Garth's World

Tone what down?

Image by James Willamor via Flickr

Now that I am relatively settled in Charlotte(meaning that I know where to buy food, where to work out, I have an office, I’m barred from the nearest pub and I only get lost once a day), I have turned my attention to building my local network. Charlotte is somewhat late to the social networking thing, and is located in the South, so I’ve dusted off my sport coats (so poorly named) and have set out to connect the old fashioned way- in person. Much to wife’s chagrin, I have been accepting every invitation I can muster to meet Linked In friends-of- friends, Jigsaw members, local business leaders, street vendors, traveling minstrels- anyone who will accept an invitation to lunch or let me into their gathering.  During one such meeting, I came face to face with a condition that I think will require some thought on my part- namely the collision of my online (and thus actual) personality with the sensibilities of the typical Charlottean.

The case in point occurred during a workshop event sponsored by the BIG council at the Duke mansion. Bill Whitley, who I’ve only just met but like immensely, was enlightening a group of local entrepreneurs with his own brand of sales training centered around creating an engaging story for prospects. Basically his philosophy is that sales people need to create a “customer attraction story” that immediately piques the prospect’s interest and then serves as a core bond as they go through the various steps in a sales conversation or presentation. After relaying some particularly compelling examples and outlining the basic structure that all of these descriptions should have in common, he invited each participant to quickly write down their own customer story and then present to the table.

Still Rocking the Sales 2.0 Boat

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Last week I travelled to Chicago for the latest (roughly quarterly) installment of the Sales 2.0 Conference.  As a member of the self-coined Sales 2.0 Mafia, I was at first concerned that maybe the sustained RICO violations that the city is known for had affected the event. First off, getting local VPs of Sales and/or Marketing to attend was more challenging than at previous shows in San Francisco and Boston. All the sponsors and other “made” folks were there (Nigel Edelshain, Anneke Seley, Mike Damphousse, etc), but the CRM dons were conspicuously absent. The inherent inconsistency of the sponsored customer pitches was typical- each 10 minute opening is only as good as the speaker (although the Q&A panels are always solid). Given the relative lack of bright eyes in the audience and buzz in the networking area, by 11AM I was worrying that maybe the Sales 2.0 mantra of Accelerate Sales-Align (Sales, Lead Generation and Marketing) Process-Achieve Productivity might be on the wane.

ut that must have been my Morton’s meat and brown booze hangover talking, because by 1PM my attitude had considerably improved. At lunchtime, the tables were filled with engaged execs loudly talking about their own challenges with revenue, ROI, social networking, productivity. The three representatives that were working the Jigsaw sponsored area (all under 30- ran me ragged at night) reported back with great activity and interest at the booth. In fact, we have already engaged with at least 10 enterprise leads and partner initiatives. David Thompson’s decision to allow cocktails to be served in the last Social Networking session starting at 3:45 was a stroke of pure brilliance. Maybe it was the social lubricant working its magic, but when I walked out as one of the last people around 7 PM I was completely jazzed with renewed excitement for the topic and had a list of follow-ups a mile long.

Embrace the Suck

Today I read an article in the New York Times (I’m not a subscriber-it got deposited outside my hotel door this morning) entitled “Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops and Their Superiors Blog.” Assuming that the piece would be filled with descriptions of rear echelon bureaucrats getting riled up about PFC Billy Bob’s love letters from the front, I set my mockery trigger to mangle and got ready to roll my eyes back into their natural position. Imagine my surprise when I learned about an “often funny and always profane” blog called Embrace the Suck.  Being the ADD boy I am, I spent the next hour that I had reserved for writing this blog reading about the exploits of the 2^nd Platoon Killahs. While I don’t think any specific detail about the posts are particularly fascinating or new, it’s the motto of the platoon that I embraced and reminded me of sales. Here’s an excerpt from the site:

“We have been in Iraq for more then 8 months and we all agree on one thing... this SUCKS! We left our families, our friends, our trucks and our lives to come fight a war thousands of miles away. We all choose to answer our nation's call to service for various reasons and now we are here sucking it... together! "Embracing the suck" is our platoon motto...  if can't laugh at yourself or your situation... then you are seriousily missing out.”

Pricing Lessons

My first job in sales was selling client server software to CIO’s that were punch drunk from a world class executive seminar put on by my CEO. Before he went down hard in a made-for-tv family drama, John Donovan was the best salesperson that I have ever met, much less worked for. But his lessons were tough. Right around my 5^th week, we were having dinner with a group I called the Boeing Computing Gods (they looked the elder counc

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il in Shazam!) and the president leaned over to me and said “so how much is all this magic software going to set us back this year?” Fresh from dueling lectures by my product manager, who of course got out the spreadsheet pivot tables for every scenario, and my sales VP, who said “never talk about price,” I mumbled something about special discounts and per node variables. John quickly interjected that “with all the mainframe money we will save your engineers, you will be stealing our software out of the barrel for a  million bucks!” Like everything he uttered in front of customers, that comment delighted everyone at the table- so much so that they didn’t hear the “you idiot!” that he hissed toward me out of what I assumed were his poisonous eyes.