While the outcome of the election is far from certain, and the president may in fact win re-election, if he had employed some basic sales principles over the last five ultra-competitive months, he might have a bigger lead as he races to the finish line. Here are five tenets of sales messaging that any good salesperson knows – and that could have made a difference in this election.

Control the conversation – customers (voters) are bombarded with messages. When you add too much to the pitch, or vary the message, you make it hard for the decision maker to follow. Yes the issues are many – taxes, jobs, education, infrastructure, foreign affairs — but in the debates, and in his campaigning, the conversation within each of these categories varied widely, and was hard to follow. He allowed himself to be redirected from topic to topic. You would never let that happen with a prospective customer; you would want to keep the conversation focused.

Keep the pitch simple – Obama has four or five notable successes to his credit – Bin Laden, keeping the auto industry alive, preventing terrorist attacks here at home, withdrawing troops from Iraq. He should have focused on them, and just them, and stuck with them. The best value propositions are simple and repeated so the customer really gets it.

Use customer testimonials – It’s one thing if you (the salesperson) say your product/service/company is fantastic, but even better if your other customers say it. Surely there are lots of people who appreciate and have benefitted from what Obama has done. Take Obamacare. Most of the banter is that it’s a horrible thing for America. But surely there are Americans who’ve benefitted from it. Why not put them front and center and let them speak on its behalf?

Never dis your competition – This is professional selling 101. I learned it first day on the job. Sure, you believe your product or service is better than your competitors’, and you know what’s wrong with your competitors’ products and services. But it’s not your place to tell the customer what that is. It’s up to the customer to find it out for themself. By my calculation, half of the debate conversation and subsequent campaigning was about what’s wrong with the competitor. That’s unprofessional, and it tends to backfire, reflecting poorly on you in the prospect’s mind.

Introduce change as a risk – Change is scary, so you always have a built-in advantage when you’re the incumbent vendor to your customer. You know the customer’s issues and key people and the process is in place to service and support the customer. The notion of a new vendor creates all kinds of questions and uncertainty, and it’s certainly the case when you swap out the entire Federal government from one party to another. Most people understand this concept, yet I haven’t heard the Obama campaign or Democrats bring up this point.

To be sure, politics and sales are not the same, but there are corollaries, especially when it comes to campaigning. It’s pretty much a sales process, with many of the same elements. The president may pull it off anyway, but had he and his campaign applied some basic sales techniques, he might be breathing a little easier today.

-By David Topus

You might have seen the video of the blind man sitting in front of the downtown office building with a tin can and a sign “I am blind. Please help”. A few occasional contributors stop and add some change to his can. Then a woman comes by and rewrites the sign, and suddenly the number of givers increases so that almost everyone is putting in money. After watching this sudden shift in contributions we see that the new sign reads, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it”.

WOW, what a difference words make. And what a great reminder that if we tap into others’ experiences, and communicate in ways others can relate to emotionally, our message will be so more compelling. In this case, it wasn’t just that he was blind, it was that the new sign, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it” resonated with sighted people who could experience the beauty. It was more content-rich. It made the message personal. It reminded others how fortunate they were compared to him. And it stirred their basic human compassion.

How we convey ideas, thoughts, experiences and feelings makes all the difference in the response we get. True in all forms of communication — whether you’re sharing a story with a friend, writing a resume, sending a sales letter, making a presentation, or striking up a conversation with a random stranger. If you want your audience to engage, to think a certain way, to do something…put yourself in their shoes and consider what’s going to get below the surface and reach them emotionally…that will reach their hearts and souls.

Originally Published on Execunet:Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Sherry Turkle, communications professor at MIT, wrote in a recent Sunday New York Times a fabulous piece about the state of interpersonal communication in our society. Her perspective was especially relevant for job seekers. It pointed out how over-connected our culture has become through technology and under-connected in person. She says that the best, highest-quality relationships require the richness and chemistry that only face-to-face interaction permits and that the skills of interpersonal communication are being all but lost as we become more isolated from one another.

Airtime appeal: Do we really want to talk to strangers?

Airtime, a site that allows users to video chat with strangers, launched last week. But do we really want to talk to people we don’t know, asks Sophie Robehmed.

A bus driver. A shop assistant. A fellow commuter you bump into. City dwellers talk to strangers every day.

