Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

Business people in the UK have devalued selling for far too long and some managers have convinced themselves that they would do better if they did not employ salespeople - after all good products sell themselves, don’t they?

As a consequence, until very recently, salespeople have done everything possible to avoid calling themselves “A Salesman or a Saleswoman.” They have developed a series of euphemisms such as: “Sales Engineer,” “Account Executive”, “Technical Sales Consultant” etc. But nowadays we accept that we all sell everyday - doctors, lawyers, estate agents, architects, and politicians.

The fact remains that anyone who is in business has to sell themselves and their products - and the so called “Captains of Industry” - Branson, Roddick, Marshall, Hanson, Gates, Dell and Co. are thought the best salespeople in the world.

It therefore follows that the quality and success of our salespeople will ultimately determine the success of our companies. Certainly the world has become more competitive and in order to survive and stay in business we need to continually expand and develop the skill sets of our sales team.

Sir John Harvey-Jones said “Most companies fail not in their attempts to be innovative or creative. In this country most of them fail because they undervalue the importance of professional selling”

Unfortunately, the task of selling never becomes any easier and as competition continues to intensify, sales people will face issues that can be extremely difficult to deal with e.g. decreased product uniqueness, increased competition within ‘safe’ markets, longer sales cycles, and shorter product life spans.

Every organisation that intends to survive in the re-engineered environment, which arrived with the new millennium, must, in my view, respond to those realities and recognise that there is not one critical sales related challenge, which must be addressed but five and I will discuss these in a follow up post.

In Summary:
Our commercial functions, particularly the sales team, represent our forward line, if they are not scoring regularly we cannot possibly achieve our overall commercial objectives – i.e. nothing happens until somebody sells something and all of that investment in costly accounting software, new office equipment, expensive IT systems etc. will count for nothing.

We can therefore say with complete confidence, that selling really is the key factor in the total marketing process

Today’s News: I had quite a lengthy conversation with Robin Frey Carey of The Customer Collective - have you been over to there yet? - and we were discussing, amongst other things, webinars and tele-seminars. My view is that like all things in life, there are good ones and erm, less than good ones. For example, the Business Experts Webinars initiative is superb and I think Lee has a really big success on his hands - if you want to check the itinerary for May, just click on the box in the left hand column. (Due to the pressure of other commitments, I will not be appearing until September)

Thanks to a superb suggestion from my good friend Keith Rosen last week, we are working on something very unique and I promise to share it with you very shortly.

Talking of upcoming tele-seminars, have you really booked your place for my conversation with the remarkable Kevin Eikenberry yet? Just click on the banner below - please.

Tomorrow: We are putting the final touches to the re-worked Top Sales Experts site and preparing to give Top 10 a makeover - plenty to keep me going. Wherever you are, have a great w/e and enjoy the sunshine

Just to say………….

Back on January 7th

So here we are my final, final posting of 2007 and it’s time to announce:

The 2007 JF Article Community Awards.

As I suggested last week, whilst last year’s awards were very much “tongue in cheek,” this year, I have invested time in really assessing the sites to which I contribute and others which I have considered doing so.

I have divided the awards into just three categories that are pertinent to me personally i.e.

Miscellaneous Article Communities - sites who do not specialise, but rather accept articles on a wide range of subjects.

The nominees in this category were:

Ezine Articles

Go Articles

Buzzle

Idea Marketers.

This was probably the easiest choice for me: The winner is Ezine Articles

Chris Knight continues to develop a very strong brand and with more than 70.000 contributing authors, Ezine is probably the most successful article community ever. However, despite their size, the quality of their service has not been compromised and they continue to exceed expectation in every department. So congratulations to Chris and his team for winning this category for the second year running.

Business Article Communities - sites who promote business specific articles.

The nominees here were:

The Sideroad

Build Your Own Business

Woopidoo

Best Management Articles

This was a much more difficult decision because all of these communities have their strengths: For example, The Sideroad present very well and Heather and Michael take their work very seriously. David Bain’s BYOB continues to attract some very high quality authors and Woopidoo appear to be very selective.

However, this year I believe Ismael Tabije at Best Management Articles has made a herculean effort to establish his community and he just edges it.

Congratulations to you and your team Ismael.

Sales Article Communities - sites that specialise in promoting sales and marketing articles and services.

The nominees here were:

Rain Today

Sales Gravy

Salesopedia

Eyes On Sales

The most difficult decision for a number of reasons: To begin with, they are all really excellent communities, who promote their contributing authors superbly. Sales Gravy and Salesopedia are the new boys on the block but both have developed an excellent reputation and I know for a fact that Jeb Blount (Sales Gravy) and Clayton Shold (Salesopedia) work tirelessly to continually improve their product

Aaron at Rain Today provides an excellent editing service and they are probably the largest and best known.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how Eyes On Sales develops now that they have been purchased by Landslide Technologies – a very forward thinking organisation. Not sure if Jan Visser is staying around, but I hope he is because he also a smart cookie who I like very much.

In the end it came down to personal experience: I have had a much closer connection with Clayton this year and both he and Jeb have enthusiastically supported Top 10 Sales Articles.

So just edging it is Salesopedia – congratulations to Clayton and his unsung partner Dave. Great job guys. That wraps up the awards for this year and it’s time for me to wind down for a well earned festive break. Once again, my thanks to all of you for your loyal support and I do hope you will come back and join me here on January 7^th – JF

PS: Please don’t forget that the Top Sales Article Of 2007, will be announced on New Years Eve at www.top10salesarticles.com

What a year!

Actually, it is still continuing at a very hectic pace with the Top Sales Article Of The Year poll still running until December 30th with the winner set to be announced on New Year’s Eve and of course, the JF Article Community Awards winners will be posted on Christmas Eve. I will then be officially off-line until January 7th, re-charging the batteries and re-introducing myself to family, neighbours and pets.

We completed our planning for 2008 more than four weeks ago and more of that later, but first I have the opportunity to review 2007 and all that……….

Our first quarter plan involved updating the main JF site, giving the blogit a makeover and preparing to exit from The jfa Group. In practice, we completed all of that, but then we went into overdrive with a number of brand new initiatives, most of which had not been part of our original planning for the year – but that is the immediacy of the internet.

In February, we conceived the concept of delivering a single location, where every week, the very best sales related articles would be selected and showcased – with considerable originality, we called this site, “Top 10 Sales Articles” and having secured the services of some of the top sales experts in the world to act as an adjudication panel, we finally launched in April.

Initial visitor numbers as with any new venture were fairly low, but gradually we have built a huge weekly patronage and of course, the excitement leading up to the grand finale is really quite extraordinary.

So it was that we formed Top Sales Associates, to promote the very best sales related products, solutions and services

It was also in April that I was asked by b5 to take over their leadership focussed blog, Leadership Turn. This was something very new for me as never before had I attempted to post on a blog every single day of the week, but it was an immense challenge and that is what really excited me.

Within a couple of months, I had been nominated as one of the top leadership blogs for 2007 in a poll organised by “Mr Remarkable” himself, Kevin Eikenberry, who has since become a very good friend: I didn’t win and I didn’t deserve to, but I did come second thanks to an extensive address book of friends, who almost to a man and woman answered the call to arms and voted for me – otherwise I would probably have come way down the field after all, I was and still am, a relative novice at this blogging lark!

The Turn was fun and I made lots of new contacts but it was terribly time consuming and in the end I had to walk away, despite a reassuring leap in visitor numbers, because we had so many other pressing initiatives – however I remain eternally grateful for the experience made possible by my editor Douglas Hanna, for his patience and support.

In May, we began considering the viability of an autonomous site for the Top Sales Experts team, where we could all showcase our solutions more effectively than on Top 10 Sales Articles, because space was and still is at a premium.

