The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has served as an integral part of the nation’s financial system since its inception in 1933. Our trust in this institution is so strong that it is rare to find someone with a checking account in a bank that lacks an FDIC placard in the window. Nonetheless, the failure and resolution of Texas-based First RepublicBank, reminds us that the hand of government can harm as well as help when it wrestles the invisible hand of the market.
More than an insurer of accounts up to $250,000, the FDIC also regulates financial institutions and serves as a receiver in bankruptcy. The latter role was codified in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act of 1950, which provided the FDIC “additional powers to both expedite the liquidation process for banks and thrifts in order to maintain confidence in the nation’s banking system,” the FDIC’s Resolution Handbook explains.
RepublicBank merged with InterFirst Corporation in June 1986, and formed First RepublicBank Corporation, the largest bank holding company in the Southwest at the time. Then FDIC Chairman William Seidman expressed concern about the merger of two weak banks, “however, without the merger, both banks were more likely to fail, and they would cost even more [apart] than if they failed together,” Seidman recalled in his memoir Full Faith and Credit1.
Seidman’s concerns were warranted. With both banks highly concentrated in the weak Texas real estate market, the deal ended up helping neither bank. As the bank’s losses mounted, depositors fled. Just nine months after the merger was completed, the FDIC had to step in to resolve the failing institution, and at $3.9 billion, it was the most costly bank failure in FDIC history.
Though much can be blamed on the poor condition of the bank’s assets, some of the government’s deal-making “proved to have some room for improvement,” according to the FDIC’s review2.
Included in the resolution was a servicing agreement between the FDIC and NCNB Corporation of Charlotte, NC, the acquiring bank of First Republic’s assets, which required the FDIC to cover costs associated with managing the troubled asset pool. This agreement turned out to be a major source of income for NCNB, and gave them an incentive to hold on to the assets rather than liquidate when the market strengthened. All told, the FDIC paid $1.9 billion in management fees to NCNB.
Another issue was taxes. The IRS had negotiated with NCNB (and no other bidders) $700 million in tax savings with the acquisition. A letter from the IRS allowed the acquirer to treat the deal as a “tax-free reorganization and to carry forward losses from the failed banks to offset future income,” according to the FDIC’s analysis3. These tax savings allowed NCNB to compete aggressively in the Texas market, offering above-market deposit rates and below-market loan rates.
“The government has created a monster,” Chris Williston, the president of the Texas Independent Bankers Association, told American Banker in 19904.
In stepping up when banks fail, the FDIC provides “an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1933. But the example of First RepublicBank reminds us that infusing government into any market-based transactions can change the outcome for better and for worse. In restoring public confidence, the more invisible our government can be, perhaps the better.
About the Author
Cara Wick writes about American financial and political history at www.bankersnotes.com. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the University of Iowa. Cara can be reached at [email protected].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/Base3000x3000-SDEPP.jpg30003000StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-11-07 06:31:272016-06-11 16:15:58StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – The Government has Created a Monster
As a leader and manager, it is quite likely at some point during your career that you will encounter employees with personal problems. Employers must be concerned about the stress levels of their work force as it can have a damaging impact on employee productivity. Personal problems can hinder the job performance of employees who are traditionally productive causing them to under-perform. In addition, it can also have a negative impact on co-workers who become distracted or influenced by the personal issues introduced into the workforce. But with empathy and careful planning, successful managers and leaders can minimize the impact of personal problems in the workplace to ensure that your work force remains efficient and that normal productivity is restored as quickly as possible.
Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:
[reveal_quick_checkout id=”25489″ checkout_text=”Subscribing to the Self Guided Program – It’s Free!”]
