Greg's Right FIT #562–This week: Demand, Activity, Ghosts

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

In this issue: 

• Thoughts about Customer Demand
• Being Human
• Random Stuff
• Back In The Day

Thoughts about Customer Demand

• There are multiple flavors of customer demand. Sometimes your solution fixes a thing they are trying to get done right now. Sometimes the solution gives them a way to get something done they've wanted to do, but couldn't. And sometimes your solution looks a lot like what they're doing now.
• Remember that management is tough. Your customers have a lot of competing priorities demanding attention. Help them by talking about how they prioritize and how their priorities change. You'll learn a lot.
• Sales trainers love to talk about selling value and creating customer demand as if it's something your people do. It's closer to the truth to say our people need to uncover or unlock what the client values to get to demand. The way to do that is through having better conversations.
• One way to unlock or uncover your client's priorities is to talk about plans. Jump into the future. "Describe a goal or target you're working on. I'll give you an example of how we work," usually gets nods and a response.

Being Human – Doing the work

I am in a group of writers and we meet monthly to share our work. At the last meeting, I described the process for writing the novel I'm working on. What's notable is I said the same thing to a different person the day before. I get up early, put some piano music in the headphones, write for an hour, then leave it for the next day. This description reminded one of my writing friends of "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, a book on writing. She has a similar process.

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?” You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so.

It's the advice I give to people starting in sales too. Pick a time, concentrate on the thing, do it as best you can, then try again tomorrow. And tomorrow. And the next day. And on and on. Momentum builds from activity.

Activity means doing the work.

^ this is for me as much as anyone reading this. . .I can't complain about results until I've done enough work.

Random Stuff

We are taking care of a cat for a few months. His name is Pablo. He belongs to our daughter. Her little cousins call him "pah-bah-lo" as in, "where is Pabalo?" While she is settling in Barcelona he will stay with us. The plan is for him to move to Spain in December. He seems excited.

Two months ago, when Pablo first moved in I needed to purchase more cat litter. The pet store had a special on cat toys with the purchase of cat litter and I succumbed. We now have 3 fuzzy tubes filled with catnip. The cats love to hug the tubes and lick them and scratch at them. When Wilson the ABC was still around he took one of the tubes outside where it promptly disappeared.

Yesterday afternoon as I walk around the yard clipping this and pulling that I see it. It's out in the middle of a grassy area. It has little bits of dried mud or something on it and it looks, well, like it's risen from the grave.

Spooky, right?

I toss it because it's dirty, but mostly because it's haunted. Now I'm wondering who dug it up? A neighborhood cat? The raccoon that is leaving little gifts around my yard. A giant bunny? The woodchuck?

Wilson from the great beyond?

Maybe it's all the ghosty Halloween decorations that went up around the neighborhood this week. Or the witch goose costume that's out and ready for Wilhelmina to wear this season. Or the stack of pumpkins prepped for display. Or the fact that Pablo is a black cat that loves to lurk.

Or, maybe I just miss my dog.

Back in the Day

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

• Last Year: Right FIT #510 – Aww. A picture of me with grandchild number one. He's now a personality filled little one year old, jabbering and scooting himself around the kid's house. It's been quite a year! A baby, celebrations all over, a new son-in-law, trips all over, and even some business stuff.
  Life!
  I'm excited to see what the next twelve months bring.
• Five Years Ago: Right FIT #301 – My customer service work was concentrated in my software sales days. The team I managed was spending so much time servicing clients we couldn't make sales calls. We broke service into a process and cut service time by a ridiculous number. The process eliminates unnecessary work by getting to the client's preferred resolution quickly. It's a good example of applying internal best practices before looking outside for solutions.
• Ten Years Ago: Right FIT #39 – I was shopping my first book around ten years ago. I'd been self-publishing but wanted to get an agent and do the commercial publishing route. The idea, "Everybody Sells" became "The Human Being's Guide to Business Growth" but I still think the first title had promise. The agents did not. It was a sales-for-the-non-sales-person book, but maybe there's not a market for that.

In case you're wondering why my writing is confusing at times, this might explain it: