FATHOM CORPORATE TRAINING by John Males

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Why Use Deep Insight for the Challenges You Face?

Gordon Bethune, the former Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines used to say, “If you have a buger on your nose and your team says, boss you look great today, because they are too afraid to tell you the truth, then you have a real problem on your hands.”

The tip of the iceberg is not what sunk the Titanic; it’s what was deep beneath the surface of the still, dark water that did the damage. Many times, we are too afraid or simply choose to ignore the real cause of the problems we are experiencing. Sometimes our own dysfunctional corporate culture prevents us from effecting real changes, as there is fear that we may be opening a can of worms we can’t neatly recap. So, we waste time and throw money at fixing problems in ways that can’t and won’t work. For example, we may mistakenly decide to conduct customer service training for our staff when we have increasing complaints and service issues. When what in fact what may be needed is a hard look at overall employee job satisfaction and motivation levels. A true story: I once went into a large grocery store for something I needed at the last minute. This was not a store I frequented. I noticed after bringing my items up to the counter a sign on the register. The sign read, “If I fail to greet you with a smile today and thank you for your business, you are entitled to 1 dozen eggs for free!” I asked the cashier about the sign as I thought it was quite impressive. Immediately the girl behind the counter retorted, “That’s what they say I am going to do, but you can just go get your eggs if you want to.” And she was dead serious. The management in this store has a real problem. One that is not going to be fixed by giving away eggs.

I was recently asked to provide a keynote speech on employee motivation at a corporate conference. I asked if I could speak to a few staff members to gauge their feelings about motivation levels at the firm. Management declined the request, as they did not want to unearth any issues that might cause unrest. Of course, the reason for this speech was that trouble already existed. If we simply give our team members an “at a boy” slap on the back, when you and they know that real problems are lurking, it will only lead to higher frustration levels and decreased job satisfaction. They feel disempowered, as it’s apparent that no one really cares or is willing to resolve real issues. They finally give up hope and decide to fend for themselves just like their own management team has chosen to do. Customers and revenue suffer next.

When folks are asked to attend new training programs, there is already the possible stigma of underperformance and the question, “Why do I have to be here.” They ask, “Is this a slam session or another band aide on our problems and a waste of time?” What I have seen effective over and over again is management’s ability to be real and their willingness to admit their own imperfections. When leadership participates in training endeavors that their own team is asked to go through, success can be exponential. If you really want to know what the team is thinking, all you need to do is be present and ask.

We can look away for a day, a month or maybe even a year and stay afloat. But if we choose to ignore real trouble for much longer, the ship will eventually go down. If we are bold enough to look deeply into the challenges we face and take the measures necessary to correct course, new possibilities for success begin to appear.

High turnover of employees and retention of customers is costly. When we decide to listen to our people, they are happier, motivated, committed and therefore easier to retain. Happy employees make happy customers. Happy customers stay put and purchase more. Everyone wins.

With more than 20 years experience in corporate turnaround environments, John Males brings expertise to clients in the areas of management, sales and negotiations. His customers include some of the world's most successful firms and recognized brands. John can be reached at info@fathomtraining.com or http://www.fathomtraining.com

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Does Your Firm Have a Compelling Position?

Based on studies conducted by the American Marketing Association, the CMO Council, and Booz Allen Hamilton:

• Salespeople are spending approximately 40% of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables while leveraging less than 50% of the materials created for them by marketing.

• Only 10-20% of salespeople create deliverables that are both compelling to their customers and consistent with their corporate brand.

• 85% of a company's external BRAND image is determined by direct interaction between the sales force and target buyers.  Not surprisingly, 85% of PURCHASE decisions are influenced by this direct interaction.

A “NON” COMPELLING POSITION!

