PetesWeekly

People assume that because I have made a living as a public speaker that I am a raving extrovert. I am not. I have been shy all my life. I break out in a sweat when surrounded by more than four people. I never understood this until I started reading a great book called Quiet.

I am an introvert, almost in the extreme. Maybe that is why I enjoy the process of writing so much. Writing is not a shared activity. It is a chance to inspect the flotsam littering the edge of your brain.

As you can imagine, being an introvert makes it tough to sell. I enjoy cold calls as much as I enjoy proctological procedures. (Hint: Once you have tried one you don’t want to do a second lap.)

Yet, I love the process of selling. I love to listen to folk talk about their problems. I love to hear their ideas, their dreams, their experiences. And at some point in each call, after they have cleared their souls, each will ask: ‘Why are you here?’ At that point, if I have an answer that adds value to any of the problems they have raised, I share it. Usually they want to buy my solution. No hype needed. It seems that the mere act of listening is so unusual that it is all that is needed for enough trust to build up. I rather like that.

So why is it that the world thinks salesfolk must be brash fast-takers? It is, I think, because people who talk fast and make quick decisions (often without enough data) are regarded more highly than people who prefer to think awhile. In a brain storming session, some of us are still thinking after the session is over, while the extroverts have filled the walls with ideas. (Research shows that brain storming with a bunch of people in the same box does not work.)

The Web has been a godsend for introverts. We have time to think. We can switch off the chatter. And we can brainstorm slowly, the way we like it. Instead of competing with the noise, we can type the beginning of an idea knowing it cannot be shouted down.

Regarding that public speaking issue, I stink. That is why I don’t do it much. What I prefer to do is to gather a group of people together, each wonderfully unique, but all sharing a specific problem that I understand. And then talk to one of them about that problem, usually someone in the fourth row. And in talking to one person, because they all share the same challenge, I am talking to all of them. Now that’s fun, and I hope it shows.

This introversion is one of the reasons I love the concept of interest-based marketing. Instead of pushing your product in front of all and sundry, hoping that it might resonate with one of the sundry, I find it so much easier to wait for people to look for what I sell. Then when they enquire, replying to their question is not a cold call. It is a chance to chat about a problem that I can usually help with. That makes it pretty stress-free, and most of those calls end with a ‘sale’.

I don’t measure them that way. It has never been about the money. That is simply a measure of how many people I can help, and how well I help them.

It would appear that one of the things we most want from life is “financial freedom”. I don’t understand that, because everything we do, everything the government wants us to do, forces us in the opposite direction.

Financial freedom comes from doing just 2 things. And we can do them independently or together. Financial freedom comes from spending less while earning more. It really is simple, just like losing weight comes from eating less while exercising more.

And yet it seems that the moment our income nudges up a smidgen, we find new and innovative ways to spend the money, on things we didn’t need yesterday. It’s worse than that, however, because we don’t just spend the money that we made this month. Rather we commit that increase for the next 60 months on something that we really don’t need, like a new car. (Which isn’t usually a problem in the short term unless, of course, we lose the increase when we lose the job.)

I am embarrassed that I too have bought a car on the pretence that the monthly expenses would be less than the maintenance cost of the older car. After doing that at least 10 times, I think I can honestly say that it is a stupid rationalisation.

This might explain why 97% of us cannot afford to retire.

While I was thinking about this, and thinking about why we need a new car when the old car is but 5 years old, and still has, as my father would say, 20 years of solid life left in it, it occurred to me that buying anything “new” is very expensive.

A new car, for instance, depreciates by about 30% as you drive it out of the garage for the first time. That is probably the most expensive short trip you will ever do.

A mobile phone, if we use it just as a mobile phone, lasts for a decade. A new mobile phone, with Android 3.1, which most of us need like 6 fingers on our left hand, which costs 6000 Rand today, you can buy next year for 2000, and 12 months after that you can get for 200. An old Nokia, which my son will give me for nothing, does the work of a phone rather well, and is not nearly as alluring to bandits.

