Real Relationships Real Revenue - Video Edition: Recent Episodes
Mo Bunnell
Are you leading important client relationships and also on the hook for growing them? The growth part can seem mysterious, but it doesn’t have to be! Business development expert Mo Bunnell will take you inside the minds of some of the most interesting thought leaders in the world, applying their insights to growth skills. You’ll learn proven processes to implement modern techniques. You’ll learn how to measure their impact. And, everything will be based in authenticity, always having the client’s best interest in mind. No shower required.
Have you ever wondered why asking for what you want can feel so awkward—and why people say yes more often than we think? In this episode, I dive deep with Dr. Vanessa Bohns, an organizational behavior expert from Cornell University and the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think. Together, we unpack why influence is so much more than persuasion—and why it’s less about manipulation and more about authentic, everyday impact.
We explore the psychological biases that make us underestimate our influence, the surprising power of simply asking face-to-face, and the crucial difference between perspective-taking and perspective-getting. Whether you’re a leader, a business developer, or simply looking to grow your positive influence, this conversation is packed with insights on building trust, making confident asks, and empowering others while avoiding the “ick” factor.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- 3:05 — Why putting “positive” in front of influence might matter more than you think
- 6:45 — The 100-year legacy of How to Win Friends and Influence People and why it’s still relevant today
- 10:15 — Why “just ask” works and how face-to-face requests get 34x more yeses than emails
- 19:00 — How small, spontaneous asks can build authentic connections and why overthinking can kill momentum
- 25:20 — The hidden power of stating what you want and why it’s essential in building relationships
- 29:00 — The difference between perspective-taking and perspective-getting
- 38:00 — Why direct asks often outperform polished presentations and how to practice this skill
- 44:00 — How seeing, feeling, and experiencing influence can make you a more confident and effective leader
If you loved this conversation with Vanessa Bohns, share the episode with a friend or colleague who could use a confidence boost—and don’t forget to subscribe for more actionable insights on mastering the art of positive influence!
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Connect with Vanessa
Get a copy of Vanessa’s book, You Have More Influence Than You Think
What happens when an elite financial advisory firm embraces a "give to grow" mindset instead of the traditional hard-sell approach? In this episode, I sit down with Cannon Carr, CEO of CornerCap, to explore exactly that. Cannon takes us behind the scenes of how his expert-led team has used authenticity, generosity, and tailored business development strategies to drive remarkable growth—without ever feeling like they're "selling."
We dig into how Cannon transformed his mindset, reshaped his firm's culture, and practically applied the GrowBIG and Give to Grow systems to reach entrepreneurs and small business owners on a meaningful level. From shifting away from “always be closing” to developing a truly integrated marketing strategy that leads with value, Cannon shares actionable insights you can apply today—whether you’re an advisor, consultant, or service-based entrepreneur. This conversation is loaded with real talk, tested tactics, and a refreshing take on sustainable business development.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The powerful mindset shift that helped Cannon grow without “selling”
- How giving more can lead to deeper relationships—and more revenue
- The biggest mistakes experts make when trying to grow their business
- How Cannon and his team created a seamless strategy from marketing to client conversations
- Ways to scale trust and credibility through content, without feeling salesy
- A sneak peek into the systems that helped transform an expert firm into a growth engine
- How to help others grow… and grow yourself in the process
- One simple tip Cannon says anyone can apply today to start seeing better results
Tune in now to learn how a values-first, give-to-grow approach can help you stand out in a crowded market—while building a business you’re proud of. This isn’t theory—it’s a tactical, inside look at what’s working right now from someone who’s lived it.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Cannon’s Podcast – Business Owner Tales from the Trenches: businessownertales.com
Cannon’s Interview with Mo Bunnell (Part Two – Scaling Your Business with Purpose): Listen on Apple Podcasts
Mo’s 50+ Go-To Questions Download (for opening meaningful conversations): givetogrow.info
Winning More – Mo’s free growth strategy toolkit & mini-training: winning-more.com
Cannon’s Exit Strategy Download – A practical guide to business succession planning: epwealth.com/business-succession-plan Case Studies & Resources from Cannon & CornerCap: cannon-carr.com
Podcast Highlight: Glen Jackson on Why Values & Culture Matter: Listen on Apple Podcasts
Podcast Highlight: Dave Moody on Turning Personal Struggles into Strength: Listen on Apple Podcasts
Podcast Highlight: Dave Sutton on Building a Powerful Balance Sheet: Listen on Apple Podcasts
Visit Cannon & CornerCap Online: cannon-carr.com
Connect with Cannon Directly: ccarr@epwealth.com
What really gives a company an edge in a constantly changing world?
In this episode, I sit down with the legendary David Teece—the man behind the most cited paper on strategic management and the creator of the “Dynamic Capabilities” framework. But he’s far more than an academic. David has built billion-dollar companies, challenged outdated economic models, and reshaped how we think about competitive advantage. We dive deep into how innovation, adaptability, and capabilities—not just cost efficiency—are the real drivers of enduring success.
