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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I’d sent the business owner a message to say that I hadn’t appreciated the hard sell etc, and by the way, where had she gotten my contact details from? (my phone number isn’t on the website).  I was polite, just very clear that I wasn’t happy. This was her response, sent to me two weeks later (there’s a clue, it took her two weeks to respond):

Hi Melinda,
We had your details in the database from a previous contact you’d had with ‘her life partner’- when you were interested in commission only salespeople. The two of you had a conversation and that’s how your details ended up in there.

Uh no, she’s wrong: I’d filled out a free website audit and he’d called me about that, and to try and sell me on a seminar to improve my website. I said no to that one too.

You were rude to him also (after asking for his help).

Wrong again: filling out a free website program does not constitute asking for help in my book. And we’d ended up having a really good conversation, turned out we had a couple of mutual connections. So… I was rude to him and he was still happy to continue a conversation off-topic and talk for nearly an hour? I don’t think so.

Don’t worry – we apologised profusely to ‘salesperson’ (Who was very upset at how rude you were to her) for having left you on the database – and removed you immediately.

Seriously, if she’s that sensitive then she shouldn’t be in telephone sales. I didn’t swear at her or abuse her in any way, nor did I hang up on her. I did interrupt her and speak over the top of her and told her that I didn’t appreciate her manipulative sales questions. Rude? I’d say the rudeness was on her side as she refused to accept my ‘No’ and kept pushing the sale.

As for all of your other comments … I could write a book … and actually, probably will – but look at the end of the day it comes down to this:

‘salesperson’ did nothing wrong.

If you understood sales – even a little bit – you’d know that she did precisely what she should have done.

Right down to burning you.

Really? Since when has it been accepted marketing practice to ‘burn’ a contact? Since when is it good salesmanship to push the sale when the person has told you very clearly ‘No’ three times?

And if I don’t understand sales ‘even a little bit’ then how have I run a successful online business for six years then?

Because you are not now, nor will you ever be our client.

I don’t want to “keep in contact with people” on the off chance that one day, maybe they might want to buy something.

Ok, so if I don’t want to buy your very expensive course today, you don’t want me to be able to contact you to buy it in six months time? Wow. How many contacts is she losing because they don’t buy today, right now?

On top of which – we sell. On the phone. Every day. If you had stayed on our database you would have gotten more calls from more sales people who you would have upset being mean to.

Maybe you should spend a bit of time looking at your own obvious issues around sales, rather than attacking 23 year old girls who are doing their jobs.

Yes, I have issues around sales. I have serious issues around pushy hard-sell sales people who won’t take no for an answer.

Attacking 23 year old girls who are doing their job? Sorry, wrong again. I never ‘attacked’ her in any way. Definitely not picking up any guilt for that. Don’t try and make it my fault because I disagreed with your staff.

Good luck with everything.

Rest 100% assured that NO ONE from my company will EVER contact you again … even if you begged us to.

I think I was supposed to be sad and sorry that they’ll never contact me again. Really, that was the best news I’d had all week. And I don’t beg.

Feedback is a part of business

No one is too precious to receive feedback. And it’s not all going to be good. Get over it. If someone took the effort to let you know that (in their opinion) there was something lacking in your business then the least you can do is thank them for the effort they took to write.

Note that I didn’t say you had to agree with the feedback and tell them you’d make changes. You don’t have to agree with it, you just have to be nice about it. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

Get over your own issues around feedback. It’s not always going to be a nice pat on the back. That kind of sycophantic feedback won’t help you improve and grow. If you get a brickbat thrown at you then consider if there’s any truth in it. If there is then take it on board and use it to improve. If there’s not truth in it then simply ignore it.

Attempting to bully and score over the person who sent it just exposes your own issues. And it’s really bad PR when they write a blog post that is seen buy thousands of readers who could have been their customers….

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We all need to market and sell our stuff, right? That’s the whole point of being in business. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to sell.

Sell something the right way and the person is happy they dealt with you and everyone is pleased by the whole transaction. Sell the wrong way – or try to – and it ends up a bun fight.