About the Author
Julie Bowen is a freelance writer and full-time mom. After graduating college, she put a lot of effort into her career as a businesswoman with several successful enterprises, but when motherhood came along, she decided it was time to pull back and take up her other passion, writing. Now she writes about business and finance and finds her work-life balance far more enjoyable. When not working and caring for her children, she likes to go for long walks with her dogs, though she is considering using Rollerblades so they can pull her.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.png00StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-11-06 11:23:042016-01-31 13:59:58Effective Handling of Employee Personal Problems is Critical to Maintaining Workforce Efficiency
StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)
Too often, our self-worth and confidence are all tied up with having to succeed all the time at everything. No one succeeds at anything, even their best skill set, all the time! Absolutely NO ONE. Think about it. Thomas Edison had it right when he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
To jump-start an internal paradigm shift about failure, consider these 6 ways to lead using failure as a tool.
SAFETY: make it safe for people to experiment and fail within reasonable ranges.
AGILITY: expect and encourage agility and flexibility to move from a non-working idea to a possible one.
LISTEN and encourage fast feedback on results, concerns, no matter whose idea it is.
LEARN: consider every failure, every mistake, to be a learning opportunity.
TEST: pilot test new ideas and projects and welcome mistakes and failures that show up.
SHARE: what you’ve learned and the mistakes you’ve made to help prevent repeats and others having to re-invent your wheel.
The fear of failure often runs a close second to the fear of dying for a lot of people. Consider this – the fear of giving feedback to your boss equates, for some, to dying, which is… failing to live. Let me prove it to you. The under-a-second internal dialogue goes like this: “If I give my boss feedback, he/she might not like it and fire me; if I’m fired I won’t have any money; if I don’t have any money, I can’t buy food; if I don’t have food, I’ll die.” Snap! Just like that we’ve equated the risk of telling our truth to the boss to… dying. Wow! How did that happen? It happens because the amygdala in our brain sends us all kinds of fear signals, rational or not. Unless we stop, pay attention, and put other parts of our brain to work, we’ll keep letting fear of failure rule too much in our lives.
All failures are not equal. While some carry more baggage than others, they can also carry more opportunity. It’s a choice point every time we and/or those we lead, ‘fail.’ How do we choose to respond? What good can we gain from our failures?
It’s up to each of us to choose whether or not to make a paradigm shift. We know it’s impossible to experience joy with out knowing sadness, or appreciate the calm without ever having seen the storm. We often tell ourselves that if we don’t risk much we can’t fail much. Is that really true? Well, it depends on what you want and need out of your relationships and career. The phrase, “No pain, no gain,” has it’s roots in this very premise.
We can choose to look at failures, at least in our daily lives, as life practice, learning, a pilot project, as experimentation, or even a legitimate part of any innovation process. Failure can be our friend when we take another, deeper look. After all, when children learn to walk and talk, they fail constantly. We happily cheer their successes, but let’s remember, it’s all those failures that got them up on two feet in the end.
About the Author
Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.
The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.png00Nathan Iveshttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngNathan Ives2013-11-06 06:10:542015-09-17 23:43:01The Advisor’s Corner – Can Failure Be My Friend?
Roxi Hewertson has joined StrategyDriven as a Principal Contributor and author of a bi-weekly column providing practical advice, tools, and practices for addressing everyday leadership issues and management challenges. Her common-sense advice and practical insights will help emerging and expert executives and managers quantifiably improve job performance and mission critical business results.
Nationally renowned executive coach, speaker, and author, Roxi Hewertson, offers StrategyDriven readers insights about how their decisions and actions impact their people and organization. The “Dear Abby of Leadership,” Roxi imparts invaluable advice to executives and managers at all levels; helping them solve problems, become more effective, and realize a higher measure of business and career success.
“We are thrilled to welcome Roxi to the StrategyDriven team,” says Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “Her extensive experience brings invaluable insights to our readers on organizational development, organizational effectiveness, and talent management.”
“A leader’s behavior creates an impact akin to a pebble landing on a lake,” asserts Roxi. “Everything within the lake reacts to the impact. The ripples grow and spread until they reach the boundaries of their influence. So it goes with leaders, regardless of intent.”