My personal addiction is technology. The PC that I purchased earlier this year for 20,000 Rand, I will be able to get next year for about half the price. Heck, the cost of the Windows upgrades I have done over the years (along with all of the associated application software upgrade costs) could finance the retirement of all the men in Somerset East.

Even new clothes can be an awfully bad deal. It’s not that last year’s clothes don’t work any more. It’s that the entire industry is designed around making you feel embarrassed that you are wearing clothes from last year. Merely buying your clothes in a different season, maybe 6 months later, can cut your clothing bill in half. (As could keeping this year’s clothes until they come into fashion again in 2019.)

What about all of those folk that you need to impress in order to do business? Rubbish. It’s polite to arrive in clothes that are ironed, appropriate for the circumstances, and clean. And preferably, that you too are clean. Or, at least, don’t smell too bad.

Interestingly, the opposite of “new” is not only “used” or “old”. It’s also “last season” or “last year”, both of which mean “so much cheaper”.

It is only now that I begin to understand why visiting my parents invoked such déjà vu. They had financial freedom. They weren’t rich. But they had no debt. And the Sony TV that my dad purchased in 1974 worked for 25 years. Unlike my last few sets that said goodbye as flatscreen, then LCD, then LED, then HD LED, and then 3D arrived. I can’t wait to see next years model!

Either earn more or spend less. Preferably both. That is the only route to financial freedom other than luck. I like to think that the harder I work, the luckier I will get. As long as I can spend less.

**********

A few days ago I presented a webinar on search engine marketing, comparing Google with facebook, and looking at some incredible results from Google. (7.8 enquiries per 100 impressions, and if you understand that jargon you know how amazing that really is.) You can view or download the video, with all the questions, here. It is 90 minutes of common sense.

On Tuesday night we had a rollicking online seminar talking about selling. May I share some thoughts from that today?

Firstly, I have long thought that we talk too much in sales meetings. Maybe we do it to cover how nervous we feel. Maybe we do it because we think if we bury our prospect in detail, in all the features that our great product (or service) offers, we can convince them to buy from us. The biggest mistake we all make, I think, is that we talk too much, which leaves no time for listening.

By now you know that I have been on insulin since 1971. That means that I am chemically deranged much of the time. Too much insulin creates two challenges. Firstly, it makes you so light headed that you can’t think straight. Secondly, it makes you angry. Neither of these is very good in social situations. I suspect that if somebody were to check, there would be a disproportionate number of diabetics instigating motor accidents and murders.

So I thought that if we were to survey the group to see how attentive they were, it might help prove the point. It did.

As you are telling your victim all your facts, your victim simply isn’t listening most of the time:

• 69% (more than two thirds) of people attending on Tuesday agreed that most of the time they are so worried about money that they’re cannot focus, let alone pay attention to some pushy sales person;
• 26% (one quarter) were having serious relationship issues, and that just sucks the life right out of you;
• 27% (another quarter) had health issues big enough to affect their focus;
• 56% had other issues that got in the way of listening;
• Just 13% felt utterly focused.

Just one in 10 people that you talk to is really paying attention to what you are saying!

If your maths is better than mine, you will notice that the numbers add up to a lot more than 100 percent. That’s because a bunch of folk have more than one set of problems to worry about. (They could tick more than one box.)

It seems that most of us would rather talk about our challenges than listen to  your hype. It was a sobering confirmation.

Then I got an e-mail from an old client who was too busy to attend. He thought he had a time management problem because there weren’t enough hours in his day. It occurred to me that there is no point in worrying about listening during sales meetings if you too busy to arrange any.

If you are not actively selling, or somebody in your firm is not actively selling, you don’t have a time management problem. You have a pending closure problem.

Clients are the only source of real revenue for any business. There are more important than anything else. I think that the moment we forget that, it’s only a matter of time before we don’t have a time management problem because when the business closes there is nothing left to do.

On the plus side, however, if you’re not actively selling, then you don’t have to worry about listening either. That’s one thing that you can tick off your list.

And finally, and this is very heartening. It’s not hard to stand out from the crowd. The rest of us do this so poorly that even a tiny improvement improves your sales results.

If you have a spare moment, please check out our brag wall here.

As anybody arrives on one of our clients’ marketing sites, it adds them to the constantly moving list. It lists the last hundred or so searchers. The lines in green are enquiries that those sites have generated. (That’s about 100 sites covering services and products ranging from aerial imagery to wallpaper.)

The sites generate about 250 enquiries each day. I won’t bury you in any more detail unless you ask, but don’t let anybody tell you that Google marketing doesn’t work. It does.

Why is it that we each see life from so varied an angle? A fellow is walking along the pavement and stumbles. (This could the sidewalk beside the roadway, or the pavement of life, as it were.)

Some of us don’t even notice. Maybe we’re en route to a first date. Maybe we’re in a rush to get to work because we’re late. Or because we can’t wait to be there.

Some of us notice, and make a note to avoid that brick sticking out the next time we walk down this road.

Some of us take umbrage and our minds are filled with dark thoughts about the people who should be fixing this kind of thing. And if, for instance, the pavements are failing, then what will be next? These folk can progress a simple stumble to the apocalypse in a few seconds.

We each know a few folk like this. Nothing is ever good enough. And each bad thing that happens must be the fault of some person not doing his job.

I have a simple rule in my life. Shyte happens. For no reason we can fathom. And some folk get buried a little deeper than others. Mostly, like winter, shyte comes in seasons. Maybe that’s because we lose our sense of humour during these winter periods. But, like mumps, adult nappies, and the other joys of the human condition, it all passes.

Helen Keller had a tougher life than most of us. She was deaf, mute, and blind. One of the comments she made about this life thing has always stuck with me: “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time.” What a glorious way to approach life.

My point is simply this. No matter how badly life is going right now, tomorrow will not be the same, and, we hope, better. No matter how well life is going right now, tomorrow will not be the same, and, we hope, better. But the key thing is that life is, in fact, going. The rest is just our perspective.

In a month or so I reach my 40th year as an injection wielding diabetic. If I had been diagnosed before 1921, I would have died within months. Each day since June 1971 has been a blessing, even though a during a few I have stepped into various depths of squishy stuff, and a few times I had a swim a few laps in it. But, that’s life. The mere fact we have it should be reward enough.

I raise this because when I tell folk I am coming back to SA for a six week tour, a few folk share with me how bad things are, how costly it has all become, and how the apocalypse is nigh.

I don’t know about that. I work with business owners from all over the world, and South Africa remains a joy compared to many countries. (And no, while I lived in Joburg, Durban and Cape Town I did not believe that either.) I do now.

Have an outstanding Easter break. I hope that you don’t spend too much of it worrying about the bills at the end of the month. You cannot change those by much. But you can change the way you think about the holiday.

I have spent the past few weeks thinking about why guest houses and BnBs struggle to fill their beds. It is not just the sixteen other local offerings that compete although that does not help either.

Rather it is that most of us travellers really fear risk much, much more than we want bliss.

Our hero, a good looking dude who hails from Oslo, looks for a place to stay in Cape Town. After fighting through the hundreds of pages all purporting to offer him travel nirvana, he opts for the City Lodge at the harbour. Why?

He does it for the same reason that he goes to McDonalds rather than a fine steak house or pub with a name he does not know: Because he knows exactly what he will get. Hotels tend to be much more of a muchness, so he is not going to get surprised.

No doubt he will complain mightily because the last City Lodge he stayed at in Tel Aviv did not serve ham or bacon at breakfast. But if he eats a Big Mac and chips (much as Norwegians are not crazy about anything other than fish and potatoes, preferably boiled) he does not have to worry about throwing the better part of the cost of his return trip at some quaint South African dish involving worms and raw meat – no matter how much it moves him.

Most tourists don’t like surprises. The kind of surprises I refer to are when you arrive at your guest house to find that it is being rebuilt. (Although that happened to me at the Sandton Crowne Plaza a few times.) Or when there is no Web connection. (Which some of us need more than morning coffee, and maybe even morning oxygen.) Or when the owners are in the middle of a divorce and the tension is a tad unsettling. (But that’s for some other time.)

So, if surprises are bad, then consistency is good – no matter how low the standard is.

