Should our family values or personal values differ from business values? #TheNewDay

Should our family values or personal values differ from business values?

‘Do as I say, not as I do’ has been a mantra on morals and ethics for years from the older generation ( parents) to the younger. It may be realistic , even practical, but is essentially hypocritical and in some cases most unjust.

People often describe their behaviour changes in life as wearing different hats. E.g. wearing my ‘parent’s hat,  my ‘work hat’, my ‘manager’s hat’. In the early days of social media salespeople would wear a business hat and use Linked in and the personal hat on Facebook.

Millennials tended to conflate the personal and commercial from the start. Indeed being suited or booted for work is less so today. Even uniformed male baristas in the coffee chains may disport the corporate T shirt still wear their work jeans below the hips to model their favoured branded underpants.

A survey of modern manners revealed in the New Day newspaper the results of a survey commissioned by Beko – the Turkish owned white goods manufacturers. 2,000 British families were studied.

76% said having good table manners.  66% not talking with your mouth full ? 58% Washing your hands before eating. 46% No gadgets on the table  Does that still hold true in lunch meetings ?

73% being honest and truthful What would be the % in the business environment  I wonder?

69% respecting your elders? In our business era of the Internet age does such deference still exist ?

i-weekend number 1658 and
new kid on the block issue 15 of The New Day

43% being a team player. How important is it in business to be a team player. A salesperson is expected to collaborate with sales support and co workers yet is set in competition against others through individual targets set by management.

40 % Looking someone in the eye.  In Sales the importance of trust between buyer and seller

38% Thank you emails (for presents)  How good are our thanks you in the office, at meetings with clients.

Saturday's edition of the i weekend had a quote of Oscar Wilde that seems pertinent

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world"

Selling Classes The BBC Great British Class Survey 2013

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.” ― George Orwell, Why I Write 

 

Many Brits are obsessed still by the ‘class’ thing. The success of TV’s Dowton Abbey attests to that.

In the last century we had Yuppies ,Chavs, Sloane rangers, DINKY ( double income no kids yet) the English have always loved to classify and reclassify.

If we really needed any proof of GB being a predominantly secular country the BBC Lab UK study  proves it. Its grading parameters were:-

 economic capital - income, savings, house value –

and social capital the study gives us 7 socio economic grades.  

The old A, B C1 C2  D and E have now been shelved it seems. ( perhaps)

No doubt Advertisers will find the survey of interest along with socio economists.

Since people and relationships are a key currency to selling , Salespeople need to take  note of this ‘new paradigm’ also.

Professor of sociology at Manchester University, Fiona Devine, suggests the survey gives a sense of class in 21st Century Britain. BBC Lab UK worked with Prof Mike Savage of the London School of Economics and Prof Devine on the study.

The findings were published in the Sociology Journal and presented at a conference of the British Sociological Association on Wednesday

The study also measured cultural capital, defined as the extent and nature of cultural interests and activities.

The new classes are defined as:

Elite - the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals

Established middle class - the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital

Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy

New affluent workers - a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital

Traditional working class - scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66

Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital

Precariat, or precarious proletariat - the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital.

The above grading from fruits of success will still be useful :-)

The GBCS was launched on line in January 2011, but data showed participants were predominantly drawn from the well-educated social groups. I guess this also indicates that such people are the most class conscious !

To overcome this  they ran a second identical survey was run with a survey company GFK, with a sample of people representing the population of the UK as a whole, using the information in parallel.

Related Links:

The Great British Class Survey

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058

Take the survey ( if you dare)

https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/class/

6 Selling skills from Social Activism campaigns

The impact of the web on social activism, is making it faster, cheaper and easier to do than ever before. This has big implications for societies around the world.

Its influence is broad and is relevant to  those of us who make and sell stuff .

 This year the USA  have been through a presidential campaign where social activism has been at its height.
 In the UK we had the London 2012 games in volunteer games makers and ambassadors did a great job to help the greatest sports party in the world work brilliantly. They were knicknamed the twitter games.

“The students are revolting !” - Change merchants extraordinaires.

A provocative claim from Nancy Lublin CEO of DoSomething.Org was that "change is the domain of young people".

Just think of the student protesters in Tienanmen Square in 1989  standing in front of that tank. The civil rights movement was as much worked by the many young people in the lunch  counters queues, those refusing to sit elsewhere on the bus etc.. The LS Occupy movement  even brought a positive response from the spokesman for the Bank of England.

One of their key ‘weapons’ today is that young people ‘ get social’.

 Nancy Lublin stressed 6 key areas that changes by the young can be harnessed in selling of social activism campaigns from her experience with  DoSomething.org .

Her talk given to a New York Public broadcaster was also aired by BBC radio 4 Four thought programme.  BBC I player site  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p7bxt

 

1.       Choice – Multiple options Ice cream flavours, cocktails

A superfluity of choice may have  little to do with quality, but we live in a world of Ben and Jerry’s of seemingly endless accessories and applications.

The Proliferation of phone covers, ‘Apps’ offers choices.

It always interests me how many American business people use the word ‘vanilla’ ( ice-cream) in a derogatory sense  meaning bland or the limits of a one trick pony offering.  Yet really good vanilla ice cream is takes a ot of beating.

Similarly a straight forward gin martini is superb but for the moment the 'less -s-more' philosophy is taking a back of stage position.

Nancy’s illustration was her fondness for Peanut butter. In her youth there were just two versions Jif or Skippy Peanut  were the offering. But now there’s low calories , low salt etc.