Through her bi-weekly column, Roxi will help StrategyDriven readers become more intentional about their behaviors and actions and truly understand their impact on their people and organizations. Her articles will help readers boost performance in the mission critical facets of their business; including strategic visioning, employee engagement and productivity, customer service, and results achievement.
About StrategyDriven
StrategyDriven provides executives and managers with the planning and execution advice, tools, and practices needed to create greater organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We believe a clear, forward-looking strategy, translatable to the day-to-day activities of all organization members, is critical to realizing success in today’s fast paced market environment. Not only does a compelling, well-executed strategy align individuals to common goals, it ensures those goals best serve the company’s mission.
At StrategyDriven, our seasoned business leaders deliver real-world strategic business planning and tactical execution best practice advice – a blending of workplace experience with sound research and academic principles – to business leaders who may not otherwise have access to these resources.
StrategyDriven refers to the family of organizations comprising StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC. For more information, please visit www.StrategyDriven.com.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.png00StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-11-05 06:43:132013-11-05 15:14:56Roxi Hewertson, CEO of the Highland Consulting Group, Authors Bi-weekly Column for StrategyDriven
I get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve their sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life, and (most important) your sales thought process right now.
Dear Jeffrey, What is your opinion of tracking daily sales dollars versus activities that will result in revenue? Does it really matter if Monday’s sales dollars are lower as long as the month pans out in regard to your goals? My thought is “Who cares which day the dollars get posted as long as they do get posted.” Ocha
Ocha, So I’m assuming your boss is making you do this and he or she is paranoid you won’t make your number by the end of the month. Both of which, tracking the daily sales dollars and the daily sales activities, are stupid. What you need to do is track the sales cycle and know where you are with respect to that sales cycle and what your expected revenues are. Because if your expected revenues are underneath your daily dollars, but your daily dollars are over your goal, you think you’re doing well, when in fact, you could be achieving 20, 30 40, 50% MORE sales by making certain you’re looking at your target dollars not just your actual dollars. Received dollars are real easy to record, but if you’re a salesperson and your boss needs to know what activity you’re doing every day – whether you’ve made five follow-ups and whether you did three cold calls – you’re doing it all backwards and you’ve got the wrong boss. What you need to do is look at the sales cycle and parenthetically look at the dollars, but they have to be compared to what you projected those dollars to be. Best regards, Jeffrey
Dear Jeffrey, I have a regional billboard company with two years of experience. For the smaller, greener, and less connected salespeople of the world, how do you keep a strategy in mind at all times to help land clients such as AT&T, Best Buy, or Taco Bell? Stuart
Stuart, You’re not going to land those people without years worth of trying, banging your head against the wall, seeing their ad agency, and doing all kinds of other stuff. UNLESS somebody in your family, somebody in your circle of friends, or somebody in your circle of influence knows someone up high at those big companies. If they do, and you can be introduced, you can get in the door. And if you can get in the door with some kind of impact, you’re going to win. But here’s the secret: don’t just be selling them a billboard. Give them a design that helps them get a response. And maybe you could even arrange with your company to give it away for 30 days to measure that response and go from there. The biggest mistake anybody in advertising makes is walking into a sales call with some kind of a media kit that shows how big a quarter page ad is, or how big a billboard is, or how many 30-second commercials there are. Go in with something already finished so people can look at it, like it, invite other people in to see it, and ultimately buy it. Best regards, Jeffrey
Jeffrey, You are pretty critical of CRM systems. They are here to stay, so how do you suggest we make them less threatening and more useful to the sales rep? How do you suggest someone shows the value of CRM to the sales users? Mike
Mike, Make the CRM applicable to the sales cycle, not just what they did on Tuesday. Don’t count the number of cold calls. Rather, study the sale from the beginning to the end and coach on that. That will actually help the person who is forced to use it.