But apart from these brief interactions, genuine conversations with random people are rarer.

The stereotype is that older people feel happier engaging the strangers they encounter.

But the young also do it, albeit that the stereotype is that it’s often only when they’re chatting each other up.

Small talk with strangers can be met with surprise or even suspicion. More often than not, meaningful relationships are not formed from a random interaction, just like friendships might not really be formed on Facebook.

The launch of Airtime is yet another attempt to try to build on the concept of random interaction. On one level, the former Facebook president Sean Parker’s site merely enables users to talk to their Facebook friends. It joins the hugely successful Skype service and a raft of others.

But the supposed twist of Airtime is the “talk to someone” button. Users are connected with each other based on criteria like mutual interests or that they are friends of friends.

Parker is trumpeting Airtime as injecting “serendipity” into our online lives. But others have described it as “Chatroulette without the nudity”, referring to the last high-profile service to try to connect random people for video conversations.

Chatroulette was widely mocked for the prevalence of lewdness.

But even if any new site manages to remain flasher-free, do people actually benefit from random conversations?

“Talking to strangers enables you to discover other possibilities. It’s always through others that we achieve our goals,” says David Topus, author of Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life. “The more people we meet and know, the more possibilities exist.”

“Talking to strangers enables you to discover other possibilities. It’s always through others that we achieve our goals,” says David Topus, author of Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life. “The more people we meet and know, the more possibilities exist.”

But do friends of friends, or people with mutual interests, really count as strangers? “Airtime is connecting people,” says Topus. “It’s not quite as random as my definition of a stranger in which you strike up conversation with someone who you don’t know or have a reason to know.

“People with common interests have been affiliating for centuries. With Airtime, both parties have agreed ahead of time to communicate, which makes it easier. Saying that, it feels a little awkward to me to be on the receiving end of an Airtime conversation.”

I know exactly what David means when I log into Airtime for the first time. I don’t like seeing a blown-up version of my face on my screen let alone a stranger seeing it on their screen too.

The first conversation I have is with a man in Edinburgh. I find it hard to focus on talking, as I scan the bottom of the screen to see what we have in common.

It turns out we both like the same newspaper. I am apologetic when my phone rings but I am also relieved the conversation is over.

The next day, a woman wearing a headset enters my screen. She’s talking to me from her workplace, a call centre in San Francisco. I ask her about her experience of Airtime so far. “People are using it to network, offering each other jobs,” she suggests.

Any perverts? “Nothing like that so far,” she says.

Next I speak to a guy who is working in video production in London. We end up talking about the online company he works for and when he finds out I’m a journalist, he tries to sell the company as a product to me. It turns out I’m already signed up.

He insists he’s met some “really interesting people” from the UK, US and India, and even makes it sound fun for a moment.

That’s if you can muster the inclination and can get past feeling self-conscious. But does all this satisfy a human need?

“It undoubtedly does,” says clinical psychologist Oliver James. “Whether it’s curiosity, loneliness or getting off on it, it’s interesting to meet strangers.

“A lot of people who use Airtime will be lonely and wanting someone to talk to in a similar way that people ring Samaritans. They can’t talk to anyone they know because they would be restrained in a way but they also don’t want to see a therapist either.”

Feeling increasingly disconnected with the world led one man, known as Fletcher or “People Person”, to start his Talk to Strangers blog nearly two years ago. “Things that were supposed to be getting better weren’t. Fewer friends, less fun. Being in your twenties isn’t all it’s cracked up to be so I did something about it,” he says.

What started as an experiment for the LA-based blogger in July 2010 “to reconnect with humanity one stranger at a time” has since transformed his life.

“I met a lot of people, made new friends, even got girlfriends. I started becoming a different person, not so cynical and judgemental. I liked who I was becoming.”

The blog proved popular with a small but loyal group of followers. He would get emails from readers saying how much the blog was helping them to get the courage to overcome shyness and to try talking to strangers themselves.

After meeting the woman who became his girlfriend, now fiancee, Fletcher wrote a farewell blog post last month in the run-up to his wedding. But that hasn’t stopped people getting in touch.

“I still get comments every day from people who have taken my simple idea and ran with it. Everyone is lonely. Almost no-one would rather sit in silence than talk to a friendly person.”

