Please take a moment to watch this video and browse the new programs I created for you this year. These were specifically designed to help improve your revenue and business, as well as build stronger relationships between managers, sales teams, and your customers.

Check In

• No term agreement, hourly rate with the greatest amount of flexibility
• Either conference call or Skype video call for ease and convenience
• Use individually or as a group
• No travel expenses!
• Intended to boost motivation and performance – can be used as needed.

Tune Up

• Quarterly sales meeting with a yearly agreement
• Half day on site
• Review goals and actions for past period and establish goals and actions for upcoming quarter.

Critical Care Coaching (Watch the video for C3 here)

• 3 month agreement
• 2, 30 minute Skype video calls per week
• Daily email communications between sales team and Jody Seivert
• Weekly email updates to leadership of how team is performing and support / practice needed to cement new skills and habits.
• No on site meetings, no travel expenses!

Committed to Raising Revenues!

Revenues

• How much do you need to make to cover your expenses, including putting money into savings and paying off debt?
• How much will you invest in your retirement this year?
• Is there a holiday you’ve been dreaming and want to do in 2012?
• And what does your company need you to write to keep your seat and to contribute to the company growth?
• Given those and any other needs and wants, what do you need to generate in sales to do those? BE SPECIFIC.

Relationships

• Who do you want to continue doing business with – and how will you deepen the relationship in ways that are meaningful to both of you?
• Who do you not work with now but would like to work with in 2012?
• Who will you release – and let someone else work with them or let them find another way to satisfy their heart’s desire – and fill that space with someone new?
• Who do you need to forgive, ask for forgiveness from, or accept just as they are and as they are not?

Resources

• To do the above, what are the skills you need to develop?
• What systems have you been avoiding putting in place, but really need to incorporate to move onward and upward?
• Where can you be a resource to others as your contribution to their future and the industry you serve?

Simple? Yes.  Time consuming? Maybe.  Worth it? For sure.

Thank you for taking your time to read my blog, for sharing with me what you find valuable, for asking me to address topics that are challenging to you, and for passing it along to others who may find something for themselves.

Here’s to a kind and gentle holiday with your loved ones. I hope your year closes softly with few regrets and a sense of completion upon which to begin the New Year.

And may 2012 be your best year yet.

With Love,
Jody

To effectively manage this you will need a strategy that includes LOTS of questions to determine where you might have missed something earlier in the process AND to determine what it is they want you to do.

Ask yourself:

1. What do they want? What are they asking for? When they tell you that the project is now over budget and EVERYONE has to cut their pricing – breathe. Just breathe. Then ask them:

“Tell me more about this……” Be in the inquiry about what happened with this project such that it’s in this place now. YOU didn’t create the over budget and you aren’t the one (or the only one) to solve it.

2. Where did the over-runs occur? Are there other vendors and contractors on the project who presented a budget, got the project, and are now presenting a new and higher price? Ask your contact these questions…and then ask them – “How are the other vendors reducing their pricing?”
3. Ask “What are you doing personally to address this issue?”
4. Ask “How much to you need to reduce the project to come in on budget?” GET SPECIFICS.
5. Ask “When is the deadline for resubmission?”
6. Ask “If I can reduce my pricing on this, and I don’t know that I can on line items but I might be able to reduce service costs, when will I get the order?” If you are reducing your price and are STILL in competition with others, you want more of a commitment from them that is commensurate with the commitment you are making to get their business. Otherwise, this can go on indefinitely in a race to the lowest price.

It’s likely that the questions asked above were not part of your qualifying process. That’s nothing that needs defending, but it’s likely the case. If you really want to play this game, and it is indeed a game, you may need to be willing to reduce your commission to get the project. Are you willing to do that – and by how much? When you are working with advisory committees and purchasing agents it’s not the same process as working solely with a designer or an end user. The money is bigger and the stakes are higher, so the game is different. AND you have invested your time and talent in the project and want the business, right? If so, how much are you willing to invest to get it? And remember, when you do the math and it doesn’t make you a profit, you can (and probably should) walk away.

Love,
Jody

As a designer, you are the crafter of events. In addition to your aesthetic gifts, you’re the one to keep things moving along.  And while you are at the center of things, you are not doing this alone. Your vendors and showroom salespeople support your efforts and results. No one is good at every aspect of the business, and they can help you with things you don’t like to do or are just plain bad at. For starters, here’s how you can participate in partnership with your showroom salespeople that will have you meet the promises you made to your clients:

• Create timelines for installation (and if you don’t have them, your client surely does) and stay in communication with the showroom salespeople. When they call you to tell you that if you don’t place the order by 5:00 on Thursday you will not make the installation date you promised your clients, call them back. This dance of partnership will have everyone win.
• Don’t make them chase you for the deposit check that is needed to process the order, and then ask them for a special timeline when you miss the one you established with them. This doesn’t forward the action. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on their part.
• The consequence of not taking action is that everything stops. If you follow the timeline plan, you will deliver happiness to your clients and be a joy to work with as a showroom customer. All good.

 As a showroom salesperson, sharpen your own selling skills so that you have professional sales abilities to offer the designer in their time of need with their clients. 

