The hidden trait that unlocks opportunities you didn’t know were there…
The biggest missed opportunities are not the ones you know you have and decide not to take advantage of. The biggest missed opportunities aren’t even the ones you try to take advantage of and mess up somehow. The biggest missed opportunities are the ones you didn’t see coming at all.
Imagine a dinner with a sustainability consultant and several business owners. At a certain point the conversation winds around to sustainability (the consultants favorite topic!) and different strategies and programs are discussed at a very high level. Its pretty clear from the outset that the business owners are not interested in hiring a sustainability consultant – in fact, the consultant leaves the dinner satisfied that good connections were made and that if and when any opportunity may arise, he’ll be on the business owner’s short list of calls.
The consultants assumptions about the business owners are:
Business Owner A – Doesn’t care about sustainability, and isn’t the “kind of person” that spends money on that (until disaster strikes!)
Business Owner B – Is in a cash-flow crunch and doesn’t have any budget for sustainability projects (until revenues pick up)
Business Owner C – Has his sustainability needs well in hand (until his business outgrows his current sustainability plan)
If you were at this dinner, you would have thought the same things. EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT TRUE… In fact:
Business Owner A – Cares about certain aspects of sustainability, but doesn’t think the consultant will understand him
Business Owner B – Has money for very high value projects if they will be sure to deliver in the next 18 months to 2 years
Business Owner C – Has a sustainability crisis on his hands but doesn’t trust anyone to mess around in the inner sanctum of his complicated business.
So how is it that the consultant missed all three of the opportunities?
Its like he had a sign over his head that said, “Not Me. I Don’t Get It”
This sign is written in the language of CREDIBILITY, which is the hidden trait that unlocks opportunities you didn’t even know were there. Its a hidden trait because in my experience, people rarely will tell you that you don’t have enough credibility to be successful in the conversation that you are having. Yet people often change their responses and their willingness to even talk to you based on their assessment of your credibility.
Worse yet, this assessment is often derived from non-verbal, non-specific information that they are garnering within a few moments of meeting you. Not on your experience, capability, or intentions.
I often talk with people who are trying to raise their rates and move ‘up market’ and having trouble doing so. Usually, this is because they have credibility with the lower – income market but do not with the higher – income market.
What do Successful Entrepreneurs Think About Credibility?
Increasing your credibility starts with your mindset. Whether you are talking about business, your career, or even your love life, you can learn a lot from the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. They can ‘sniff out’ the difference between someone of their own kind and someone with a employee’s mindset. If you want to have credibility with people who are really making things happen in the world – read this check list and be honest about where you are on which side of the table:
Contribution VS. Entitlement
Nothing kills your credibility faster than entitlement. Employees think that someone owes them money because the spent time in the office. Entrepreneurs know that the only measure that matters is the measure of real contribution to the group effort.
Outcome VS. Output
Someone with an employee mindset is satisfied by hard work. You’ll often hear them talk about how much they or others deserve based on how hard they are working. People who have a lot of credibility pay attention to the desired result – the outcome – and do not value any output that doesn’t effectively move the team closer to goal.
Sort for What is Needed VS. Sort for What is Requested
Who has more credibility with you? Someone who joins your team and looks for where there are gaps to fill or someone who looks for instructions and is satisfied to follow them? If you are sorting for what is requested, you are operating under the (usually incorrect) assumption that someone knows exactly what everyone should be doing in order to make your collective effort a success.
Work Yourself Out of a Job VS. Work to Protect Your Job
Entrepreneurial minded people are constantly trying to work themselves out of a job. This counterintuitive approach insures that they are always in at the center of the highest leverage needs of the environment. Working to protect your job (either blatantly or subtly) will lead you to less credibility and less credibility.
Action Steps: Generating More Credibility Now..
Take a minute to review the most important areas of your life. In what ways do you match the description of an Entrepreneur? In what ways do you match the description of an employee? If you change your mindset, you will instantly begin to build credibility in areas where you have had less than you think.
You tell me… what are the other big ways entrepreneurs establish their credibility with their mindset?
Frustrated with your team member? Time for training…FOR YOU…
When I was running creative teams, I would frequently leave meetings rolling my eyes at under-performing employees and contractors. I was frustrated that they seemed to continually bring in sub par work and then expect me to fill in the difference. Why couldn’t they just get it? They were working hard. They seemed to be smart enough. But still — I couldn’t count on them to meet my standards, which I felt were high, but reasonable. After all, the other team members seemed to ‘get it’.