You’ll hear how David has simultaneously excelled in academia and business, what most economists get wrong about firms, and how his groundbreaking ideas help organizations not only survive disruption but thrive in it. Whether you're leading a startup or steering a global company, this conversation will open your mind to what truly powers sustainable growth.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why most strategy models miss the mark in today's innovation-driven world
- The hidden ingredient that allows companies to thrive amid uncertainty
- What “dynamic capabilities” really mean (and how to cultivate them)
- Why David Teece believes traditional economics failed to explain real business success
- The surprising link between academic theory and billion-dollar execution
- How to rethink competitive advantage when everything around you is shifting
If today’s conversation sparked new ideas or challenged your thinking, dive deeper into David Teece’s groundbreaking work by grabbing his book Dynamic Capabilities & Strategic Management: Organizing for Innovation and Growth on Amazon. And if you want to continue the discussion or explore collaboration opportunities, you can reach David directly at dteece@thinkbrg.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Purchase a Copy of Dynamic Capabilities & Strategic Management: https://a.co/d/g8Xo4uA
Connect with David at dteece@thinkbrg.com
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What if the secret to peak performance wasn’t grinding harder, but simply feeling better? In this episode of Real Relationships, Real Revenue, I sit down with the brilliant Ali Abdaal—doctor, YouTuber, author, and now productivity philosopher—to unpack the science and strategy behind Feel Good Productivity. We explore the idea that happiness isn’t a reward for success, but the engine that drives it. Ali breaks down how boosting energy, reducing stress, and infusing joy into your daily work can radically enhance both performance and satisfaction. If you’ve ever felt burned out, stuck, or like your business development efforts are a chore, this conversation might just flip everything you thought you knew about productivity.
We also dive into the real-world applications of Ali’s ideas—from overcoming introversion in high-stakes networking to staying consistent with outreach when results seem far away. With his signature blend of science and story, Ali walks us through practical ways to make selling, leading, and even showing up to client events feel fun. This isn’t just a motivational chat—it’s a masterclass in rethinking how you work, sell, and grow. If you’re building a business, deepening client relationships, or just trying to stay sane while doing it all—tune in. You’re going to want to hear this.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The one question that can transform any task from draining to energizing
- Why feeling good before you get results might be your ultimate advantage
- A mindset shift that turns sales into service—and kills the sleazy feeling
- How Nobel Prize-winning physics and magic tricks both relate to business growth
- The 3 core "energizers" that power up your workday (and how to use them)
- The simple trick Ali used to stay consistent on YouTube
- Why pretending to be an actor might just be your new networking superpower
If this episode lit a spark, imagine what could change if you started applying even one of these ideas today. Take a second to reflect—what’s one thing you could make more fun this week? And if you loved this conversation, don’t forget to share it with a colleague, grab a copy of Feel Good Productivity, and subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’re just getting started.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Check Out Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You: https://a.co/d/38WJQtT
Follow Ali’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal
Take a Look at Ali’s Website: https://aliabdaal.com/
Sign Up for Ali’s Newsletter: https://aliabdaal.com/newsletter/
What does it really take to stand out and succeed in a competitive market? In this episode, we dive deep into the strategies and mindset shifts that can elevate your brand and business. Our guest, Topaz Adizes, shares firsthand experiences, practical advice, and thought-provoking insights that challenge the status quo. From overcoming obstacles to leveraging hidden opportunities, this conversation is packed with golden nuggets you won’t want to miss.
We discuss the power of storytelling in business, the importance of adapting to change, and how to build lasting connections with your audience. Whether you're an entrepreneur, creative, or someone looking for that next level of growth, this episode will inspire you to take action. Get ready for an eye-opening discussion that might just change the way you think about success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- A mindset shift that can drastically change your results
- The secret to building brand loyalty that most people overlook
- How to turn setbacks into stepping stones for growth
- A hidden opportunity in your industry that you might be missing
- The role of storytelling in creating an unforgettable brand
- Why adaptability is your greatest asset in business
- How to make your audience feel truly connected to your message
Want to learn more from Topaz and stay connected? Check out his work at topazadizes.com. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and let us know your biggest takeaway!
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Connect with Topaz
Have you ever let fear of failure, uncertainty, or judgment hold you back from going after what you truly want? In this episode, we dive into the principles of Wild Courage with author Jenny Wood. We break down three of the nine bold traits she explores in her book—how to be positively manipulative, obsessed, and shameless—to achieve extraordinary success in business and life. Jenny shares how a bold moment on a New York subway shaped her fearless approach, how she landed her dream job at Google, and the powerful strategies she now uses as an entrepreneur to build relationships, close deals, and grow her business.
