Greg's Right FIT #526 – This week: Values, Wants, Memories

Quick notes to help you find new business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

• Thoughts on Values
• Being Human
• Random Stuff

Thoughts on Values

• In my workshop on Opportunity Development we spend what feels like a long time on Shared Values. Pursuing opportunities with prospects who have similar shared values is a shortcut. Not just to a faster sales cycle, but a better customer experience in the months and years after the sale.
• Values, as we use the term in sales, aren't so much the deeply held personal kind talked about in ethics classes. They are more the guiding principles behind the goals of the organization. For instance, what is the prospect's comp plan? The comp plan indicates what the firm finds valuable now, and to a degree, what they find valuable in their vision of the future.
• Finding opportunities with organizations that have values aligned with what you offer, makes the sales process easier. If the prospect is curious about ways to replace employees, and you sell employee development training, there's a mismatch. The sales process will be hard.
• Getting to a prospects shared values isn't straightforward. Getting to our values is much easier to reach. The more you know about who you are, who you want to be, and how you want to serve your customers in the future, the easier it is to identify prospects that share the same outlook. Start with the leadership team.

Being Human – I want that

"Who wants an orange whip? Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips." – John Candy in The Blues Brothers

When my youngest was a toddler, we watched shows on cable TV, usually a channel like Nickelodeon. These shows were punctuated with commercials aimed at kids (or their parents) and each time something was advertised he would say, "I want that." Every time.

Marketing works. Exposure to messages, over time, changes behaviors. A sales trainer I listened to when I was a young buck said, watch the route you take to work in the morning. He said it was worth it to take a longer drive if it led you through nicer areas of town. Seeing the nice houses, the nice cars, the pretty people, he said, would give you the motivation to make more sales. Villian Dr. Hannibal Lecter thought the same way about serial killers. "We begin by coveting what we see every day," he said to Clarice.

Knowing this, we need to be conscious of what goes into our brains. Next time we think, "I want this," we should get curious about where that want came from. I'm reading an old novel and it's delightful. Each chapter is wonder because the time it describes, the 1830's, is so different from where I sit 200 years later. But in most ways, it's the exact same. Men seeking power, people misunderstanding each other, a community policing itself. So much fun. Especially when the author shows us why they want what they want. It's good stuff.

Random Stuff

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it probably never happened"
. . . or something like that

Do you have an Aura Frame? It's a photo frame that friends and family can contribute pictures to. My lovely bride's sister gifted one to their parents. Since then everyone in the family has one. It's like a personal Instagram. I love it. Sometimes I find myself staring at it for minutes at a time after catching a glimpse of a great old pic as I am passing through the kitchen.

It makes me all warm inside.

It also brings up stories.

I'm finding that the older the picture, the more likely it is that everyone involved remembers something different. Sometimes it's a small difference, sometimes it's a big difference. The only consistent thing is in every instance, my memory is wrong.

It doesn't bother me much. The little world in my head is generally filled with goodness, so it's not like some sort of soul shattering revelation. Sometimes, though, it can be a little jarring. My view in my brain is so clear, so perfect, that even in the face of facts, I have a hard time believing I'm wrong.

Don't worry. I come around eventually. It may take a day or two for the real information to take root, but once it does, it stays.

I heard memory described as remembering the last time we told the story. Our brains are amazing that way. It's the reason I look at a picture 18 month old me with my great-grandmother's dog and I think I remember what the dog smelled like. I might, but it's not likely. The dog's name was Gigo. (I won't ask anyone if that's true. I don't need any rewiring of my brain today.) He was a little white dog that was around my entire childhood, as far as I know.

And as far as you know.

That's how it works. Your only memory of my great-grandma's dog is mine. Explains some things, doesn't it?

Aura Frame. Recommended.