I was getting quite peeved. How could such a big supermarket be out of this 1 coffee for weeks?

Today I went in early for bread, milk, doughnuts, and so on. No need for coffee – we have some.

But as I walked past the coffee isle I dismissed even thinking of taking a look for Tracy’s favourite coffee. After all, we have some, and there’s plenty of evidence the supermarket is not great with its restocking – several other regular purchases we make are out of stock for days or weeks at a time…

But a little voice then said “psst! Take a look. It won’t take long!”

So I did.

And guess what?

Yup – they had some.

In fact there were just 2 bags… So I grabbed them both.

Result? the supermarket got an extra $18 out of me today, and because I was feeling a little ‘up’ as a result, bought a magazine for another $6.

And I have a happy wife!

What does this have to do with sales?

How often do we just not offer or suggest something to a customer?

Almost always it’s because we believe the customer is not interested or not ready. Well, until you ask, you’ll never convert that belief into a fact.

And who knows, they might say Yes!

And that could be you with your equivalent of the extra sale of coffee and magazine!

“So what?” you may ask.

So what indeed!

Almost every tablet maker is offering a system based on Android. And for the entry 16Gb models the price is $499 and up. HP was offering theirs with the new WebOS operating system. They pulled out before they barely got started. RiM, the Blackberry people are soon to launch theirs, with an ability ‘soon’ to run Android apps. Windows 8 is a way off, and currently looking like it is suffering from an identity crisis…

So how does looking the same as everybody else help you win business? I thought this was such a simple rule of business…

Buyers who do not want or care about the Apple ecosystem and offering, or avoid Apple on principle, have plenty of choice… For the moment. The current situation is unsustainable and many models, if not companies, will not survive in the tablet business for long. It will cost their shareholders dearly. Then choice will be reduced.

In the mean time the Android ship may be changing course as it recognises the problems having an open ‘standard’ with many different variants and interpretations bring… And that Apple may have been right to offer a controlled and closed ecosystem.

I love Apple stuff AND I want their to by viable competition, so I can get something better if I need it, and at the very least, Apple is kept on it’s toes with innovation…

So come on you big businesses… Offer something useful, viable and DIFFERENT!

If not, well, I look forward to the next firesale of failed tablet devices… It could bring a new dimension to the ‘hackintosh’ people as they work to put iOS and/or OSX on to these defunct tablets….

It seems this is a subtle point that is easily and readily passed up by most.

I’ve just been watching the BBC tech show ‘Click’ (10 Sep 2011 edition). There was a review of the recent IFA tech exhibition in Berlin, Germany – the one where Samsung hastily withdrew their 7.7 inch new tablet following an injunction granted to Apple by a German court.

Lee Westaway, from CNET, stated that the price of most non iPad tablets was at least the same as the iPad, and that when faced with this choice, many buyers are going with the iPad because it’s established, it works, it’s proven, they know others who have one etc, and the new Android tablets are still a little bit “geeky” and unproven. He stated that if the price “was a lot cheaper, there’d be more reason to by one” (Android tablet, that is).

He’s wrong! And here’s why I think so – and it’s critical.

If the price were much lower, there’s be less reasons to NOT buy one – this is NOT the same as there being more reasons to buy one.

What do I mean?

Well, as I said before in my 29 Aug post, it’s really about risk. Or lack of it.

A lower-priced Android tablet means there’s less risk for me personally. If it was free, the electrical/technical/mechanical risks would be the same – it’s the same piece of equipment. And this would also be true if the price was $1 million. This is why the main risk variable is personal.

If I pay $99 for an Android or other type of tablet, it doesn’t matter too much if it sucks – I can say that for $99 you can’t go wrong with a device that’s clearly not an iPad and people shouldn’t expect an iPad experience. I can claim to be testing out the waters before deciding on whether I need a tablet at all, and if so, what capabilities I need.

This is the logical argument that hides the fact that the decision I make in buying it (or going with the iPad or none at all), like every other decision every human makes, is 100% emotional (see “Brain Rules!” by John Medina at www.brainrules.net and also “Buy-Ology” on Wikipedia…)

So the recent fire sale of the HP TouchPad device – at $329 these things weren’t moving – but HP says it’s bailing out of the retail PC/tablet business, lowers the price to $99 and these things sell out globally in a matter of hours – a ton of people around the world paid $99 for a device that’s got no future, no future support, no future accessories – nothing…

At $99 there were simply less reasons to NOT buy one – no body is going to call you a fool for buying something that was originally $500 or $600 for under $100 and that gets you ‘in’ to the tablet world… but for $300+, people imagined feeling silly buying the HP device, or the others when a little bit more gets you the ‘real deal’…

Next time you feel like you may be losing the sale and the customer is telling you it’s too expensive, remember this post – and call him or her out on it – explore the real reasons they have for not buying from you (and yes, it COULD be price alone, but ONLY if you’ve let them perceive the required solution as being a commodity – people do pay $50 for a bottle of water you know!!!)