In other words, I was poisoning my own organization.
I didn’t fully get this until I was mentoring another executive coach on site with a client almost 15 years later. I was coaching a GM (We’ll call her “Vicky”) of a strategically critical technology organization and I was mentoring a coach (“Lisa”) who was coaching one of her subordinates (Let’s call him “Frederick”).
Vicky had lost her temper because Frederick had been performing poorly. Lisa and I were in a meeting with Vicky, who was telling us the story of the incident. It involved yelling, and even a bit of name-calling. Vicky had apologized for being unprofessional, but felt justified in her upset because clearly Frederick had reached his limitations and wasn’t able to do the job that was required of him. What happened next stopped my heart.
“Frederick isn’t the one that has reached his limitations, you have” Said Lisa to my client, Vicky. My eyes tried to bore a hole in Lisa’s head. She went on to explain, “Think about it. If you know how to handle a situation you simply handle it. It’s only when you are out of options — when you don’t know what to do — that you lose it.” This moment changed my perspective on frustration in the workplace. Frustration is a sign that you are at your own limitations as a leader or a manager.
ACTION STEP: Recall a time that you were frustrated with an employee or team member. Write down what skill or capability that would have made the difference in your ability to handle that situation and get the employee back on track?
Since then you’ll often hear me say (in fact I said it to a client today)
“Either believe in your people fully or fire them. As long as they are on your team, work with them to set them up to win. If they are failing, you haven’t matched them well to their job description. You haven’t given them what they need to succeed. If you are at the end of your limitations and they are still failing – fire them. Immediately. It’s ok to fire someone because you don’t have the ability to lead them.”
Why haven’t you ‘cracked the code’ for having all the customers you want?
*You are working with too many damn variables!*
Here’s an example. Someone came to me frustrated that they are having trouble getting their small service business off the ground (meaning that they are able to make a few thousand dollars per month in revenue, but they can’t seem to grow from there).
I asked about sales conversions… “I’m not sure. Sometimes it seems like it goes really well and sometimes not at all.” Ok. variable one is that there isn’t a proven sales process performed by someone with a proven track record using that process.
I asked about lead generation. “Well, I’ve tried a bunch of different things once, but haven’t found a steady was of getting leads.” Variable number 2. The method of getting leads is not proven.
I asked about who their best customer is. “Well, someone who will pay!” Variable number 3. What is the specific description of someone who is your typical customer. “Oh, well that’s easy. They are wealthy travelers who have the problem of not being familiar with the cities they would like to travel to.” How many of these people have you met and interviewed? ”1 or 2.” Variable number 4. The ‘ideal customer’ here is utterly theoretical. It must be proven that there is a group of people that actually fit your description, want what you have, and are reachable by some predictable means.
I ask about what service they provide. Taking a page out of my book and reading it upside down, they say “What ever the customer wants.” Variable number 5.
What is your pricing model? Variable number 6. (Most people in this position have an unproven pricing model – based on what they would LIKE to have happen, not based on what has really worked for other businesses)
Have you been successful delivering this exact service for another company? “Umm..” Variable number 7. Unproven = unknown. Unknown = variable.
Have you run your own business successfully before?
“Well, yes. But I didn’t make a lot of money if that is what you mean.” Variable number 8.
I ask about the goals of this business “I want to make $500k per year…” Has a business like yours ever done that before? Variable number 9.
Can you solve the equation?
So far, I’m looking at balancing an equation that looks roughly like this:
(A(B+C) / D*(E-F)) / ((G*H / 100-I) = $500,000!
If you are unproven as a small business owner, try to reduce as many as the other variables as possible so that you can know where to start to “crack the code”.
There are no points for originality in business.
Money you make doing the same thing that other people do spends just as well as money you make trying something new. Replicate other people’s working businesses. If it’s not working, replicate it more closely and carefully.
If you want to innovate, pick ONE area and make everything else a constant. Like all aspects of pride and preference, innovation is earned as a right of the successful. Sometimes, a desire to be different is a desire to fail.
Otherwise no one – not even I – can help you figure out what to change, fix, or improve…
The biggest mistake an entrepreneur can make…
I was working with a first-time CEO of a start-up software company. He was well versed on all the leadership books, and even taught entrepreneurialism at a tier-one business school. His business track record was very impressive with several SVP and EVP positions in various departments at larger companies. Here, though, his relationship with the technical founder was strained, the product was late, that first big order was illusive. He looked at me in a moment of total vulnerability and said, “Bryan, what do you think of my leadership? Am I a bad CEO?”.