The first designs looked superb and we drew up a list of the additional experts we wanted to invite onto the team – then wham! Nikki Owen, creator of The Sales Activator® and our sponsor on Top 10, came up with the concept of creating a specialised sales leadership resource – a one stop location, where sales captains could find tools for self-development, sales team sessions, articles, process tool-kits, newsletters, in fact everything they could possibly need to gain an advantage in ever increasing competitive markets.

By September we had launched the Sales Leadership Zone and despite a very slow take-up on subscriptions, which led us to reverse our thinking, this free to subscribe site has now really taken off and is fast becoming THE place to be for anyone charged with managing, training and developing a professional sales team.

At this point, I decided to bring all of our enterprises under one trading umbrella and we formed the Sales Practitioners Group, which is now based in London and Paris, with a further office planned to open in Cape Town at the end of 2008.

Once the Zone was up and running, my team turned their attention once more to the Top Sales Experts initiative and in my opinion, produced their best work to date.

The new additions took the Experts team to twenty six strong, with an excellent balance of established sales gurus and up and coming stars and we really do have some exciting plans to develop this site in 2008 – www.topsalesexperts.com

Which leads me in nicely to sharing with you my overall objectives for the next twelve months.

To begin with, my new consultancy – The Sales Practitioner – launches in January, with a brand new range of leading edge solutions and services. That’s all I can tell you right now, because the elves are busy designing something special ?

Certainly, I intend travelling more and accepting a greater number of invitations to speak, coach and consult because this year I have devoted almost entirely to online development and I have really missed the human interaction with clients.

That is not to say that we will not be forging ahead with further development of all our online initiatives, particularly with the Top Sales Experts team – think sales conventions, webinars, online one-one coaching and more.

It is also my intention to considerably enhance the Sales Leadership Zone, adding even more resources and at some point during Q1, I will launch a new leadership blog – tougheratthetop.com – which is very overdue in terms of my ambitions to give something back to aspiring leaders.

I have two books planned and I anticipate being prompted all the way by my publisher, Jeb Blount. I will also attempt to write more new articles and submit to the six or seven sites that I know will promote my work appropriately – I don’t need to mention them again, just look at my JF Article Community Awards nominees on Monday’s post.

Finally, I will be involving myself in a number of non-JF projects, in an advisory capacity to ensure my grey matter continues to be fully exercised. I will also immerse myself in all things Sales 2.0, but I will certainly not be dictated to by it’s supporters!:-(

I guess that’s about it: I need to thank you for coming back and allowing me to share my thoughts with you on a daily basis, it has been a tremendous challenge but immense fun.

I also want to thank all my friends, acquaintances and colleagues, new friends who were introduced into my life this year plus of course my team of incredibly talented little elves, especially Jacqueline Male, who is “Merlin” in my eyes and the “Top Graphics Guy” Bill Jeckells, for taking concepts from the “Crazy One” and turning them into reality.

To all of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making 2007 a very special year for me – words don’t do it somehow.

Have a great Christmas and do take a break from present wrapping/mince pie making/turkey stuffing etc on Monday to find out who has won the JF Article Community Awards – oh, and if you haven’t voted yet for goodness sake get over there – www.top10salesarticles.com

My Very Best

JF

PS: I am very happy to be a member of the Concord Society, because you cannot buy your way into that and neither can you bullshit your way in. Who?

“What we fear is not suffering or even death.

What we fear is that we have wasted life.

In our darkest moments we are afraid that our highest calling will go unanswered.”

Well here we are, my final list of nominees for The 2007 JF Article Community Awards.

Whilst last year’s awards were very much “tongue in cheek,” this year, I have invested time in really assessing the sites to which I contribute and others which I have considered doing so.

You will note that I have divided the awards into just three categories that are pertinent to me personally i.e.

Miscellaneous Article Communities - sites who do not specialise, but rather accept articles on a wide range of subjects.

Business Article Communities - sites who promote business specific articles.

Sales Article Communities - sites that specialise in promoting sales and marketing articles and services.

