Jon Cooper: Jungle frolics to teach us about business

Here is a fabulous little story, both in the sense that it’s a kind of fable, and that it’s quite excellent!

A tiger was stalking through the jungle looking for dinner. He spotted a lone coyote in a clearing and set his sights on it.

As the tiger roared and stomped his way towards his unsuspecting prey, the coyote sensed imminent danger from his feline nemesis and froze for a moment.

Recovering his guile and composure quickly, he trotted over to a nearby pile of bones and exclaimed, “Mmm, what a delicious tiger that was!”

The tiger, shaken by this unexpected revelation, skulked away and vowed to avoid coyote-hunting for evermore.

Meanwhile, a monkey had witnessed the remarkable scene from a tree and skipped off to find the tiger, and offer him a deal.

“Mr Tiger,” he pronounced, “I have some very interesting and valuable information, which I’ll give you in return for a little protection.”

The tiger agreed to watch out for the monkey’s welfare, and was told the whole truth about the coyote and the bones.

Shortly afterwards, the tiger appeared in the clearing with the monkey on his back. (Now there’s a metaphor waiting to happen…)

Mr Coyote, snoozing smugly by the life-saving bones, opened one eye and spotted the peculiar couple, intent as they were on spoiling his afternoon nap. He looked away and declared loudly “I’m starving; why does that lazy monkey take so long to get me another tiger…?”

So what’s the moral in this tale of animal cunning (and, probably, monkey-eating tigers)?

Well, there are several. Firstly, that you can overcome pretty much any obstacle with the right effort. Secondly; in the story, the coyote had to overcome the same challenge not once, but twice. So; never give up, even when a problem refuses to be solved first time around.

He also didn’t exactly work hard to escape a grizzly and macabre death. “Working hard” would have meant running away, and dying exhausted a minute later as the big cat inevitably caught him.

Credit to Mr Coyote; he chose working smart over working hard. Works every time!

Jon Cooper is the founder of JupiterDawn.com business consulting, and an Accredited Business Adviser with the IBD group. Exclusive to Jupiter Dawn Blog readers - contact jon@jupiterdawn.com for a free one-hour business mentoring session with Jon, worth £175. Follow @jonnycooper.

Jon Cooper: When opposites attract success

Supercharge your business with the right partner!

I met two halves of a brilliant partnership over breakfast the other day; they’ve built a fantastic business in recycling and waste management, and they have at least three unique products which make their competition look simply, well, rubbish (sorry…).

What fascinated me were the striking differences between the pair of them. One, a natural born leader, with a massive handshake and projecting serious gravitas. He seemed to be holding a crowd effortlessly, and was entertaining them with an amusing anecdote.

His partner was less conspicuous, and spoke quietly yet effectively about what they had achieved, and what they had yet to achieve. He also held the purse strings!

When I got to talk to Mr Big, he made a surprising admission: before he teamed up with his unassuming “other half”, he had been nearly bankrupt, having risked the crown jewels on some brave yet misguided venture.

I realised that here was a classic double act; comparable to the great comedic talents of Laurel and Hardy, Morecombe and Wise or Cannon and Ball (ok, that’s enough), this was a pair who truly sparked off each other, and whose whole was infinitely greater than their two halves.

I suggested that he had found his perfect foil; someone who could distil his crackpot ideas and turn them into a business, and who could temper his wild imaginings for the sake of long-term growth.

He agreed, and added “He doesn’t distil all my ideas; some of them are just too crazy or risky to use, so I think he just kind of ignores them. But when he likes the sound of a plan, he’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen. I guess I’m not so good on the details, and he loves working the small stuff!”

Many entrepreneurs have significant skill gaps when it comes to service delivery, project execution, time management and cash control. It’s just not what they DO!

If that sounds like you, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re the Bill Gates of your enterprise; the Richard Branson.

When your peculiar talents are forged in white-hot creativity, blue-sky thinking and ultra-positivity, it’s no surprise there isn’t room in your head for the daily logistics.

But like our Mr Big, you’d better find your calming nemesis before you drive your ideas-train right off the rails!

Jon Cooper is the founder of www.JupiterDawn.com. Marketing for your business.

Jon Cooper – When your customers return, will you recognise them?

Post-recession, everything's changed!

I was in the States last week, working on a deal I’ve been trying to land for years. More of that another time, but I also spent some flying hours reading the ever-brilliant Jeffrey Gitomer, an inspirational writer and guru of sales, marketing and networking.