My reply shocked him.
“Leadership is irrelevant. You aren’t even a ‘real’ CEO. Your team is weak, you don’t have any customers, and your product is just emerging into a demonstrable state. This company needs a CEO like a hole in the head. What this company needs is for you to get out there yourself and sell something. Then come back here and make them build what you sold. It needs you to control it, not lead it. Tell the people that disagree with you to shut up or leave. DO what needs to be done. Once you have a few key customers and a staff of Vps that are smarter than you are, THEN you will need to worry about leadership.”
This got me thinking. The biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make at EVERY stage of the game is playing the game at the wrong stage. As mavericks, we are hard-wired to think we are further down the road than we really are, so I put together this simple set of proof points for all of you. I’d love for you to challenge me on them.
Hint: Descriptions of later stages DO NOT apply to earlier ones. This is why I don’t recommend very many business books to people. Ray Crock and Jack Welch can’t teach you what to do with your small business.
$100,000 in annual revenue proves that you don’t suck at sales.
75% in-person close ratio and/or 50% close ratio selling from the stage and/or 8% selling from a landing page proves that getting better at sales is not your highest leverage business activity.
If you have a high close ratio but are missing the 6-figure mark, then you are avoiding sales conversations that you know you could be and should be having. You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t suck at sales.
If you are stuck here – perhaps your fulfillment is weak?
$100k / year in take-home for you proves that you have a real business. (Rather than a bloated hobby or a job-avoidance strategy)
Less than one year = Gold Medal
Third year = No medals, but “Hey! At least you qualified for the Olympics of small business!”
Four or five years = You are waiting for a train that is not likely going to come
Six or more years = Wake up call. You are officially a “want-rapreneuer”
It’s hard for me to get my head around the idea of raising money before this benchmark. I know that some business require start-up capital, but if you’ve never done at least this, I couldn’t recommend you an investor (even one I didn’t like)
A million dollars in annual revenue proves that you can deliver on your promises.(If Profit drops below 10% then you can deliver on your promises in your hobby.)
Where’s your leverage point here?
More leads?
Better conversions?
More revenue-per-customer?
More recurring revenue or return customers?
Measure yourself against competitors/industry and get REAL with how you measure up. The highest leverage point from here on out is very likely a better definition of who you are and who your customers are. Spend time on that before investing in the above.
What is needed from you? Drive more than leadership. Clarity more than wisdom. Simplicity more than foresight. Once you are here. Look around. What do you want? Really?
10 million dollars in annual revenue proves that you understand the fundamentals of marketing.
20% net profit or more at this level proves that you understand operations.
Paying yourself a salary – AND counting that as an expense against profit – AND paying estimated taxes on time – AND keeping your debt:cash ratio below 2:1 proves that you understand finance.
You have to make a choice as you approach this benchmark. Really, really, really, are you a ‘lifestyle business’ or are you here to impact the planet? Do you have something to prove? Are you motivated by “TWD” (total world domination)? Are you ready to give up control of your business in order for it to emerge as a national or international brand?
If you haven’t been on either end of a lawsuit, that’s just weird.
To reach the next benchmark, you must make a solemn commitment to winning – your new highest value.
100 million dollars in annual revenue proves that you understand product/service strategy.
Or perhaps you hired a VP that does. (less likely)
Extra points if you have fewer than 100 employees at this point. If you don’t – be clear that you are making a value play and require some liquidity event to make it worthwhile for you and the other stockholders.
Extra extra points of your investment across multiple product lines is proportional to your gross profit from those products. So often companies end up on the wrong side of the Pareto principle with 80% of their expenses supporting a product that only garners 20% of the revenue. (Don’t be smug – 65/35 is just as bad)
If you haven’t hired a CEO by now (by choice or by force), then you are a very rare breed and I want to take you to dinner.
If you have a fulfilling love relationship, then same goes.
1 billion dollars in annual revenue proves that you understand scale.
Still an elite club in 2010, you are a brilliant strategist, or were extremely lucky (most likely both).
You have 1000 to 5000 employees. Company culture is your highest leverage tool. Everything your company can do and cannot do is a function of the culture that you create with every word you speak.
Winners and losers amongst your competition will be defined by the aggregate beliefs of the employees about what is and is not ‘good’. What is and is not acceptable. What is and is not possible. Your access to these beliefs is tenuous and remote. You are in a raw ‘leadership’ environment.
Winning is no longer the x factor, it should be a given. From here on out, the x factor is how you define the game.
