As a select group of my Google/DCLK sales colleagues go off to for a 2 day offsite to sharpen up their value-based sales skills, I'm reminded that this type of training is super necessary, but more important - not sufficient - to win/earn your customer's business, and to win broadly in your product or company's competitive category.

What also matters?
  1. Selling the Solution's Value, and also the Vision. Every sales person in online media and technology sales has been introduced to, and most practice, a probing customer needs analysis followed by the differentiated solution that exactly matches their needs, solves their problems, and helps them achieve their business objectives: How do we grow our business, how do we save costs, how do we bring more to the bottom line, how do we execute against our business plan faster & more efficiently, and perhaps most strategically: how do we gain share, defend share, and define new market spaces in the minds of our current and future customers.
  2. Value, and vision more so, are not about feature and functionality parity. "Their pixel does backflips". "They have real-time API bidding with 8 of the 9 agency conglomerate trading desks". "They took our business 'cause our path to conversion reporting is inane" We hear these kinds of things regularly. Some things are important, some things are even more important. That's why high-level enterprise technology adoption sales require teams, teams not cowboys, to be successful. Yes, the customer's Manager of Online Customer Acquisition wants to know about the incremental uplift on viewthrough conversions. But more essentially, most salespeople and sales teams are not having the correspondingly appropriate conversations in the C-Suite. Those folks don't give a hoot about viewthrough attribution. They care about the Big Game of Chess. CMO's and CEO's don't know that they can demand more than "here are the game pieces, you go do the checkmate thingy". There are strategies. And they are looking for strategists and experts, not just technologies. If I go in and lay out how our technology can assist in double checking, forking or even skewering, pinning and zwischenzug - NOW, we've got game play. The result is I'm not going to ask them for a $50K test budget after that. I've got a partner: I'm going to earn their $1 or $2 million.
  3. Sales is like surfing. Huh? Exactly. On the front page of yesterday's SF Chronicle is a quote from 16 year old Noah Wegrich that gave me chills. First, he's goofy like me. Second, he's got a wicked backside off-the-lip (the dominant photo on the front page), very unlike me at my age. Third, Google should hire him - but he's 16 so his high GPA from an Elite or Top Tier is at least 5 years in the future (not 15 years in the past, like mine). So, on the front page, Noah, captain of the Los Aptos High surf team, is call-out quoted in support of an article on the rules and strategy that define the "game" (not contest) of high school surfing: "You're not surfing in a lineup, battling for position, trying to out-snake people. It's more fun as a team sport".

Amen. The Zen of Sales is like the Zen of surfing. Meditate a bit on this and the next time you lunch with a client, or whip out the powerpoint in their boardroom, remember: features, functionality, tests, budgets may be what's on their minds and on their lips, but those are but small moves in the grander Game of Chess.
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So, a colleague of mine asked if this was a spam or "made for adsense" site. While it lacks some of the design polish, it's really just, how shall I say it, "authentic" - Sales people (especially good ones) aren't web designers. I assure you it's made by me, and isn't spam. 

While we're at it, a couple of new changes: 1) it's now white, and easier on the eye, and you can actually read the text in the hover callouts 2) responding to popular demand, if you'd like to give attribution to your post, please add your name or user name in parentheses after the title, like (anonymous) or (username) or (your name). E.g. Three Favorite Bloggers (Steve Thommes). Here are few more title ideas that have been brought up: Date Night Activities, Best 2005 Vintage, Wine to Drink This Year, Top Secret Cooking Tips and Sales Skills for Superstars. Cool stuff!

Lastly, one of my New Years Resolutions was to "nurture my network". Already a lot of you have reached out, commented, made suggestions, and even re-kindled a an old ad-serving opportunity. Nice! and Thank you! Get the conversation going and share What Are You Passionate About? with your friends, family and colleagues!
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So, I was asked, why the long domain name? For one thing, Passion.com is taken, and looks to be successful all on its own. 

But more importantly, the way people use the Web has changed. Looking at Google Analytics (I can't wait to try ChartBeat), it looks like no one is typing in the domain name ("direct navigation" in industry parlance) - more and more this also applies to generic, niche, short domains as well (like CreditCards.com). Instead, all of the visits are coming from social media interactions: Google, Twitter, Facebook. Where does most of your traffic come from, and do you feel like there's a fundamental shift happening from Google search traffic to Facebook and Twitter-linked traffic?
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Today, Monday, 1/4/2010, is for most of us our first day back in the office. Back on the phone and visiting prospects. How can I empower their success? The Holiday has been a time of reflection. January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings, and is often depicted as having two faces, one which looks backward and the other gazing forward. 

2009 was a tremendous success. And even as I closed an important deal on New Years Eve, I'm looking forward even more to 2010. Careerwise, what are you passionate about in 2010?

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Welcome to 2010! We're 3 days in, and today you can post at WAYPA? 


What is WAYPA? It's a place where people can think about, list, prioritize and discuss what's most important. 


So it is 2010 and what are you going to do different? Better. How are you going to impact other people's lives? For the Better. For now, and as a start, just answer a simple question: What Are You Passionate About?
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