I am not going to elaborate on my reasons for my choices yet, I will reserve my commentary for Christmas Eve, when I announce the winners (6pm GMT - 1pm EST) - just to keep you guessing

What I do need to say is that mine, as ever, will be a very personal and subjective view based on my experiences through 2007 - you might just be surprised. Here we go:

Miscellaneous Category:

Business Specific Category:

Sales Specific Category:

Again, the winners will be announced here on Christmas Eve.

Today’s News:

The hugely anticipated Volume 3 of the “Top Sales Experts Share Their Top Articles” e-book, will be launched at 6pm GMT (1pm EST) and you can download this fantastic 86 page collection for FREE here

Tomorrow:My guest on the JF Guest Author Spot is Cheryl Clausen and you can expect something special and original from fellow Top Sales Expert, Coach Cheryl.

I don’t know if you remember “chain mail” when you were a kid? You would receive a letter from someone you had never heard of and you had to write to five of your friends to keep the chain going – if you broke it, the consequences were too horrible to contemplate.

Well if you think about it, this was the earliest form of viral marketing and it is now commonplace on the net.

My good friend and fellow Top Sales Expert, Jill Konrath of Selling To Big Companies, just tagged me to share 8 random things about myself, so here they are:

1. I have just launched the Sales Practitioners Group and the first initiative – Sales Leadership Zone will be live on September 11th (Full details next week)
2. I have an intolerance to lactose, which is a real pain as I love cheese!
3. I cycled over 2000 miles last year.
4. I am a sports fanatic and had the opportunity to play both soccer and cricket professionally.
5. I have supported Manchester United for over 50 years.
6. I wish I had studied harder at school as my dream was to go to Oxford/Cambridge University. Now I am living my dream through my son Joe
7. I am a member of MENSA but I only attended one meeting and left after ten minutes because the people were so humourless and boring
8. Although I am a confirmed Francophile, my dream is to live permanently in Cape Town (Watch this space!)

Now, I pass on the tags to:

• Andrea Nierenberg – World-class networking guru and global traveller
• Kevin Eikenberry – Remarkable friend and exceptionally talented author
• Chris Knight – “The Man” – Mr EzineArticles and entrepreneur extraordinaire
• Douglas Hanna –  Customer relationship guru and my ex-editor at b5
• George Petri – “Sales Visionary” and savvy businessman

Check out their sites. These are all really smart individuals.

And now more about Jill Konrath and Sales Shebangs – but to ensure that you receive correct information, let Jill tell you all about this sales event of the year herself………….

A Community for Women Who Sell!

Sales Shebang is for all the smart, savvy women who sell.

We’re here to help you be even more successful—perhaps even unstoppable!

Attend our first ever conference on November 5-6th in Minneapolis. You’ll get fresh ideas, unique insights, inspiration and practical information to help you:

• Capture lucrative new accounts.
• Accelerate your sales cycle.
• Create value for your customers.
• Catapult past your competitors.
• Do all this without going crazy!

You’ll learn all this from an all star cast of top sales experts who know what it takes to achieve extraordinary success. Plus the connections you make will be worth their weight in gold.

The Sales Shebang kicks off the night before with a comedy performance not to be missed! You’ll want to come early, enjoy the fun and start networking..

You can find full details by clicking on the banner in the left hand column.

That’s it for this week - have a great w/e wherever you are in the world! - JF

Before I announce my preferred article directory sites for 2006, which I have to say is a purely subjective view based solely on my personal experiences, I would like to share with all directory site owners just what it is that we authors look for – what is it that encourages us to submit our best and our most recent work on a regular basis? – After all, we are expected to meet some fairly stringent submission guidelines!

I should add that these are in no particular order as they are all equally important.

To begin with, speed of publication is crucial; having spent hours or even days preparing an article, it really is so frustrating to have to wait weeks for it to appear on a site.

