我好奇故我在-業務

獅子挑有潛力的獵物，集中精力攻擊

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:27:30 +0800

書: Selling to Zebras

這是有關銷售技巧的書，用獅子獵物來比喻銷售工作。傳統銷售工作是地毯式陌生拜訪，講數字遊戲，拜訪愈多人愈好(a numbers game)。但是獅子的哲學是他無法長期跑很快，所以他會挑選獵物，然後一擊。

[Lions] won’t swipe at any food source within sight… and then pursue another and another until all their energy is spent and they have to abandon the hunt. Rather, they pursue prey that is worth the energy to pursue.

最好的業務有挺昂貴的個人生活習慣

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:42:38 +0800

這篇文章作者的觀察很對，我的確有認識這樣的人，但是作者詮釋的角度很有趣也很真。

source: http://www.quotacrush.com/index.php/2009/08/12/the-best-salespeople-have-expensive-hobbies/

以下是作者被企業家問到「怎樣找到好業務員？」的摘要回答。

My immediate response was, “The first and most important quality that I look for in a salesperson is that they have expensive hobbies.”

I look for two basic qualifiers if I’m going to be thinking about this person further:

First, I look for expensive LEGAL hobbies. (略) Expensive hobbies speak to two things:

They have had some success before that allowed them to even partake in these hobbies
They have motivation to repeat that success in order to continue with those hobbies.

You need to sense a passion for that hobby. I don’t mean just skiing, but someone that has decided that they need to ski every mountain around Lake Tahoe more than once, and at least once on every continent that has skiing. I don’t mean someone that enjoys biking, I mean someone that describes the bike they own (or REALLY want to own) as having automatic transmission, disc brakes and made of titanium. Its that type of passion for the hobby, that typically tells me that this someone who is driven, focused, and squarely thinking about cash in their pocket at nearly every turn. The more this salesperson wants to do that hobby, the more she/he going to be thinking about closing.

Second, a great salesperson will start building his/her pitch in the interview. They may not get your product or the product direction correctly, but as they hear you talk about the product, they should come back at you with suggestions on how to pitch the product, or “have you tried this approach” questions. These suggestions may be WAY off your corporate mission but that’s OK. What you should take from this is that you have someone that knows how to listen, and is willing to take what he/she hears and be creative to find a solution. The salesperson that is building his/her pitch the minute he starts hearing about the product is already thinking about how he/she can close deals. This is the key to the entire thought process. A salesperson that is thinking about a solution that leads to a close is the salesperson you want on your sales force.

行銷與業務的差異

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:28:47 +0800

行銷與業務的簡單定義
"Marketing tells a story that spreads.
Sales overcomes the natural resistance to say yes."

行銷是講一個可以擴散流傳的故事
業務克服自然阻力，讓客戶說YES

by Seth Godin
(source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/the-difference-between-marketing-and-sales.html)

行銷與業務在網路世界的協同
by Larry Kilbourne
(source: http://www.lkphd.com/articles/sales-marketing-alignment-in-a-20-world-solution-or-tar-baby.html)

網路環境上，買方的決策過程是會加快還是增長？
...the Internet has allowed buyers to be much more reliant on their own ability to research and develop possible solutions, sales cycles in many cases are longer than in pre-Internet days, when buyers relied upon sellers more for information and education.
網路讓買方更倚賴自己作調查以及發展可能的解決方案能力，在許多例子中，銷售週期比沒有網路時代來得更長。在網路之前，買方主要依賴業務提供訊息。

業務端目前有一個流行名詞lead nurturing，我解釋於 http://blog.roodo.com/ad264/archives/9181493.html，所以下段指出業務工作變得得將買方決策過程拉遠看。

行銷與業務的界線模糊
Marketing is now responsible for establishing rapport and building relationships with prospects - the traditional dominion of sales. Sales must (for the process to work effectively) take a more long-term view of the process than monthly or quarterly quotas encourage, as well as pay more attention to the story that is being told (to maintain a consistent story line).
由於現在行銷講個人化溝通，所以過去屬於業務範疇——即與潛在客戶建立和諧關係，變成也是行銷得負責的。業務為了要工作更有效，也得看得更長遠，非僅看每月或每季的quotas，另外也需要注意行銷人講了什麼故事，以便對買方的說法一致。