• Great support – pre and post sales
• High quality
• Features
• Options/flexibility
• The relationship they have built up with the client
• …

And so on..

But when you ask a sales person why they lost an opportunity, and you almost always hear just one answer…

PRICE!

I offer as ‘evidence for the Prosecution’ Exhibit A — The HP TouchPad.

This is (was!) HP’s response to Apple’s iPad. It had a whole bunch of tech features that were missing from the iPad2. And it was available for the same price as the iPad2.

And yet HP couldn’t sell them.

They were in shops and on the Internet – availability wasn’t a problem.

And yet HP couldn’t sell them, well, not many anyway… (see here…)

But when HP suddenly announced it was pulling out of consumer PC and tablet business and dropped the price of the HP TouchPad to $99, they were sold out.

I can hear it now – the argument for the Defence – they sold out because the price was dropped… and so why not drop the price of other tablets, and sell a load more…?

LIES!!!

They sold out quickly because the RISK involved in buying it, vs the potential value/benefit of having it, had dropped to acceptable levels for a lot of people.

Buyers in every situation fear just one thing – FAILURE!

Making up this failure is some combination of the following:

There isn’t the same risk in buying a full price iPad as there is in buying a full price tablet from anybody else.

Why?

Well, iPads work, they’re a known quantity, they provide the means to do everything most people want to do, and don’t required a degree in computer science to use, plus they’re cool – few people would give you a hard time for long over buying an iPad. Clearly, given how many millions of iPads have been sold, $499 for a tablet is not too much… and few are left truly disappointed, or get laughed at or criticised for having one – if this was an issue people would not have bought an iPad, sales would have been woeful… just like sales of every other tablet currently available… And there’s little fear of change for many – already familiar with the iOS software in iPhones & iPads, and its ease of use – there’s little perceived change involved.

But some other tablet? A tablet which has more tech stuff, doesn’t look so cool (arguably), costs at least the same, if not more, not noted for ease of use for the typical human being, and no hi-quality app store etc to go with it…? Try selling that to your spouse/family… or yourself… unless you want to ‘hack’ your tablet and/or simply hate Apple and its products…

But at $99 you can make the argument “well, at that price you can’t go wrong, I got a tablet for under $100″ – plenty of people would understand.

You get the same ‘experience’ for $99 as you would at the original $499, but if it turn out to be a klutz, well, what do you expect for $99…

People buy a certain level of risk – a balance between the cost of the solution and the implications of not having the solution…

At $99 the HP TouchPad  tipped the balance clearly in to the ‘acceptable risk’ category which was beyond its reach at $499 or even the heavily discounted prices that were floating around just before the fire sale at $99.

So my call to action here is simple: just how are your customers perceiving the balance between cost of solution and implications of not having a solution… and what do you need to do to tip them in favour of buying a solution, ideally from you?

A single word, a simple concept.

Or is it…?

A metric is simply a measure of something.

Almost every business I know, big or small, has at least a few metrics that it uses to help it make decisions.

And one of these metrics is sales. How much in sales was achieved yesterday, or last week, last month, last quarter, or for the year to date. We’re talking money here.

Quite a few businesses will also track volume – how many objects, items, or instances of a service, were sold. Here, we’re talking about simple counts.

And quite a few businesses will also track the average sale price or ‘ASP’ – defined as the financial value of the sales achieved in a given period, divided by the volume for the same period.

And of course there is the sales forecast – an estimate, hopefully based on some intelligence, of the sales and associated volume anticipated in a given, future period.

And that is pretty much it – sure, there will be some metrics relating to a few key processes, such as on-time delivery, waste, and so on.

But these aren’t enough – not from a sales perspective. Not from a business acumen perspective. And some are frankly, dangerously misleading.

I’ll explain why, with examples, and then show you what you can do to avoid the same traps, and so have a more useful and robust set of metrics for your business.

Let me start with a couple of basic principles. You probably know a couple of these, but perhaps not all.