Get ready for a conversation packed with insights on influence, persistence, and self-advocacy. Whether you're looking to grow your business, advance your career, or simply take bigger, bolder steps in life, this episode will challenge you to rethink what it means to be fearless. Tune in now—this is your chance to learn how to apply Wild Courage to your own journey!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising way fear of judgment holds us back—and how to push through it
- How to be “manipulative” in the best way possible (yes, really!)
- Why being obsessed isn’t a bad thing—it’s the key to success
- The strategy that got Jenny hired at Google (hint: she didn’t just apply online)
- How to use the "pencil sharpener" tactic to win people over and close deals
- The simple shift in your emails that makes people say “yes” faster
- Why your biggest missed opportunity might be not being shameless
- The unexpected power of asking the right question in a networking call
If you’re ready to step up and take action, connect with Jenny and dive deeper into Wild Courage. Visit itsjennywood.com for free resources, follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram, and grab a copy of Wild Courage at wildcouragebook.com. If this episode inspired you, share it with a friend and tag us on social media—we’d love to hear how you're embracing Wild Courage!
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Email Jenny at: jenny@itsjennywood.com
Buy Wild Courage at: https://a.co/d/5M4vFNy
Download the resources Jenny mentioned at: itsjennywood.com/mo
Have you ever found yourself in a leadership role—whether guiding a team, driving a client project, or shaping a business—without an official title? In this episode, I sit down with leadership expert and author Kevin Eikenberry to unpack the power of flexible leadership and how it can drive both relationships and revenue. We explore how great leaders don’t just react—they lead with confidence, even in uncertain times. Kevin shares insights from his latest book, Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence, diving into how leadership is a verb, not a title, and how adaptability is the key to long-term success.
We cover everything from defining a clear vision to leading through uncertainty and creating buy-in with your team. Kevin’s practical, real-world strategies will help you navigate change, communicate effectively, and inspire action—even when the future feels unpredictable. If you’re ready to step into leadership with confidence, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways you won’t want to miss!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising truth about leadership (and why it has nothing to do with your job title)
- The biggest mistake leaders make when setting a vision—and how to avoid it
- Why uncertainty isn’t your enemy—and how to turn it into an advantage
- How to adapt when your plans are blown up a week after you make them
- The “IKEA Effect” and why it’s the secret to getting your team fully bought in
- The one leadership practice you should be doing every single month (but probably aren’t)
- Why over-communicating is the key to trust—and how to do it without sounding repetitive
- A mindset shift that will completely change how you handle challenges in leadership
Tune in now to discover how flexible leadership can help you navigate uncertainty, inspire action, and build lasting success.
Resources Mentioned:
Kevin’s Gift to Listeners
Kevin’s new book, Flexible Leadership
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Are your team meetings draining energy rather than fueling success? What if there was a way to make every meeting engaging, productive, and even enjoyable? In this episode, I sit down with executive coach Joe Hudson, whose unique approach to leadership and team dynamics has transformed countless organizations. Joe shares powerful insights on how to build an aligned, high-performing team culture, structure decision-making for maximum impact, and redefine what it means to run an effective meeting.
We dive into the core principles that make teams thrive, from fostering authentic relationships to challenging the status quo. Joe unpacks why most meetings fail, how leaders unknowingly sabotage efficiency, and the secret to making meetings a powerful driver of business growth. Whether you’re leading a team internally or managing client relationships, this episode will leave you rethinking how you structure conversations, make decisions, and cultivate a winning culture.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising metric that determines whether a meeting is truly effective
- Why most companies are unknowingly wasting massive amounts of time—and how to fix it
- The counterintuitive leadership habit that builds deeper trust and stronger teams
- How to instantly improve team cohesion using a simple but overlooked principle
- The secret behind “five-star meetings” and why they drastically improve company performance
- A powerful (but easy-to-implement) strategy to ensure your meetings drive real results
- The #1 mistake leaders make when trying to foster alignment—and what to do instead
- How to use strategic tension to supercharge both internal teams and client relationships
Ready to transform the way you lead and make every meeting count? Don’t let another unproductive conversation drain your team’s potential. Tune in now to learn Joe’s game-changing strategies and start implementing them today. If you found this episode valuable, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your team. For more insights and resources, check out Joe’s work at The Art of Accomplishment—because leadership should be both effective and fulfilling.
Resources Mentioned:
Joe’s website: https://www.artofaccomplishment.com
Joe’s podcast: https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/podcast
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Is workplace flexibility the key to retaining top talent? In this episode, I sit down with Manar Morales, CEO of the Diversity & Flexibility Alliance and author of The Flexibility Paradigm, to tackle one of the biggest challenges leaders face today—how to make workplace flexibility work for everyone. As businesses navigate hybrid environments, employee retention struggles, and shifting cultural expectations, Manar shares why flexibility isn’t just a policy—it’s a business imperative.
