102 Creating your own website in 15 minutes

The internet is a great source of new business and we haven’t yet started to scratch its surface.

I know what you are thinking here. You are thinking that the internet marketplace is for the bright young nerds who are making a fortune on e-bay, but this is just not true. Even if you think that “Java” is coffee and “Flash” is what men do in raincoats in the park. You can still make use of the internet to sell your products or services very easily.

The first thing you need is a website. Wait a minute! Don’t switch off just yet. A website does not have to be a 100 page monster that costs half the national debt to create. You can create a website in 10 minutes for free! (yes YOU!)

It is very easy to do and as long as you know how to switch on the computer and connect to the internet you too can be the proud owner of a website selling your products or services. In fact, it is so easy that I recommend that you consider doing it for each of your products.

The easiest way to create a website is to create a “Blog”. Blogs were originally designed as an internet diary, and bloggers (everyone has a name on the internet) compete with each other to have the most interesting (and therefore the most sought after) blog.

Blog software is, however, the easiest to use and you can easily create a blog for yourself for FREE, in just 10 minutes. Let me explain how it is done:

1. Switch on your computer and make sure it is connected to the internet
2. Open your internet software (usually Internet Explorer) and type in the following address: https://www.blogger.com/start.
3. I will be creating the website in Blogger which is Google’s free blog generator. There are others out there to choose from I just use Blogger because it seems to be the easiest, and they don’t insist on you using their advertising.
4. If you like you can cruise around the site learning more about how it all works but for now we are going to create the site.
5. Click on “Create your Blog Now”
6. If you haven’t got a Google account you will have to do this now. Follow the instructions, it costs nothing and all you have to have is an e-mail address.
7. Keep following the instructions and you will get to the Blogger Dashboard. You are now ready to create your blog.
8. Click on “Create your Blog Now”
9. Type in the name of your Blog. Anything will do here… “Fred’s Spanners”
10. Now type in the URL name. This will be http://www.(yoursitename).blogspot.com. Again you can type in anything you like to describe the content of your site.
11. You are now directed to the template page. You can choose what you want your blog to look like. It doesn’t matter what you choose because you can change it later. Click on one of the templates, then press “Continue”
12. Click “Start Blogging” and you will be directed to a page that you have to complete with your first article or information.
13. Fill in the title at the top and then some description of your product or service.
14. Click on “Post Article” and you are away.
15. You can click on a button to view your blog, but I recommend you click on the “Layout” tab, and add a few interesting additions.
16. Click on “Add a Gadget” on the right hand column and you can add pictures, videos, slide shows, text, pretty much anything.
17. Keep referring back to your Blog to see how you are going.
18. Don’t forget to put your telephone number or contact details so that people can contact you to buy…..

How simple is that? It has probably taken longer to read this that it does to start your own website. Now we have to drive people to your website, and we will look at that in the next issue

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

101 How to become a Professional Speaker.

As the president of the Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa (formerly the NSASA) I am often asked how I became a speaker. People think I have a wonderful job. I get to travel all over the country and all over the world, stay in the best hotels, have plenty of free time and get paid to tell people what I think.

Actually I do have a wonderful job but it is not always that glamorous.

If you would like to become a speaker you can, but don’t expect it to be the easiest ride of your life. Of the hundreds of people who decide to take up a career in speaking every year, very few have the stamina to make it. Many of them have had a career in Human Resources or Sales and are used to speaking in front of an audience. They see the speaker at their annual conference speak for an hour and get paid well, so they decide this is the life for them. Most of these people fail in the speaking industry. They work for a couple of years trying to make a go of it but move into another more reliable career when their golden handshake runs out. In the PSASA we help people avoid the pitfalls and develop a speaking business that works.

There are four things involved in becoming a professional speaker:

1. Develop a good message
2. Acquire exceptional speaking skills
3. Find paying audiences who want to listen to your message
4. Work out a good business model

Let’s have a look at these one at a time.

Develop a good message

People often go into the speaking business for the wrong reason. They have the skills to deliver a message, but they are not passionate about the message they deliver. The first stage to being an exceptional speaker is to have a good message. You may well have climbed a mountain or walked the Great Wall of China, but what is the message in the experience? What does your target market care about? In the PSASA we often talk about the “Niche” you should focus on. It is a mistake to try to be all things to all people, so where should you focus?

Acquire exceptional speaking skills

People are not born good speakers, they acquire the skills to speak and then practice. I will often encourage people to join the Toastmasters organisation to develop their speaking skills, but the best way to fine tune them is to practice. Once you have a message, get yourself in front of as many people who will listen and present your ideas. There are many organisations that are looking for speakers at their meetings. Organisations like Rotary, Round Table, and networking groups are crying out for interesting speakers. You will not get paid for this of course, but you are fine tuning your skills at their expense which is worth its weight in gold. If you have a book or video on the subject, take it with you to sell after the event. During my first year as a speaker this income was sometimes the only money I had to live on.

Find paying audiences who want to listen to your message

This is a tough one. You have a great message and the skills to deliver that message, now you need to find people who will listen and pay you for the privilege. The Speaker’s Agents and Bureaus will help here but don’t rely on them to be your only income. They are in business just like you are so don’t expect them to invest a lot of their time in you without getting a good return on that investment. They will help of course, especially if you have an interesting or unique message. Their customers are always looking for something a little different. Some speakers work entirely with bureaus but this is unusual. Most speakers also create their own audiences with Seminars, Training courses, or working directly with companies at their conferences.

Nobody is going to hand you audiences on a plate; you have to work hard for them. Many speakers fail at this point because they expect the audiences to beat a path to the door. It’s just not going to happen.

Work out a good business model

It is well known in the speaking industry that you have to create a business model that is sustainable. It isn’t just about speaking. Most speakers have written a book or two to give them credibility and have something to sell at the back of the room after the presentation. Others have become consultants, give webinars or teleseminars, become coaches or mentors, and have DVDs, CDs and MP3s to support their message. Each successful speaker develops their own business model and this is where the PSASA can be of great assistance. We cannot help you get audiences, but we can help you with advice on how to create a sustainable business model. Our monthly chapter meetings have speakers from all over the world who are delighted to share their experiences and offer advice.

So if you want to become one of South Africa’s great world speakers, have a interesting message, develop the skills to deliver that message, start to work on getting as many people to listen to you as possible and create the right business model. That’s all you have to do! See you at the next PSASA meeting.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

100 Selling in a Receding Economy

In today’s competitive market there seem to be more suppliers and less customers than ever before. World costs are rising dramatically and here in South Africa we have additional challenges of an inconsistent electricity supply, impending political change, rising fuel costs and a sharp decline in the growth of the economy. The ecomomists will tell you that we are not actually in a recession, but it sure does feel like it. So how come some businesses excel? Why are there are more millionaires created in a declining market than in a growing one?

What makes the winners so successful?

How do we become wealthy in a receding economy?

Attitude is important here. The people who thrive in a receding economy are those people who see themselves as successful despite all the evidence to the contrary, see a positive future where others are battening down the hatches or worse still, leaving the country.

Even if you do decide to go, where do you go to? This is a world recession; America’s housing market is struggling as is that of the UK and Japan. The American dollar is in decline which may sound like good news for tourists but with a weakened economy the USA will be purchasing less and this has a considerable effect on the exports from countries like China, Canada, Mexico and even South Africa, who exported over US$7,5 billion worth of merchandise to the USA last year.

Very few countries are immune so the only real answer is to make this country work. But how?

Attitude is important but it is not the only thing that matters.

We all know people who are positive at every opportunity, but fail to get the desired results. This sort of idiocy will not work. Positive thinking has to be converted to positive action if we are really going to make this work. “Action is the mother of opportunity”. We will explore this principle later in this series but it is clear that sitting quietly in a darkened room being positive is not going to generate the required results.

So what action do we need to take?

Interestingly any action is better than no action at all, but what action to take? Too often we fall back on lots of ¨M.O.T.S¨

M.O.T.S.?... More Of The Same.....

This will just not work. Oh sure, when things are going well M.O.T.S. works. When the economy is growing you can continue to do what you did last year and get good results. When the economy is receding however, this approach is doomed to failure.

Many businesses are now doing business as normal and wondering why their results are declining. To these businesses I say “Watch Out!” These businesses will be the first to go to the wall.

Over the next few months we will be exploring what you can do in a receeding economy to grow your business but for now I would like you to consider how flexibility can help.

When the economy is receeding there will be many industries that decline, but some will flourish. The housing market typically will be in decline, but people have got to live somewhere, so the rental market is increasing.

In my own market as a conference speaker, conferences are in decline. Many companies are reconsidering their budget for the year and cutting back on what they consider to be non-essential expenditure. Interestingly there has been a dramatic increase in the requests for focused sales training. This is a good thing of course. Businesses are struggling so it is a good time to get the sales team to improve their performance and deliver better results.

Consider your own market and work out what areas will be in decline and what will grow. Then be flexible to focus on the areas of growth.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

When in Rome

In Cameroon I had the rare honour to be introduced to the Fon of Bafut (A Fon is the "King" of the area and Bafut is the largest of the three provinces in Cameroon). Prior to the meeting I was given explicit instructions not to shake his hand and what to do with my own hands instead. Our friend who had arranged the meeting, was his son.

I was told that the proper use of the hands when speaking to the Fon is in front of your mouth with your eyes cast down to the floor, and when the Fon is speaking the hands should keep up a quiet clapping motion in front of the body. It was felt, however that I may get this wrong which would be a terrible insult, so when (if) the Fon addresses me I should keep my hands behind my back at all times, which I did. I also looked at him when he talked which was, apparently, not on, so my conversation with the Fon was quite short.

The psychology behind the position of the hands is, I guess, that the Fon is too important to care about your attitude when you are talking to him so you should lower your eyes and hold both hands over your mouth. This would effectively hide your body language and therefore a large part of the communication of your feelings. By clapping when the Fon is talking however you are indicating your approval of what he is saying. He is all powerful in the area anyway so I guess it doesn't matter what you feel, you have to approve.

This story serves to underline an important issue. When doing business with people of other cultures, it is not only important to learn some of their verbal language but also their body language. By not fully understanding the importance of averting my eyes, my conversation with the Fon was cut short. Under the circumstances this was not a problem but if I had been visiting the Fon to get his approval over some business matter, my mistake could have been catastrophic.

The lesson here is easy one. I was told what to do, and I simply did not realise the importance of this type of body language.In business we learn by training or experience how to use verbal and written language to communicate. Nobody would doubt the importance of these media in business communications, and without a good command of the appropriate language, business at anything but a basic level would be impossible.

To be really effective in business, however, it is essential that we learn the art of understanding body language, so that we can communicate well using our own gestures and understand others by reading theirs.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

98 Proposals and how to write them

Okay... we are having a bad year, at least some of us are. The recession is hitting us and many areas of the economy are tightening their belts. In order to succeed we have to work harder to produce the same results, but to improve our results we will have to work smarter.

It is no longer good enough to let the customer know how much your products or services are and expect them to beat a path to your door. This is just not going to work. We need to be selling all the way and this includes how you get your price to your customer.

One of the many gripes I have with traditional selling is the way we send out “Quotations”.

A Typical quote will look something like this:

Quotations

Specifications: Details of the product offered, such as size, shape, design, etc.
Price: The current price offered. This section may also include some additional savings for bulk purchase.
Delivery: The lead time or delivery details.
Terms and conditions: This is the small print and will contain a large variety of disclaimers and legal conditions protecting the vendor.
Limitations: Finally, the quotation is finished with the limitations, for example that it holds good for only 30 days.

Does any this sound familiar? I am not suggesting that it is wrong; it is just less likely to get the desired effect. I accept that many of the items above have to be in the quote but I recommend a different approach, a proposal.

Proposals

Proposals tend to be more in line with the customer whereas quotes seem to focus on the product and the price.

A typical proposal should include the following:

The customer’s objectives: The first thing the customer should read in your proposal is an outline of their own requirements. The customer wants to know that you fully understand their problem or need before you tell them how you are going to meet or solve it.

Your recommendations: First come the customer’s problems or needs, next you offer your solutions (benefits).

Summary of additional benefits: Once you have told your customer how your product or service solves their problem you may want to include additional benefits of your product. Be careful, these must be benefits and not features. Make sure items mentioned here really are going to benefit the customer and are not just “nice to haves” of no value to them.

Financial implications: Once the customer can see that your product or service will really work for them, tell them how much it will cost. Be careful to include the cost as well as the financial benefit to their business. For instance, show the return on their investment, or the profit to be made from selling your product or compare the savings they will make using your service against those made with the present one. Always look at price in terms of improved efficiency, increased production, improved safety, reduced costs, etc.

Your additional information: Finally, you can attach additional information for your customer at the end. This will include the dimensions or specifications of your product or service, any legal obligations, etc.

You will see that proposals are much more effective than quotations because they focus on the customer and their problems rather than on your product or company.

Of course some of you will be thinking that we have to send the customer the standard quotation form because it contains our standard terms and conditions, “the legal stuff”. Okay… I can understand that, however there is nothing stopping you putting a one page proposal in front of the quotation. This is more work of course, but it is much more likely to bring in the business.

One last word on proposals. “If you want to win…take it in!” I was sitting with the members of a small company last week who were complaining that they were not getting enough people to say yes. They would e-mail 2 or 3 large proposals each week but not getting the answers they wanted

After some discussion I realised that although these proposals were often for business worth more than R300,000 they would rarely take in the proposal and present it to the decision maker. Frankly they were losing business because of this approach. “If you want to win…take it in!”.


To read more articles in the Richard’s Review series have a look at the blog www.richards-review.blogspot.com.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains these final two paragraphs

My Daughter's Report

My daughter came home last week with her school report. I have 5 children and for as many years as I can easily remember we have had school reports to deal with.

I am not a great believer in the necessity for academic achievement. Now that most of my children are away from home and having families of their own I can admit to this. In the past I felt compelled to do the normal fatherly thing and praise the child for an ‘A’ or a ‘B’, discuss the ‘C’ and ‘D’ and complain about the occasional ‘E’ and ‘F’, but in my heart I have always known that my children will do well in life despite their school reports rather than because of them.

Okay… I know what you are thinking, but this is not the day to discuss that.

Anyway… My Daughter comes home with her report and unusually it is the best she has ever brought home. Six Bs and one D. This is fantastic, and I told her so in my “father knows best” voice. Then my wife and I do what ever other parent would do, started to focus on the ‘D’ and see if we can help the child to improve.

We do that all the time. Instead of focusing on the best subjects, the ones she really enjoys, trying to help her excel in these areas, we focus on her worst subject and help her become average in that.

At about the same time I watched a presentation in Durban by Marcus Buckingham. Marcus is a world class speaker and the author of “First, Break all the rules” and “Now, discover your strengths” and he says that we have got it all wrong. Focus your attention on developing your strengths rather than improving your weaknesses.

If you have a corporate job I guess you have a review each year with your boss. I occasionally get asked to comment on these documents and they all seem the same. You start out by rating yourself, your boss does the same and then you compare notes. The final stage is to make a list of “Areas for improvement”. So instead of looking at what you are really good at and encouraging you to become a super star, you are asked to focus on what you are bad at so that you can improve those areas to average.

Does this make sense? Of course not!

Imagine a world class cricket team. Each team member has to bat, but some of the team, especially the best bowlers, do not bat well. If we were to extend this train of thought the cricket coach should instruct the batters who perform badly to spend all their time in the nets improving their batting skills. Of course this is not the best way to produce a winning team. The Bowlers spend most of their time concentrating on improving their bowling, becoming superstars and just a little time in the nets with a bat in their hand

We must do the same with our teams at work. When it comes time for the review with your team, encourage the stars to become superstars. Let them focus on the things they are good at so they can become great. Support them in the things that they are not so go at and they will drive your success forward.

We can’t all be good at everything all of the time. I think I would much rather be a star at one thing than average at everything.

And what about my daughter’s report? Well that very quickly got filed with the others as Michaela rushed off for yet another hockey practice. She has her heart set on playing for SA schools this year, and you know what? She may just make it!

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

96 The Power of Differentiation

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the risks we face in business with a weakening economy.

Some of the replies I got back said that was okay, but what can we do to make sure that we are still in business at the end of the year? How do we compete in a shrinking market?

The first rule here is differentiation. We have to make sure we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors so that the customers can see us as different. In a growing market when there is enough business to go round there is less pressure to differentiate. In a shrinking market we must be seen to be different or die.

If the customer can see no difference between you and your competitors they will choose the cheapest price.

Let’s imagine I have two identical products (or services) in front of me. They come off the same production line in Taiwan so they are identical, in fact the only difference between the two products is that one is priced at R300 and the other is priced at R400. Which one would you buy?

Of course you would buy the cheaper product, and probably be very pleased with your self for doing so. The customer will always buy the cheaper product if they can see no difference between one brand and another.

In this environment where all products are identical there is a temptation to enter into a price war. As manufacturers, we see our customers always buying the cheapest so we begin to believe the customer only cares about price. How often have you heard that in your sales meetings?

Now, let us imagine that the product priced at R400 also comes with a lifetime guarantee, delivery over the next 24 hours, parts readily available and a very attractive sales person to sell it to you. Which one would you buy now?

The R400 one of course… but why? Because it is better value. You have differentiated yourself from your competitors with added items that the customer values and, therefore, made your product more attractive.

Don’t be tempted into a price war with your competitors in this shrinking market. Rather talk to as many customers as possible to see what they consider would add value to your product or service.

There are many items that this might be:

Improved delivery, smarter delivery vehicles, attractive sales people (and by that I mean sales people with attractive personalities), longer guarantee, uncondititional guarantee, bigger range of colours, better response to customer complaints, more flexible working hours, bigger range of products, shorter service contract, longer service contracts, additional benefits, stronger materials, longer lasting, self-lubricating, 24 hour delivery, open all hours, the list is endless.

What are you going to do to differentiate yourself from your competitors this year?

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

95 A rising tide sinks all ships.

I have a friend who insists on looking negatively at everything he sees.

“It’s going to be a tough year”, he said to me last night. “Many small businesses will be out of business by the end of the year and some of the larger businesses will have to batten down the hatches if they are to stay afloat.” And you know what… he’s right about one thing. We are in for a tough year. I guess you are agreeing with me already. We have seen it on the TV; we read it in the Newspapers. We hear it from almost everybody we talk to. It is going to be a tough year…. and I am delighted.

History tells us that we will have years like this every so often. Some people will tell you that they come on a cycle every 4, or 7 or 11 years. These are the same people who tell you that there is a big wave every 7 and I am not sure I believe that either, I just know that every so often we get a challenging year and 2008 is going to be one here in South Africa.

I have no intention in listing the challenges you and I will be facing this year, you know them off by heart. You have read them in the paper and your next door neighbour delights on supporting these articles with statistics to prove that he was right all the time to worrey. You will see them in your e-mail from people who delight is sending bad news with headings like “I told you things were bad”, or “Finally someone tells the truth”.

But I am delighted this year is going to be a tough one. We need it. We have had it easy for the last few years and complacency is beginning to set in. Business has been easier to get in the past few years and many of us thought (hoped) that this would go on for ever. Well I have news for you. Nothing lasts forever.

My industry (training and communication) is a good example. There is a restively low entry barrier in this industry and the rewards are good, if you know what you are doing. This low entry barrier has, over the last five years or so, encouraged thousands of people to take their retrenchment package and become a business speaker or trainer. Most don’t make it. It seems like an easy business, however you need to know what you are doing, and be prepared for three or more lean years while you are learning the trade and creating a name for yourself.

This year is going to be a tough year and those people who entered this industry as a soft option to earn a good salary in the last 10 years of their working life will just fall by the wayside. I have some friends in the National Speakers Association who will be amongst the casualties. I will be sorry to see them go but go they must.

This is true of many industries. The marginal businesses, “also rans” and “hangers on” will be swept away with the high tide leaving the way open in the next few years for the rest of us to prosper.

The title of this article is “A rising tide sinks all ships” but this is only true if the ships are securely anchored to the sea bed on a fixed cable.

The businesses that are going to prosper this year and benefit from the lack of competition over the next few years will be the ones that understand that you cannot just stand still and wait for the business to come to you.

If you do the same things this year as you did last year you are destined for disaster. The businesses that succeed will be the ones that take action and change their approach to meet the challenges of the year ahead.

Action is the mother of opportunity.

It is going to be a tough business year this year but if you can be successful this year you will be amongst the few, and you (and I) are in for a bumper few years ahead.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

93 The Number’s Game

A few weeks ago I had an e-mail from a very distraught salesperson. She was upset because her company had set her an impossible target to reach and while she liked her job she didn’t feel she could carry on working for them if they set targets she can not reach.

Have you ever felt like that? I remember many years ago being sent targets from head office by people who plainly did not know what is happening on the ground. It seemed as though they had completed their budgets and needed another 30% over inflation to balance, so guess what? The sales department gets the burden.

Okay, now I understand. Now that I have worked both sides of the fence I can see that the pen pushers in Head office weren’t just sucking the figures out of their thumbs. There is usually some science in the work they do (not always, but usually) but the poor sales person hasn’t been given insight into the calculations, they are just told to get on with it, and if they wont, there are plenty of sales people in the wings who are waiting to take over.