Most guesthouses cost a lot less than an hotel. And most of the time the owner is there to point you at the best stuff to see around the area. (Unlike most lesser hotels where the workers seem to be imported from the planet Mute because they barely speak, let alone any language I know.)

So, when I am in Cape Town I now stay at Jambo Guest House in Green Point – when Barry and Mina have space. It costs less than most hotels, except possibly the chain which combines the shower, toilet, and the basin into a cubicle the size of my trashcan, in a room where I can reach the window and the door from my bed, at the same time.

For much the same price, I get a glorious bed, a large romping space with wireless Internet, a fine bathroom with fluffy towels, a short walk to a superb steak with great Shiraz, a short walk to the V&A Waterfront, and a short walk into Cape Town. This makes it a great place for a business traveller.

Don’t get me started on the huge breakfast. Norwegians are not slim and trim because, as you might suspect, they are genetically blessed.  Rather it is the astounding price of food that keeps us all in a state of semi starvation. So SA meals are all much better, especially Jambo’s breakfast which makes a Norwegian smorgasbord look rather sad.

Barry also has a pub where that last hour before bed passes gently fueled by great SA Shiraz and planning early retirement, which in my case now means 69. But hey, if it means I can travel to South Africa at will, and that’s the whole of July this year, then it can’t be too bad.

But, and here is my point. I stayed up the road at the City Lodge for years before making the change, and only because I knew him well by then and had run out of excuses. Small establishments are not competing with each other. They are competing first with our desire to reduce risk. This human condition is  fascinating.

It is a sad mirror on one’s life if one has to spend a pretty good Monday reading the most recent tome from the SA government. I refer to the Consumer Protection Act or as I prefer to call it, the Fukushima A Mosquito Act.

The key concept aims at… “helping consumers—

1. who are low-income persons or persons comprising low-income communities;
2. who live in remote, isolated or low-density population areas or communities;
3. who are minors, seniors or other similar consumers; or
4. whose ability to read and comprehend any advertisement, agreement, mark, instruction, label, warning, notice or other visual representation is limited by reason of low literacy, vision impairment or limited fluency in the language in which the representation is produced, published or presented; “

But I think they got carried away. After working through 150 pages of protecting the consumer but removing ever more rights from the already corkscrewed small business owner, I have come to realise that government has no idea about SMME reality.

In fact, that’s not quite true. My legal friends (SMMEs all) are all planning Indian Ocean Christmasses from the consulting to be had to keep you and me in line. (After all, 12 years in Pollsmoor and/ or a fine equal to 10% of annual turnover, is a tad disconcerting.)

Even though I am in Norway, it seems that I am going to be forced to offer stuff that the DTI feels I have not offered since I started in 1984. Dreadful things like refunds if clients are not happy. And client service to explain the small print. And it even seems – and I do not want to shout this out too loud -  that I must deliver to them what they’re paying for.

In fact, you and I have been so bad at this that a new Consumer Commissioner needs urgent appointing, with a new BMW in line with her status, new offices, and a gaggle of civil servants. All this so that low income folk in rural areas not well serviced by Eskom, and without Internet access, can be assured that if they had the Web they could buy from me without any fear of loss.

Maybe I am a little vexed by a new EU ruling that has kiboshed my plans to bring my Mom out to Norway for a couple of weeks. Turns out that I have to submit my tax returns, bank statements and my wife to the local police chief for his approval before he will allow me to sign away my future to warrant that Mom will not overstay her welcome, die, or otherwise burden the state. This after she has to paid R3000 for medical cover for two weeks here. A new rule, it seems, to keep the tourist hordes out of Europe.

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I have a radical suggestion on how we can solve this turdy bloat of paper that we are drowning in. It is this: The day after the national elections we should send all the elected officials to an Indian Ocean hideaway, to stay at 5 Star resorts for their entire elected term. Not only will this cost much, much less than the damage they do when they pitch at the office, but they will have a fine time as well. So will the rest of us.

This is not just the SA crew, but the entire Euro bunch. What the heck, lets go for bust and send the worldwide crowd. Four years with no new regulation, and nobody giving our future to bonusclad  bankers. Could it go any more wrong, or cost any more, than if they stayed at home?