I’ve always found his books and articles hugely entertaining and readable, but his latest newsletter really grabbed my attention.

I’ll paraphrase without plagiarising – for the real thing, visit www.gitomer.com

It’s all about how your customer has changed during, and maybe because of, the recession -

1 – He’s angry that his home and investments went down in value
2 – He won’t be banking, or buying homes, cars or insurance like he did before, and has lost all his respect for previously revered institutions
3 – He’s online, and blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, Linkedining and YouTubing about his buying experiences. If your service sucks, all your other customers will soon know
4 – He’s Googling, not Yellow-Paging, and can do this anywhere, anytime on his mobile device
5 – He’ll buy immediately if you take credit cards online, including after midnight 365 days of the year
6 – By the time he buys, he will have checked your price and facts online in seconds, and read what customers, as well as you, have to say about your company
7 – Because of this, he knows as much about your products as you do, and more about your competitors’ products than you do
8 – He wants you to answer the phone, and is sick of your hold music, your automated options, your offshore so-called “help-desks” and you telling him how important he is while he pays 10p a minute holding on your 0870 customer “service” line
9 – He’s looking for ideas, answers, help and advice, not crummy, transparent special offers
10 – He expects you to be as computer-literate as he is, and will be utterly turned off if you reply to his online query from a Hotmail, msn, AOL, gmail or other proprietary address. Get your own domain name for £7.99pa to meet your customer’s minimum expectations!

As Gitomer wisely adds, we are not going to “recover” from this recession; we are going to “revive and revise”.

Is your business ready?

Jon Cooper is the founder of Jupiter Dawn Consulting. Add any comments or questions to this column online, or by e-mail to jon@jupiterdawn.com

Jon Cooper: Creative thinking wins every time

Build power into your message!

Anyone successful in sales understands the difference between features and benefits, and that customers buy the latter, not the former. Twin turbos (feature) mean you get to work faster (benefit), and 2GB of RAM (feature) means you finish your work sooner (benefit) when you get there! There is also a way of negative selling, highlighting drawbacks instead of benefits. 512MB of RAM probably means you’ll be there all day!

All we really need to be told is how a particular product or service is going to affect our lives.

I heard a lovely little parable the other day which graphically illustrates the power of this approach.

It tells of a young boy, sitting on the steps of Grand Central Station in New York. He has a board next to him with the words “I am blind, please give generously” written on it.

There is a hat in front of him, and a man stops and drops a few coins in it. He then takes the board, turns it round and writes some words on it before replacing it.

The man returns later in the day, to see the boy smiling, his hat overflowing with coins and banknotes.

Hearing the man’s footsteps, the boy asks if it was he who changed his sign earlier. “What did you write?” he asks in amazement.

“I wrote, “today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it”” the man replies.

That simple phrase made people think about the reality of the boy’s condition, and was 100 times more powerful than the statement of his blindness by itself.

It reminded onlookers of the good fortune they enjoyed by being able to appreciate the beauty of the day, and shows that a dry statement of fact will never carry as much impact as a few vivid words which immerse the reader in the world of the writer.

I think there are at least two other messages we can take from that story.

Firstly; there are always people less fortunate than yourself. Take the time to help where you can, and be thankful for what you have.

Secondly; it shows the power of creative thinking. There is always a better way, so be innovative, different, and build power into all your messages.

Have a question you'd like Jon Cooper to address? You can submit it by either adding a comment to this post online or by e-mailing it to jon@jupiterdawn.com

Jon Cooper: Getting past the gatekeeper

Don't fall at the first fence!

So, you’ve got a brilliant product or service which blows all your competitors out of the water. Not only that, but you’ve priced it so well that your customers are never going to say no! If only you could get to them to tell them about it…

I’ve recently been working with a large organisation which sells vending machines to businesses throughout the UK. They were concerned that their telesales team had recently been connecting to decision makers less and less frequently.

As anyone who’s ever tried to sell by phone will know, many of your potential customers are surrounded by a human firewall, a virtual moat manned by PAs and receptionists charged with one simple task – to protect their executives from the white noise of uninvited sales calls.

Here’s a plan we put together, designed to overcome this perennial dilemma.

1: Call the company, and ask for the sales department, rather than the named decision maker. You will always be put through. Aim: Avoid immediate rebuttal from gatekeeper.