We explore how flexibility drives productivity, engagement, and retention while debunking common myths that hold leaders back from embracing it. Through a five-step framework, we break down what organizations, teams, and individuals can do to implement sustainable, high-impact flexibility strategies. If you’ve ever wondered how to balance business needs with employee well-being, this episode is a must-listen!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The unexpected why behind successful workplace flexibility
- A common mistake leaders make that drives top talent away
- How to structure flexibility so that it benefits both employees and businesses
- The overlooked role of co-creation in designing flexible work models
- Why some flexibility policies fail—and how to make sure yours doesn’t
- A thought-provoking question that will reshape how you approach workplace culture
- How flexibility can be the secret weapon for long-term competitive advantage
Workplace flexibility is not just a buzzword—it's a vital strategy for driving business success and retaining top talent. If you’re ready to dive deeper into the topic, be sure to pick up Manar Morales’ book The Flexibility Paradigm here. For more insights on how to create a flexible workplace that benefits both employees and businesses, visit the Diversity and Flexibility Alliance website at dfalliance.com. You can also connect with Manar directly via email at manar@dfalliance or on LinkedIn at Manar Morales.
Resources Mentioned:
The Flexibility Paradigm: https://www.amazon.com/Flexibility-Paradigm-Productivity-Profitability-Possibility/dp/1647125308
Email Manar: manar@dfalliance
Connect with Manar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manar-morales-1800a37/
Diversity and Flexibility Alliance: https://dfalliance.com
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
How do you build real relationships that drive revenue and open doors to new opportunities? In this episode, I sit down with business development powerhouse Jim Ries to break down the art of strategic networking, collaboration, and event-driven growth. Jim isn’t just talking theory—he’s in the trenches, creating partnerships, hosting innovative events, and helping professionals develop a book of business that actually delivers results.
We dive into his top three strategies for making connections that matter. Jim also reveals the hidden power of event partnerships and why most networking efforts fall flat. If you’ve ever struggled to get a prospect to return your call or wondered how to stand out in a crowded market, this episode is packed with information you can put into action right away.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- A fresh approach to networking that eliminates awkward small talk
- The secret to creating events people actually want to attend
- How to turn casual connections into long-term business relationships
- The #1 mistake professionals make when trying to grow their network
- A simple strategy to get in front of more high-value prospects
- Why traditional networking fails—and what to do instead
- How to leverage partnerships to multiply your reach effortlessly
If you enjoyed this conversation and want to connect with Jim, reach out to him via email at jries@offitkurman.com or find him on LinkedIn. And if you found value in this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use these insights!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jim on LinkedIn
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Think you’re either born a great conversationalist or destined to struggle through awkward small talk forever? Think again. In this episode, I chat with Alison Wood Brooks, behavioral scientist and author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. We dig deep into the hidden mechanics of conversation, the myths holding us back, and tools you can use to connect meaningfully with anyone—whether you’re closing a deal, leading a team, or simply sharing stories with friends and family.
This isn’t your standard “how-to” guide. Alison’s research-backed insights and unique personal anecdotes make this an episode that will shift how you approach every interaction. From the small details of word choice to the big-picture art of building trust, we uncover how the most essential life skill—talking—is also the most overlooked.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why even “bad” small talk can be a bridge to deep connections
- The subtle art of asking questions that captivate, not interrogate
- Why humor isn’t about being funny—but about finding the fun
- Alison’s favorite tricks to save a dying conversation without breaking a sweat
- How technology has unlocked groundbreaking ways to study human dialogue
- Tools to turn awkward moments into powerful opportunities
Get ready to rethink what it means to truly communicate. This episode is packed with ideas you’ll want to try out immediately.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Check out Alison’s website
Alison’s Book: Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
What does it take to truly excel under pressure, build an unbeatable team, and achieve your goals?
In this episode, I sit down with Rich Diviney, retired Navy SEAL officer and author, to uncover the secrets behind human performance and team dynamics. Rich shares his insights on the attributes that determine success, how to identify them in ourselves and others, and what separates good performers from exceptional ones. We dive into the profound difference between skills and attributes, the power of humility, and how to leverage resilience and perseverance in both life and business.
Whether you're striving to grow your business, lead a high-performing team, or simply become the best version of yourself, this episode will keep you moving forward. Tune in and find out what it really takes to thrive in uncertain and challenging environments.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The difference between skills and attributes—and why one matters more under pressure
- The essential attribute for bouncing back after setbacks
- Why humility is the secret weapon of high-performing teams
- How to focus only on what you can control and avoid the trap of overthinking
- The surprising link between your identity and your performance
- Why perseverance without resilience can lead to burnout
- The Navy SEAL approach to breaking down overwhelming challenges
- A quick tool to master compartmentalization and stay focused under stress
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Jonny Miller’s Episode on Nervous System Mastery
Henning Streubel’s Episode on Quickly Processing Setbacks
Check out Rich’s Company’s Website
Special code for 15% off the assessment: REALRELATIONSHIPS15
Have you ever wished your team would come to you with solutions instead of problems? In this episode, I sit down with Dominic Ashley-Timms , co-author of The Answer is a Question, to discuss how a simple shift in how you engage with your team can save you time, build confidence in others, and transform your impact from manager to leader. Dominic shares a groundbreaking method of “operational coaching” that replaces reactive solutions with questions that unlock potential. Drawing on years of research and proven results, Dominic explains how this powerful method can free up 20-50% of your time—so you can focus on what really matters, whether it's growth targets, client relationships, or innovation.