Angry at Social NOTworking? (I’m not)
I responded to a “LinkedIn Question” today. A man claims to be angry at all the hype surrounding the business applications of social media.
Here’s the link if you want to enter the frey:
(http://www.linkedin.com/answers/professional-development/professional-networking/PRO_PNT/642057-1470374)
His Argument
“…Over 93% of all corporate social media actions these days is ending in disappointment in the Return of Investment. So little is known about the importance of matching communication styles and networking styles in your corporate branding strategy to your target audience, it makes me angry, very angry!…”
My Argument
To single out social networking as a standout of ineffectiveness seems very odd to me. I don’t think the problem is specific to social media…
Marketing is not Understood!
The underlying truth is that marketing is not understood. Corps see a competitor taking actions and attracting customers (with dubious causation) and decide to mimic the actions hoping for similar results. Only the most diligent direct marketers have a clear idea of what the actual cause/effect relationships are in the marketplace. It’s a good thing that metrics are flimsy and understanding is thin, because otherwise there would be an economic meltdown as nearly all marketing departments and spending would end immediately.
Given that social media is a customer intimacy tool – essentially a branding and awareness tool – fixed ROI measurements for these kinds of corporate initiatives have been illusive at best and hopelessly flawed at worst. Companies that understand brand (Apple, Patagonia, Zappos) will use social media well and have massive gains from the trend. Companies that don’t (United, GM, 7-11) will use it poorly and will gain nothing.
At a really good party, you should feel OK being naked.
A word about social media, specifically. Social media is the art of being real and naked – hiding nothing – and having people love you for it. If your approach to social media is the most common one, “how can I look good on social media? How do I put my best foot forward?” then you are likely to fail from the start. If you don’t want to invite your customers into your office and see what you think and say in private, social media will likely be your foe, not your friend. Honesty and transperancy is the new black.
Ps. Follow me on Twitter (Bryan_Franklin)
The Proposal
Cancun, Valentines Day 2010.
I have a rule with Jennifer. If I think something three times, I say it. This is the way that I make sure I’m not out-smarting myself in my relationship with her. This is the way that she and I have carved out and diagramed the games we play with each other so that we can enjoy them – and not fall victim to them. Its as if we’ve decided to be tethered to the truth – good or bad – in every moment.
So there I am, in an embrace with her that feels so pure and clean that it could be from an angel, and I think something for the third time.
“I am ready to marry this woman.”
Jennifer and I have gotten used to the question “When are you two going to get married?” and we even started to hear people ask “How come you aren’t married?”. We’d talked about the fact that we are clearly headed in that direction. From the very beginning, we talked about our feelings that we had a good chance for ‘longevity’ as a couple. But this is a big step.
Jennifer never had a relationship with a man that she seriously considered marriage material. I was married once before until September of 08. She started unsure about me. I started unsure about commitment in general. A year and a half later, I was feeling the last few dew drops of being unsure dry up. I realized I was certain. Then I thought it again. Then I thought it a third time in Cancun.
Sometimes, to be a man, you must be sure of something you can’t be sure of. This is one of those times. Of course I can’t know what our future will hold. I certainly thought I was going to be married to my first wife forever. But there is a special kind of certainty – that feels like solid steel – with your feet flat on the earth. A certainty that only can come from a connection to the truth. From saying everything you think three times.
How did I know?
From early on, she astounded me with her ability to expand and adjust herself to meet me. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I know that I don’t know what challenges we will face in the future. I know that I don’t know what qualities or attributes will be most important. I do know that whatever they are, she will develop and master them. I trust her willingness to change. On Valentines Day 2009 we mused, “I guess this is what happens when a changeling falls in love with a metamorph.” We could feel each other swirl and swim around each other, all the while feeling a solid center. When times are at their best, this dynamic creates beautiful emotional fractal patterns – ever changing and enveloping. When times are at their worst, this dynamic creates the ability for either of us to freely choose to heal ourselves and each other. She chooses to be strong when I am weakest. I do the same. With this co-ability, we’ve played some pretty interesting games. We’ve created freedom that supports devotion and devotion that supports freedom. We’ve explored motivation and purpose at its core. We have stirred up inspiring communities. We find ourselves at the center of interesting business, art, and transformation.
She knows how to generate the universe. Things happen for her. Its as if she has a guardian angel looking after her (She calls it the “Austin Fairy”). We giggle with delight at what happens when our intentions line up. Together, our world truly is magical.