• Are you executing your sales process with mastery and asking the designer all the qualifying questions that they also need to be asking their client?
• Do you organize yourself by appointment to continue to move the sale forward?
• Do you establish end dates with the designer so that you both have something to move toward and push back from? 
• Do you know how each of your designers (especially you VIP’s) operates their business so that you can work within their existing business model?
• Do you have ‘go to’ responses for the completely predictable objections that they will give you? 
• How have you adjusted your business in response to the designers who are now hourly only and in no rush to process the product sale? 

While the designer is the hub in the wheel, you are the outer edge that keeps it all together. And you are the only one in the partnership whose business card says salesperson, making you responsible for the sale – each and every one. How great is that?

Love,
Jody

I thought I’d share this with you as it’s so germane to how we talk about end users and the discount conversation. I recently received this from one of my favorite designer clients…..

Jody,

I was reading a “thread” posed as a question by a manufacturer about designer commissions. It was on LinkedIn. This is what one reader had to say. It is great and full of JodySpeak. Especially the last line.

I’d like to hear how everyone handles the client’s who ask “Do you get a discount?” in anticipation of you sharing it with them.

My answer to them is “Any proceeds I receive from trade discounts are what enable me to offer superior service to my clients without increasing my hourly design fees and project management fees. The funds are also used to support the growth of my business and the development of my employees. Does this sound acceptable to you?”

And here was my response……

“Do you get a discount?” is one question. “Do you get different pricing from what I get?” is another question, and may be what they are really asking, but it’s not the question that they DID ask.

The answer to the first question is No. You don’t get a discount. You have a different pricing structure that is to the trade and not retail. The answer to the second question is… “What has you ask?”

If you struggle with challenges like this, I can help you. Call me, email me, whatever. Just don’t keep repeating what you’re doing that doesn’t work.

Love,
Jody

Hearing means that the buyer heard the seller: “This sofa is $6500 as shown” says the seller – and the buyer nods. Since silence often implies consent the seller keeps moving forward, thinking that the buyer just agreed to a $6500 sofa and the sale is imminent.

Agreement means that the buyer agrees with the seller: “This sofa is $6500 as shown…which works within the budget you have for this item, correct?” And the buyer says yes, agreeing that the budget and the sofa price are in the same ballpark. And that’s all that they agreed to, but the seller may think it’s more than that.

Commitment means that the buyer agrees to take action that the seller offers: “This sofa is $6500 as shown, which means it works within the budget for this item. Can we order this today?” And the buyer either says yes or stalls or says no. Make no mistake – here and only here is where the seller asked the buyer to buy.

Take a look at your sales process and execution. Have you collapsed one for the other and thought you were further along the road than you actually were? Have you thought you had commitment when you only had agreement, and were left wondering why the sale didn’t close?

The power is being real about your selling actions so that you can make the subtle differences work for you. To get a commitment you have to ask for it, which is easier to do if there is already agreement – but know they are not the same.

With thanks and love,
Jody

For the last couple of months I have been writing blogs for showrooms about what they need to cross off their lists of ‘must knows’ and ‘gotta dos’. To know what I have told them, go to my blogsite and read “Dating” and “Let’s try this again…Installation date”.  In these blogs I have pleaded with showroom salespeople to get time and money information from YOU about your project and your client.

Now it’s your turn to have my undivided attention and unrequested but now more than ever needed advice and assistance.

You are the kingpin (or queen bee!) of this entire design process. Upon you rest the aesthetic direction, how and when the project will go, what product is sourced and purchased, and the management of your client to follow the plan that you and they have agreed to. I know and appreciate that you didn’t become a designer solely to manage projects and people, and sometimes bristle at the sales and business end of being a designer. And yet those skills are critical to the project moving forward; the skills of bringing clarity and communication to all of the interactions among involved parties.  And the skills of building partnerships upstream (client) and downstream from you (showrooms/vendors as your sales process partners) are as important as is the beauty of the project you are creating.

To that end are a couple of key components that never go away, and get more sensitive and critical as the project moves forward – namely, time and money. In another time that will not soon return, those were issues that might have been marginally discussed early in the process when wallets were wide open and the bottom of them miles away, these key points were less of a hot topic then than they are today. You don’t get it both ways – either there is a budget or there isn’t – yet. They are willing to discuss that with you or they either don’t trust you enough to share that yet or they just don’t know – the former of which is something to develop and the latter of which is something to discuss. Regardless, you gotta talk about the money.

Same is true for installation date. You may not be in a hurry to complete this project, but someone who is signing the front of the check undoubtedly is. Living in a construction site (unless it’s house #2 or #3 – and even then!) is not fun, and when the time and materials clock keeps running, and an event that might be driving this process is getting closer, someone is going to get anxious…and then we go back to the money conversation again. PLEASE establish installation dates and the dates by which, moving backward from there, decisions need to be made, deposits need to be placed, by DATE, so that the project can be completed on time and on budget. Even with social media as an important source of visibility, most designers are still operating without a marketing plan and relying on the referrals of clients to get new projects. When you create a drop dead gorgeous space, that fulfills the lifestyle needs of your client, AND complete it ON TIME and ON BUDGET, your clients have LOTS to crow about…. and will crow about YOU. Let me know if you need help with any of this. I’m in your corner.