Think of a lighthouse for a minute.  This lighthouse is on the shore of a very rocky coastline.  The lighthouse has a critical job to do with its messaging system.  Ships passing by rely on the lighthouse to provide direction and safety.  But, imagine for a moment that this lighthouse is very “different.”  It has tiny little feet!  And, when it sees a ship coming, it reacts by running up and down the shore hollering and screaming, attempting to shine its light in the right direction to get the attention of nearby ships.  Unfortunately, for these ships passing by and for their weary crews, the lighthouse has created a very dangerous dilemma.  There is simply no way to gauge which maneuvers to make because there is no stable consistent messaging from the crazy lighthouse.  Many firms operate just like this lighthouse! They follow a shotgun approach to their messaging and how they position themselves in the marketplace.  They send out inconsistent communication about what they do best, what sets them apart from the competition and why.  Their sales people are lost and can’t produce results because they are not given consistent messaging from management to communicate to potential customers. These firms, like the ships in the example, end up on the rocks because of it.


Brand positioning is about identifying your brand’s real value and competitive difference and communicating this information consistently to customers so that they have good reason to buy your product and service.  Think of Timex! “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”  A solid message and position communicated clearly and consistently over a period of time becomes foundational.

Communicating sameness is a waste of time and money!

Let’s look at two common mistakes of brand positioning:

1.    Lack of Differentiation: Highlighting what may be true but what is not a key differentiation point (i.e. “you’ll like working with us”).  Differentiation defines the compelling reasons to buy.

2.    Lack of Focus: A generic marketing message to a generic target market.  Remember the old adage “jack of all trades master of none”.  Customers need to know what your unique solution is and how it solves their unique pain points.

And remember, that what positions a brand, is not simply concrete, tangible and easily defined.  Coke’s brand position is refreshment and fun times, not just cola.  Apple’s brand position is built around great innovation and beautiful design, not little black or white boxes.

With more than 20 years experience in corporate turnaround environments, John Males brings expertise to clients in the areas of management, sales and negotiations. His customers include some of the world's most successful firms and recognized brands.  John can be reached at info@fathomtraining.com or http://www.fathomtraining.com

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Your Customers Increasing Choice and Decreasing Attention Span Spells DANGER

No matter how fantastic a sales person you are, no matter how much training you have had, no matter who you work for or what you are attempting to market or sell, there is one thing that cannot be changed:  Across all business segments today, and within each of those business segments, both products and services are available in an ever widening array of choice. 

Consumers can “have it their way” today and they are!   A customer can customize a hamburger, an ipod, a car, a computer, and a non-fat-mocha latte brewed at 110 degrees!  Customers are wide eyed for new choices and opportunities in the marketplace.  They are savvier than ever, and have the resources necessary to find what they are looking for easily. The internet has increased the consumer’s ability to source from around the globe in a matter of seconds.

But this is not all!  It gets worse, much worse.  There is a rarely thought about but very important phenomenon that has grown to epidemic proportions today in our society.  Noted psychologist and author, Jon Kabat-Zinn, in his book, Coming to Our Senses, states, our society suffers from what we can call a “consistent and a constant state of partial attention.”  

Ask yourself this question:  If you are on the beach and you are talking on your cell phone, are you really fully and completely at the beach?  If a consumer is at the mall in a store shopping, but is on the cell phone at the same time, is he really present and at the store? The implications of this are immense as we try to garner the wandering eyes and minds of the consumer and direct it to what we have to sell them.  Dealing with this is a challenge, and if you choose to ignore it, your company’s success will wither on the proverbial vine of consumer choice and attention deficit disorder. 

A noted creative director from GSD&M Advertising, who has handled the likes of Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart and others, made an important observation. The criteria for measuring effective creative advertising these days have changed.  In the new world, a message on a billboard on the side of the freeway must be able to immediately and completely convey an intended message to be effective, otherwise, it is useless.

What this should immediately spell out for you as a salesperson tasked with marketing your products and services is:  DANGER.

A state of constant partial attention, combined with a plethora of choice in both products, services and from whom they are consumed, means that your chances of being noticed in an ever deepening “sea of competition” are not only slim, they will continue to get slimmer in the future! 

So no matter what you are selling, gaining and keeping customers will become significantly more challenging in the years to come. This is especially true for products and services that typically are sold mainly on price, with no thought GIVEN to OTHER qualities that YOU and the BRAND contribute to the transaction.

Is it that we are doomed to competing on price alone and diminishing sales and margins if we sell highly commoditized products and services?   The answer is YES---IF---we don’t understand one simple fact.  Just about every firm selling a heavily commoditized product or service has something very real, unique and critical to brag about.

Where sales consultants fall short, is: they are not given a thorough understanding of the total brand value the firm delivers in the marketplace.  Therefore, they cannot effectively compete on anything other than price.


With more than 20 years experience in corporate turnaround environments, John Males brings expertise to clients in the areas of management, sales and negotiations. His customers include some of the world's most successful firms and recognized brands.  John can be reached at info@fathomtraining.com or http://www.fathomtraining.com

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Your Firm Has a Story to Tell. It's Your Job to Sell It!

A business without a face will only serve to immerse your firm further in the deep sea of competition!   We live in an experience economy.  Firms are charged with creating an entirely memorable experience that customers wish to return to again and again. Your passion and purpose for being must be told to your customers and the world.

Humans are emotionally driven and directed beings and will pay more and purchase more from those firms and individuals that hold both: mental and emotional real estate in the minds and heart of their customers.

Research suggests that those brands that engage people emotionally and that differentiate themselves command prices 20% to 200% higher than competitors' and sell in far higher volume. Want to be as sticky to your customer as Nordstrom's, Starbuck's or Target? The world's most successful brands evoke an emotional response from the customer and have a great story to tell.

Firms spend the majority of marketing dollars to create and then offer elaborate brand promises.  These same firms don't pay enough attention to delivering training that ensures these promises are translated into reality for the employees and ultimately for the customer.   

A timely research project at Baylor University is investigating how employee based branding effects brand equity. In a series of studies, Chris Pullig, Assistant Professor of Marketing, found that when employees find the brand they represent more attractive by fully understanding the firm's story, they are ever more committed to deliver the brand's promise.  This commitment is positively related to job performance and ultimate customer satisfaction.  This means that brand messages aimed at current and prospective employees may be equally important as the ones aimed at consumers in creating marketplace success.

In summary, your firm's unique story communicates your passion and engages your customers emotionally when told in a creative, endearing and thought provoking way. That story and its appeal to the customer can make you all the more attractive as they begin to develop a personal affinity with your firm. Your brand's internal and external image cohesiveness is also a direct reflection of your ability to get your entire team to operate from the same playbook.

The shared passion, purpose, vision, and core values that your team members hold will help them to communicate the brands story to current and prospective customers.  It is the responsibility of your management team to translate the firm’s unique story into something exciting for them that will ultimately impact your customers.

With more than 20 years experience in corporate turnaround environments, John Males brings expertise to clients in the areas of management, sales and negotiations. His customers include some of the world's most successful firms and recognized brands.  John can be reached at info@fathomtraining.com or http://www.fathomtraining.com

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Exceptional Presentations

WHO CARES WHAT THE AUDIENCE WANTS?
YOU SHOULD!

December 2007


The next time you’re tasked with giving a presentation, forget getting it right!  Think about it.  You do your best to prepare for a presentation you must deliver internally or externally.  You’ve created a myriad of Power Point Slides and have practiced each and every word over and over.  You get up in front of the group to present and your weak in the knees, you begin to sweat and your voice seems to have dropped to a chocked up whisper.  What happened?   Public speaking ranks as the number 1 fear of the human being.  We know this.  What else do we know?

Every presentation is made up of 3 components.  We call them the 3V’s.

Visual, Vocal and Verbal

These components together convey the total believability of the message you are delivering.  Let’s define them.  

The Visual component is everything you see or don’t see.  It included movements that begin with the way you get out of your chair and how you return to it.   It included how you are dressed, how you stand, walk, gesture and appear in front of the group.  It included any visual aids you use as well.  

The Vocal component includes not what you say but HOW you say it.  It compromises the tone of your voice, the volume at which you speak, the rate at which you speak and the pauses you include or don’t include in your material.

The Verbal component is comprised of the actual words or verbiage that you say.  The words that you spent so much time writing and preparing to speak and that are probably on the page you have in front of you.  

Unless you are on the phone and have no visual appearance to the audience, your presentation will have these 3 components. They are the tools you have to deliver 100% impact and believability to your audience.

Now, we also know something very critical.  Each of these 3 components has a completely different weight in the overall 100% believability of your message.   They are astonishing!  The weights of each component follow.  

VISUAL     55%
VOCAL     38%
VERBAL     7%
 TOTAL    100%

Surprised?  These numbers are absolutely critical to your delivery of an exceptional presentation.  

It means is that your visual appearance and how you say what you say matter 14X more than simply the word you speak.   No wonder politicians with great poise, charisma and a convincing tone get elected so often!

So the problem remains that we invest our energy in getting all the words and sentences right without paying attention to our delivery skills in the preparation and delivery.  This simply can and does not work based upon the way we know human beings take in and digest information.  

We must follow the rules of both visual and vocal delivery to make an impactful presentation.  Otherwise, we risk the chance of putting both others and ourselves to sleep!  An old and very seasoned speaking coach once conveyed one of the most important messages I have ever heard on delivering presentations.  This has been some of the most valuable advice I have ever received on the topic.  I will share that advice with you now:

“The audience can never and will never be more excited about the presentation than the presenter.”  

If you expect the folks sitting in front of you to stay with you and take an interest in your material, then you best heed the rules of thumb we are discussing here.  I didn’t invent them.  No one did!  We just must deal with them as a speaker to deliver excellence.  Some speakers simply want to go up in front of the audience and do what they feel most comfortable doing and delivering their own way.  The audience pays with disinterest and boredom.  You must deliver an audience centered presentation. The presentation is after all for them isn’t it? If it doesn’t work for the audience, then you are wasting their time.   And time is something no one seems to have a lot of these days.   You can’t change the rules.  But, you can change the way you deliver your material. Check out our Exceptional Presentations course (http://fathomtraining.com/exceptional_presentations.php) to drastically improve your effectiveness.  It will be one of the best things you have done for yourself both personally and professionally!  Guaranteed!

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Time Management

Time Management:
Decisions & Procrastination

January 2008

When we started Fathom Corporate Training (http://www.fathomtraining.com)  we searched high and low for a name befitting our firm. So many ideas surface when undertaking these types of endeavors. But, sometimes we even have a hard time simply deciding what to order on the restaurant menu. Trying to make the right decision can become an obsession. We turn in circles trying to make the perfect decision. But, really don’t have all the information to do that. Recently I had a revelation. I woke up with a clear understanding and realization of how much time I have wasted in my life trying to make the right decision. While my life has gone pretty smoothly, I have indeed sacrificed. Most of all, I have sacrificed precious time trying to make these perfect decisions. Time is something we can’t get back. I have to remind myself every day that “right” does not exist. There will always be a “left” staring us in the face. And you will ask yourself, “I wander if I should go that way?” When the fear of the unknown and indecisiveness comes up because of a new fork in the road we must realize a couple things:

1. We don’t know the future.
2. There is no right way.

There are many different roads to getting there and because there is no way to know what roadblocks may be ahead, it may be time to simply choose. Ultimately, you’ll get where you’re going and feel more productive and efficient. Or, you may discover a new way of getting things done that you could have never planned for. Go ahead, step into the unknown. And remember, we are all whistling in the same darkness!

Do you procrastinate? We all do to some degree. If getting a project started in the perfect way or at the right time is holding you back, your procrastinating. One key to stopping your procrastination is to first know when your doing it. We all do something different when we procrastinate. I find myself running lots of errands. Sure, your getting lots done. Most of us are very efficient, but not effective. What’s the difference? Efficient use of your time means getting the most done in the shortest amount of time. Effective use of your time means getting the right things done. Things that will lead you to accomplishing your most important life goals. It’s seems easier to go to the store or watch TV than to start on something that feels threatening, such as an important project. So get started. And if you are afraid that the project is too large and feels overwhelming, just remember the Spartans. When facing the ruthless Persian army and outnumbered by thousands, the 300 brave Spartan soldiers felt completely overwhelmed. But, the Greek leader of the Spartan army broke down the massive task at hand by asking his men a simple question. “Can each of you slay 3-4 more Persians today than you did yesterday?” They agreed that they could. And they did. One at a time!

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Time Management