How Not to Cold Call

A few weeks ago I had the dubious pleasure of receiving a business cold call. By the time the call finished I was so angry I rang my husband at work to vent – the venting took longer than the call. (Hubby ended up being late for a meeting, and told his boss “She was way angrier than you, and I have to live with her” LOL)

Normally cold calls don’t bother me. We’re on the Do-Not-Call register so if we DO receive any cold calls it’s generally for my business. Usually it’s enough to tell the person very clearly “Nope, not interested, thanks for your time” and that’s the end of it. Not this call. Here’s how NOT to cold call someone:

The one thing they did right

They rang during the day. Ring me in the evening and you’ve got me offside from the second I pick up the phone. Business hours people, that’s what they’re for.

I love you forever, what’s your name?

The salesperson introduced herself and told me the name of the person she was calling for – I slightly know this business owner from a couple of forums that we’re both on. Her script, after the intro, went something like:

Our business helps other small businesses just like yours to grow and make more money. Tell me about your business, what do you do?

Huh? You rang me, you help businesses just like mine, but you don’t actually know what my business does?

Imagine you’re in a bar and a complete stranger comes up to you, takes you in his (or her) arms, looks into your eyes and says in complete seriousness “I love you and want to marry you, have kids with you and be together until we die. Oh, and what’s your name?”

You’d be like “Get away from me you freakin weirdo!”

That’s what this call was like. First you tell me your business is to help small businesses just like mine to grow – and then you ask me what my business is? If you don’t know what I do then how do you know that your business can help me?

Do some research. Look at my website – it’ll tell you. That’s what it’s there for (ok, one of the things). Or at least reword your script so it’s not so contradictory and doesn’t make me think you’re ignorant.

Pushy Pushy

I told the salesperson a very brief and general description of what I do. She suggested that I needed to narrow down my niche. I said it was a lot more focussed but my description would do for now. That didn’t please her at all. Did she really expect me to discuss my business in detail with a stranger who called me?

And then she started on her spiel. She was selling a course on creating info-products. I’d seen some details from the business owner on a forum, so I knew what she was talking about.

“No thanks, I’m not interested at the moment”

You know how in sales books they tell you that a ‘No’ is only an objection? Well, this person had been reading those books.

She began on the marketing questions that are designed so you either have to sound like a complete idiot to turn it down or you open the door for more selling. Her question was something along the lines of:

“Do you want to learn how to sell more effective and higher priced information products to your customers?”

Well, what am I supposed to say? “No, I like being broke and not selling anything” how stupid would that answer be? But if I say “Of course I do” then she’s got an open door to keep pushing the sale.

So I didn’t answer. I pointed out that it’s a typical marketing question designed to either open the door or make me look stupid, and I don’t appreciate being manipulated.  And said again “No, I’m not interested in this product”

The pushy got worse

I’m sure she took my ‘No’ as a personal challenge because she continued to try and sell to me. I ended up saying ‘No’ at least three times, very clearly. I told her “I’m not interested and I’m not your ideal client” and she kept on pushing to sell!

At this point I was interrupting her and talking over the top of her. Rude, yes, but it was the only way to let her know I wasn’t interested short of outright hanging up on her.

It ended when I told her (again) I wasn’t interested and was going to hang up. At that point she agreed I wasn’t their client and we said a rather terse goodbye.

Do unto others….

How many of us enjoy having someone disrespect us and ignore us when we tell them no? Who wants to get off a call feeling they’ve just been manipulated and sold something they didn’t really want? Why are these sales techniques still being taught?

A few years ago I read “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by John Cialdini. In it he discusses the brain conditioning and instinctive responses that we’re all wired with. Marketers hook into this brain wiring and structure their questions so we’ll give them the answer they want rather than look a fool.

Marketing or a Used Car Salesman?

Cold calling works – I won’t deny that. But at what ethical cost? Do you really want to sell to someone knowing that they bought because you twisted their responses? That’s why Naomi and Sonia created ‘Marketing for Nice People’ last year, because everyone is so fed up with the manipulative, sleazy sales techniques that are being used. (Marketing for Nice People is no longer available unfortunately, but if you’re looking for a marketing course try the Marketing 101 – great course!)