We break down Dominic’s “STAR Model,” a proven framework to stop, think, ask, and get results. Plus, Dominic shares some of the most provocative questions you can ask to change context, challenge barriers, and unleash your team’s ability to solve their own problems. If you’re ready to transform how you lead, this episode will give you the tools to engage differently and achieve more—without working harder.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to save 20-50% of your time as a leader
- Why solving your team’s problems for them is holding everyone back
- How the STAR model turns everyday conversations into coaching moments
- The simple question that boosts commitment and follow-through
- Why “low-power” questions are your secret leadership blind spot
- What happens when you challenge your team’s assumptions with a question
If you want to dive deeper into Dominic’s transformative approach, check out his book, The Answer is a Question. To take it even further, explore starmanager.global here.
Don’t miss this opportunity to reshape how you lead, engage your team, and free up time for what truly matters!
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Have you ever wondered what really makes professional relationships thrive?
In this episode, we dive deep into the art and science of building meaningful connections with Jason Levin, author of Relationships to Infinity. Together, we unpack why so many people say “Let’s keep in touch” but rarely follow through—and explore actionable ways to break that cycle. Jason shares the secrets of leveraging dormant ties, cultivating authentic networks, and creating consistent habits that make relationships flourish.
Curious about how relationships can shape your ceiling of success? Tune in to discover the surprising, often overlooked truths behind nurturing your network and why it's never too late to start.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why “Let’s keep in touch” might be the most misleading phrase in networking—and how to fix it
- The science behind dormant ties and how they can open unexpected doors
- A simple, one-sentence strategy to instantly reignite old connections
- How guilt and discomfort hold you back—and the surprising ways to overcome them
- The underestimated value of sharing memories in strengthening relationships
- Why ambiverts might have the ultimate networking superpower
- The role of gratitude in building lasting connections—and how it benefits you, too
- A practical approach to networking events that eliminates the “icky” feeling
Ready to take your relationship-building skills to the next level? Connect with Jason Levin at ReadySetLaunch.net or reach out directly via email at Jason@ReadySetLaunch.net, and be sure to grab a copy of his book, Relationships to Infinity.
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jason
Grab Jason’s book Relationships to Infinity
My favorite version of the "The Waiting" by Tom Petty
Check out the surgeon general's white paper on loneliness
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What if improvisation wasn’t just for comedy, but a game-changer for business, relationships, and even personal growth?
In this episode, I sit down with Kelly Leonard, the creative force behind Second City's groundbreaking use of improv training in the corporate world. From recruiting comedy legends like Tina Fey and Steve Carell to co-authoring the acclaimed book Yes, And, Kelly shares stories, insights, and research-backed techniques that redefine how we approach collaboration, listening, and adaptability. You'll learn how to build trust, navigate ambiguity, and create powerful ensembles in business and life.
Kelly also delves into the science behind improv. Whether you're prepping for a high-stakes pitch, navigating personal challenges, or just looking to sharpen your creative edge, this episode will leave you inspired and equipped.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The “Yes, And” philosophy and how it fosters creativity and collaboration
- A surprising FBI training exercise to build agility under pressure
- How to turn disagreement into a productive conversation with one simple phrase
- Stories of famous improvisers and the magic of ensemble thinking
- Why listening deeply is the ultimate superpower in high-stakes situations
- How improv can help heal anxiety and build resilience
- The unexpected ways improv transforms both individuals and organizations
If you enjoyed this conversation with Kelly Leonard, dive deeper into his world! Check out my interview on Kelly’s podcast, Getting to Yes, And. Don’t miss his acclaimed book, Yes, And, a must-read for anyone looking to elevate their collaboration and creativity.
Learn more about The Second City here, and tune into Kelly’s podcast here. You can also connect with Kelly directly on LinkedIn or follow his updates on X.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to the Give to Grow episode on Kelly’s Podcast: https://www.secondcity.com/network/mo-bunnell-give-to-grow
Check out Kelly’s book, Yes, And: https://a.co/d/6f6lDYT
The Seconde City: https://www.secondcity.com
Subscribe to Kelly’s podcast: https://www.secondcity.com/network/category/getting-to-yes,-and-podcast
Connect with Kelly on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-leonard-b8495047/
Connect with Kelly on X: https://www.twitter.com/KLsecondcity
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What if trust, not time, is the true currency of relationships?
In this episode, I sit down with David Horsager, global trust expert and author of Trust Matters More Than Ever, to unpack the essential role of trust in business and life.
