Successful Blog

Be Irresistible: Find the Unique Opportunity that Is Yours in Any Moment

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Ack, What Do I Do Now?!

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Let’s just say it was in the last few years …
My life already had become all about working with corporations and individuals on simplifying their strategic goals. Daily I asked people questions. Sometimes the situation was about an immediate problem. Sometimes it was about far-ranging visions and goals. The questions were the same, the answers were sometimes easier to find than other times..

Five types of questions can get anyone to the best view of the opportunities in any moment:

  • Mission – Know where you are going. What is your specific and ultimate goal? Can you see it. What is your commitment to it?
  • Position – Know the unique place where are you alone are now. What is unique about where you stand in the situation? What do you uniquely bring to the table? How can your perceived weakness be turned into a strength? (if your back is against the wall, no one can come up behind you.)
  • Conditions – Know how change offers you unique opportunities. What has changed that offers an opening, an opportunity, that uniquely suits you?
  • Command Decisions – Know how to focus and sort which decisions move you toward your ultimate goal. Which opportunity moves you toward your ultimate goal? How does your response work toward making more opportunities? Which decisions will build a foundation for stronger opportunities tomorrow?
  • Networks and Systems – Know who will help you execute and how you will keep your process going. Who can help? How can you align your goals with another to make the movement faster, easier, and more meaningful for both of you? Where is the process so strong it’s invisible or so weak that it stand out?

Strategy is a framework for claiming the opportunities that uniquely our own to move forward toward a specific goal in realistic ways over time. Keeping an eye toward our end game — our mission — is only the beginning. If we recognize the unique opportunities inside every change — when we move, when circumstances move, when the people around us move — we can see a clearer way to that ultimate, specific goal.

Have you analyzed your unique opportunities lately?

Be Irresistible

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Dear Big Company: Why Your Best Customer Offer Doesn’t Cut It!

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The Wrong Kind of Attention

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As I checked my bulk email, a subject line stood out to me. It read …

Only For Our Best Customers > Charisma Now On Sale!

I thought. there’s an “almost clever” idea meant to get me to look inside.
Charisma is the name of a bedding product line the company sells. I’ve bought it in the past and I am a fan. So the email ad should have made positive points … right?

It had the opposite effect. Here’s why.

Dear Big Company: Why Your Best Customer Offer Doesn’t Cut It

From the moment I read the subject line, my mind was brought to the offer not to the product. I was thinking What makes me a best customer and what’s so special about this best customer offer? That’s a doubly dangerous line to walk. After all, something ONLY for best customers really should be something exclusive and highly rewarding.

  • A “Best Customer Offer” Needs to Be Exclusive If they call me a best customer, I need to know what got me there. Am I truly a member of that exclusive best customer club or do they “say that to every girl’? I was doubtful about my “best customer-ness.” I haven’t bought from this big company for over two years.

    I found my doubt confirmed by the words under the ad.
    This offer “only for our best customers also said …

    If you received this email from a friend and would like to subscribe to our email list, click here.

    and something like …

    You received this email because you have subscribed to promotional emails from [The Big Company]

    So everyone on their list and anyone they pass the email onto is a best customer?

  • A Best Customer Offer Should Be Best Customer Rewarding If you call attention to my best customer-ness, I would think you’re trying to encourage best customer kind of behavior. So the next “best” requirement would be a Best Customer offer that seduce me into being a Best Customer — an unforgettable sale of such value that I not only stocked up for my own home, but also encouraged my friends to do it too. Unfortunately, the sale prices I discovered matched every other sale The Big Company has sent me.

    • Dear Big Company:

    Your “Best Customer” offer backfired on me.

    If you want me to read your ad and buy your product, don’t lie to me. It shows no respect for either one of us and takes the focus off the value of your product. In fact, it gets me wondering about things like these:

    • Is a best customer anyone with an email address on your list? Would you include the guy on the corner flashing open a trench coat saying “Hey look at this!”
    • Is your company in trouble that you have to resort to this? Are you like the guy who’ll say anything to get a date and doesn’t care who it’s with?
    • Did you think about who would read this email? Or were you so busy trying to sell me that you forgot that I might actually want to trust what you’re saying?

    “If you’re going to lie to me, at least have the decency to be convincing.” If this is your best truth, you need a better plan to get “best customers” to fall in love with you again. Because saying the equivalent to …

    You’re my best girlfriend and I offer you the same thing I give every girl even the ones I don’t know yet.

    just doesn’t cut it.

    If I’m a best customer, I want to feel like you care about me. A better subject line might read …

    Wake Up with Charisma! Sweet Dreams and Savings Sale!

    then don’t tell me … show me.

    Be irresistible.

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

Selling to People: How to Be the Value Not a Necessary Evil

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Guest Post
by Doug Rice

I am in an interesting position as a sales professional. I see things from the rather optimistic perspective of a salesperson. I see myself as a value creator and a problem solver for my customers. I help them achieve their goals. I make their lives easier and more fulfilling. I believe that I am valuable to them. They don’t just need a product or service. They need ME. I make a difference to them.

But, then again, I buy stuff too. I am a consumer and a businessperson as well. And I have to ask myself, “Do I view other salespeople in the same way?” You see, when I take off my sales glasses, and come back to end-consumer reality, I realize that I may be a little delusional. It seems that most people have quite the opposite view of salespeople. They see them, not as value creators, but necessary evils.

When people go shopping for a car, they rarely want the salesperson to help them. They tolerate it because they have to in order to get the vehicle they want. I recently read an article about an increasing number of doctors refusing pharmaceutical reps from making unsolicited sales calls. “If we need something,” reads a sign on one doctor’s door, we’ll call you.” We hate shopping for furniture because we don’t want to be “hounded” by the salesperson. We find the house we are interested in and THEN contact the real estate assigned to it to see if we can negotiate a better price. We send out an RFP to decide between suppliers.

We want the car. We want the house. We need the drugs. We need the supplies. But the salespeople? They just stand in the way of us accomplishing our objectives. They just make the buying process more difficult for us. We don’t want them and we don’t need them. They are necessary evil.

How to Be the Value Not a Necessary Evil

If you are a salesperson, you are probably feeling rather indignant right about now. I know the feeling. I hate admitting this to myself. But let’s face facts. This is the perception that most buyers have of us. The question is, “what are we going to do about it?” You see, it really doesn’t matter if we truly are value creators or simply sheisters trying to squeeze out profit. If customers perceive us as barriers, that’s what we will be. We can create all the value in the world but, if it goes unnoticed, we are just exhausting our efforts in vain. So, how can we change perceptions? Well, it isn’t easy, it won’t happen overnight, and it will take a lot of upfront effort before there is any payoff. But it is possible to transform your image from that of a necessary evil to that of a value creator. Here are a few tips:

  1. Never fail to qualify. Asking open-ended questions signals to customers that you care about helping them find solutions. Never talk features and benefits until you know what the customer needs. If you do, you may offer a benefit that is irrelevant to the customer. And customers seem to view benefits as mutually exclusive. If it works in one way, then it must not work in the way they need it too. Always know your customer before attempting to sell your customer. If you don’t learn about your customer, you are going to be irrelevant. And value that is irrelevant isn’t really value at all.
  2. Never emphasize price. It doesn’t matter if you have the best price in your market, bragging about it will commoditize you and make you unnecessary. And an unnecessary good is just as bad as a necessary evil. I’m not saying to hide your price. Be upfront about it, but present it in a matter-of-fact manner, as if it really isn’t important. Your customer is trained to seek out the best price but really wants the greatest value. Sell the value, not the price.
  3. Always have a reason. Whether you are sending an email, making a call, or giving a presentation and whether it is your first, second, or third attempt, always have a reason for contacting your customer. Never simply “check-in.” This kind of activity says to the customer, “Hello, you haven’t bought from me yet. Are you going to do it or not?” Newsflash for salespeople: they probably haven’t bought yet because you haven’t yet convinced them. Pestering them with calls basically asking them to hurry up is not going to motivate them. Have something valuable to say every time you contact them. If you do, you are reinforcing to them that you actually have something meaningful to contribute.
  4. Always follow up. Nothing says that you were merely an obstacle to overcome more than the customer never hearing from you after the sale. When you turn the sale into the beginning of the relationship, you are signaling to the customer that you are in it for the long haul. Make sure they don’t just have your product or service after the sale. Make sure they have you. Closing is the new opening.