She values integration. She loves all my parts – even and especially the parts “without bows”. We’ve done a lot of deliberate shadow work – worked on finding and exposing the parts of ourselves that bring us the most shame. We discovered together that each one of hers has a corresponding part in me – and that they all can and do love each other.
She is a holder and speaker of truth. Most people say they value truth or honesty. Very few actually do.
So there I was, thinking for the third time, “I’m ready to marry this woman.”
So I crafted a proposal. Knowing Jennifer, it had to be perfect in ever way that counts. I knew that she was going to look right through me and see everything on my mind and every feeling in my body. I knew that it had to be real.
So, with great effort, I omitted all the fanfare and theater. I didn’t have special music playing. I didn’t have any artists performing. I didn’t order a special meal. I didn’t spend money. I didn’t hire an airplane to skywrite. I didn’t erect any monument to me at all. I didn’t even prepare a ring. I simply called forth and gave to her my certainty. My trust in her and in us. My love.
“I want to marry you.”
“You sure?” She said. Squinting.
“Yes. I’m sure. Do I feel sure to you?” Solid. No question whatsoever.
“Yes.”
“Will you marry me?” I ask.
“Of course, I’ve been a yes. Yes!” She said.
“This is an engagement kiss.” I said.
And we slowly brought our lips together, and became engaged.
Unsafe inside Safe
What makes a person magnetic? What makes a conversation positively charged? What makes a speaker compelling?
Lifeforce
Magnetic energy gathers and intensifies between positively charged and negatively charged objects (or particals). This is a decent model for what I observe to be a similar effect in Lifeforce.
I guess we should have a working definition of the word lifeforce here, so I’m going to use this: lifeforce is the energy that confirms another person is not dead. Before you roll your eyes at me, there’s a little more to it. If “dead” is on one end of the lifeforce continuum, what is on the other end? I think about it like this:
Dead
Coma
Sleeping
Zoned
Awake
Alert
Switched on (or turned on)
Vibrant
Compelling
Magnetic
Most of us would have everything we want in our businesses, relationships, communities, and bank accounts is we knew how to stay on the right side of “alert” and go all the way to “magnetic” on command. In other words, lifeforce is a crucial element of leadership, sales, love, having what you want and having the kind of impact you want to have.
The human animal has learned to harness many forces of nature, from magnatism to combustion to fusion. In each case scientists learned to use/control/benefit from a force of nature by solving two seperate problems: Concentration of force (sometimes density or amplification) and Containment of force. To harness your own lifeforce – arguably the most useful and powerful force in nature – you must both concentrate and contain it.
Lifeforce Concentrate
The concentration or amplification of lifeforce comes from two opposite experiences at or near the same time. Coding an experience as bad and good at the same time will leave you feeling more alive and being more compelling that just one or the other. An experience that is both right and wrong is more interesting than one that is clearly right or wrong. The most powerful paradox that gives lifeforce is the colocation of Safe and Unsafe.
When under threat, the human animal enters a involuntary state of fight/flight by activating the sympathetic nervous system. Two byproducts of this activation are an increase in lifeforce and a decrease in cognative access to choice. When you are unsafe, you gain lifeforce and lose choice. When you are comfortable and safe, you lose lifeforce and gain choice.
Experiences that have unsafe and safe at the same time can either be choiceless and lifeless or full of life and choice. The latter condition is what we mean when we say, “Freedom”. Are Freedom, living freely, and free expression unsafe? Of course! We would all be free beings all of the tine if it weren’t for the rational and useful fear of not belonging to our tribe. The penalty for not belong always feels like – and sometimes is – death.
The Free risk more and eminate more lifeforce. The Free get martyred and die young more often. The Free lead us. The Free are scrutinized and hated. The Free live daily inside a moral dilema. The Free have the only shot we’ve got of living our purpose.
The Free are magnetic and compelling.
Unsafe inside Safe
We’ve covered the amplification of lifeforce, but how do you contain it? A combustion engine with no container is just a messy explosion, which is the force of destruction, not lifeforce. The walls of a combustion engine are made of steel or alluminum. The walls of a lifeforce engine are made of trust.
To create a container of trust or yourself that will allow you to have the unsafe experience of freedom and increase your lifeforce, it is useful to consider a few factors.
First – give every experiment a near term end time. We will tolerate anything for a short period of time, and almost nothing forever.
Second – be clear about your own intentions or surrender to them without knowing what they are. In a free state, your intentions arise powerfully, so be ready to see your own shadow!