The point of marketing is to make the customer be panting to buy the product, to be standing there with their wallet in hand throwing money at you. Not because it’s the only way to get rid of you, but because they can see how that product is going to change their life forever and THEY MUST HAVE IT NOW!!!

Pt 1, the end

After the call, when I’d calmed down reasonably, I sent a message to the business owner to let her know that the call went badly and that I hadn’t appreciated being pushed and manipulated by a hard-selling salesperson. Tomorrow I’ll show you her response, and we’ll have a chat about receiving feedback. Let me just say, her reply was even more entertaining than the cold call!

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Well, it’s been school holidays here. We spent a week at the in-laws down in Victoria and the rest of the holidays staying at home. The kidlet and I spent a lot of our time doing ‘girl stuff’, cooking, sewing and really enjoying each others company.

In the middle of our visit to the in-laws I spoke at the Business Mums Network Pampering day. It was a really great day and kudos to Melissa for organising it. The talks will be available soon in downloadable and/or CD format, along with the notes.

Recently I discovered two fantastic tools that I’m loving using.

Timedriver

For quite a while now I’ve been looking for an online appointment maker that could work with different time zones and I finally found Timedriver – it does everything I wanted and at a lower price than I expected. How awesome is that?

The way it works is this: I enter in days and times that I’m available to take appointments, in my own local time. Each ‘appointment book’ is for a different type of appointment – I currently have set up appointment books for 45 minute coaching sessions, 15 minute Laser coaching sessions and 15 minutes quick consult timings.

When a client needs to book an appointment with me I send them the link to the appropriate appointment book. When they open the link, Timedriver detects their default time zone from their computer and so they see the available appointments based on their own local time zone.

Timedriver sends both the client and myself an email when an appointment has been booked and also syncs with my Outlook calendar to book them in. You have no idea how excited I was to find Timedriver. And the best part is that after the free 90 day trial it costs less than US$30 per year!

Dropbox

Dropbox was shown to me by Sean of Psychotactics when I took on managing a project for him. It’s a way to share files with other people without having to email them.

You download the Dropbox application and install it on your desktop. Anything you want to share you save to a folder inside dropbox.

To share a folder with someone you got to the online application and send the person an email invitation to the folder. That person can only see folders that they’ve been invited to – they can’t see anything else in your dropbox.

The other person can then add files to the folder, change and save files, all from their desktop. The first two Gb are free. Great for storing small backups, sharing files, photo’s and audio/video, working with your VA etc.

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We’ve recently looked at Why we systemise our business, and How to write systems. Today we’re going to look at systemising your emails.

Firstly lets be clear on one point. You’ll never be able to pass off all emails to your VA and never deal with emails yourself again. No matter how much of a Tim Ferriss fan you are, it’s just not going to happen. Think about it, if you email me with a question about your business and Coaching, do you want it answered by a VA or would you like a personal answer?

What you can do is systemise and create templates for the most common questions that you’re emailed about, and delegate those. A PA/VA can be a great help in sorting emails, dealing with the run of the mill one’s, and freeing you up to deal with only those that require your personal attention.

What can you delegate? Questions that get asked regularly, invoices, payments and other accounting emails, quotes for work if you have ‘package’ options, stock ordering and supply, appointments, requests for non-personal information, the list goes on.

What should you deal with? Anything that is a one-off email, any complaints, requests for interviews, anything that requires a personal touch.

Why create templates for email? How often do you have to answer questions via email? If you’re having to rewrite the same answer to the same question each time then you need templates. Think about the questions that you’re asked. How many of them are similar enough that you can use a template or script to answer them? How much time will you save when you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and rewrite the emails every time?

So, the How. Where do you start? If you’re like 99.9% of Business Owners you already have the makings of email templates and scripts in your email client. Look through you sent emails, emails to clients, suppliers, contacts from your website etc.

Group all the questions you’ve been asked into like topics and use the emails you’ve written previously to create a standard template answer. Write the templates in word docs, and save them using the question as the file name.

Group the docs into folders based on what they refer to, such as ‘Quotes’, ‘Ordering’, Wholesalers’, etc. This makes it easy to find the doc again when you need.

Next time you receive an email asking for information, you simply go to the appropriate folder, copy and paste the template into an email. Check that it answers the question properly and send it off.

