Greg's Right FIT #559–This week: Opportunities, Others, Oopsies

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

In this issue: 

• Thoughts about Opportunities
• Being Human
• Random Stuff
• Back In The Day

Thoughts about Opportunities (in sales)

• When wading into complex selling situations it's easy to get confused. There's just so much to consider. It's what happens when dealing with multiple players and competing priorities. To help, focus on getting agreement on the opportunity. An easy phrase is, "what does the prospect need 'more of' or 'less of.'" It keeps everyone on track.
• Sales calls that don't have a clear definition of the problem being solved or result needed are hard to sit through. It ends up sounding like, "well, we can do this, or that. . . or this. . .or that. . ." Ugh. Combat this by asking them to define where they are now or describe where they want to be in a year. In other words, define the opportunity. If the opportunity is small, get out of the call.
• My clients hear me prattle on and on about uncovering evidence because it's the first step to finding bigger opportunities. After evidence comes context (where? when? to what extent?) or constraints. (why isn't it done now?) When your prospect comes around to thinking this way, the opportunity grows.
• Companies elevate big decisions to committees in an attempt to provide clear thought. I know we make fun of committees, and they aren't foolproof, but they work well enough that it's worth the effort to learn how to make committees work better. It helps larger opportunities get over the finish line. The last thing you want is for your champion to be sitting in a committee without a plan. That's an opportunity killer. Help them navigate their committees better.

Being Human – The thoughts of others

"Our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people" – Proust

Want to get better at managing? I have a simple, but not easy way to do this. Assuming you're effective at your work, of course.

Get feedback.

You might need a professional to help with this because the people you manage are, well, let's just say they won't be honest. Not completely, anyway. A third party helps you get honest feedback.

This feedback, when sourced correctly tells you about your work personality as perceived by other people. When you know what they think, you can change/fix anything keeping your team from perceiving you as the best manager. Does that make sense? Their perception is reality. If you're good at your work, but perceived as too gruff, too ambitious, uncaring, or any other descriptor attached to modern managers, change their perception.

I know, sounds simple, but it's hard to do. What can I say? I only have a few paragraphs to work with here.

Random Stuff

It's been a breaky-week here in the middle of a big island. It started with the nice pitcher I've been using for my new gazpacho obsession. It's a white pitcher and where the handle plugs into the body there are some pretty serious indentations. Inside these indentations was hardened gazpacho. Very unsightly and possibly unsanitary if left untreated, right? As the main dishwasher I took up the challenge of freeing the red stuff from the holes in the white thing.

Do you wash the dishes in the evening? I've gotten into the habit of soaking dirty things overnight then attacking the washing first thing in the morning. I get up early, but it takes me a while to get human. Doing something mindless like the dishes is a perfect first-thing-task for sleepy Greg. It has a start and a stop. It doesn't require a lot of coordination. I feel good when it's done.

Digging into the gazpacho filled crevices started ok. But the pitcher turned soapy and slippery. I lost control. The neck of the pitcher hit the edge of the sink and, well, this white pitcher is not going to be holding gazpacho again. The pitcher is called earthenware. I know this because the place online where you get a replacement tells me so. There's only one in stock and it's discontinued. Really?

As the week went on I dropped the coffee grounds, a piece of my rowing machine's seat wheel thing broke of, I chipped a canning jar, forgot about some bacon on the grill, and while cracking an egg, dumped the contents into the compost jug instead of the frying pan. Oh, and I cut my finger chopping a baby carrot. (which did not need a chopping)

Like I said, breaky-week for butter-fingers here. I need to be careful this weekend.

Good thing the kids don't need me to babysit.

Back in the Day

What I was thinking about last year, five years ago, and ten years ago.

• Last Year: Right FIT #507 – Last year my truck had a little part fail and it took most of the fall for me to fix it. (fast forward to last month and it turns out I didn't fix it right making a new issue. . .but anyway) This year it's my wife's little car with a tiny failure! A hole in some rubber part that made the car whistle like crazy. September is tough on the Chambers vehicles.
• Five Years Ago: Right FIT #298 – Besides a nice pic of a dog staring at me (which was annoying and I didn't know I'd miss), I mentioned being patient without being fatalistic. This was in relation to wanting deals to close, and I used an example of waiting for a loved one and thinking something terrible might have happened. It's way worse in our minds. I'm working with a group and this is a hot topic. My advice is unchanged. If you've developed the opportunity correctly, they'll buy. Be patient.
• Ten Years Ago: Right FIT #36 – During this time in my life I was getting deep into writing my book and working with an advisor. We talked about the client I mentioned here and some others in order for him to understand the work I do. He told me I abstracted things, but people want details. Like this case. He wanted me to say more about exactly what I did to help them. I told him it was mostly the client. I redirected them to stay on task, but they did all the work. It didn't feel right taking the credit. That's when he taught me, "due in part to the work I did. . ." as a nice way of saying, I was there. I still use it.