Greg's Right FIT #475

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

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Change
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Change

• You rarely start from zero. To encourage your people toward change, recognize how far along you are from zero. A journey well begun is half done, as they say. 
• Your people will make more progress in a shorter period of time with a clearer destination. To describe the destination in memorable terms, try these prompts: What will it look like? What will it sound like? What will it feel like? What will it smell like? (Yes, smell. It's a powerful memory maker.)
• To make even more progress, don't focus on everything that needs to change. Pick one piece at a time. This does two things. It lets your team see progress being made. It eliminates "paralysis by analysis."
• You don't want to see change, you want it to stick. One way to make it happen is by starting with a new person. When you describe the future you want, they don't have history, so they'll take you at your word and think it's normal. 

Being Human - Robots selling to robots

“Prospects used to talk to sales teams in the early stages of a decision. Now, AI is answering their questions before they ever engage with a salesperson.” – from "High Intent Prospecting"

My wife is an instructor at our Community College. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in 2023, she has been inundated with AI-generated responses in her courses. She recognizes most of them, notifies the student that it looks like AI, and doesn't give them credit for the assignment. She's pretty confident in her assessment because the students receiving this feedback don't deny it. 

This is happening in a friend's high-school courses too. In his case, his team encourages the use of AI and teaches the students how to use it responsibly. 

These are examples of how your future buyers are learning how to make decisions. These students aren't in charge of anything right now, but in a decade they'll be making decisions at their workplace. How will your sellers, your marketers, SDRs, account executives, and business developers work in this new environment? Will they need to make changes in how they work? When will they need to change their processes? 

As Philip Dick said, "the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed." I address this in the addendum of my white paper. 

I see evidence of early stage decision-making being outsourced to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. The early stage, to me, is when all options for solving a problem are considered. Those questions sound like "how", "what", "can", "should", and "who". Questions that used to be directed to sales people because they owned the information. For instance, to learn about a car, you used to visit a car dealer. Nowadays, we expect that information on our phone. Instantly. In the near future, a majority of workers will think nothing of having a conversation with ChatGPT about work problems, or asking it for ideas to get better results. 

And where will ChatGPT get its info? Search engines for now.

Buyer agents talking to selling agents doesn't seem so far away. It will impact commodities and "simple" purchases first, then work its way up to sophisticated "enlighten me" types of sales. 

Get ready. 

PS: If you're interested, I'm speaking about these things. If you have an audience that would like to hear more, send me a note.

Random Stuff

“One more inch,
You son of a bitch" – me screaming a Guster lyric during their mini-dumpster set finale

This week you may have seen me, no longer ill, clutching a bourbon, in a sea of paunchy Gen Xers, scream-singing lyrics at a group of middle-aged men standing on stage. It happened.

Live music is a tonic for whatever ails you.

Years ago, I fell for the band Guster. They were one of my early Napster downloads and became legendary after a night traveling the streets of Green Bay post-Packers game in UFB's kind-bus.

The first time I bought tickets for them was in 2006. I couldn't go for some reason. Looking through my email receipts, they announced another date in Omaha in late 2016, and I bought tickets for a Feb 5th 2017 show. I remembered this purchase sometime around February 12th.

They came back to town July 2018. I bought those tickets in May. I missed it not because I forgot, but because something came up. The next fall they were back in Omaha with the symphony. I told myself I wouldn't buy tickets until I knew for sure I could go. At some point in the spring, someone said, "did you finally see Guster?" which meant I forgot they were in town again. (this is why you don't hear me screaming on their album, "Omagah!")

You may be wondering, are these guys really that good? Why is he so obsessed with seeing them? I wish I could tell you. Basically, at this point, seeing them is one of my white whales. (or some residual Catholic guilt for all the free downloads I stole from them in 1999)

• In 2020 they were here pre-lockdown, the same week I was in Madrid.
• In 2022 I was injured.
• I don't remember them coming through in 2023.

In late 2024 they announced a livestream of a holiday show. $15. I streamed it. My lovely bride walked in from the cold one night to catch me singing at a full volume TV while the pets cowered in the corner. I didn't care.

Mostly, I didn't want to admit to her that, ever the optimist, I also bought tickets for a February 5th, 2025 show. Their "We Also Have Eras" tour. I kept it a secret until Tuesday. 

On Wednesday I woke up to freezing drizzle, which stayed with us through the evening. Treacherous driving conditions. Just one more obstacle to overcome. A final test of my resolve. 

I'm happy to report we made it to the show. My first, my lovely bride's second. 

It was glorious. I am absolved.