Keep in mind salespeople just want to make a sale. They don’t want to be accountable. They got into sales so they wouldn’t have to be accountable. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not responsible. And it’s the managers or the leaders responsibility to help them be responsible for themselves. Best regards, Jeffrey
Jeffrey, I sell broadcast television advertising in a small market. I have mountains of information that shows TV as a great way to advertise, but how do I work that into my sales presentation without being overly analytical and pedantic? I need to give my prospective clients reasons to buy, but I don’t want to overwhelm them with data. Dennis
Dennis, Good. Nobody wants data. Everyone hates data and, in fact, no one believes data. 74% of all people don’t believe data. Where did I get that number? I made it up. But it sounds good. It’s data. What you need are video testimonials from customers who have already advertised on your station, got great results, and are willing to recommend that another prospective customer use your TV station. That’s all you need. If that’s not working for you, or you can’t get them because you don’t have any relationships, then do a 30-second spot where you are the voice. And do a spot about whomever you’re trying to get – the car agency, the car wash company, the cemetery lot salesperson. Whatever it is that you’re trying to get people to buy, do that. You make the commercial. It’s 30 seconds. It’s only 90 words. Figure it out. You’re a smart guy. Your method of being pedantic is too pedantic. Making a commercial in advance and getting a testimonial – those are the only two ways to sell. Best regards, Jeffrey
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/JeffreyGitomer.jpg218156StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2013-11-04 06:53:072016-08-08 16:31:10Salespeople have questions. Jeffrey has answers.
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StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – The Government has Created a Monster
/in StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective/by Cara WickMore than an insurer of accounts up to $250,000, the FDIC also regulates financial institutions and serves as a receiver in bankruptcy. The latter role was codified in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act of 1950, which provided the FDIC “additional powers to both expedite the liquidation process for banks and thrifts in order to maintain confidence in the nation’s banking system,” the FDIC’s Resolution Handbook explains.
RepublicBank merged with InterFirst Corporation in June 1986, and formed First RepublicBank Corporation, the largest bank holding company in the Southwest at the time. Then FDIC Chairman William Seidman expressed concern about the merger of two weak banks, “however, without the merger, both banks were more likely to fail, and they would cost even more [apart] than if they failed together,” Seidman recalled in his memoir Full Faith and Credit1.
Seidman’s concerns were warranted. With both banks highly concentrated in the weak Texas real estate market, the deal ended up helping neither bank. As the bank’s losses mounted, depositors fled. Just nine months after the merger was completed, the FDIC had to step in to resolve the failing institution, and at $3.9 billion, it was the most costly bank failure in FDIC history.
Though much can be blamed on the poor condition of the bank’s assets, some of the government’s deal-making “proved to have some room for improvement,” according to the FDIC’s review2.
Included in the resolution was a servicing agreement between the FDIC and NCNB Corporation of Charlotte, NC, the acquiring bank of First Republic’s assets, which required the FDIC to cover costs associated with managing the troubled asset pool. This agreement turned out to be a major source of income for NCNB, and gave them an incentive to hold on to the assets rather than liquidate when the market strengthened. All told, the FDIC paid $1.9 billion in management fees to NCNB.
Another issue was taxes. The IRS had negotiated with NCNB (and no other bidders) $700 million in tax savings with the acquisition. A letter from the IRS allowed the acquirer to treat the deal as a “tax-free reorganization and to carry forward losses from the failed banks to offset future income,” according to the FDIC’s analysis3. These tax savings allowed NCNB to compete aggressively in the Texas market, offering above-market deposit rates and below-market loan rates.
“The government has created a monster,” Chris Williston, the president of the Texas Independent Bankers Association, told American Banker in 19904.
In stepping up when banks fail, the FDIC provides “an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1933. But the example of First RepublicBank reminds us that infusing government into any market-based transactions can change the outcome for better and for worse. In restoring public confidence, the more invisible our government can be, perhaps the better.