2.       Customisation –  they don’t buy albums they buy songs they remix or they rent them.

Theymake it their own  and localise it. They build their own play list.

3.       Leading from the middle

For many, the power of crowd sourcing is quite a game changer. Lublin offered different label to the 'old skool'  innovator, laggards mass market categories of conventional product life cycles.

Lublin labelled the audience categories of  a social activism campaign as Presidents -VP -Followers –Slackers

She emphasised that her campaigns were weighted towards Vice presidents and followers. Apparently on social media most people are sharers and followers in the sense on clicking on share.

 Sharers and followers outnumber  90 :10 makers according to Lublin.

 4.       Speed

Today communication signals are sent and received shorter and short time lengths.

 Back in the day a car took 7 years to be developed now it is probably under 18 months from CAD to first model off the  production line.
The typical campaign length for social activism from launch through living to it’s death for Do.Something.com is six weeks.

 

5.       Cost

Social activism campaigns amongst young people must consider cost. i.e. NO COST

A paradigm for DoSomething.com for social activism campaigning with young people means a campaign must involve  no money, youngsters don’t have much. It must not involve adults since  independence from the power of adults is a crucial value .Campaigns must not depend on cars.

6.       Wired

Young folk are master jugglers of technology. They are continually on multiple devices. A study showed they are capable of juggling 9-11 activities at any one time. Adults are nearer to 5-7 devices- although I am not sure I can even manage that many!

Text messages have very high open rates.  Lublin's campaigns begin with a text to get folks to opt in.

The key is to make this multi choice and multi-channel as easy as possible for your audience.


Take a look at DoSomthething.com site click on  http://www.dosomething.org/

Related links
Click here for

 1.  Occupy's influence acknowledged by Bank of England



   2.  Selling methods of Peaceful protest
 
 

 

 

Selling to the Choosy in their choosing

More and more people in work are consciously aware of their role contributing to Sales.

They may not be in direct two way communication with their customer- yet they are aware or say that they are aware that the decision maker or influencer has a choice. In service industries in particular they are aware we have a choice.

For example I may buy my airfare for business and so act as a true decision maker or have someone buy it for me in which case I am an influencer.

BA have reintroduced their “We fly to serve “slogan.  On landing the plane ,their pilots whom we may never see, yet alone speak to, thank us for choosing their airline.

The burger from Burger King is offered as a choice “have it your way”

One’s coffee from Starbucks is expressed as“ happiness” is in ( my) choice.

Selling has been described as asking for a decision whilst buying is about taking and making a decision. 

There is a discipline becoming increasingly popular called psycho economics – behavioural economics.  For salespeople this is of interest because it often helps to explain behaviour which they encounter in buyer behaviour which helps to explain the mix of rational and emotional motivations at paly in the buying journey.

Many choices for Buyers in Business are between things that are not that much different. The value of choice depends on your buyer’s ability to perceive differences between the options

Psycho-economist Sheena Iyengar   from Columbia University in a TED talk studies this area of science see link below.

Her studies have shown that the average number of choices made in the day is 70 decisions in a typical day.

A similar study on CEO’s  time in decision for their task  that in a week  a CEO will work on  139 tasks each of which has many sub choices but  the study revealed  50%  of the decision  were made within 9 minutes or less,  only 12%  were  in an hour category.

Many buyers are overloaded with choice. One tap on the pc and they are hit with overload.

So  the work of Sheena Iyengar on what is going on in the methods we use to choose is of interest to us.

 Sheena did a study on choice at a food store to measure how shoppers react to range of choices.

Jam tasting booth experiment

When 6 flavours of jam were offered   40% stopped at the stall.     30 % buy

When 64 flavours were offered 60% stopped at the stall.       3% buy

So that might show us that the more choice you offer the better. But  what percentage of those who stopped by bought?

For the 64% flavours stall 3% bought

For the 6 flavours of jam stall 30% bought

What this suggests to Sheena is that even if we choose to participate if the range of choices is very broad we are more likely to avoid choice. Her studies also show that even if it is in our best interests , the very broad choice puts us off choosing.

Sheena suggest 4 ways to make better choices

1.    Cut   less is more   Apparently the average supermarket has 45,000 items. Wall mart 100,000 items. Yet the 9^th biggest supermarket however is  ALDI  who narrow their choice offering to 1,400 products.  

2.    Concretization   This is an important technique for those in intangible services that it is vital to make the consequences of the choices in a vivid way.  Alternatively get the buyer to envisage the positive consequences of their choice.

3.    Categorisation   Sheena’s studies show we can handle more categories than choices. In an experiment with categories of a magazine rack in a shop her research showed that   400 magazine (choices) split into  20  sold more than  600 magazines split into  10 categories.

4.    Condition for Complexity – gradually increase the complexity  Start off  with easy  choices in your presentation .

Sheena’s  studies  showed that the sequence in choice a car choice worked better if the sequence started with say choosing out of four gear shifts and steadily build to choosing say from the 56 colour choices keeps buyers more engaged than starting with the vast colour range of 56 colours  and then onto the choice of gear shifts.

Links related

 7 Effective ways to close

http://fruitsofsuccesswithhugh.blogspot.com/2011/02/7-effective-sales-closes-and-ways-of.html

Pat Brenner’s Behavioural Economics site

http://www.scoop.it/t/behavioral-economics

TED talks on Behavioural economics on Choice and Choosing you might find interesting

Sheena Iyengar

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose.html

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM