Security Pie

My friend Zvika (all names are fictional to protect the innocent) drew my attention to Peter Bregman post on Harvard Business blog Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy. Peter is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and advises CEOs and their leadership teams. My friend Zvika is an executive in a small company and knows one or two things about selling “against the big guys”.

I read this article and find it to be interesting for multiple reasons:

1. Peter tells a nice story about Passlogix. I like stories. 
2. I second Peter’s thoughts. Customers buy from someone they trust. It does not matter if you work in a big company or a small company. In order to sell, you should gain your customers trust.
3. I was amused that Peter found the mentioned phenomenon interesting. 

Did you ever think why customers buy? why do YOU buy? I always find it awkward when I hear experts talk teach about the art (or science) of selling, but they do not teach why customers buy.  IMO, a customer or a prospect will trust their sales rep if he and the company that he represents are professional, reliable, accurate and will be there when needed. Day or night.  Sun or rain. 

Many years ago, when I sold our first major (at the time) project, I looked at my prospect eyes and told him something along the following lines:

 Believe me… we know what we are doing, you are not the second or third customer for this kind of project

He knew that he was the first, but he trusted us..

 Marc Boroditsky is the president, CEO and a co-founder of Passlogix . He is passionate about his company and will always answer the phone. Companies should have passionate executives at all levels. I wish Mr. Boroditsky (I do not know him) all the best. Such success stories make my day. Learning from my own experience, one day he could not answer the phone for every customer. But then, he must have other executives with the same level of passion that will.

Assaf  adds:  He concludes with “small is the new big”. Maybe the correct line is “Big is the new small?”.

Assaf wrote about the need to have a consistent message. Let’s remember that it is even more important to set the right message.  Using Rafael’s “one of the worst marketing movie”  as an example:

If you believe Rafael’s marketing director, they are pretty consistent in the way they think about marketing movies:  ”We try to make the movies about the place where the defense expo is located,” the company source said, adding that in previous years Rafael had won prizes for its pavilions and marketing techniques. 

Whether you think that the movie is bad and wrong or just not according to your taste, it proves again that there’s no bad marketing.  Just look at the youtube counter. 116,000 and growing..

I love this smell as well

It’s this time of the year. One can smell it. If you remember Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore’s statement ”I love the smell of napalm in the morning”, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the last uphill battle at the continuous war on business. Assaf calls this EQ. I call this the best time of the quarter.EQ – the End of the Quarter. Everyone is on the watch, alerted and ready. This is the time to separate between the boys and men.  Get the POs and meet your personal goals as well as the company numbers. All are reay to take a bite of the pie. 

It’s all about eve sales. The ability to answer the customer needs, create a solution, close a deal and get a PO. All are alerted, focusing on the goal. To be honest, I always thought that sales is an art, but then I’ve learned that it is actually a process.

Old school will use Og Mandino’s sales principles: 

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