About the Author
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References
Effective Handling of Employee Personal Problems is Critical to Maintaining Workforce Efficiency
/in Management & Leadership/by Julie BowenAs a leader and manager, it is quite likely at some point during your career that you will encounter employees with personal problems. Employers must be concerned about the stress levels of their work force as it can have a damaging impact on employee productivity. Personal problems can hinder the job performance of employees who are traditionally productive causing them to under-perform. In addition, it can also have a negative impact on co-workers who become distracted or influenced by the personal issues introduced into the workforce. But with empathy and careful planning, successful managers and leaders can minimize the impact of personal problems in the workplace to ensure that your work force remains efficient and that normal productivity is restored as quickly as possible.
Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:
[reveal_quick_checkout id=”25489″ checkout_text=”Subscribing to the Self Guided Program – It’s Free!”]
About the Author
Julie Bowen is a freelance writer and full-time mom. After graduating college, she put a lot of effort into her career as a businesswoman with several successful enterprises, but when motherhood came along, she decided it was time to pull back and take up her other passion, writing. Now she writes about business and finance and finds her work-life balance far more enjoyable. When not working and caring for her children, she likes to go for long walks with her dogs, though she is considering using Rollerblades so they can pull her.
The Advisor’s Corner – Can Failure Be My Friend?
/in The Advisor's Corner/by Roxi HewertsonHow can I stop being so worried about failing?
StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)
Too often, our self-worth and confidence are all tied up with having to succeed all the time at everything. No one succeeds at anything, even their best skill set, all the time! Absolutely NO ONE. Think about it. Thomas Edison had it right when he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
To jump-start an internal paradigm shift about failure, consider these 6 ways to lead using failure as a tool.
The fear of failure often runs a close second to the fear of dying for a lot of people. Consider this – the fear of giving feedback to your boss equates, for some, to dying, which is… failing to live. Let me prove it to you. The under-a-second internal dialogue goes like this: “If I give my boss feedback, he/she might not like it and fire me; if I’m fired I won’t have any money; if I don’t have any money, I can’t buy food; if I don’t have food, I’ll die.” Snap! Just like that we’ve equated the risk of telling our truth to the boss to… dying. Wow! How did that happen? It happens because the amygdala in our brain sends us all kinds of fear signals, rational or not. Unless we stop, pay attention, and put other parts of our brain to work, we’ll keep letting fear of failure rule too much in our lives.
All failures are not equal. While some carry more baggage than others, they can also carry more opportunity. It’s a choice point every time we and/or those we lead, ‘fail.’ How do we choose to respond? What good can we gain from our failures?
It’s up to each of us to choose whether or not to make a paradigm shift. We know it’s impossible to experience joy with out knowing sadness, or appreciate the calm without ever having seen the storm. We often tell ourselves that if we don’t risk much we can’t fail much. Is that really true? Well, it depends on what you want and need out of your relationships and career. The phrase, “No pain, no gain,” has it’s roots in this very premise.
We can choose to look at failures, at least in our daily lives, as life practice, learning, a pilot project, as experimentation, or even a legitimate part of any innovation process. Failure can be our friend when we take another, deeper look. After all, when children learn to walk and talk, they fail constantly. We happily cheer their successes, but let’s remember, it’s all those failures that got them up on two feet in the end.
About the Author
The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].
Roxi Hewertson, CEO of the Highland Consulting Group, Authors Bi-weekly Column for StrategyDriven
/in Announcements/by StrategyDrivenRoxi Hewertson has joined StrategyDriven as a Principal Contributor and author of a bi-weekly column providing practical advice, tools, and practices for addressing everyday leadership issues and management challenges. Her common-sense advice and practical insights will help emerging and expert executives and managers quantifiably improve job performance and mission critical business results.
“We are thrilled to welcome Roxi to the StrategyDriven team,” says Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “Her extensive experience brings invaluable insights to our readers on organizational development, organizational effectiveness, and talent management.”
“A leader’s behavior creates an impact akin to a pebble landing on a lake,” asserts Roxi. “Everything within the lake reacts to the impact. The ripples grow and spread until they reach the boundaries of their influence. So it goes with leaders, regardless of intent.”
Through her bi-weekly column, Roxi will help StrategyDriven readers become more intentional about their behaviors and actions and truly understand their impact on their people and organizations. Her articles will help readers boost performance in the mission critical facets of their business; including strategic visioning, employee engagement and productivity, customer service, and results achievement.