We dive into a high-level view of David’s research-backed eight pillars of trust. From the power of clarity and compassion to the underestimated influence of commitment and competency, you’re sure to walk away from this episode with a better understanding of how trust can transform client relationships, team dynamics, and leadership.
Tune in to learn how you can leverage trust to build stronger, more reliable connections in every area of your life.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why trust—not time—is the real currency of strong relationships
- How clarity can make or break trust in a crowded, distracted world
- Tools for rebuilding trust when it’s been broken
- Practical methods to show authentic appreciation that resonates
- How a simple engagement statement can boost connection and retention
Whether you’re aiming to improve client relationships, inspire your team, or enhance personal growth, David’s proven strategies will help you take your skills to the next level. Don’t forget to check out his book, Trust Matters More Than Ever, and review his latest research and tools at trustedge.com
Resources Mentioned:
Get the Trust Matters More Than Ever book
Check out the Trust Edge Website
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What does it really take to lead yourself before you can effectively lead others?
In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Hawk, host of The Learning Leader Show and author of multiple books including "The Score That Matters." With over 600 episodes under his belt interviewing top performers, Ryan shares his thoughts around leadership, personal growth, and the mindset needed for sustained excellence. We dive deep into his personal purpose statement of inspiring others to value and pursue excellence, and how he lives this out through his four core values: being thoughtful, thankful, curious, and consistent.
We also discuss the importance of setting up systems and environments that make personal growth inevitable, including how to develop your own purpose statement and values that actually drive behavior change.
If you're ready to move beyond surface-level leadership advice and discover how to create lasting impact through purposeful living, this episode is your blueprint.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The critical first step most leaders skip when trying to lead others
- A framework for developing your own purpose statement that actually drives behavior
- How top performers are using daily questions to stay aligned with their values
- Why having too many values can be worse than having none at all
- The mindset shift that separates sustained excellence from temporary success
Follow Ryan on The Learning Leader Show and grab his latest book "The Score That Matters" to continue your growth journey. Don't forget to subscribe to Real Relationships Real Revenue for more conversations that help you lead with purpose and drive meaningful results.
Resources Mentioned:
Ryan’s Episode #476 with Kat Cole
Ryan’s Episode #361 with Admiral William McRaven
Ryan’s Episode #439 with General Stanley McChrystal
Ryan’s Episode #568 with Tony Robbins
Books:
The Score That Matters
Welcome to Management
The Pursuit of Excellence
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Have you ever wished you could control your energy levels as easily as adjusting the temperature on your thermostat?
In this episode, I dive into the fascinating world of nervous system mastery with Jonny Miller, who's revolutionizing how we approach energy management and self-regulation.
Jonny shares incredibly practical techniques that can help you shift your energy state in as little as 30-60 seconds, whether you need to calm down after a stressful meeting or amp up before an important presentation. We explore the science behind these techniques, including the groundbreaking finding that there are four times as many neural pathways going from body to brain than brain to body – which explains why bottom-up regulation practices can be so powerful.
What really excites me about this conversation is how immediately applicable these tools are for business leaders and entrepreneurs. I can't wait for you to discover how these simple yet powerful techniques could revolutionize your daily energy management!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising reason why trying to "think yourself calm" is far less effective than bottom-up regulation
- A simple humming technique that can take you to instant calm
- The breathing pattern that can replace your morning coffee
- How to achieve the equivalent of 4 hours of sleep in just 15 minutes
- Why certain environmental tweaks can permanently upgrade your nervous system
- A powerful technique that can shift your state in under 60 seconds
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Apply to work directly with Jonny and join the upcoming cohort of Nervous System Mastery
Take the Zero-cost Nervous System Quotient (NSQ) Self-Assessment
Free Non-Sleep-Deep-Rest (NSDR) Recording
Listen to Jonny's Curious Humans Podcast
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Khe Hy, a legendary figure in the world of blogging, email newsletters, and coaching.
Khe's unique background as a former high-flying investment banker gives him a perspective that sets him apart in the world of personal development. We dive deep into the art of building authentic relationships and how to scale your network without losing that personal touch.
Khe shares his mindset around relationships, his innovative system for managing connections, and his philosophy on staying top-of-mind with the people who matter most.
He also shares his concept of "authentic relationship building" and how it differs from traditional networking. We discuss the power of listening at a soul level, the art of making mutually beneficial introductions, and how to use technology to nurture relationships at scale. Khe also opens up about his journey from a timid child of Cambodian immigrants to a master connector, and shares insights on finding aliveness in your daily life and career.
Whether you're looking to enhance your professional network or seeking more meaningful connections in your personal life, this episode is for you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The secret ingredient that turns networking into authentic relationship building
- How to scale your relationships without losing the personal touch
- The surprising link between your hobbies and your most valuable connections
- A powerful daily habit that could transform your network over time
- An unexpected test to gauge if you're living the life you truly want
Resources Mentioned:
Subscribe to Khe’s newsletter (highly recommend!)