2: Explain to the salesperson that you’re in sales, just like they are, and you’d appreciate a little help. Aim: Get them to identify with you and open up.

3: Ask them who they currently use for supply of your product or service, and how they feel about that current supplier. Aim: Research the company’s need for change.

4: Ask who the decision maker would be where your product or service is concerned. Always ask for their direct extension number, so you “don’t have to bother them again” Aim: Enable contact with your buyer without risk of being blocked at the switchboard.

5: Contact the decision maker directly at their desk and mention your previous conversation with sales, where they suggested a need for your product or service. Aim: Create a perceived referral from someone else in the company.

We found that this approach increased direct conversations with decision makers by over 40%, and produced a call-to-appointment ratio 32% higher over the next quarter.

Of course, any aspirations to those kinds of improvements assume that your telesales personnel already display the essential attributes of honesty, integrity, credibility and humour, through a gentle yet persuasive phone manner.

Jon Cooper is the founder of Jupiter Dawn Consulting. Add any comments or questions online, or by e-mail to jon@jupiterdawn.com

Jon Cooper: Top ten biggest sales mistakes.

Easy ways to ruin a sale.

As you read this, salespeople around world are doubtless hard at work inventing
new methods of screwing up their chances of success. To give them a helping
hand, here are my top ten ways to lose a sale!
1: Talk about yourself. No prospect wants you to listen to his story, and in any
case, you are far more interesting than he is.
2: Talk technical. Make sure you baffle them with enough confusing jargon, so
they have to buy just to find out what you were on about.
3: Let the customer take control. You need them to call the shots. Anyway, it’s
only polite, as they’re the ones paying your wages.
4: Make sure you recite your canned pitch. Everyone loves being assaulted with
a heavy sales spiel.
5: Insist they hear all the features of your product. Don’t bother talking benefits;
how should you know how they’re going to use your stuff anyway? They’ll have
plenty of time to work that out for themselves once they’re bought it.
6: Don’t worry about asking for the sale; after all, nobody ever makes decisions
on the day, so just assume they’re going to get at least three more quotes and
then want to think about it, like all the others.
7: Don’t waste time chasing prospects. They’ll always come back to you if you’ve
done your job, right? If they don’t, it just means they were wasting your time all
along.
8: Aim your pitch at the lowest-ranking employee. Get him excited and he’ll tell
his boss, who’ll tell his boss, and so on, until your sparkling message reaches
the actual decision-maker.
9: Don’t bother checking early on if they need or want your product. Just hit
them with your standard pitch, and they’ll sure as heck want it by the time
you’ve finished.
10: Love ‘em and leave ‘em. Your job is to make the sale, not deliver the goods.
The only reason they want to speak to you later is to complain about something,
so leave all that to Customer Service. Wouldn’t be so bad if they rang you with a
recommendation or referral every now and again, but of course; they never do.
Have a question you'd like Jon Cooper to address? You can submit it by either
adding a comment to this post online or by e-mailing it to jon@jupiterdawn.com

Jon Cooper: Give to receive...

Everyone loves a freebie!

I just came back from a few days in the States, where I met a group of enlightened
entrepreneurs who are refusing to lie down and suffer the consequences of the economic
downturn. One of their crunch-busting techniques is as old as the hills, but they’ve
recently refined it to an art form. It’s called giving stuff away!
You know the lovely warm feeling when you pull on a pair of jeans you haven’t worn for
ages and find a ten pound note in the pocket? And don’t those free deli samples in
Sainsbury’s taste so much better than the stuff you actually buy?
Well, that's how your customers feel when they get more than they are expecting from
you.
And, imagine how your prospects will respond to your marketing when they receive a free
gift - without even making a purchase!
Giving "more" is a simple, inexpensive way to instantly improve your relationship with
both customers and prospects.
Ideas for gifts... that cost you nothing!
1: Free reports, info packs, fact sheets and market analysis: these can all be made
available online or by email to really slash the costs of delivery.
2: Newsletters: regular info and offer-packed communiqués to your database of prospects
and customers.
3: Industry specific freebies: appeal to who you’re trying to sell to: recipes, sports tips,
discount coupons, travel guides
4: Trial offers: get them using your products for free and they’ll often need or want to
continue and pay.
5: Buy one, get one free: this really does cost you nothing, providing your gross margin is
more than 50%!
Ideas for gifts... that cost you a small amount
1: Company-branded items: hats, water bottles, mouse pads, pens etc
2: Non-related materials: stuffed animals, chocolates, alcohol, sports tickets
3: One of your products or services at no cost to them
4: Rewards for referrals or recommendations
5: Calendars and diaries: clichéd, corny, but nothing lasts a whole year like something
with 12 months of dates on it!
The return on your "gift" investment could be worth thousands of pounds in sales. Make
that extra effort and give your customers more than they are expecting.
Have a question you'd like Jon Cooper to address? You can submit it by either adding a comment to this post online or by e-mailing it to jon@jupiterdawn.com

