbox. Please call back." and hangs you up!

You would think that this kind of thing happens in very rare circumstances, perhaps when the receptionist is in the loo, or the company is about to go bust and they've given up entirely. But no - I made about 40 calls this morning and a good 8-10 of these were to comapnies unable or unwilling to do the most basic thing - answer their phone. The unavoidable impression is that these are organisations so incompetent, so dreadfully dead-beat, that they must be staffed and managed by morons. I just keep thinking, what if were a customer? What if I actually wanted to buy something? I'd be running a mile by now - and we are in tough times, when you'd think every outfit in the land would at least be trying to do its best with the in-bound enquiries through it main phone number. I can only assume that a lot of these companies have simply fired their receptionist, but Jesus, for £50 per week, you can get a virtual PA service to do the job professionally and with minimum setup aggro.

If you are a Sales Director or an MD reading this, I strongly advise you, every so often, to anonymously call your main switchboard number and see what happens. Then call through to your main Sales number. Go on, depress yourself. It is THE most basic thing to get right, and you don't need a training course to know how to do it either.

Right, rant over, I'm off to call up some more companies who think they are so successful they don't even need to answer their phones.