    5. These tips aren’t guaranteed, of course, to turn you into a knight in shining armor for your customer. But they do send the signal that you are not merely a transactional salesperson. You do not sell businesses a better service but rather a better business. You do not sell consumers a better product but rather a better life. If sales is your career, you’ve got to start working on changing your perceived role. Commoditization is all too easy in today’s world. You’ve got to stand out if you want to stand at all. Soon, “necessary evils” won’t be necessary at all.

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    Doug Rice who writes for How Does that Make You Buy? You can find him on Twitter as @dougricehdtmyb
    Thanks, Riley

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

Are you rejecting smart ideas?

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by Patty Azzarello

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by Patty Azzarello

Thrown Overboard

Very early in my career (I emphasize “very early” as this is not an incident I am proud of and didn’t want you to think this was last week!).

I was in a sales training session and we had to do a lifeboat exercise.

The Lifeboat…

You are probably familiar with this.

You imagine you are lost at sea in a lifeboat with others, and you have set of items in your emergency kit.
But you can’t keep them all, and you need to decide which few items to keep (while you pursue or await rescue) and which to throw overboard.  It’s stuff like a flare, a rope, a mirror, a flashlight, food, a compass, drinking water, matches, etc.

What’s supposed to happen…

The way the exercise goes is that you first create your list of must-keep items individually, and then you discuss it as a team and build a team-generated list.

This is an exercise where there are, in fact, correct answers, so you get a score on how well you did as an individual, and as a team.
The point of the exercise is to show how no individual scores come out higher than the team score, and to demonstrate the value of teamwork.

OK, So our team was pathetic.

This was an international meeting, and on our team we had 7 English-as-a-first-language people, and one French guy.  Although he spoke English, (loads better than any one of us spoke French!), the language issue was difficult and distracting to the team.

Every time he advocated for his choices we basically ignored him because it was just too slow and difficult to get what he was saying, and it didn’t sound that smart to us anyway.

You can guess the outcome here

1) Our team not only lost, but failed spectacularly, in an unprecedented way…?2) Our team score was lower than ALL of our individual scores…?3) AND the French guy not only had the highest individual score on our team, but of all the individuals, and all the teams!

OK, so what are the lessons?

He was the smartest guy in the room.  He tried to share his good ideas with us – over and over again.  We basically threw him overboard.

So for me, although miles from the lesson intended about teamwork, this provided a good slap in the face, and some real lessons about communicating.

I think about this tragically “American” moment in my career very often when I am working internationally.  And it serves as a reminder to be a better human!

1. Modify your expectations of communicating

When there is a language issue, treat is as YOUR issue.

They are speaking your language as a favor to you.  You don’t speak THEIR language.  So remember you are putting the other person in a difficult position.

If you have never tried – just try to learn another language.  Appreciate the great chasm that you would need to cross to speak as well in your colleague’s language as they do in yours.

Don’t just accept a weak meeting outcome, and blame it on the other person.

Take responsibility to get the necessary business outcome and give the person a chance to communicate on their terms.  It’s up to you to make sure you get their best thinking.

2. Don’t equate capability with ability to speak your language

I recall from one of Jack Welch’s books that even he made this mistake when he first started hiring people in Japan.  He hired the Japanese people that spoke English best because they seemed more capable to him.

He later let native Japanese leaders choose talent in Japan and got much better hires.

If something is critical, let people work in their native language and make it your problem to process and understand it.

3. Revert to writing

Writing can be much easier to understand because both parties get to communicate at their own pace.  Nothing gets lost as the conversation goes by.

I have had meetings where we literally wrote out, in sentences, our conversation, decisions and agreements on the white board.
The discussion moves slower, but the communication moves much faster.  Writing can often be much more easily understood than talking, and it is very easily translated.

Use writing in parallel with social media
I also heard a brilliant idea from a colleague who manages an international team. 

On all of their multi-country conference calls they use an additional IM window where people in each country type out the key points being made, translate any jargon, highlight questions and decisions, and clarify areas in the discussion that were moving fast, or unclear.

They also use blog updates which capture the key ideas and decisions from the conference call in writing, to re-inforce the key outcomes and have a record for later review and understanding.

This improved both productivity and relationships dramatically.  Brilliant!

How do you communicate with global teams?

Please leave your ideas in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advisor. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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7 Key Steps to Being Seen as the Best in Your Field

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What Good Is an Expert No One Knows?

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Whether we’re part of a large organization or working at home, to be successful and recognized, people have to see the quality of our work, know its value, find it relevant and worth coming back to. Without that we won’t be working long. It’s not enough to have knowledge, know-how, and be able to deliver extraordinary value, if we’re the only ones who know that’s what we can do.

To succeed in business, we need to share our expertise in ways that are relevant, real, and understandable and the more quickly we do that the faster we’ll be able to get on with the real work. These are the 7 Steps to becoming visible as the best in your field, the expert worth knowing, the first trusted source.

  1. Debriefing your successes to find your unique expertise. Inside your successes you’ll find your natural strengths and how they are best used. Capitalize on your strengths and match them with your deep interests — those things that you talk about and do even when you don’t have to talk about or do them. Your unique talent and experience differentiates your expertise — makes it uniquely your own. Know your strengths and play to them.
  2. Chose ONE key area of expertise. Find ONE niche that fits your strengths. With the noise of a crowded market, one niche, one offer, one specific expertise is a clear, easy to share message. People like a “go to” person for a specific need. Having ONE key area of expertise makes it easy for people to share what you do. It makes it easy for the people who want that expertise to find you. Once you’re working together, they’ll discover the other wonderful things you know.
  3. Network online and off to find people who need your expertise. Get to know the groups offline that attract the people who want to know someone who does what you do. Use tools like Listorious.com and Twitter search to find people to follow on Twitter and talk with them. Make friends on LinkedIn one by one. Align all of your profiles to showcase that one area of expertise that is your strongest suit. Introduce yourself with your best true story and a build your powerful personal network systematically.
  4. Share Your expertise as content. New customers and clients want information about how to run their businesses and their lives better — top-notch, quality, relevant content. Find opportunities to write, speak, or teach for your business. Share wht you’ve learned in contexts that are appealing. When you speak, write, and casually answer questions give them information, answers, AND analysis that shows them how much you love what you do. People can get news anywhere, but they don’t want to do what you do. What they want is your experience and the expert opinion, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and predictions.
  5. Use online tools to curate relevant content around your expertise. Make finding interesting content tidbits your expert quest. Get to be friends with Google Alerts and similar services. Follow terms around the Internet. Choose several publications, blogs, and writers who stay on top of the areas that your customers and clients care most about. Retweet their articles on Twitter. Share them on Facebook and LinkedIn. Add a comment to the article as you send it out. Use popurl.com or alltop.com to locate
  6. Learn as much as you can about those who do what you do. Get to know the other experts in your niche. Talk with them. Visit and comment on their blogs. Ask them for an interview. Share war stories. Discuss ways of working together. Discover the ways that your expertise is the same and different from theirs. Volunteer to guest post on their blogs and determine who you might want to invite to work with you on larger projects and referrals. That’s a great way to build the base of people who know what you do.
  7. Go deeply into your area of expertise. Saturate yourself in the trends and the traditional ways of doing things. Find out what researchers are thinking so that you can offer clients and customers the perspective they don’t have the time to gather on their own. Be the first trusted source of the highest quality and most relevant information so that people begin to look to you for an analysis of their situation.