The real problem with impossible targets is the way we react when we get them. You have the e-mail with your targets on and you are looking at it for the first time…. “What!” you exclaim “This is impossible. This target is unrealistic. They should get off their a***s in head office and come down here and try and do my job if they think they can do better. There is no way I can achieve this target.”

The problem is that as soon as you say “There is no way I can achieve this target.” Guess what? There is no way you are going to achieve that target. It’s what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy. The moment you say you can not achieve the target you set up a belief system that sticks and you will never achieve that target. You get to the end of the year with only 70% of your target and you say “I told you so”.

The solution

When your boss sets you an unrealistic target, DOUBLE IT!. That’s right Double that unrealistic target in your mind (Don’t tell the boss you are doing this). Then send yourself forward 12 months and see yourself at the end of the year having achieved double that tough target and ask yourself “How did I do it?” (Just ignore your belief system at the moment because it is making fun of you for playing such a silly game)

If it helps, imagine yourself at the annual convention receiving the award (two weeks in Mauritius) for the best sales person of the year. Then look back down the time line and ask yourself “What did I do to achieve double that tough target?” Of course you couldn’t work any harder, you are already working hard so what else did you do?

Maybe you worked smarter rather than harder. Perhaps you concentrated on the larger contracts, rather than spending your time on the little ones. Maybe you played the “Numbers Game” Let me explain.

Imagine you make phone calls to make appointments and then you visit the prospects to close the sale.

Let’s say that you make 30 phone calls in a week and you have a 30% success rate on making appointments. Let’s also imagine that you then visit those 10 people and you have a 25% closing ratio so you close 2.5 customers a week.

30 phone calls x 30% strike rate = 10 Appointments

10 Appointments x 25% strike rate = 2.5 closed customers a week

Now let us imagine that you make a few very small changes. Let’s say that you make 40 phone calls a week instead of 30. That shouldn’t be too difficult should it? Then let’s imagine that you increase your strike rates by just 5% each. Just a few better selling skills should do that easily. See how the figures respond:

40 phone calls x 35% strike rate = 14 Appointments

14 Appointments x 30% strike rate = 4.2 closed customers a week

You have nearly doubled your closed sales by very minor improvements in your performance. Selling is a numbers game, and while the purists will quite rightly talk about qualified leads and focusing on a few, rather than a shot gun approach, we all have to work with the numbers if we are going to succeed.

The next time you get an impossible target consider this. The really great sales people never say it’s impossible, rather they ask “How can I make that possible?”

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com, or www.salescoachingworx.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph

92 What do you do when the customer doesn’t turn up?

Last week one of the members of my distance learning website, www.salescoachingworx.com asked a question about a customer who wasn’t there for a prearranged meeting.

This is a tough one and without knowing more background it is hard to give a definitive answer. In principle, if a person isn’t there having confirmed an appointment, he is rude and it is down to him to apologise and make sure you are happy. In the real world however, this is not likely to happen. Sales people will tell you it happens all the time.

Presuming there wasn’t an accident or some other unavoidable delay, when a customer is not there for a meeting that was previously arranged, he is saying that we are not important to him. We can say this is his fault but it may be more beneficial to accept that maybe it is our fault. Perhaps we didn’t get across the importance of the meeting, our product or the benefits he will be getting once he has purchased.

Maybe we didn’t uncover his problems and give him confidence that we are the right people to solve them for him.

This is not to say that the customer has a right to be rude. Sometimes customers ignore you to make you feel small. They figure that if they are important and you are not, they will get a better deal. If a customer keeps me waiting for a meeting that I was on time for, I will always thank him for giving me more time to prepare. This will take away any advantage he may have gained by keeping me waiting

Sometimes a customer will ignore you when come into their office for a meeting. They keep their head down with some apparently important paperwork and make you wait. In this case again, this is just a trick. It is natural for people to look up when you walk in and takes some effort just to stay looking at the apparently important document they are engrossed in.

When this has happened to me in the past I haven’t waited politely, I wander around their office picking up things to look at or straightening their pictures. This will usually get their attention.

In the case of your customer that wasn’t there, I would just make contact again, tell him that you were pleased to have the extra time in your busy day and set another appointment. Telling him how rude he was may make you feel better but is not likely to get you another customer. I would also recommend that you make sure the customer is looking forward to the meeting by letting him know how he will benefit by it.

This article is written and published by Richard Mulvey who can be contacted on www.richardmulvey.com, or www.salescoachingworx.com. You may re-publish this article in any media as long as it is not altered in any way and it contains this final paragraph