Fieldstone Hill Group: Improve Sales & Marketing Performance

In today's disruptive marketplace, it's not enough just to connect with our customers.

Whether in person or online, the challenge is to use our connections to create "safe containers" where our customers feel comfortable sharing, collaborating and co-creating with us.

Here are 5 steps to building networks of trust and knowledge-based relationships:

1. Understand that communication matters more than connection

2. Demonstrate a genuine, caring curiosity

3. Prize your customers' individual excellence

4. Prioritize learning more than persuasion

5. Sell to help

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com. 

This site is inactive today in protest of the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

The US Congress is about to censor the Internet, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed.

We need to kill these bills to protect our rights of free speech, privacy and property.

Human-centered marketing is about connecting with customers & prospects in a spirit of collaboration and community.

A big part of joining with our customers & prospects in co-creating a new solution is attempting to prize their individual excellence. This is accomplished by asking questions with a genuine inquisitiveness -- a caring curiosity. 

We should emphasize the invitational, inclusive, reciprocal, cooperative and collaborative qualities in our contacts. It's not important that we agree with everything that is said, as long as we're just open to understanding and learning.

Appreciative Inquiry facilitates the creation of a safe space, a free trade zone where customers can share their underlying needs and requirements. What do you really need and prefer? And how can we create it together?

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.

Take hold of the future.

Or the future will take hold of you.

Cheers!

                           (Credit to Patrick Dixon)

Social Media Marketers,

I write out of concern that, while obviously well-intentioned, some of you may be inadvertently leading business owners into an over-reliance on social media and inbound marketing.

I am reminded of the early, halcyon days of CRM.  Same vibe. Companies were convinced that the implementation of a CRM system, primarily, would somehow improve sales effectiveness and customer relations. The emphasis was placed on automation instead of routine personal contact.

Of course, we all learned that wasn't true. The pendulum swung back: we came to realize (after significant investment and opportunity costs) that CRM is a technology platform; it is not a relationship.

Same with social media.

Posting and tweeting is not the same as actually connecting and engaging.

If we don't physically interact with customers and prospects on a regular basis, we can't build genuine, resilient & loyal relationships -- and we cannot learn.

Social media is, in fact, a very efficient way of reaching large numbers of people. Of course, that's an understatement. It's a mighty paradigm shift. But what it accomplishes in efficiency, it truly lacks in effectiveness. 

So I believe your attempt to help by convincing companies to rely primarily on posting and tweeting -- and then to sit back waiting for customers & prospects to "find" them -- is a dangerous disservice to your clients.

Posting, tweeting & blogging is an important part of the mix. Increasingly so. I enthusiastically recommend that all my clients participate. But the main emphasis must remain on "good, old fashioned," new business development strategies and tactics.

That means grinding it out. Face-to-face. No 140-character shortcuts.

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.

Why can't we relate to our customers and prospects the same way we do to friends and neighbors?

Introducing a new conversation to sharpen sales & marketing focus, while creating stronger human connections --

Dialogue is a communication process, a "skilled conversation" that focuses on collective thinking, teamwork and collaboration. Practiced routinely, over time, dialogue helps work groups and individuals perform at higher levels.

Researchers at MIT's Sloan School have been studying Dialogue as an important part of organizational learning for over 30 years.  Linda Ellinor and Glenna Gerard wrote a great book on Dialogue with work groups in the workplace that was simply called Dialogue.

Ellinor and Gerard said that "to engage in dialogue is to look for a whole between the pieces of communication and information. It is to get past all of the little things that separate us, and to focus on the major underlying bonds and themes that unite us."

Pure dialogue is a tolerant, respectful conversation. Some basic qualities are to: a) value listening more than speaking; b) value understanding more than agreement; c) value learning more than persuasion; and d) value cooperation more than competition.

Dialogue is an intensive style of discourse that moves groups and individuals from the competition and exclusion often found in the marketplace to increased collaboration, partnership and inclusion.

In selling situations, dialogue can be used to accelerate lead qualification and to lay the groundwork for loyal, longer-term customer relationships. At every stage of the sales cycle, dialogue can be used to improve performance and learning.

To begin -- just start adding more questions and inquiry into your conversations.

                                                  (Credit to Linda Ellinor and Glenna Gerard).

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.

Wealth is not the issue. It's using wealth to buy government and abuse middle-class America that's the issue.

The system will never change. But we can level the playing field.

Andrew Jackson restored some balance. Teddy Roosevelt restored some balance. And now the time has come again.

We all have a stake in the outcome.

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.

A story taken from the Hasidic sages:

A Jewish peasant boy came to the big town to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. But found himself without his prayer book.

The wheel of his cart had come off right in the middle of the woods and it distressed him that this day should pass without his having said his prayers.

He thought: “The Holy One blessed be sits enthroned in the heavens and we pray all year long to Him. We especially pray during these two days of Rosh Hashanah when the whole world is being judged and each person is being judged for the rest of the year."

“But I forgot my prayer book”.

So this is the prayer he made: “I have done something very foolish, Lord. I came away from home this morning without my prayer book and my memory is such that I cannot recite a single prayer without it.

“So this is what I am going to do: I shall recite the alphabet five times very slowly and you, to whom all prayers are known, will put the letters together to form the prayers I can’t remember.”

And the Holy One said to his angels, “Of all the prayers I have heard today, this one was undoubtedly the best because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.”

Happy New Year!

(Special thanks to Paulo Coelho)

Everyone's complaining about uncertainty.

Consumers won't spend because they're uncertain about job security. Businesses won't hire because they're uncertain about health care reform. Banks won't lend because they're uncertain about new government regulation.

There's enough uncertainty to go around for everyone. That much we do know. But there's also opportunity in uncertainty. And if we can leverage it, turn it into something positive, we can not only compete in today's economy but actually thrive and gain market share from our faint-hearted competitors.

In a state of uncertainty, all  things are possible. In a state of uncertainty, we're free to change, create and innovate. As the best-selling author Deepak Chopra likes to say, " . . . step into the unknown, and you step into the field of all possibilities."

But taking those first steps requires courage. It's the courage or self-confidence in knowing that, whatever awaits us around the corner, we'll know the right solution to choose and we'll know the right action to take.  

I've been in business for over 20 years, and security has always been illusory.

Sure, we're in uncharted territory now. And we're surrounded by slippery slopes. But is our biggest challenge now really a crisis of uncertainty? Or is it just an old-fashioned crisis of confidence?

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.

Old Navy. Taco Bell. Miller Lite. Just to name a few.

There's a long list of marketing executives at major brands who have been canned in the last few months. 

In fact, according to Ad Age Magazine, few CMOs hold their jobs for more than three years; they get fired 25% quicker than chief information officers and nearly twice as often as every other C-suiter.

Why?

While marketers are still talking about brands, their bosses and clients are thinking about sales.

As I've posted here before, the game has changed: marketing professionals -- at both large companies and small -- must begin to take responsibility for their company's bottom-line sales results.

The purpose of brand awareness is lead generation. And your boss expects a reasonable percentage of those leads to convert to sales. So don't be surprised if you're asked to quantify the sales revenue results of your next marketing campaign. You're accountable.

Welcome to the new economy: we're all sales producers now.

To share your thoughts, email david@fieldstonehill.com.