    8. PLUS ONE: Love what you do. . Nothing is more appealing than an expert who is fully engaged in what he or she is doing. It’s easy to trust that someone who is so engaged will be upbeat and easy to work with when problems come. Share the joy of your niche with the folks who come to see you. They’ll want to know more about what it is that you do.

    Focusing in on your expertise gives customers and clients insight into who you are and why they should keep coming back to see you. It becomes a key centerpiece of your offer — quality, knowledge, and credibility as promotion. Now, you’re ready when that person comes to look with the reasons founded in the relevance and the results that you represent. Just keep counting to seven — seven key steps to being seen as the best in your field.

    What has been the single most useful strategy you’ve found in building your own business expertise?

    Be irresistible.
    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

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What I Learned from an Irresistible Billionaire Entrepreneur

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Listening and Learning

When a good heart thoughtfully shares experience, listening comes easily. I know because last week I had the privilege of hearing Clay Mathile tell the story of his life as an entrepreneur. It was a quiet, late morning conversation that included my friends and colleagues, Barry Moltz and Anita Campbell. We were in a small meeting room at Aileron — the $130 million campus that Clay built to pass his success on to others.

“Entrepreneurs can solve almost all the problems we have in this country, in this world,” said Mathile in an interview with CNN Money.

The Iams Vision and Focus

What Clay talked about while we were with him was the vision and the focus that built the Iams Corporation. His vision was clearly stated in a story.

Clay was born in the poorest times of American history, in one of Ohio’s poorest cities. From the time he was 6 he wanted to own his own company. He wanted that company to be the best at what it did and to provide jobs. In 1970, when Clay was considering a job for Iams, the little known pet food brand was having difficulties. While thinking about the opportunity, a thirty-something Clay visited a relative at nearby farm shared some time and left a bag of the dog food for the man’s farm dog. (Anyone who’s seen a farm dog knows that’s a dog luxury!) A few weeks later when the Iams decision was pending, Clay returned to the farm to have another conversation. The dog that ran out of the house was so remarkably changed that Clay didn’t recognize him! This dog had a beautiful, bright eyes and high energy!

Clay’s thought was “This is what people want for the pets they love!” His decision was made. The change in that dog became the vision that turned around a company. Mathile joined Iams in 1970, helped turn it around and took complete ownership of it in 1982. In August of 1999, Clay sold Iams to Proctor and Gamble for $2.3 billion.

The rest of the Iams story includes years of learning.

“It took me 5 years to realize that I was selling a dog food that dogs wouldn’t eat in a package that consumers wouldn’t buy,” Clay said in humility of someone who loves learning. “Then it took me another 5 years to fix the problem.”

But throughout our extended conversation, the themes of learning, vision, and focus were inside every answer to every question.

  • We stayed focused on our mission to be the most recognized provider of dog and cat nutrition.
  • We realized that dogs and cats were our customers and that our employees needed to be people who loved dogs and cats as much as the people who buy our products.
  • We trained every person and had dieticians in every region.
  • Pictures of dogs and cats were everywhere throughout the company — on desks, on walls.

It was clear that everyone shared the same vision … of delivering great pet nutrition to make a difference.

Aileron

Now, Clay has put his money to investing in other people — entrepreneurs who are building their own businesses. The beautiful campus, Aileron, and fabulous team who run it have the vision and the focus to be the ultimate individualized professional management resource for small business owners. I’m paraphrasing how Clay Mathile said it, but his words so reminded me of my dad that I can’t help but think I got the meaning …

There is no higher philanthropy than being an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs create jobs for other people.

The wisdom of one man changed me in one short meeting. I’m grateful for the contribution I was able to make to the Course for Presidents at Aileron.org in June.

I look forward to going back soon.

Clay Mathile is irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!