Greg's Right FIT #418

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Anxiety
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Anxiety

(inspired by The Sales Momentum Mindset)

• A definition of anxiety is a future-oriented, long-acting response to thoughts of broad threats. When our people have a lot concerns about the unknown, it threatens momentum because activity slows down or comes to a stop.
• Mark Twain said, "Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe." Seneca said, "We suffer more in imagination than in reality." Both are right, but not necessarily helpful for you to quote when your people are anxious. (from experience)
• More effective is getting a list of these generalized anxieties out on paper. Written down and explained. If you're asking someone to do this, focus on making the list comprehensive and complete, not discussing each one. Seeing the list is often all it takes to slow anxious feelings down. 
• Once a list is complete, ("Is there anything else?" *pause* "No.") it helps to list the outcomes. Specifically, the "if this comes true, then what?" outcomes. Between naming anxieties and claiming possible outcomes, anxious feelings come down, and activity resumes. 

Being Human - RFM scoring, the old school

"It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned."
– Oscar Wilde

It's been a while since I found myself lost in Excel pivot tables, but it happened before 2023 came to a close.

We were looking at the goals for 2024/25 and the plan to get there. This company has a lot of customers and a long history with them, so I mention modeling being effective for stretching ad dollars, getting quick wins, and increasing ROI. The sales and marketing team already does a nice job marketing to specific roles and jobs-to-be-done, but hasn't done much with modeling, time-frames, invoice counts, or revenue. Specifically, the data-appending coupled with a Recency/Frequency/Monetary (RFM) scoring I recommend.

The reason they haven't done much with it, I find out, is because they don't know what I'm talking about. I describe it and their immediate reaction is along the lines of sounds expensive, sounds old school, and RFM doesn't sound like it applies to long, complex B2B sales cycles, like ours. 

Au contraire, mon frère.  

The magic of modeling using RFM, similar to customizing messages to roles and jobs-to-be-done, is that prospects act similarly to their peers. A long-time customer with multiple invoices each quarter doesn't act like a newly invoiced, first-time customer. However, they tend to act like other companies with similar demographics. Combining these segments with roles and jobs-to-be-done tightens messaging, reduces ad spend, and generates revenue, faster. 

Here's the kicker. It also shows us which companies in the customer file look like our best customers, but aren't acting like them. Easy conversations leading to early wins. 

The one who gets it first is the sports fan. "Sounds like 3-pointers and layups." Nice analogy. Our local favorite basketball team is all about analytics and playing the odds over a season. Shooting 40% over 70 possessions is the same as shooting 27% from the 3 point line. Knowing this, take the highest percentage shot (layup) or the 3 pointer. Skip the mid-range two-pointer.  Lead generation for a complex, B2B sales cycle over the course of two years is similar. If we only have X number of presentations, focus on getting the most from them.

RFM segmentation will help them get the most from their limited budget, just like focusing on 3 pointers and layups will produce the most points per possession over a season. The layups are the warm current customers that look like, but don't act like, best customers. The three-pointers are the lookalike cold-prospects that haven't done any business with the company yet. 

Trust the process, as they say. If you have a lot of customers, put the law of large numbers to work for you.

Random Stuff

"Grown-ups shouldn't finish books they're not enjoying."
– John Irving

Books.

Each Christmas I get some new ones and this year my haul includes a book about whiskey, "Hacking Whiskey", a book about an artist we have hanging in the house, "The Posters of Jules Chéret," and a book about writing novels, "Novelist As A Vocation," by Haruki Murakami. The stack of books to read on my desk is now three stacks. 

I finished a few in 2023. Here are some I have moved from my desk to the shelves around the house, including my favorite. 

• Poet Billy Collins collection, "Aimless Love" is staying on my desk to read again.
• Father Uwem Akpan's, "Say You're One of Them." To use a word from social media, devastating. Knocked me about.
• Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act," had good bits. 
• I re-read Thorton Wilder's play "Our Town," which hits harder in my 50's than it did in high school.
• Nordgren & Schonthal's "The Human Element" had some good insights into sales/marketing aimed at non-professional sales/marketing people. 
• "Just Kids," from Patti Smith is a beautifully written memoir.
• Ann Patchet, "This is the Story of a Happy Marriage," which I picked up for her essay on writing. I read "Bel Canto" a long time ago and loved it. She's funny.
• "A Hacker's Mind," was an interesting look into a mindset I don't have, but could use some work on. 
• On page 799 of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker." It really is up to the hype and accolades. Great writing. 
• Dimitris Xygalatas book, "Ritual," was thought provoking.
• Leg's McNeil's "Please Kill Me," history of punk was fun. 
• "Remain in Love," by Chris Franz was fun. (between this, the punk book, and Patti Smith, I'm done with 70's NYC, though)
• Michael Lewis, "Going Infinite," another page turner from a great storyteller. Read this right before the SBF trial. 
• David Sedaris, "Happy-Go-Lucky." If you have the chance, go see him live. He's a very funny man. 
• I dug through some older books on our shelves too. "The Ghost Map," by Johnson had me thinking about the power of infographics in addition to public health.
• "Under the Banner of Heaven," by Krakauer filled in a few blanks in my brain about Mormonism and Utah. 
• "Fantasyland," by Kurt Anderson is a funny and troubling take on what makes us in the USA act like we do. 
• "The War of Art," by Pressfield was a quick read by the guy who gave us "300." Very macho. 
• "How Soccer Explains the World," really does what its title suggests. Globalization and reactions to it. Foer nails it. 
• Finally, I'll end with my favorite book of 2023, "Entangled Life," by Merlin Sheldrake. Sometimes a book changes how you see the world, and this did just that. There is a fungus among us. Amazing book.

There's one other book I read, re-read, and re-read. "The Sales Momentum Mindset." Pick it up wherever you buy books.
(the Audiobook should be done by this summer)