About StrategyDriven
StrategyDriven provides executives and managers with the planning and execution advice, tools, and practices needed to create greater organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We believe a clear, forward-looking strategy, translatable to the day-to-day activities of all organization members, is critical to realizing success in today’s fast paced market environment. Not only does a compelling, well-executed strategy align individuals to common goals, it ensures those goals best serve the company’s mission.
At StrategyDriven, our seasoned business leaders deliver real-world strategic business planning and tactical execution best practice advice – a blending of workplace experience with sound research and academic principles – to business leaders who may not otherwise have access to these resources.
StrategyDriven refers to the family of organizations comprising StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC. For more information, please visit www.StrategyDriven.com.
Salespeople have questions. Jeffrey has answers.
/in Marketing & Sales/by Jeffrey GitomerI get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve their sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life, and (most important) your sales thought process right now.
Ocha, So I’m assuming your boss is making you do this and he or she is paranoid you won’t make your number by the end of the month. Both of which, tracking the daily sales dollars and the daily sales activities, are stupid. What you need to do is track the sales cycle and know where you are with respect to that sales cycle and what your expected revenues are. Because if your expected revenues are underneath your daily dollars, but your daily dollars are over your goal, you think you’re doing well, when in fact, you could be achieving 20, 30 40, 50% MORE sales by making certain you’re looking at your target dollars not just your actual dollars. Received dollars are real easy to record, but if you’re a salesperson and your boss needs to know what activity you’re doing every day – whether you’ve made five follow-ups and whether you did three cold calls – you’re doing it all backwards and you’ve got the wrong boss. What you need to do is look at the sales cycle and parenthetically look at the dollars, but they have to be compared to what you projected those dollars to be. Best regards, Jeffrey
Stuart, You’re not going to land those people without years worth of trying, banging your head against the wall, seeing their ad agency, and doing all kinds of other stuff. UNLESS somebody in your family, somebody in your circle of friends, or somebody in your circle of influence knows someone up high at those big companies. If they do, and you can be introduced, you can get in the door. And if you can get in the door with some kind of impact, you’re going to win. But here’s the secret: don’t just be selling them a billboard. Give them a design that helps them get a response. And maybe you could even arrange with your company to give it away for 30 days to measure that response and go from there. The biggest mistake anybody in advertising makes is walking into a sales call with some kind of a media kit that shows how big a quarter page ad is, or how big a billboard is, or how many 30-second commercials there are. Go in with something already finished so people can look at it, like it, invite other people in to see it, and ultimately buy it. Best regards, Jeffrey
Mike, Make the CRM applicable to the sales cycle, not just what they did on Tuesday. Don’t count the number of cold calls. Rather, study the sale from the beginning to the end and coach on that. That will actually help the person who is forced to use it.
Keep in mind salespeople just want to make a sale. They don’t want to be accountable. They got into sales so they wouldn’t have to be accountable. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not responsible. And it’s the managers or the leaders responsibility to help them be responsible for themselves. Best regards, Jeffrey
Dennis, Good. Nobody wants data. Everyone hates data and, in fact, no one believes data. 74% of all people don’t believe data. Where did I get that number? I made it up. But it sounds good. It’s data. What you need are video testimonials from customers who have already advertised on your station, got great results, and are willing to recommend that another prospective customer use your TV station. That’s all you need. If that’s not working for you, or you can’t get them because you don’t have any relationships, then do a 30-second spot where you are the voice. And do a spot about whomever you’re trying to get – the car agency, the car wash company, the cemetery lot salesperson. Whatever it is that you’re trying to get people to buy, do that. You make the commercial. It’s 30 seconds. It’s only 90 words. Figure it out. You’re a smart guy. Your method of being pedantic is too pedantic. Making a commercial in advance and getting a testimonial – those are the only two ways to sell. Best regards, Jeffrey
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author