Elevator pitch to take you up in the world

Get new business every day with your own 30 second commercial

As a newcomer to a breakfast networking group last week, I was reminded how important it is to be able answer the question “so what do you do…?” concisely and in a way that both grabs attention and leaves a lasting impression.

Most of the attendees were lucid and confident, but there remained others I spoke with who were only ever going to make a dreary and easily forgettable impact on their peers.

If your career in business means you regularly meet new people – and who’s doesn’t? – then it’s critical to be able to create and present a personal 30-second commercial, often called an “elevator pitch” in the States.

It’s the basis of personal networking, self-promotion, and pretty much everything else you need to stand out from the crowd in an over-crowded world.

Here are my top 10 tips for making that first impression –

1: Talk benefits, not just features. “I’m a lawyer who makes sure people don’t get ripped off in property deals” rather than just saying you’re a property lawyer.

2: Be conversational and confident. Don’t hesitate, fidget or blather, and always present with a smile and a twinkle in your eye.

3: Don’t use jargon and particularly not industry-specific acronyms (OMG!)

4: Boast a little. It’s ok to start a sentence with “My key strengths are…”

5: Fulfil a need. Reminding the listener that you’re a qualified Zeppelin commander marks you as quirky and interesting, but a little redundant.

6: Tailor to your audience. Investors want to hear how they can get returns, customers how you can solve their problems, and potential partners why you’re going to be a success together.

7: Use power adjectives such as “astounding” and “spectacular” over mundane words like “ok” and “good”.

8: Be prepared for follow-ups. If you’ve been convincing and engaging up to now, you’ll get questions. Rehearse the answers to any likely comebacks.

9: Review and revise regularly based on feedback. Conversely, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

10: Test your commercial on a 7-year old. If they don’t understand every word of it, you’ll lose half your target audience before you get a chance to finish!

Jon Cooper is the founder of JupiterDawn.com business consulting.
Email jon@jupiterdawn.com with feedback and business strategy queries.

Free sales for small effort

Totally Free Sales! (Well almost)

If I told you that there is a way to increase your sales by 18% without paying for advertising, making any calls, or even making much effort at all, you’d probably think I’d finally lost my marbles.

In fact, you can achieve all that by the circulation of a regular e-newsletter to your existing clients. The caveats are that it does take a small amount of effort, and that 18% is the average extra new business I’ve experienced across 8 clients who’ve been running an e-newsletter I helped them design monthly for at least 6 months.

Here’s my 10-point action plan for creating easy, low-cost incremental sales –

1 – Collect email addresses for all your clients and prospects, if you haven’t got them already, and collate them into a database. Make sure to regularly update with new clients and prospects.

2 – Promote no more than three offers in each newsletter. Clients don’t want to just read about your products, and you can always lead them to more detailed stuff via links to your website. Then add handy free tips which could help your clients in their business.

3 – Make it unique. These days, most people get loads of newsletters. Fill yours with passion, fun and useful information to make it stand out from the herd.

4 – Make it look great. Use headlines, bullets, graphics and HTML so your customers’ eyes are drawn to it.

5 – Make it IT friendly: no more than about 800kb for easy download, and have it scaled to fit most screen sizes. Your web-team can help you design the first one, or they can do them all for a modest agreed monthly payment.

6 – Ask for feedback. You don’t want to be publishing stuff nobody likes for more than one issue.

7 – Make contact easy. Bold phone numbers and clickable email links are simple and essential components.

8 – Add an unsubscribe link. It might sound negative, but it’s better than repeatedly winding up a good customer if they simply don’t want your regular updates.

9 – Post each newsletter on your website. If you have been including useful tips as well as just product offers, they can form a valuable online resource for some time to come.

10 – Continue all the above monthly for maximum effect!

Jon Cooper is the founder of JupiterDawn.com business consulting.
Email jon@jupiterdawn.com with feedback and business strategy queries