Mo’s interview with Jay Papasan, author of The ONE Thing
Mo’s interview with Risk Expert Dennis Baltz
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I'm joined by Gina Rubel, a seasoned expert in global expansion for firms and organizations. Together, we’re diving deep into the strategies for winning the high-value work that propels your business forward. Global growth is about high value and targeting the right opportunities, and Gina is here to share her insights on how you can start winning the big projects that truly matter. Join us as we explore how to move beyond the easy wins and start securing the most impactful work.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The most significant leverage point in the global workspace today
- A client approach that accelerates global expansion
- Common pitfalls that professionals and service providers face
- The three key components of high-performing client teams
- The one thing you should never let drive your decision-making
- How to shift from doing the work to winning the work
- Leveraging technology to attract high-value opportunities
- Practical tips for expanding your reach globally
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Gina! If you want to learn more from her, make sure to visit their website https://www.furiarubel.com/ and follow her on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Order Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Check out Give to Grow Live!
Listen to my interview on their podcast On Record
Visit their website
Follow Gina on LinkedIn
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I'm excited to be joined by David Perell, who’s here to share his expertise on how to write really well. David is a master in the art of writing, and together we’ll dive into his top tips on the essential components of good writing, how to overcome writer's block, and practical activities you can do to become a stronger writer. After all, better writing leads to bigger wins!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What it truly takes to improve your writing
- The many benefits of becoming a better writer
- The two phases of writing and how they can enhance your work
- The one key principle to keep in mind if you want to achieve your goals
- Books and exercises that will help sharpen your writing skills
- The step-by-step process for creating great content
- The core element every writer needs to craft compelling pieces
- The secret to producing well-rounded, impactful writing
I hope you enjoyed this episode with David! He has so many valuable tips for becoming a better writer and I hope this conversation helps you get started improving your writing today.
If you want to get in touch with David, make sure to follow him on LinkedIn and X. You can also check out the podcast episode he did on storytelling and the episode he did on copy editing.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Check out David’s podcast episode with Shaan Puri on storytelling
Listen to David’s podcast episode with Harry Dry on copy editing
Follow David on LinkedIn
Follow David on X
Listen to Mark Forsyth (author of Elements of Eloquence) Interview
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
This episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue marks the conclusion of our series on how to write a book that builds your personal brand, earns you a seat at the table, and strengthens relationships to grow your business over time. Today, I’m joined by John Gilbert, a successful lawyer who used his book to elevate his career to the next level. In this conversation, John shares his experience and insights on how you, too, can write a book that transforms your professional life.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The biggest benefit of writing a book
- How writing a book changes the way others perceive you
- The key to leveraging your book to build relationships and meet new people
- The credibility you gain with clients as an author
- One way you can engage your audience before your book is published
- How you can use your book for business development during the launch
- Strategies for using your book post-publication to grow your business
- A behind-the-scenes look at the book creation and publishing process
- The one way you’ll know if you have the right subject for your book
There are so many benefits to writing a book and I hope this real-life example of how impactful it can be inspires you to get started on your own book!
If you want to contact John, connect with him on LinkedIn. You can also get a copy of his book here.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of John’s book
Get a copy of John’s book globally
Connect with John on LinkedIn
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are continuing our series on how you can use your book to grow your business. I sat down with Chad Cannon. He is a return guest and he’s here to give us some real-life case studies of how people have used their books to grow their business. Chad has more insight than anyone I know on how to take a book and actually build your book of business with it so I am excited to share this conversation with you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why a book is the best business card you could have
- The number one word-of-mouth marketing tool you can use
- The one thing you need to remember when deciding what book to write
- What to remember if you want to write a great book
- Some authors who utilized their books to massively grow their business
- The truth about how long your book should be in order to be successful
- The difference between how I used The Snowball System and Give to Grow
- The number one way to get someone who wants to work with you from your book
- How to make it really easy for your reader to reach out to you
A book is the number one word-of-mouth marketing tool in the world, and I hope this episode gave you some inspiration!
If you want to learn more, check out StoryBrand, Building a Story Brand, and Marketing Made Simple for a directory of certified coaches who can help you.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Check out the 5 Minute Marketing Makeover
Check out Marketing Made Simple
Check out Building a StoryBrand
Learn more about StoryBrand
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with my secret weapon, Joy Panos Stauber, a brilliant designer who makes books look amazing. We sat down to discuss how to integrate design with content in a way that makes anything you create better. No matter what you’re working on, how you integrate design with your content is super important, so Joy is here to show us the right way to do it so that you can take your content to the next level.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The real reason that design is so important
- The key element that helps your clients fully absorb your material
- Practical tips for designing content that people can’t wait to engage with
- How to achieve fantastic design when the stakes are high
- How you can capture the essence of your content with design
Remember, your design is so much more important than it may appear. It really enhances your brand experience and elevates your message. If you don’t have an in-house expert, hiring a professional can make all the difference. You won’t be disappointed!