文章後續有討論這樣的變化對實務作業的影響，有興趣者可點選觀看。

Lead Nurturing

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:25:10 +0800

Lead Nurturing, or, Everything Old is New Again
Friday, May 8, 2009 at 2:48PM
Larry Kilbourne in Lead generation, Lead nurturing, Marketing
(source:http://www.lkphd.com/articles/lead-nurturing-or-everything-old-is-new-again.html?printerFriendly=true)

這一篇是名詞解釋，回原新名詞lead nurturing的起點。簡單說本質銷售從產品導向轉為顧客導向。以下先介紹此名詞的祖先consultative selling，後面介紹lead nurturing的定義與執行。如果對銷售名詞沒興趣者，可跳過此篇。

祖先：consultative selling 諮詢式銷售：
則需要賣方不斷解決買方的問題，這個過程是一種雙向的溝通，用以區分買方的需要，並提出解決方案。

Consultative selling was a concept whose time had come for a number of reasons. For one, it recognized that successful sales organizations in the modern world could not operate on the basis of a philosophy of "take the money and run." For another, it acknowledged a fundamental truth about selling; namely, that people buy from people they trust. Trust is predicated on an established relationship; hence, selling was about building relationships as much as pushing product (or whatever).
諮詢式銷售的概念會出現有幾個原因。一個是它認為現代成功的銷售組織，不能建立在「拿了錢」就跑的哲學。另一個原因是，它認為關於銷售的最基本事實是：人們會找其所相信的人買東西。信任在一個已建立的關係中是可以預期的，因此，銷售是有關建立關係，比促銷產品或其他事情來說，重要得多。

The subsequent mind-shift in sales techiques was revolutionary: instead of focusing on product features you focused on uncovering prospects' needs.
銷售技巧由注意產品特色改變成發覺潛在客戶的需求。文中後續說：這個銷售概念後來被Seth Godin引進 marketing中。Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers

Godin's then-radical notion was that marketers, instead of bombarding prospects with advertising and marketing collateral (what he calls "interruption marketing"), should reach out to them to establish a relationship in which they would give their consent to receive ads and marketing collateral about subjects that interested them. Handled properly, over time you could, as Godin's title explicitly puts it, "turn strangers into friends and friends into customers." Pitch was replaced with relationship at the core of marketing activities.
Godin認為不要用干擾式廣告、大量轟炸消費者，而是應該接近他們，建立關係，得到他們的同意之後，再給他們會感興趣的廣告。也就是說「將陌生人變成朋友，朋友變成顧客」。這個概念本質上跟consultative selling相似。

後裔：lead nurturing：
Like consultative sales and permission marketing, lead nurturing is firmly rooted in the concepts of relationship building and collaboration between solution seekers and offerers. It is, in the words of Brian Carroll - perhaps its foremost proponent - "all about having consistent and meaningful dialog with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy." Lead nurturing is a process, he points out, "that converts more inquiries into qualified leads and qualified leads into sales."
lead nurturing跟consultative selling或是permission marketing很像，都是耕植於建立關係上。Brian Carroll(可能是最早提出lead nurturing者)他的說法是「lead nurturing是一個過程，將多次的詢問轉化為符合條件的潛在客戶(qualified leads)，再將這些潛在客戶轉為銷售。」

此詞彙的本質容易瞭解，隨著現代科技的進展，其應用執行方式更得成熟。
What strikes me as relatively novel about lead nurturing is the extent to which, in its application and execution, it is dependant on fairly sophisticated processes (read software) that enable companies to:

Identify which stage of the buy cycle prospects inhabit based on a variety of (usually web-based) behaviors they exhibit (lead scoring)
辨認出潛在顧客在銷售週期中的哪一個階段
Engage prospects at each stage through dialogue or collateral (and via a variety of media) that is relevant to their needs/interests at that particular stage (nurturing)
在每一個階段，透過對話，或是透過不同媒體傳播與他們需求興趣相關的銷售輔助，與消費者接觸。
Track their movement as it flows either toward or away from a sale (also lead scoring)
追蹤他們的行動，瞭解其離消費目標更近或是疏遠了。
Maintain records of these myriad transactions and conversations that allow marketing forecasts to be made
紀錄這些不同的交易以及對話，可以讓預測未來的行銷該怎樣作。