Secondly, presentation – i.e. how one’s work is presented on a site is also vital because the visual aspect has to appeal to visitors. Those of us that have taken the time to get up to speed with even basic html are “disappointed”, to say the least, when we cannot put those skills into practice and we are left with a very boring and dull looking piece of work.

It goes without saying that every author wants their work to be read by as many people as possible, therefore a site’s popularity has to be taken into account. It really is soul destroying to see that your article has only been viewed by say a dozen visitors in a month on one site, when another has provided a thousand views.

Finally, I would say responsiveness is of paramount importance: If I have a query with a published article or need advice on an aspect of article submission, I don’t really want to have to wait weeks for a reply – my need is immediate.

When I first began writing and submitting my work in May this year in order to create what publishers call “a platform”, I chose a small number of sites and then I built on that select few: However, that “select few” grew to more than 150 which was clearly far too many and gradually, I have come the full circle and now only work with about 20, for all the reasons described above. The reality is that whilst there may well be an abundance of sites claiming to specialise in my field, sadly, very few meet my criteria.

OK, so here we go:

Top “Miscellaneous” Article Directory:

Ezine Articles – www.EzineArticles.com

It is very difficult to fault Chris Knight’s operation: I cannot tell you that they have been around longer than anyone else, but it does feel that way and the level of professionalism is extremely high. Ezine scores top marks in all the areas that are important to me and with circa 35.000 authors registered, clearly I am not alone in my thinking. To give you some idea of the sheer quantity of submissions, although I have made it into the top 1% with 125 articles published since May, I still have not broken into the top 300!

Chris has developed the site into a “community” and although this is an ongoing objective, he is succeeding. The managing editor is a very efficient guy called “Wally” and I am always impressed with the speed of his responses to any queries I have.

Probably the key factor for me is the number of visitors and I know that a well written and pertinent piece will attract upwards of 1000 readers. I have only one criticism, and it is a very small frustration; deciding which category to submit a business article to can be a headache. For example, an article on say presentation techniques is wholly relevant to almost all commercial functions but I know it will attract more readers if I place it in “Sales” and this means that anyone who only looks at the “Sales Management” or “Leadership” categories and does not do a key word search, will not get to read it.

Runners Up:

I would also like to mention four other sites that I can highly recommend within this category:

Buzzle – www.buzzle.com
Article Dashboard – www.articledashboard.com
Searchwarp – www.searchwarp.com
Article Factory – www.articlefactory.com

All four provide an excellent service and I very much look forward to working with them in 2007. (The Article Alley “group” would easily have made it onto the shortlist, but they have become a victim of their own success this year and took a while to catch up with a backlog of submissions, however they are up and running again).

Top Business Article Directory:

Build Your Own Business – www.buildyourownbusiness.biz

This was always going to be a “no brainer” decision for me and those of you who are regular readers of this blog will understand why. To begin with, David Bain the founder and owner of BYOB is just simply one of those people you immediately like and trust; I realised this when I was trying to submit my first article way back in May. The site was experiencing some minor and I have to say, rare technical difficulties. However, an e-mail to David received a very swift response and several messages later matters were resolved – and I should tell you that this was fairly late at night, but typically he introduced himself with a level of personal commitment that is unique.

David is a true professional and he will know that this is the highest commercial accolade I pay anyone: He is also extremely knowledgeable about all things “SEO” and generous with advice – a simple query will elicit a full and relevant reply containing specific details written in a language that the recipient can understand.

He has my total admiration for what he has achieved with all his enterprises and initiatives in 2006 – he also has my commitment to continue contributing my work on a consistent basis during 2007, I am very proud to be associated with his ongoing success.

Runners Up:

In no particular order:

The Side Road – www.thesideroad.com
Cash Flow Seller – www.cashflowseller.com
Best Management Articles – www.bestmanagementarticles.com
Manager Newz – www.managernewz.com

Again, all four of these runners up provide an excellent service and I am also looking forward to two further “sales specific” sites that I have been advised will be launching during 2007: Top Sales Experts and The Sales Desk.

