Greg's Right FIT #455

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

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Opportunities
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Opportunities

• If three people we respect talk about a show, will we watch it? What if it's three random strangers? Generating awareness is a marketing skill. The best marketers look for any and all opportunities to get the buzz going. Be aware.
• It's good practice to look outside our industry for ideas and approaches that rhyme with what we're trying to accomplish. Curiosity questions include, what parts of their business are like ours, and what problems do we both face? 
• Make a choice, then make it right, says the old adage. It's true. The story we tell ourselves after the event will determine how we feel about it, so make a decision and jump to action. (assuming there's a low chance of fatality)
• If one person says it, one person says it. Talk to a lot of people. Humans are expert pattern finders. The more inputs we have, the better the pattern we'll find. 

Being Human - Follow-up     

"Who can it be knocking at my door?" – Men at Work

This week I talked to a sales team about follow-up. The client had done an analysis of objections and two things jumped out. Price objections and prospects going cold/silent. 

A perfect time to break out one of my favorite sales process visuals. The half-life of enthusiasm. 

It looks like this:

The way it works is we work to build interest/enthusiasm in the first call, and when the second call comes around we assume the prospect is where we left them. Call two simply picks up where we left off. 

The reality is life has been happening to the prospect. Goodnesss knows what they've gone through, but one thing is for sure. They aren't in the same place we left them. At best, their enthusiasm for your solution is half of what it was. 

What are we to do about this? 

One idea is to focus on the objective. The outcome the prospect described in our discovery process. There's a good chance that once the prospect described the outcome they want/need, that's when their enthusiasm grew. If we start meeting #2 by revisiting the objective, "Before we get started. . . reviewing my notes I wrote. . ."

This led to some discussion about getting to the objective. In this business, the prospects tend to talk about my client's solution. I get it, it's a cool solution. It's fun to talk about. I reminded them that a solution gets value from the problem it solves. This means we need to get them to talk about the problem the prospect thinks it will solve more than we talk about our solution. 

Fine, they said. What about the ones we didn't get that info from? What do we do with them? 

Start over. "I'm sorry, I reviewed my notes and didn't write down the part about why we were talking about our solution in the first place. What issue is this addressing again?"

They hated that.

I get it. We all know why the solution exists. They'll think we're dumb if we have them state the obvious. 

Trust me. That's not what will happen. Get the answer and use it for better follow-up and shorter sales cycles. It works. 
 

Random Stuff

"I once thought I had mono for an entire year. It turned out I was just really bored." – Wayne in "Wayne's World

For the last seven-ish years, I have been part of a writing group. It started as a class by local poet Steve Langan, and later splintered into a monthly gathering. Sometimes there are prompts like, "incorporate poison ivy, hologram, and fire escape into a piece," but most of the time we can submit anything. Sometimes we just show up, hear some new writing, and enjoy each other's company. 

This month we hosted the group. Or, I should say, my lovely bride hosted. I offered them our house, and since we have tomatoes, I said, "how do I make bruschetta?" 

Did you ever see Wayne's World? Do you remember the part when he can't find a clerk at the music store and Wayne says, "I know, I'll play the 'may I help you?' riff," rocks out for a second, and the clerk pops up? 

Me saying bruschetta is like that. My bride heard me and lept into action. Within hours we had hot plates, cold plates, desserts, wine selections, little toothpicks, and a variety of sparkling waters.

The guests arrived, were suitably awed at her kitchen prowess, and she ran off to teach a class. 

It was awesome. 

On a somewhat related note, the next day we lost a tree. 

By my count, it was 77 years old. 

I say somewhat related because one of the poems submitted the night before was about birthdays. 

To celebrate somebody's birth
you calculate years on this earth. 
Unlike rings on a tree,
you can't measure to see
if one's age determines one's girth. 

– by Steve Jordan

Good stuff.