Third – play well with others. Notice that there are pleople in your life who love you unconditionally. Way more than you think. Trust that they will love a dangerous, free you. Feel their experience fully as they connect to you in a free, risk-taking state.
Last – jump. “ready, set, go” never works as well as “not ready, not set, go anyway”
A container can be a job, relationship, marriage, party, partnership, contract, friendship, agreement, understanding, or just the presence of a powerful person.
If you are taking risks and get that “this isn’t fun anymore” feeling. Stop and find where you are not trusting. Build your container with reinforced trust. With a stinger container, anything that is too scary can be too thrilling. Do what ever it takes, inside yourself or out in the world, to have a container of authentic trust. Shying away from the risk is the wrong move. Getting to work on the container is the right one.
As a leader, lover, business maven or community god: Play all out, jump in, connect to the important ones, be clear and surrendered to your intentions, and play each daily game only for one day. Create a container. Create unsafe freedoms inside it – and watch the magic.
Nuts and Bolts – Art of Selling Value – Create Trust
What Establishes Trust?
Nothing. You cannot make someone trust you. Trust can only be granted or withheld, never earned, broken, or least of all “established”.
And, trust is required to make any Value sale, so now what? It is useful to consider that you start out with trust and then get busy suggesting that your prospect change their mind and decide to not trust you. You do this on a hundred ways, most other than conscious, and more often than not your prospect takes the cue and follows you all the way to the conclusion that you aren’t totally trustable. I can not force you to eat, but if you are hungry and I offer you a meal that meets your health and taste guidelines, you will eat. I can not force you to or prevent you from trusting me, and acknowledging that will go a long way away from giving you the signals you are looking for to withhold your trust.
Indications that you are defeating yourself here are: You continually get pushback about your price; You continually get prospects backing out with cold feet after they are “closed”; or… You yourself are not at ease durning the value stage of the Sales Process.
Low Hanging Fruit – The Basic Trust Blocks
The easiest ways to erode trust (in order of importance) are:
- Have private agendas, jugments, and thoughts (including the agenda of trying to be trusted)
- Advocate a solution before supporting your view with sufficient inquiry
- Think you know things about them or the world
- Speak, act, and move your body in an incongrous, out-of-alignment, unresolved manner
- Avoid or cover up your own faults and failings
- Blame other people or the environment for anything in the past or present
- Break simple promises
- Lie (it’s especially good when you can lie and then lie about lying, which all of you do on a regular basis)
Most people are stuck in this triangular paradigm: sales requires both that you are trusted and that you lie, and people don’t trust liars. I’ve only noticed one side of that paradigm to be operative. Sales (not order-taking but true sales where you are changing the hearts and minds of your customers) requires trust. People trust liars and truth-tellers about the same. You can sell almost anything without lying, regardless of the limitations of your service or of you.
As a result of being stuck in the triangular lie about lying in sales, people are led to the disasterous conclusion, “If you keep your promises and don’t lie, customers (people) will trust you.”
Ha!
Look again at the top of the list and start there. This is the best you can do to avoid signaling mistrust. A lifetime dedicated to clean up all the mixed messages that get in the way of you showing up clearly and powerfully in these areas would yeild fantastic finanial results and a quiet sense of who you really are. A lifetime chasing down just the last two without covering the others will yeild only the shame of failure, lack of integrity, and struggle.
Higher Level of Refinement
I admit it. I do sooo much in a sales conversation to “establish” trust that I haven’t mentioned here. I like to lie about trust in sales in this way because I want to make sure that you are selling while standing on a solid platform. Without these fundimentals, all of the rest of my techniques would be weird, slimy, and ineffective. So please, don’t do what I know you will do – even after promising not to – don’t think that you need more techniques to establish trust before you have covered the low hanging fruit.
Once you have, Belong Them To Your Tribe. Your tribe is a group of very successful, happy, attractive people that use your services. Think of your current customers as the cool kids in the cafeteria. Tell a little story about the kinds of antics and conversations that go on at that table. Make your prospect want a seat there. Unlike in school, breaking into the popular crowd here is as easy as writing you a check.
Example: “You are interested in social media? That’s great, I love working with people who are really understand it. Who are able to monetize their networks. So many people think they get it and really don’t. I remember talking with a client of mine – an executive at one of the major social media companies – about when he first realized that the value of a network could outpace the value of revenue many times over, and then we started to devise a plan together to balance revenue growth with the vibrancy of the online network…”
This story allows my prospect to belong to the cool kids just by doing business with me. This allows the prospect to continue on trusting me more and more. Don’t have social media execs in your back pocket? If you just generalize the experiences your prospect wants to have, you will find that you do know and have worked with people who already have that experience. Trust me.