Top Sales Articles Category:

The Sales Vault – www.salesvault.com

I suspected that this category would have been more keenly contested but for a number of reasons, in the end the decision was pretty straightforward. Daphne Slife has developed a really informative “group” and her newsletters are superb. I would like to say more, but my relationship with Daphne is relatively new, which tells you how quickly I have become impressed.

Runners Up:

Eyes On Sales – www.eyesonsales.com
Sales Resources – www.salesresources.com
Sales Newz – www.salesnewz.com

I can highly recommend all of these three sites and a particular word of praise for Jan Visser, of Eyes On Sales who has worked tremendously hard on the revamp of his site, which is looking really good.

OK, that’s it, once again congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all the “nominees”.

Well, 2006 was a very exciting year but 2007 is going to be even more challenging: To begin with, the new JF site launches in January – www.jonathanfarrington.com and we are also giving this site – the JF blogit - a makeover within the next four weeks.

However, all of The jfa Group solutions will have autonomous sites and the first one off the production line will be ASP Profile, hopefully by the end of January.

That just leaves me to thank the technical team here at Group for doing such a superb job – they really are the unsung heroes but without them none of this would be possible.

May I wish all of you, including my Partners and Associates, a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year - JF

P.S. New articles appear on both www.jonathanfarrington.com and www.thejfagroup.com as usual.

Welcome to my brand new blog! Hopefully, you will return often to enjoy articles, advice, commentary, interviews with experts in the fields of professional sales and sales leadership and maybe even contribute with your own comments.

Although tomorrow, October 6th, is the official launch date agreed with the technical team, I am actually out of the country on business and so my first real blog of note will be early next week when I return home to France, however let me share a few thoughts from this week with you, and what a week!

First of all the new jfa Group site - www.thejfagroup was launched and my thanks are due again to the unsung heroes who design and maintain all of our sites, thanks guys, another fantastic piece of work! They are now preparing to start work on the new ASP Profile site which launches before the end of the year.

Then, my son Joe went up to Cambridge to start his first term. I think he has already settled in and providing he, or rather his liver, survives fresher’s week, he will excel, as ever.

Finally, we discovered that a domain we bought and paid for in July, with reputedly, one of the major players in that field, had in fact never been registered! You can imagine that I was less than pleased, particularly as we had begun the design work etc. and have another twenty domains registered with them. The fact that they refuse to give my webmaster the name of the MD and are not responding to either telephone calls or written correspondence, has made me highly suspicious, however I have found the parent company and was quietly amused - actually, that’s not true, I fell off my chair laughing - at a quote the CEO makes “What makes ****** special, are it’s people and their commitment to putting the customer first!” Mmm, I don’t think so.

For obvious reasons, I cannot say more at this stage, suffice to add that I will reveal all next week and it is safe to assume that you will be as staggered as I am at the levels of incompetence and in all probability, gross negligence, by so called industry leaders. Perhaps they have forgotten that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

New articles posted on both the JF and the jfa sites today. The former explores the second stage of how organisations develop, what I call “The Scientific Management Phase” and if you missed the first part in which I identify the first stage, “The Pioneering Phase” you can read it here. The jfa Group feature of the week, highlights the fact that when it comes to bidding for major opportunities, size really does not matter and reveals the secrets of the “Super-Bidders”

Over the coming weeks, I will be recommending excellent sales & marketing articles written by other authors, as well as pointing you towards the business article sites that really do attract the very best writers. You will quickly realise that one of my favourites is www.buildyourownbusiness.biz. The CEO is a wonderful guy called David Bain, who is innovative, bright, offers excellent customer care and if that wasn’t enough, is an expert in his field. David’s site is aimed purely at entrepreneurs, sales and marketing professionals and industry captains. I particularly enjoy listening to his weekly Podcast on Friday evenings, when he discusses the top five articles of the week in depth, before announcing a winner - it really is superb.

OK, have a great weekend - more from France next week .