Greg's Right FIT #381

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Selling
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Selling

• Research shows companies spend 80% of their marketing budget on producing leads, the rest on follow-up. Buyer research shows qualified buyers will make a purchasing decision, "eventually." Consider investing more in follow up. 
• Buyers develop buying habits based on experiences with seller's selling practices. In other words, how they have been "sold to" will determine how they approach a buying decision. That's not good news based on how most sellers, sell.
• Your buyers really don't care about how you do things. They do care about results they're getting. If a potential buyer is focused on your process, they may not be your buyer.
• Is your buyer able to prioritize a budget or are they simply managing the budget they were given? Find the prioritizers. 

Being Human - Talk to them all

"A half-truth is a whole lie." – Yiddish proverb

Last week I mentioned one of my go-to business development diagnostics, the Venn diagram above. I call it Awareness-Buyers-Conversations (ABC) so I can remember where it is in my files. The first part of the diagnostic is getting a feel for how the target market feels about your existence. It's based on the premise: it's better to be there than to be good. The other two circles in th diagram are closer to "being good." 

If the business development effort shows that we're out and about and making ourselves known, the next focus is on who we're talking to. Not all buyers are created equal, and many times we are spending time with the wrong person. The way around this is to identify multiple buyers early in the process and talk to them all. 

Easy-peasy, right?

Yeah, not really. The world is full of not great sales people. In response buyers have come up with ways to protect themselves. One way of protection is for buyer-adjacent people to say they are the sole decision maker when they aren't. If people are active, but not finding or closing opportunities, or if they're taking a long time to close opportunities, I check the number of people they are talking to inside the company. Is it one? More than one? If it's more than one, how are they getting to those other decision makers? 

The more complex your solution is, the more complex the purchasing process will be. The more critical your solution is to a company, the more complex the purchasing process is. Identifying and starting conversations with everyone related to the opportunity speeds up business development. 

It's important. Not as important as being there, but I put it ahead of the third part of the tool. Next week I'll touch on the last part of my diagnostic, Conversation Quality. 

Random Stuff

"You can think clearly only with your clothes on."
— Margaret Atwood

I am not a bird watcher but when one comes close I get interested. We remodeled the back room I work in and in the process I lost some window coverings. The plants love it and I'm coming around. I didn't know how much I was missing by having the top half of my windows blocking the outside world. It turns out there are a lot of birds behind those window coverings. I've seen black-capped chickadees, lots of barn swallows, and the regular menagerie of robins, blue jays, and cardinals. When I see them I do a quick Google search to see if I can ID the bird type, and if I have a lot f work to do, I spend way too much time going down the rabbit hole of wiki pages and videos.

This morning I got a real treat. A pair of hawks on a tree branch about 100 feet away. She was tearing something up because I saw fur or feathers every time she pulled her beak up. He was, well, he was interested in something more carnal. I narrowed them down to either a Cooper or a Sharpie hawk. It seems birdwatchers will write "Cooper/Sharpie" in their birdwatching books since they are so alike. Whoever they were, something was being eaten, and it caught my eye. 

It makes me wonder why we ever had those window coverings. The room is much brighter, the look is more dramatic, and the covers didn't stop Wilson the ABC from chewing the window sashes when excited. (one of his few misdeeds) 

Then I remember. The window coverings went up one weekend after my lovely bride and I were enjoying a late night cocktail on the back porch. The houses in the area are close together, but we never seem to see anyone in their houses. Except that night. The woman who lived behind us was walking around the back of the house, topless. My bride will mention the woman's husband was also topless, but I don't remember that so much. We put up window coverings right away. Not because we walked around topless, but more because we wanted to send a message, maybe? Everyone else has covers, maybe you should too? 

This nakedness turned out to be a feature, not a bug. They were always naked. The Nakeys we called them. Nakey Neighbors. One freezing cold Halloween the kids went up to their door, and she came to the door in a towel. Literally holding the towel in one hand and giving candy in the other. Her husband walked up behind her like, "Hey! What are the kids dressed as?" only wearing a towel around his waist. They waved at me as the kids ran off. Again, it was freezing outside. My laugh tears were freezing on my cheeks. 

So, I blame the Nakeys for my missing years of nature knowledge. They got pregnant, she stopped walking around naked, (he never stopped) and they moved. No other nakeds have moved in since.

Now that my kids have moved out, I guess it's my turn.