Give More Away. In a great sales conversation, I can’t tell when we are selling and when we are getting started. Your true value is not in the content of your advice or advocacy, so you need not worry about giving too much away. I still feel the ‘clentch’ from time to time – the desire to hold back and not give it away for free. Then I relax and give anyway, and it always works out in the end. A prospect that gets a solid small win with you in the sales conversation is far more likely to trust you than one who has been promised the moon and is waiting on delivery. That trust is the same trust they will use to interpret your value favorably once you get started, so give it away already!
Aborb the Subtleties. A prospect will tend to trust your compitency when you demonstrate your understanding of the advatages and challenges of the domain. Atune your listening to pick up on the subtlies and tell stories that indicate you understand the texture – not just the text – of their world. A client that talks about having “too much to do” could be indicating one of many things. Perhaps they are working too much of the time and do not feel free to take weekends off with family and friends. Perhaps they are concerned about the quality of team members they work with and do not feel comfortable deligating. Perhaps they are undecided about the best direction for themselves, creating too many priority one tasks out of a fear of making a decision. Getting this right allows them to continue their initial trust in you. Getting it wrong betrays that your attention is really not on them, it is on yourself and your performance in the sale.
As I’m wrapping this up I’m struck with the applicability of these ideas to the dynamics between men and women. Re-read this post replacing “client”, “prospect”, and “customer” with “date”, “lover” or “spouce”.
Try this stuff out in both contexts and tell me what you think. Notice what happens to the amount of trust you feel. Notice what happens to how much you trust yourself.
What is the Context for Your Relationship?
I think an important key to an amazing relationship is having a context for it that is bigger than both of you. What is something that both of you believe in so much that you both would be willing to sacrifice the relationship itself to it, if it came down to that? As I write that I notice how unwilling I am to walk away – that it is my position that I will never sacrifice my relationship with Jennifer for any reason. I also know our purpose together:
The Exploration and Discovery of an Extraordinary Life.
If we both really believed that we would have to end the relationship in order to have extraordinary lives, I think we would have to do just that. This is important because if you are in a relationship long enough you will come to a point where the relationship you have is dead and you must create a new one in its place or walk away. I am no longer willing to walk away, but I am certainly willing to kill everything we have and start fresh. This is not a bluff. This isn’t the nice, pleasant, tea-time version of starting fresh. I’m talking about burning everything and leaving nothing. Post-apocalyptic kind of starting fresh. Every time one of us feels that our relationship is creating a confine rather than an expansion – every time one of us feels that our relationship is ebbing away from discovery or extraordinariness in any way – we come together in a very high quality conversation under the umbrella of the context for our relationship and recreate ourselves as the partners we need to be in order to serve our relationship’s true purpose.
The Third Agenda
There is plenty of advice out there about how to deal with two different agendas. Yours and hers/his. How do you make sure that your needs are met while also meeting the needs or your partner? When are you being gracious? When are you not standing up for yourself? When are you being greedy? When are you honoring your truth? These questions are nearly impossible to answer in a system with only two nodes. Every situation is either viewed from your point of view or theirs, and therefore subjectivity always will favor one of you.
There is also plenty of ways to get help on your individual purpose. It is well understood pretended that if you live your purpose as a servant to your higher calling that your petty concerns melt away and you can die with the knowledge that your time here was worth something. There is an entire section of the book store dedicated to help you with this.
Something very interesting, however, happens when you introduce a third, senior agenda into the system. Suddenly it becomes obvious when you are being selfish or undernourished, because you need only to look at the purpose of the relationship itself to find your compass. It is much easier to take an honest look at the alignment of the relationship’s purpose, agenda, and behavior than it is to look at your own. Agreement about where it is ‘in’ and where it is ‘out’ is easily achieved. Conversations about what to do or not do can take on the quality of two entities serving a third, rather than a tug-of-war about who is giving and who is taking. Conversations are still hard, emotional, and personal. It wouldn’t be any fun if they weren’t. But they do not tend to dive into a death spiral of blame, resentment, disapproval, and withholding.