1. Metrics fall in to one of two types – leading indicators, and lagging indicators. Sales figures for example, are lagging indicators. They tell you about what has happened in the past. Now, this does not mean that sales forecasts are leading indicators because they tell you about the future – more on that in a moment.
2. Only leading indicators are useful for helping you directly run your business. To be a leading indicator, a metric must meet the following criteria:
1. It must refer to something that you can change – you can’t change last week’s sales figures;
2. It must measure a quantity that exists today, and this quantity, what ever it is, correlates strongly with a future situation – e.g. for every 25 visitors who download a free tool or informational paper from your website today, 5 of them will spend at least $30 with you in the next 3 months.
3. It must be unequivocal, clear – averages tend to hide extremes and concentrations that indicate something deeper at work;
3. A key metric or indicator relates to things at the business level. You shouldn’t have too many. Any other metric will relate to a specific part of the business. Between them, your key metrics will also reflect the core values of your business.
4. Have a balanced set of metrics – financial, customer, process and growth/learning/people – with clear definitions and target values.
5. Regularly review your key metrics and the data that feeds in to them to make sure that
1. The metric is still useful – you’re not simply measuring it because it’s easy to measure and measuring something is better than measuring nothing – so the myth goes..!
2. The metric is (still) accurate – it actually does measure what you want & need it to measure.
3. The people impacted by it (the metric) or whose activities affect it understand its existence and relevance to the business and to individuals.
4. The metrics together tell the essential story of your business – nothing important at the business level, be it process, results, or values, is left untouched by any of the key metrics.

About my earlier warning that some metrics can be dangerous…

This almost always involves averages – for example, the average sale price. Add up all the prices you get for each individual sale, and divide by the number of sales. You can use this to forecast future income or sales revenue for a given value of volume. But how accurately?

If you have 10 sales people, you may have 2 or 3 who contribute say, 50% of the sales. You wouldn’t know this because averages tend to smooth these features out… so you couldn’t identify which individual sales people would benefit from extra support, or which sales people could help with that. You wouldn’t know who to go to out of these 10 to take their practice & methods and spread this through the others – sharing best practice…

Averages are useful, but not in isolation. If possible, also look at how the data points that go together to make up the average value, are distributed – look at their associated ‘standard deviation’ which is a measure of spread, and use metrics like this to help you target your continuous improvement efforts.

In earlier posts, I listed the core elements of business acumen – your set of key metrics should cover all of these – at the very least, the following:

• Cash – grouped by the main sources of cash, including sales
• Margin or profit – before & after taxes etc, with a track on costs, discounts, etc.
• Return on assets – so you know fundamentally how efficient your business is at turning investments (usually your own money) in to cash
• Growth – is your business fundamentally able to grow and is it – is enough of your sales coming from new customers and/or new products?
• Customers – do they pay on time and in full? Do they come back for more? Are they recommending you to others?

So my call to action is a simple one: review your metrics, starting with a blank sheet of paper… and identify, using the pointers above, those few metrics that really tell the story of your business. Identify the data that goes in to forming each one. Make sure people who need to know about these, well, need to know about them – in full.

Then put a note in your diary to review them again in 3 months time – and change them as appropriate.

It’s a term that is often used in many contexts – and almost always seems to take on a mystical sense of great importance. Yet when you ask people to define it, you often get different definitions.

So what is the big deal?

Well, you can have 2 sales people that seem to do the same things, seem to do the right things, yet one is a lot more successful than the other. Why?

The more successful sales person – let’s call her ‘Sara’, is more likely to have made an explicit connection for the customer, between the customer’s current situation and the actual ‘pain’ it’s causing now, and/or could cause in the future. The less successful sales person – let’s call her ‘Una’ – is less likely to make that connection explicit for the customer. Where Sara wins out further over Una is in describing those connections in terms of 1 or more key business issues.

And because Sara has a better understanding of these key business issues, which, by the way, are the same in any and every business, she is able to get a higher overall sales price. She can use her business acumen – a combination of this knowledge of these key business issues, and the experience to know where, when and how to apply this knowledge.

So what are these core business issues? Ram Charan, in his book “What The CEO Wants You To Know”, listed them simply as

• Cash – more so than revenue in the form of sales not yet paid for – a business fails usually when it runs out of cash – which it can do even with a strong order book
• Margin/profit
• Return on Assets – how much cash can be generated per unit of asset… related to velocity or turns…
• Growth
• Customers

But in practice it’s often thought of more as

• Reducing costs
• Development
• Manufacturing
• Sales
• Servicing
• Managing risk
• Including reliability, quality and product lifetime
• Agreement amongst key staff/managers
• Other risks
• Producing differentiated/innovative products
• Efficiencies (time to market/lead time)
• Development time
• Manufacturing time
• Logistics

By helping the customer understand the true nature of their situation, Sara shows clearly how she adds value for her customers. For Una’s customers they don’t see things so clearly, and so selecting Una can often feel too risky… and reducing the price can sometimes feel to the customer that they’re now taking on a less risky proposition… after all, risk is usually perceived as a product of how bad the situation can be (e.g. cost), and the likelihood this bad situation will actually arise.

So my call to action for you today is to help your clients at every opportunity to clarify their understanding of their situation, and have them tell you (i.e. make explicit) in terms of some combination of the list above, and in their own words, just what their situation is and how they’d like things to be in future. Help them by asking about the items in the list above – just translate the terms in the list in to the equivalent phrases/terms used in your client’s industry.

Well, there is the usual stuff you read on news sites, such as interest rates could go up, yadda yadda yadda.

I have something else in mind.

I was watching the address made last night by President Obama, and then the response immediately after by Speaker Boehner. The Speaker is from Ohio and observed that, when he was running a small business, you could not have expenditure that was greater than income – not for long, anyway!

Now in his address, Boehner suggested that you cut your expenditure – makes sense. Up to a point. The other thing you do is look for ways to generate more cash.

Almost every business that fails does so because it ran out of cash – even though it may have had a full order book…

Now this may sound pretty bloody obvious, but I’m amazed at how many businesses, big and small, seem to lose sight of this, claiming they have made a ton of sales. Like many others who have been in business, sales are good – cash is better! I’d rather have $10, or £10, or €10 in my hand, cash, than a purchase order for $20, £20 or €20…

The President suggests that there are some expenditure that shouldn’t be cut. That what is cut or not in essence defines the nature of society. And so it is for any business. What you choose to cut and what you choose to continue to invest in says a lot about your values as a business, and that will both attract as well as repel customers.

Continuing to invest in sales activities is clearly critical. How you go about these sales activities is also critical.

For example, discounting is neither good or bad in itself. But discount without getting something of similar value is not sustainable – yet I see it all the time…

…”I gave that customer 6% discount to keep his business, and keep him satisfied.”

Fine – except you now have to bring in more than 6% just to get back to where you were. That extra effort could have grown your business – brought in more cash, if you hadn’t given the discount.

So what did you get for your investment in that customer? Because that is what it is… an investment… will it be a good one or a bad one? What is the value you bring to your customer? Does he or she know? Do you know?

My call to action is simple – with each decision you make, just remember that sales are good, but cash is better.

Gently remind your customers next time you can, just what value they are getting from doing business with you, what you have invested in them in the past, and what value you can bring in the future. It’s OK to give a discount. Just get something of suitable value in return – more than a simple promise, too!9

It’s an interesting word, for sure.

So what does it have to do with business?

More importantly perhaps, is what does it have to do with success in business?

Let’s find out…

Passion is a word that has several meanings, all but one of which are lost to every day use.

Did you know that one of the meanings is suffering?

Yes, you read that right – one of the meanings of ‘passion’ is ‘suffering’ – as in ‘The Passion of The Christ’.

And it’s this meaning, as well as the more widely known meaning, that together have something very useful to tell us about success in business.

You are in business, or thinking of going in to business in order to fix, achieve and/or avoid something. Chances are, it’s a combination of several of these. I doubt you are doing this simply to generate cash – you want that money for something!

Your business is not an end in itself… it’s a means to an end…

… so why not make that ‘means’ as enjoyable and motivating as possible?

So go in to an area of business, or service a market, for which you have some genuine passion.

The usual meaning of ‘passion’ certainly makes sense in this last sentence. But what about the part to do with suffering?

I think we all know that business can be tough – you will have some frustrating times and decisions ahead of you. Things won’t always go according to plan. Some days will be poor in terms of cash generation. What will help you stay the course is in the passion you have for what you sell, for how you sell it, for what it can do for your customers, and for their appreciation. That and the vision you have that your business will help you achieve…

Simon Sinek (see http://www.startwithwhy.com/) suggests in his ‘Golden Circle’ that all organisations and careers function on 3 levels:

1. What you do
2. How you do it
3. Why you do it

It’s very easy to be clear about the first 2.