Anyone who wants to improve their lives in some way, be it with more clients, a new job, better employees, new investors, a strategic partner, or anything else, knows they can’t do it alone. It’s through others that we achieve our goals. What eludes many people, however, is that often, those “others” are standing in front of them at the supermarket checkout line, next to them in the elevator, across from them at the coffee shop, beside them at the kids soccer field. Most of the time, all it takes is a friendly comment, an observation, even a compliment, to trigger a conversation and begin a relationship. In Talk to Strangers; How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income and Life, I not only show how these “random encounter” opportunities are all around us, but how to initiate and leverage them into profitable business and personal relationships.

The everyday world is full of opportunity, if you know how to tap it. Anyone have a story to share about a successful random encounter that monetized in some way???

It makes random connecting so much easier.

v     They’re kind of like bumper stickers on cars — they give you information about the owner. And they make it so natural to start a conversation. “You work for those guys?”, is a perfect question for starting a conversation. Most people will light up when you ask, and most of the time will respond affirmative. I say most of the time because it’s possible they’re wearing someone else’s logo, or garment for that matter, but that’s unlikely. It’s also possible they hate their company, but that’s also unlikely, especially if they’re wearing the logo.    So back to the conversation…”How long’ve you been with them?”, is a great follow up. And from there, “what do you do for them?”, asked with authentic curiosity will help you guide the conversation to discover what is possible. If you know someone who works at the same company, you might ask if they know them. If you know something about the industry, you might remark on it. If you want to know more about the industry, you can ask.

…   When someone wears a piece of clothing with their company logo on it, they’re usually proud of it. And they’re usually willing to talk about it. After all, it’s there for all to see. What a great invitation to connect, to converse, to explore and to learn. From there, anything is possible.

Network Without Trying

By
Amy Levin-Epstein

(MoneyWatch) Standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. Waiting to pay for your dry cleaning. Sitting at your child’s bus stop pick-up spot. All of these seem like boring stops in your everyday life, right? Not so, according to a new book, “Talk to Strangers: How Everyday, Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income, and Life.” Author David Topus says these are all potential networking opportunities — every bit as useful as a formal meet-and-greet events.

Here’s what he has to say about turning chance encounters into opportunities to gain information, contacts, or even a new job.

Why is casual networking — done as you go about your day — even more effective than the traditional kind?

Topus: You see the same people again and again at formalized networking activities, where in a random everyday situation you’ll meet fresh people. Networking events also tend to attract people who are looking for things, not necessarily the people who have things to give out (like jobs and investments). Finally, people who have influence may tend to stay away from those kinds of events. When you meet someone in a random situation who is influential they are often less guarded.

What are some possible networking venues?

Topus: You could meet someone in an elevator, standing in line in the supermarket checkout, at Starbucks, and certainly sitting on an airplane. You can even meet someone standing on the sidelines watching your kids play soccer. You never know who is influential — you have to assume that everyone is worth meeting, and that you can improve everyone’s life somehow. Approach everyone equally.

Why are planes such a great place to network?

Topus: When you’re on a plane you have uninterrupted time. If you’re sitting next to the person you clearly have lots of uninterrupted time with them. The environment is naturally conducive to random connecting. If you’re sitting in first class, you [often] find people of influence.

How might someone initiate these random encounters?

Topus: Say something that is engaging and reasonably intelligent, and maybe somewhat revealing. If you’re in a travel venue and someone has a big suitcase, you might say, “That looks like a long trip, where are you headed?” If you’re in a coffee shop and somebody is working on their laptop, ask about the technology. “How do you like your MacBook Pro? What kinds of stuff do you do with it? What kind of work do you do?”

Do you practice this casual type of networking in your everyday life? Please share in the comments section.

I recently made a great connection with someone standing next to me at the bookstore next to a huge display of advice books for college graduates. All I did was remark on how much advice there was on the topic, and how kids today need all the help they can get. He agreed, and then I made the conversation a little more personal by asking if he needed that much advice when HE graduated (he was my age so I knew I was taking him back a ways). Not really he said, because he had an in-demand major and got a job right away. He proceeded to tell me about his first job, and how things were easier then. From we talked about his career path and current line of work, for which my book happened to be highly relevant. He bought a copy, we exchanged cards, and I now have a new contact who happens to run a small engineering company. It all began with a comment about what was happening in the moment.