••• Click here for this short Youtube video which makes the point, in an amusing way, about the most fundamental of all business moves  …

Moving from uncheck to check is the customer contact.

It’s the simple switch, at any particular moment, from not being in contact with a customer (uncheck), to being in contact with a customer (check).

This is the fundamental business move, the basic unit of business measurement–uncheck to check or uncheck2check.

Yet, in 25 years of consulting, I’ve never found a company that knows exactly how many check moves it makes each business quarter or how often they flip the switch from uncheck to check.

FACT: Sales are a direct consequence of customer contacts. If we use quarterly sales projections why don’t we use quarterly projections for customer contacts, for Check moves? To help escape from the darkness of uncheck and take control of your business, make quarterly projections of your check moves and keep daily measurements of how often you flip the switch. It’s simple to do and always significantly raises the sales activity – uncheck2check.

(WOMBAT = Word Of Mouth Buy And Tell)

Who are the WOMBATs?
Everyone is a WOMBAT. A WOMBAT is someone who buys and tells other people by word of mouth. If you look at selling from the customer’s viewpoint (not the sales manager’s) you recognize that the customer closes the sale (not the salesperson). In fact, as customers, we are all closing sales, all the time.

What do WOMBATs do?
Wombats buy things and then they can’t wait to tell other WOMBATs about their buying experience. Good or bad.
• We are all buying ideas and opportunities, goods and services all day long.
• We are always telling others about our new ideas, our favourite products and the latest services–and we word-of-mouth it 24/7 via iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and all the other media.

Yes, we are all WOMBATs and so naturally we know quite a lot about how WOMBATs think, how we behave and what we like and what we dislike.

Some WOMBATs are also COIs
A COI is a centre of influence–an individual who influences at least ten other people. In any population sub-group like a target audience or a market niche or a passion group, the 10% lead the 90%. There is usually a small group of heavy-hitters who call the shots and are called a COI (centre of influence). COIs may be a handful of trade journalists, a few market-leaders, some early-innovators, an industry spokesperson, a recognised guru or a high profile customer. When these people talk the rest of the target audience listens! Every WOMBAT marketing plan or personal sales plan should give deliberate thought to who should be on the COI list.

 The Book

• If you’d like to download an instant ebook version of the book WOMBAT SELLING: How to sell by Word of Mouth just click here and follow the link to download.

Pass It On

• If you like you can pass this link on to your colleagues or friends.

Before a customer can say YES or NO we first have to get his or her attention.

There’s always been the problem of attention in selling but now it’s getting worse. In any marketplace, every trader competes with every other trader for the attention of the customer. It is obvious that before a trader can make an offer they first have to get the attention of the potential buyer.

Visit a flea market, a fish market, a supermarket or a stock market and see the enormous amount of selling effort which is directed to getting and holding the attention of the customer. This is mostly done through brain branding.

A brand is a corporate cognitive pattern. The pattern links a brain directly to a corporation. Brain branding, using repetition, is the programming of a corporate cognitive pattern – a brand – in the brain of a customer.

This is done through the power of repetition. When a minimum of 10 repetitions of a brand takes place in a customer’s brain, the pattern becomes cognized and later can be recognised and used as part of the customer’s experience.

Brain branding makes it easier to attract the future attention of the consumer. As you’ll see, the key is repetition. Looking back from the end of any transaction – when the customer buys – there is always a track winding back to attention. Attracting and holding attention has always been a problem in selling and as the information big bang gathers momentum it becomes harder and harder to secure ‘share of attention’.

Why?

Because there are:

-more TV channels than ever before
-more magazines than ever before
-more ads than ever before
-more offers than ever before
-less ‘attention share’ than ever before.

Your selling has to become cleverer and cleverer at getting and holding attention.

In a true darwinian sense, only the fittest offers can survive and the edge of an offer is attention.

What if your ideas or business ventures were presented in this way?

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”

Just click, start the video … and enjoy the learning …

Here’s an 8-minute clip from the classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross.  The film depicts two days in the lives of four real estate agents and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a representative to “motivate” them by announcing that, in one week, all except the top two salesmen will be fired.

Watch an oldsell manager “motivating” his sales team - or how NOT to run a sales meeting.