SALES: Solve Your Client’s Problems, Not Sell Your Customer Products

The BIGGEST mistake I’ve seen sales folk do, the most problematic mindset they have that stops them from being successful, is looking at customers as someone they can sell their products to, and not as clients whose problems they can solve.

Nothing compels someone to buy from you more than the perception (hopefully more than just that, of course) that what they’re spending their monies on, addresses a shortfall in how they’re running their business.

Needless to say, this example applies to essential goods and services to an operating business, not 18-inch rims for a souped-up car.

Does the CRM software you’re selling help the client’s company better mange its relationships with its customers? How?
Does your ad solutions assist the customer with raising awareness with its target consumers?

Once you adopt the thinking of the buy-side, then your sell-side pitches will be more effective.

We Don’t Have to be Strangers (Even If We Don’t Work Together)

“If we don’t end up working together, we can still be friends” is a refrain that is so obvious but something I’ve felt compelled to include in conversations lately.

Maybe it’s the new age thinking of feeling that one needs to either accept or reject something, swipe left or right to say no or yes, click like or disregard as you scroll past, that compels folks today to be so binary in the way they view relationships.

In fact, we can be adversarial and still cordial.

Look at Messi and Ronaldo, they’re not scything each other down on the pitch or at awards galas.

Hillary Clinton ended up working for Obama and is now on the presidential ticket.

Life is not black or white, and I would much rather not have these awkward countenances that people have become so comfortable with these days.

Founding A Startup is like Being Shipwrecked from Day One

This analogy helps if you’ve watched or read the Life of Pi.

Founding a startup is like being SHIPWRECKED from day one.

The minute you start you’re trying to survive, alongside a starving tiger no less.

The hyena & orang utan are perhaps the co-founders that bravely started that crazy journey with you.

The zebra, your trusting 1st investor, surely gets eaten at some point.

Getting funded, which gets all the sexy press, is like hitting a jackpot of flying fish — it just delays what could be the inevitability of a lonely death in the high seas.

But boy, it is indeed as exciting as seeing a luminescent pool of fish at night.

Being “successful” though, is finally discovering a bountiful island to get off your boat.

“Precision Beats Power. Timing Beats Speed” – Conor McGregor

Those were the words spoken by Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor in his post-match interview in the Octagon after defeating defending Brazilian Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo in UFC #194.

Just how good was Aldo? In the ten years from 26 November 2005 until 26 November 2015, Aldo never lost an MMA fight, thus marking an entire decade of invincibility, with 5 years ruling as a world champion (18 fights, 10 title fights, 9 title defences).

In the title unification fight held on 12 December 2015, McGregor registered the UFC’s fastest knockout win in its history.

13 seconds was all it took.

And with that, and all of the Irishman’s confident trash talking, history was made as he became the new undefeated champion. Now, watch that punch in slow-mo, and the post-match interview below…

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a fan of Mixed Martial Arts, what McGregor gave us with his famed lethal left-handed strike was a quote applicable to so many of the things we do.

Running a startup, I’ve always said that in order to beat the big boys, you’ve got to draw your competitors to where his numbers count for nothing.

In my previous writing, I advocated being swifter and more nimble: Fight the big guy in a small, confined space. Move faster where he’s slower.

Now, McGregor’s words have added another layer of complexity to this strategy: What if your opponent moves quicker and punches harder than you?

You don’t fight strength with more strength, if you don’t have it. If you can’t do continuous upgrades of your platform, don’t. But do so in a targeted manner.

You don’t fight speed with more speed, if you don’t have it. If you can’t quickly address issues and deficiencies, don’t. But do so with meaningful upgrades at the opportune moments.

What you’d have to do is execute with accuracy, and to time these efforts to maximum effect.

Precision Beats Power. Timing Beats Speed.

Never better said.

Don’t Be Shy. Focus On Your Strengths

Part of growing old(er) includes being wiser and more cognisant of yourself. It means being comfortable with who you are, and what you have become.

For example, hangovers get worse as you get older. There’s no two ways about it.

Anyways, I recently shared some passing remarks about a peer business in a casual conversation and perhaps those words got passed on and unfortunately, someone got offended.

To be honest, it was a fair and widely-held private critique anyways (I had said, said personality had a “permanent fanboy editorial voice”).

In layman-speak, what I meant was this person enthuses about everything he writes about, and everything he writes about is in one way or another, compensated (by monies or freebies)

As Jack Ma himself pointed out, in our ‘middle-age” (applies to our business, not just our own numbered years of existence), focus on your strengths, and don’t try and reinvent yourself. There’s nothing to be shy about it.

SENATUS is not Vogue. I know that. I wouldn’t be upset if you said that. We have other shortfalls too (e.g., we don’t do fashion editorials that brands managers can proudly report to head office about and that hurts us), but what we’re good at, we’re damn good.

It’s the same thing when I play recreational football on the weekends, I know I’m no Lionel Messi, so I won’t get upset when you blame me for not pinging a 30 yard cross directly onto your head. I’m not Neymar Jr., so don’t expect me to dance circles around you either. I’m not Luis Suarez, so really I don’t (mean to) bite.

Is Your PR Company Too Big & Successful (Busy) For You?

Far be it for me to stick my neck into the PR business but when the successful agencies win most of the accounts, sure, the economies of scale and influence work.

But only for a short while (after the big high-cost publicity event).

The resource allocation and prioritization sets in pretty soon into the mandate win, and just as quickly junior execs and interns are now handling these accounts — These are usually folks who neither have the experience, skills, know-how nor interest (yet) to manage relationships with stakeholders / vendors / 3rd parties.

Then for events organised by these PR companies, you see the same guests every time.

Is it for a lack of trying? Or just a churn of the same invite list?

I really just don’t get the business rationale of turning some of these people up, people who can’t even be bothered to (pretend to) check out the products on display in store. They stand around, huddled in cliques, take wefies, and leave. This is frankly just rubbish database activation at work.

Aside: This isn’t about “free loaders” because the best ones actually know to mingle and be good crowds. It is afterall their interest to be re-invited.

Then the influencers show up, and they’re more interested in their OOTD than what you’re selling (unless you give them some freebies or paid mentions). Honestly, my buying decisions have never been influenced by an influencer but maybe that’s cos uncles don’t dress like xiaomeimeis.

Then the coverage by media: Formulaic “best dressed”/what-she-wore lists that have no relevance whatsoever to the collection launch (it’s an instore event not the Oscars, FFS). Or worse, a half-blur low-lit lousily-shot Instagram photo that does nothing for the brand other than to show the magazine was there.

All this partly stems from the poor initial PR contact, which I surmise is a result of delegation of management. Who they use to reach out with, who they reach out to, how they followup, what understanding and expectation all sides have of deliverables and how they grow and cultivate those relationships.

When this is done poorly, I cannot do my job properly.

Pick a PR company that WANTS your account, not just one that YOU WANT. Or become THAT BIG account it can’t afford to lose, and will go out of its way to ensure that doesn’t happen.

How the Crackdown on Corruption in China Helped My Business

Once upon a time, not too long ago, China had an unfettered boom in luxury spending, not only on the mainland but beyond its shores as its citizens poured overseas and clearing out stocks in boutiques at an unprecedented scale.

And that was how in 2013, the one-handbag-purchase-per-passport restriction came about in many stores worldwide, in an effort to throttle the voracious appetite of the Chinese tourists.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, as business soared. It didn’t matter what you sold, you could emblazon your handbag with logos, make incredulous markups with emu or python skin-editions, the consumers would buy it all up.

Watch brands could probably have sold anniversary editions even for any of odd-numbered years! (Here’s our 13 year anniversary edition! I kid).

The hard luxury business with diamonds and jewels and timepieces-abling moved fast. “Boutique”, “celebrity”, event-partnerships, anything that you could think of, there was a special edition watch pegged to it. And these were hugely popular purchases because they were smallish, easy to move, easy to “gift”.

The smaller and more valuable the item, the easier it was… to “hand it to someone” discreetly.

And thus with the Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption, this wave of luxury spending abruptly plummeted. The effect was two-fold: If you were bribed with cash, you’d have more to spend indiscriminately. Or you could bribe with products. So on two fronts, luxury brands were hit with lower sales.

Many European and American labels had to close boutiques after an early aggressive expansion. Marc Jacobs was one such big name casualty, losing his job as Louis Vuitton’s womenswear artistic director for failing to read the “changing trend” as consumers eschewed logos. Right, logos was what did it.

So how did this have anything to do with my digital business?

When business was thriving in Asia because of Chinese spending, it didn’t matter how brand managers were spending their advertising dollars. They could have bought ads in a pets magazine and no one would have asked any questions.

Business via China was still going to come.

Ad dollars poured into traditional channels here in Singapore, from dailies to glossies in the print business. New titles cropped up, needing little excuse to publish offshoots, with editions for menswear (Blah Blah “Homme”), horlogerie (Blah Blah “Time”), travel (you get the idea), etc.

Now, with luxury sales dramatically down and commensurately, marketing budgets, managers had to be accountable for where they were spending their monies. Each dollar had to have a measurable ROI.

Now, you had to be accountable.

Now, you couldn’t just buy ad pages from a print magazine, tack on an ancillary buy for digital banners on the same magazine’s website that was visited only by the interns. (Actually, they still do. But this is easier to “justify”)

That’s when the tide changed for us.

This newfound prudence meant many print titles couldn’t just ride on sales relationships anymore, and many have since gone under in Singapore, and around the region.

Now, managers had to take a close look at which sites performed, had actual traffic, spoke to the right audience (ex-China, or China, but probably less of China and more home-market) they wanted to market to, in order to justify their spending.

Under such scrutiny over the past 2 years, we did well, and continue to do so.

Thanks Comrade Xi.

Print Magazines Have a Pay Day When There’re Many Advertisers. Online Magazines, Only When They Have More Traffic

Just let that sink in for a minute.

Therein lies the fundamental difference between print and digital.

Every fall season, (fashion) glossies around the world print their extra-thick editions, as advertisers stack their budgets for the commencement of the post-summer year-end shopping season; from autumn/winter collections, to post-Thanksgiving sales, to Christmas gifting.

You hear tales of a quantum leap in advertising dollars made from a single monthly edition. September issues, as some of us are led to believe, are like the “Black Fridays” in the print magazine business. In fact, there are urban legends (more likely the truth) circulated here in Singapore about publishers banking six-figures from that one month’s run.

But you need to ask yourself, do these print magazines see a multi-fold increase in circulation for this same time period, commensurate with the multi-fold increase in ad pages? Clearly not.

And if not, what are advertisers buying into? Insertion into a thicker wad of paper, with the self-assurance that every page that is turned is given the same amount of attention?

Some people tune in to Super Bowl to watch the half-time commercials. I’ve never heard of anyone buying a magazine for the ads.

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise you that (most) print publishers will choose to get audited for that particular month. FYI: In the print industry, magazines need only be audited for one month’s run, in order to say they’re “audited,” if at all. And by audit, it means some third party verifying that you actually print x number of copies that month. So for appearance or auditing reasons, you’ll see more of these thick copies printed in September.

Did you know if one copy of a magazine is (officially provided) on a flight, every passenger on that flight is counted as readership. No? You’re welcome, there’s a fun fact to talk about on your next date.

There’ll be copies in huge stacks in bookstores, inserted into corporate goodie bags for any good reason, sent to restaurants, hotels, cafés (preferably in the same building as the client), to the clinics of doctors, dentists, ophthalmologists and most popularly, gynaecologists.

Digital platforms can’t do what print magazines do: make much more money, with more or less the same number of readership.

Websites whether they are Buzzfeed.com (ugh, I know) or theAtlantic.com, needs to have more of the same quality traffic (e.g., more people who like football reading about football seeing football ads) in order to make more revenues. Even then, they never quite have the same big “pay day” that print magazines have.

Digital publishers are also “audited” by Google Analytics and sometimes, client-designated ad serving platforms all year round, each month, all day, every hour and second, down to the very click by who, where and when. That’s the detail we have to be accountable for.

Surely, at some point in time, advertisers need to think about just what they are buying into when they all jump onto the fall season bandwagon of print advertising.

Do you think your ad on page 246 will be seen amongst the other 300 ad pages of a 388-page magazine?

Or maybe you’re just happy you got a 30-word editorial mention under Features on page 42. Now, that’s something to write home to head office in Paris about.

Fast Fashion Didn’t Kill Fashion, Fashion Did

There’s a lot of talk these days (here, here, and here) about the extensive damage the accessibility and affordability of fast fashion has done to the larger fashion industry.

The chaotic crowds of shoppers queuing overnight and jostling for the H&M x Balmain capsule collection, marketed cleverly with the use of IT girls of the moment including Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, have people wondering if there is just too much fashion, no, too much cheaply and quickly-produced fashion around these days.

Do you really believe that?

Is someone buying 40 $10 T-shirts from H&M depriving a luxury label of the sale of one $400 equivalent? Maybe, if it’s clearly a rip-off and folks are thinking they are buying an exact replica (there’s ample legal recourse). More often than not, these aren’t bootlegged versions, but loosely-inspired reproductions.

For example, is a skull-head graphic print exclusive ONLY to one luxury brand?

Doesn’t fashion itself also copy, appropriate from others?

In fact, the rules of copyright apply differently for fashion, and this loose(r) enforcement has resulted in more innovation and sales. To that point, I lean towards what Tom Ford once said about Gucci counterfeits, and by that extrapolation, fast-fashion productions: That they appeal to different markets.

In other words, someone who is a TOM FORD customer isn’t going to being hijacked by a H&M/TopShop/Zara copy.

That said, the designer has recently also commented, “A lot of the things I did – it’s not going to sound anything but egotistical – if I’m lucky and I did the right thing, they will be at Zara way before I can get them in the store, and I don’t like that.”

If anything, affordable fashion has made it such that MORE people can dress more fashionably. If more luxurious fashion labels cannot make their own case with workmanship, materials and brand DNA, and thus justify a higher price tag, in light of a larger, more fashionable consumer base, then perhaps it is their own fault they aren’t doing well.

Amancio Ortega, the multi-billionaire founder of European clothes retailer Zara recently became the wealthiest person in the world, attesting to burgeoning growth of the fashion industry. Has his wealth really come at the expense of other fashion labels?

Doesn’t this just mean the pie has become bigger for everyone?

My view is, if you’re in fashion or any other business, you need to clearly articulate your value proposition. Face it, there is always going to be cheaper competition.

ANYBODY can try to put red soles on their stiletto pumps (not that you won’t get sued), but there is ONLY ONE Christian Louboutin.

The Toruk Never Looks Up; Neither Does Your Biggest Competitor

So many of us are working on our own startup and fledging businesses, cognizant of who the biggest players are in our market.

For quite a number of you, the approach has been to take small steps to establish a foothold and expand carefully and meaningfully without stirring the attention of the big giant on the block, lest it comes knocking on your door and squeezing you out of the business, whether it’s through predatory pricing or offering the same promotions.

In the movie “Avatar”, if you recall, Jake Sulley (played by Aussie actor Sam Worthington) decides to capture the Toruk with cunning simplicity. Acknowledging that the Toruk — the big red bird of prey feared by all the Na’Vi (natives) of the planet Pandora — which sits at the top of the “fear chain”, so to speak, Jake Sulley attacks it from above, knowing that the Toruk would never expect anyone else to threaten it from that direction.

I recommend this bold strategy for all those who have been initially conservative.

Go after your competitor from where he expects it least.

It is the only way for you to succeed, and perhaps your best chance of survival too.

The author of this note realizes not all have watched the movie Avatar and advises friends not to literally jump on your competitor’s back at the next conference.

Kien M. Lee

Thoughts on the World at Large

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