Hey, where is everybody going? It's not Xmas yet

The holiday "dead period" was , in each of the past three years, our busiest season. We are on track for this year to bring in even better sales numbers for our clients. The number one revenue day for our firm in 2010 was December 29.

 We keep year-by-year data on which companies, contacts, and projects within companies have a year-end spend-down habit. During the holiday season we focus more than our usual efforts on making sure that those targets have great opportunities to do their year-end buying with our clients. We also track which client companies use year-end to bring on new employees and make sure that those clients have all of the tools and services they’ll need to bring new hires into full productivity quickly.

The conventional wisdom that fall or spring is the best time to sell B to B services and solutions has not been borne out in recent years. The wisdom goes that by November and December, most companies have given up on fourth quarter sales and moved on to planning a more successful next year. However, we've noticed a trend against that CW.  Client solutions and services are moving, these last two months of the year, because buyers are pushing to implement, or at least purchase, new services and technology solutions before the end of the year.

Why?

• So they can qualify for current-year tax deductions and make certain that they don’t lose funding to some other department or initiative while they are out for the holidays.
• Many corporations, from huge to very small, try to have new employees in place for the first of the year. Managers want those new employees productive, quick. We motivate lots of sales by reminding our customers that new employees are the last people on earth you want finagling with out-dated systems or overwhelmed servers, or backed up service providers.
• In our era of economic uncertainty, many companies hold back on purchasing until their own year-end numbers are nearly locked before deciding which project and technology investments to fund.

In addition to our data-driven approach to recent year-end sales cycles, we also encourage our clients to put a full sales press into the field during the holidays because that effort, even when it does not result in November and December sales creates a critical mass of conversational invitations to close sales on January and February rather than starting the conversation in first quarter.

The holidays tend to feature two kinds of conversations, "Call me after the first of the year," and in-depth discussions with people who are not overwhelmed with their own work flow because "it's the holidays." Those conversations and access to key people who are ordinarily pretty tough to reach, keep us working through the season. Our clients start each year well ahead of competitors who are starting from a near blank slate when they return to the office after New Years.

Can we use Blogger to criticize Google?

More specifically, if you found us through Google or its search engine copycat (what, Redmond's water prevents you from writing algorithms?)--thanks for stopping.

But as a B2B sales and marketing firm, we're extremely concerned. SJN Sales depends on our clients, and their customers, accessing a web environment that balances accuracy and crowd-sourcing.

As shown in today's NY Times, the search behemoth makes it pretty easy to maliciously clobber a competitor's business, and they are giving some real lip service to trying something that might help with the problem in the future. Maybe.

Why Texting Is the Most Important Information Service in the World

Marketing 2.0 experts, all aboard. SMS is it.

Why Texting Is the Most Important Information Service in the World - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/why-texting-is-the-most-important-information-service-in-the-world/242951/

Good news for marketing 2.0 experts

Bad news for all the rest: Coke's marketing director for global agrees that SMS is the future of consumer marketing. For obvious reasons--mobile platforms are ubiquitous in developing economies chief among them--a web site isn't going to do it.

Google + and your leads

This could be the start of something big.

If you've asked yourself, How can my business integrate social networking, positive peer pressure and sales? we may be onto something here. SJN Group is developing a Google+-centered workshop for professionals who know they need to network, and would prefer to do more from the couch and less at cocktail parties. Watch this space for webinar announcements.

New grads are on the loose! Hide your best leads!

If you've been in sales for any period of time, you know that this is a delicate season.

On one hand, you want the help that many organizations bring on board in summer, to increase the volume of contacts with your prospects. On the other hand, the founders' nephews' boyfriends who really need a job after they've earned a business degree...can make you question the value of our nation's educational institutions.

If you're in line for the gift horse, as we like to call our newly hired new grads at SJN Sales, here are a couple of tips to get the most from them:

1. Know your best leads. If you have a strong, positive relationship with a particular prospect, do not do not do not delegate any contact to someone who is new to your company. If you've invested in a connection, passing it to someone junior sends the wrong message.
2. Dish the ones that look good on paper. If you have a company in your sights that fits into your high probability matrix, you've worked your process, and you just have not gotten to first base--hand it off. Sometimes, despite your mom and the nicer sales managers' denying it, what is not working in the relationship really is just you. If you stay in sales, you'll learn not to personalize this.

So use your database or CRM, sort your leads and ask for a bonus on whatever the new kid sells. Congratulations to the graduates, and good luck to all.

Recovery indicator: Sales hiring has been budgeted for summer

Great news--the economy is inching toward employment recovery. We're predicting this because SMB hiring in sales jobs is showing signs of life--longtime clients are wrapping up their contracts with SJN Sales and moving to increase head count!

Perhaps this is contrary, but we're delighted. More new hires by SaaS and software developers means more prospecting, more presentations and more demos being delivered. SJN Sales' new offering in lead conversion--we will now carry out followups on your existing leads as a stand-alone project--fits into this trend perfectly. More about our new followup campaigns here.

Pricing: Two cautionary tales

The first, from a geneticist blogger, shows the perils of letting your competition do all your thinking to set price...then automating with an algorithm. Needless to say, the case of the $23 million textbook carries a couple of lessons with it. Never assume that you've automated a process so perfectly that you don't need to check on the results, and don't distract grad students who spend their time studying flies because--ooh shiny!

Then we get the small business beat from the NY Times, telling a story of entrepreneurs raising their prices. Take-away: Price is just one factor in your customers' minds . Provide a valuable product or service at a profitable rate, and ignore your competition's pricing. Odd that the reporter never thought to add, Because all too often intangibles have to compete with something "free", copying prices or even payment model (this much a month, yearly subscription, this much an hour) isn't a strategy.

What did your least productive 20% of staff do today?

Please assure yourself that if you don't yet have a network security/filtering device, none of these folks works for you.

Because there is no cognitive surplus at your business, right?

"It sells itself."

Can't count how many times I've been told about newly developed software: It sells itself.

You know, the odds are that it doesn't. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Seriously, some percentage of our clients apparently find that everyone who sees their product buys it. And that's great!

It means that they've built a solution that responds to a real, painful business problem. However, there are a number of steps that happen before a new prospect sees the product, and that's where we  come in.

More on this tomorrow--the SaaS product on my desk isn't selling itself at this hour, which is why we're busy around here.

Is this thing on?

Social media bubble--it's like the South Seas, tulips and Fresno starter homes, all rolled into one! You, yes you, have got to plant your business's flag in all the social media.

Meaning, user-generated content. Meaning, what Clay Shirky approves of (cognitive surplus: it's a new world of labors of love, paid for in unicorn dust!) and Nick Carr disapproves of (go outside and play, you're rotting your brain!) has become required for all serious businesses.

Even those of us who are pretty sure that no one buys complex intangibles because they got 'liked' on Facebook.