Love,
Jody

1. A place to work toward or back from.
2. An actual sense of urgency and completion based on THEM, not based on whether you get it in to make your month, this month.
3. Data in your pipeline that is accurate and relevant to your goal – this month or any month to come.
4. A real sense of where this project is and when it’s going to start or finish.
5. Any control over YOUR sales process and your business.

Without a place to work toward or back from, you have no ‘context’ for the business conversation. Without that, the conversation will drift somewhere and will likely end up with the designer leaving the showroom with a couple of tear sheets and even a quote, leaving you feeling confident that ‘this is going to happen’….and the chase begins.

Without an actual sense of urgency based on THEM you will push this sale to a date that YOU need to have the order in. They will feel the push and will either push back or disappear. Ask “Have you established a date for delivery / installation yet?” and if they say they haven’t, then ask when they think the client would like to see this project completed. If they don’t know that either, consider that they are either very early in the process or they are not managing this project…the client is.

Without accurate data in your pipeline, you are living in a dream world, void of reality. It feels good to be there for awhile and it gets very uncomfortable around the 21^st of the month…when you start getting scared about not making goal and either take no action or take desperate action. If you cannot accurately project your business, you will consistently NOT make goal. This is YOUR business and you need to drive this side of the transaction to support the manufacturing of product to fulfill your designer’s time frame.

Without a real sense of where the project is you don’t have the opportunity to determine how much of this project you can go after. If they are early in the process (such that they don’t have an installation settled yet) you can source LOTS of product by opening up the conversation about the PROJECT rather than the product that brought them in today. If they are late in the project and are looking for quick lead times, your actions will be very different.

Without an installation date, you will not manage YOUR sales process. You will treat all quotes the same…and they are not. You will not go ‘wide and deep’ if they are early, and you won’t ask for the sale if they are getting close to that date.

If they don’t have a date, SET ONE for them. Tell them that you want them to meet whatever budget and deadline they will have so that their client is happy AND so that you can “manage the milestones” to completion date.

For instance, if they say the installation date is mid January (10 weeks away), you start to itemize the ‘milestones’ by when actions need to happen and decisions need to be completed. Say “To ship by January 10, we need to order by November 10, which means that you need to have a check from your client by November 5 in order to get one to me on time. Are those dates doable for you?” And get agreement from them.

Ask how you can support them in meeting these dates (with reminders or phone calls).

You either own your sales process or you don’t. If you do, you will have straight conversations with your designers about how the process works so that the process works. Or you can avoid it and hope and pray that it will just happen and plan to make lots of calls the last week of the month and leave messages that do not compel the designer to take action. YOU choose either way, as you are the ONLY one responsible for your success or lack of it.

Love,
Jody

Your job now has MORE to it that it used to.  It has aspects to it and things to do now that it didn’t have before, aspects that may be core elements to the job today.

I talked to my ex-husband recently and he shared how his role has changed in his company, Twilight Productions.  Nick Seivert books entertainment for events and hospitality and, like the rest of us, has been belt-tightening in the last couple of years just to stay afloat.  In doing that, he had to let go and took the place of the people he had on staff who would go to the event and see that all is well with the talent and with the client.  By doing it himself now, he found that he engages with the client as set up occurs, asks about how the event is going, and how his people are doing.  As a result, each and every time he goes on a set up call, he books more business, just by being there and talking/listening to the client, who invariably asks him if he can book other events.  It didn’t start out as his intention, but he is maximizing each opportunity that the staff people before him never, ever did.

So, what does this mean to you?  Whining about changes in your job, how it’s unfair, this isn’t what you signed on for, and on and on and on doesn’t change a thing other than your state of (un)happiness.  You can look for another job, one that’s more like the job you started – and it’s likely that this job has morphed over the last few years, too.  Or you can accept the changes and identify what’s new that you need to learn and incorporate into what the job requires now to perform at the level you used to perform at.  Where the real power here is to give up the resistance that your job is not the way you want it to be and to pine for the old job which is not returning any time soon, if ever.  The new responsibilities aren’t the cause of angst, it’s the resistance to them that is fatiguing, joyless, and a huge waste of time….time that is better spent engaged and falling in love with the life and job you have now, right now, today.

Love,
Jody

By connecting in the first selling step, we hope to be in a good position in the second step (Qualifying) to have earned the right to ask the questions we need to ask to get the answers we need to have. And ANYTHING that forwards the ability to do that is worth investigating and trying.

In a selling situation, the seller needs to ask questions. Many sellers feel that they are invading the buyer’s privacy by asking too many questions. Asking permission that is granted by the buyer eliminates that restrictive reaction.

I love the concept of asking permission to ask questions. I love asking anyone I’m in conversation with who is talking about something interesting to ask them “May I ask you a question?” Most people, in response to that question and without missing a beat, will say “Yes”. And will pause and listen to the question being asked and enjoy the attention and care of being listened to intently.

Try it with people you love, try it with people you’ve just met. Just try it.

Love,
Jody