The Ugly Parts
The spiritual function of a love relationship is to give you a special mirror just for the ugliest parts of you. The parts you do not show anyone else. Most of us get pissed off and throw things at the mirror. As if shattering the image will shatter the part. Of course, if we succeed at shattering the mirror, we go charging out in search of the very next mirror we can find so we can again give the special and unique gift of our worst, most indefensible selves. Imagine the possibility of those parts of you finding love and acceptance. Imagine the possibility of those parts being invited into the light and given their rightful place at your table. To exchange the closet where they live for a throne. To be revered, even, as the glorious solutions they are. This is a nearly impossible request to make of any person – but it is not only possible but even likely in the context of a greater purpose. Given my commitment to discovery, it is an easy task to find and accept Jennifer’s more prickly bits. Given her commitment to an Extraordinary Life (one where we are fully integrated and accepted) it is an easy task for her to invite my uncontrollable parts to do their worst. Ok, “easy” may be a stretch. Doable with consistency? Yes.
It is Probably Too Late For You
Well, not really. If you are already in a relationship, it is going to require a huge amount of discipline to find a purpose that you both will really be willing to surrender to fully. The temptation will be incredibly high to use the same dual-node method of negotiation to develop a purpose that you both think will be relatively non-threatening and palatable to the neighbors and the babysitter, but no where near important enough to each of you to serve as a third agenda that you both can live by. Just know that you are up against that temptation, and compromising even a tiny bit – especially unconsciously – will doom the intent.
It is much easier to define the purpose of the relationship you want first and then find a partner who wants to surrender to the same purpose. You might find that who you are attracted to and who you choose to date might change (this is likely a good thing). You might find yourself with a very unlikely partner. One who will end up being the most extraordinary love of your extraordinary life.
Nuts and Bolts – Don’t write a proposal.
I was recently asked to explain more about something I had said on stage at a sales training in San Francisco.
“Don’t write a proposal.”
I was asked how to make sure that a proposal was valued or considered after it had been written. ”What’s the best way to turn in a proposal once you’ve written it?” My answer was a bit shocking to the asker, but not to many of the experienced and successful service providers that I know. I was recently in a meeting with a service provider who is very prominent in her field. She told me a story of realizing that she had forgotten who she was in her business. When I asked her what led to this realization, she replied, “I found my self writing a proposal. I never write proposals. Of course I didn’t get the job.”
There are three scenarios in which you will be asked to write a proposal. I’ll take the most common one first:
Non-Competitive Sale
In this scenario, you find yourself selling to a customer that is not necessarily going to buy anything from you or a competitor. When you reach the end of your sales process, the customer winds up by asking for a proposal. An inexperienced sales person might be excited, because the tone of this request is usually positive and friendly and there still seems like there is a chance the customer might buy if the proposal is of a high quality. An experienced sales person is unhappy here because she knows that there is zero chance of a sale coming from the proposal. Zero. It The only proposal that has any chance at all of leading to a sale is a proposal to continue the conversation. Some common reasons a sales conversation will end with a proposal request are:
- You aren’t talking to a decision maker. They want the proposal to show someone else so that the someone else can say “no”. Showing the proposal shows that your contact shows interest in solving the problem without actually committing any resources to do anything about it. It’s an easy win for them with no cost. Your proposal can be the physical evidence of their taking initiative, and will be important later when your contact is accused of not doing anything proactive.
- You didn’t discover the client’s value. They want to say no, but like you too much to do it to your face. The more they like you, the more likely they will ask for your proposal – even though they will not consider it seriously for a second. They will likely not even read it.
- You didn’t ask for money. The client is left with an interest in your service but no way to buy it. The amount in the proposal will always seem too high because it will be received outside the context of any value you may have created in the original sales engagement. A true buyer will demand the price if you do not offer it. A fake buyer will ask for a proposal.
SOLUTION:
- Apologize immediately. Apologize for not understanding more about what they want from your service and how you can help them solve their problem.
- Declare that you do not write proposals. I say this with the same tone as I might say, “I do not know how to extract truffle oil”.
- Ask them what they were hoping to accomplish with the proposal. Is it one of the above reasons or a new one? Get details. Show it to who? Then what? And what would happen then?
- Invite them to partner. Depending on the response to number 3, figure out a way to partner with them to achieve the same result. If you are out of time, suggest, “It seems obvious that we need another meeting to cover the rest of the ground here. What would be a good time…”
Competitive, Informal Sale
In this scenario, you are in a competitive environment, but there is no formalized RFP process to follow. The customer has an expectation that you will comply with their requests because they are trying to make a choice between your services and those of your competitors. They may talk about “Apples to Apples” and such. The most important aspect that distinguishes a competitive sale is differentiation. You must look different and better than your competitors. Of course, following – even loosly – a proposal format given to you by the customer makes it virtually impossible to do this. More Later…