If you have a PA, VA or Admin Asst, they can more than pay for themselves by filtering your business email. They can deal with the standard emails that the templates work with, and anything that doesn’t have a template is sent off to you for answering.

What do you think? How could this work in your business? What questions are asked repeatedly?

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Last week we looked at Why we Need Systems in our business, even in our micro business where there’s only one person doing everything. Today we’re going to look at How and Where to start building those systems.

It starts with you. You’re the boss. Your job is to plan for expansion, and this is the first step (after your business plan). McDonalds systems enable 16 year old kids to run a busy restaurant. Your systems will enable you to work more efficiently, to identify hiccups and roadblocks in your business and to get people to help you when you need it.

So where do you start?

The easiest way to start is to write down every hat you wear within your business – Receptionist, Bookkeeper, Manufacturer, Copywriter, Supplies, Order Fulfilment, etc.

Under each heading then write a list of the tasks that position is responsible for – yes, even when it’s just you doing it all. Note that here you’re writing each task, not each step of the task.

Eg: Receptionist – answers the telephone, makes bookings, filing, taking orders.

Once you have each task, draw a flowchart for that task detailing each step from start to finish. This is where some shortcuts come in – skip the basic tasks. When it’s just you, then you don’t need a manual to answer the phone.

You do need a written down system for anything that you can envision yourself delegating at any time in the future. Usually, this will include tasks such as packing and posting orders, bookkeeping and emails (we’ll cover emails in a future post).

Write down your systems in a way that is so simple and basic that you could pull a teenager in off the street and ask them to follow it. That’s a really good test of a system by the way, if you can hand it to a person who’s never done the task before and they can follow it then it works. If they get hung up on any part of it and begin asking questions then you need to add in more detail.

When you’re satisfied that it’s written in detail and is easily understandable save an electronic copy in a special folder labelled “Systems” on your computer and then print out a copy. File the hard copy somewhere easily accessible – you’ll be using it regularly.

Keep working through each task until you’ve done them all, or at least the one’s with more than five steps.

The hardest part here is the actual doing. Finding the time to work through a task and write down every step, everything you do in the process. One good way to do it is to have someone observing and writing down what you do. Swap with a friend, you observe her and she can observe you.

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What are Systems and why do you need them?

A system is a written down process for a particular task within your business. When collected together, the systems form the Operations Manual for your business.

Now, I can hear you saying, “Why would I need one? I work for myself/at home/sole trader.” Why? Because having up to date and easy to follow Systems keep work flowing smoothly, prevents overwhelm because you know what you’re doing and where you’re up to. They allow you bring in staff members and train them, they add value to the business when/if you ever decide to sell it and they allow you to hand over tasks to other people – such as family members – so they can help you. Systems save you time and money.

You already have systems for most tasks within your business; you just haven’t vocalised or written them down. Often the systems don’t actually work that well, because they’ve evolved over time, rather than been designed for maximum efficiency and ease of use.

- When you answer the phone, do you have a particular way of answering and a set of words that you use to answer?  That’s a system.

- Do you have a procedure for registering new clients and recording their information? That’s a system.

- Do you have a routine for packing orders, checking them and posting them out? That’s a system.

- Do you have a process for receiving, distributing and answering emails? That’s a system.

Heck, we have systems for our housework, for our kids, for gardening. We just don’t recognise them and label them as such.

How often have you looked at some work for a client and had to figure out where you were up to with it? What had already been done and what still needed to be done? What if you had a written down checklist that began with the new client and followed their work through to completion and was then filed? How much time would you save, how much more work could you take on? How much more profit could you make?

How often has someone offered to come in and help you with some aspect of your business when you were overbooked and stressed beyond belief, and you said no because it was easier to do it yourself than to teach them how to do it? What if you could hand them a folder, walk them through it once, show them where everything is that they need and then leave them to it?

Are you one of those business people who talks of getting a VA one day “but just has to catch up with my emails/bookkeeping/orders first”. Imagine how much easier it would be if you could email your VA a document that tells them exactly how you want the work handled, complete with examples and text templates.

When are you planning to bring order and structure to your business systems?

Coming up in Part 2 – How and Where to start building your business systems.