Not so much with the third – why you do it – and this is where the passion comes in…

Without a clear sense of ‘why’ – when the suffering part of ‘passion’ begins to dominate, it’s not so easy to rebalance, to get that other part of the passion back and drive through the challenges and get closer to success.

So where might you find this ‘why’ and your passion that goes with it?

Well, only you can really know, but where it connects to your business is in some combination of these areas:

• The market you serve – it could be individuals, it could be organisations, there is no limit – your passion is in the ‘who’ that you sell to.
• The products & services you want to offer – your passion could be in the ‘what’ that you sell.
• The problem or situation your products & services tackle – your passion could be in the ‘why’ customers buy what they buy from you.

What is certain – if you have no real passions in any of these 3 areas, you are going to find it much tougher to generate the cash you want & need to achieve your vision.

So my call to action is a simple one…

Give thought to your ‘why’ and the passion that connects with it.

Where and how does it connect with your business?

What possibilities and opportunities become available to you if you move your focus to a different combination of market, product/service and problem?

Reflect on these questions. Check out Simon Sinek’s web site for further insights. All this takes time, so let it.

And if you’re up for a challenge, why not share your ‘why’ with me? I’d love to learn more about people’s ‘why’ – and perhaps help you out as you refine & clarify…

“How will I know I’ve found it?”

I’ve been working to refine my WHY since a great buddy of mine put me on to the concept and Simon Sinek.

You see, I’ve been looking for YEARS (about 7!) for a way to express my WHY. The trouble was, I didn’t know what it was.

Each time I thought I had it – turns out I didn’t. Does this sound familiar?

A few days ago I thought I had it. I was very happy. I decided to drop an email to my buddy (Steve Marriot – an amazing coach) who had put me on to this concept in the first place. I couldn’t wait to share the news with him and thank him for his gift, of pointing me to Simon Sinek and this concept of starting with WHY.

And as I typed merrily away on my keyboard, I suddenly realised I couldn’t completely remember my WHY…!

I don’t mean I couldn’t remember all of the words ‘verbatim’. I mean, I couldn’t even remember all of the essence of it. How silly was THAT?! After all, I was sure I had it…

And that was when I realised that I DID NOT HAVE MY WHY…

BUT… for the first time on my journey to discover my WHY, I felt pretty good at realising I didn’t have my WHY…

…Because I now had a sure-fire way of determining if I had found my WHY or not – and it was QUICK!

AND… I also felt that I was closer to my WHY than I had ever been – I was definitely on the scent…

This helped me zero in quickly on what my WHY is…

I believe that it’s more than a conscious, deliberate act of remembrance. It goes deeper than that. If you have to make an effort to reconstruct your WHY, if it doesn’t ‘roll off your tongue’, then you haven’t got it. When you have discovered your WHY, it’s there in the way you think, act and communicate.

As my long suffering wife Tracy will tell you (bless you!), up until the point where I discovered my WHY, I was trying too hard, and making it too complicated… it was from the ‘head’ and not the ‘heart’.

So I discovered that for me at least, may be for you too, when you discover your WHY and come to express it, it will be a simple and short phrase.

And so I can comfortably, confidently, naturally, and easily express my WHY anytime, like now…

“I’m driven to help you inspire YOUR customers to buy from you.”

Which approach would you like to use most often?

I’m guessing it’s inspiration – we have so much negative baggage with the word ‘manipulation’. Especially in sales.

BUT it’s OK to manipulate to sell – just so long as we all know it’s happening.

Let me give you an example – a price discount is a manipulation.

You may disagree… Because you use it, you buy stuff yourself because of a sale in Main Street. Discounts work!

Manipulation works.

It works in the short term, but is it a sustainable long term strategy?

Probably not.

I believe inspiring your customers to buy from you is a more sustainable long term strategy to sales success.

INSPIRE your customers to buy… and they’ll come back AND tell the World about you!

I’m inspired to help you INSPIRE YOUR CUSTOMERS to buy… like raving fans!

That’s why I get up in the mornings, and why anybody else should care.

What is your WHY?

Why do YOU get up each morning?

Why should anybody care?

Amazingly it seems very few people or organisations have sufficient clarity about their “why”.

They rely on the HOW and the WHAT, and without the WHY, the HOW and WHAT just look and feel like everybody else’s HOW and WHAT – difficult for customers to differentiate. And when it’s difficult to differentiate it becomes an issue of price and availability… and not in the way you need for a sustainable and viable business.

Find out more from at https://twitter.com/#!/simonsinek and http:www.startwithwhy.com