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Joy! If you want to learn more from her, make sure to check out her website and connect with her on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Joy’s website
Follow Joy on LinkedIn
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are continuing our series about how to write a book and use it to help grow your business. We have spoken with multiple experts who help you get started, and now we are moving onto the next level - marketing the book! Marketing is extremely important because it can lead directly to people hiring you before your book's even published. To talk to us about it, I sat down with return guest Tim Grahl. He’s one of the top book marketing experts in the world and he is going to show us how we can do this and do it well.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The shift in how people see you when they hear you are an author of a book
- The key to marketing your book in a way that will win you business
- The true power of a book
- The key to getting clients before your book even publishes
- How to actually use your book to get more leads
- The difference in how you market different types of books
The impact a book can have on your business is truly mind-blowing when you know how to market it. Everyone you meet should get a copy of your book. You’ll be amazed at how it opens doors that were closed to you in the past!
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Tim! If you are interested in learning more from him, you can check out his books on Amazon.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Tim’s books
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
This episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue is the next in our series about how you can write a book and use it to take your business to the next level. I am joined by Jeff Goins, one of the best personal editors or collaborators out there. He’s here to share more information on the type of work he does, how to write a book even if you’re busy, and how to take a good book and make it great. We’re also diving into how you can hire a collaborator and create something that you’re really proud of!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Key tips to get your book written - even if you don’t have time
- What a collaborator does and how they can help you take your book to the next level
- The three things you want to integrate when creating your book to make an impact
- The different roles people play in the book creation process
- How not to publish your book
- How to use sticky statements that will make your book stand out
- The way to start writing your book before you actually write a book
- The one thing to do if you want to really perfect your book
- The difference between good and great work when it comes to writing a book
I hope you found some value in this episode with Jeff! He is so talented at what he does and the books he creates are changing the world.
If you want to learn more about how you can work with Jeff, head over to his agency website Fresh Complaint, get a copy of his book Real Artists Don't Starve, or reach out to him directly at jeff@freshcomplaint.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Jeff’s website
Visit the Fresh Complaint website
Get in touch with Jeff at jeff@freshcomplaint.com
Get a copy of Real Artists Don't Starve
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
You know how the word “secret” is overused in everything? Well, in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the real secrets of book publishing! My guest for this episode is David Moldawer, the one person who truly knows the ins and outs of the industry. He’ll reveal not only the secrets of book publishing but also how to find an agent, decide between self-publishing, hybrid, or traditional publishing, and craft a compelling book proposal. We’re diving into the three C’s of publishing a book, and I can’t wait to share this conversation with you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The most direct way that writing a book can help your business grows
- The longevity of books and how they compare to other methods of sharing your expertise
- The magic ripple effects of writing a book beyond people buying the book
- The different types of publishing and how to find the best one for you
- The one publishing method to beware of
- What you need to know in terms of growing an audience for your book
- Why it’s crucial to have an agent when you pitch your book
- The key to writing a great book proposal
- The most important things to remember if you want to hybrid publish your book
- Why you shouldn’t be scared to publish your book if there are others like it
- Great hybrid publishers to consider for your book
I hope you enjoyed this episode with David! Books can significantly help grow businesses in ways that many people don't yet understand. My goal with this show is to provide examples and discuss the process, offering insights into this world that you might not have seen before. David did a great job of helping with that!
If you want to work with him, make sure to visit his website and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Visit David’s website
Check him out on The Maven Game
Connect with David on LinkedIn
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about books! Writing a book was easily one of the most game-changing things I have ever done for my business. So, I am chatting with our publisher Todd Sattersten, the owner of Bard Press, which only publishes one book a year. Books are an incredible growth tool, and Todd and I are discussing everything you need to know, including the value of a book that connects to your business, how you can scale it up or down for your business, and the practical steps to get started on creating your own book.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The immense value of writing a book
- Small, medium, and large ways to go about writing a book
- Real-life examples of how people used books to grow their business significantly
- How having a book can help you demonstrate your expertise on a topic
- The easiest entry to writing a book
- How to write a book that actually turns into more business for you
- The unexpected ways that writing a book can help you
- Why creating a book is an act of giving
- The key point you have to remember if you want your book to help you grow
- Important things to understand when writing your book
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it inspires you to write your book and grow your business! If you want to learn more about Todd and Bard Press, head over to https://bardpress.com/. They are a publisher that collaborates closely with authors to craft and market unique, high-quality business books, focusing on publishing only one book a year.
Also, make sure to head over to Givetogrow.info! It’s your one-stop shop that includes a Team Launch Guide, podcast episodes, downloadable posters, lead generation methods, top meeting preparation questions, research citations, and a Secret Chapter.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about Bard Press
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am sharing another short and impactful solo episode. I'm sharing a powerful mantra that will transform your approach to client relationships—something you can keep in mind every day for the rest of your career. It’s "Fall in love with their problem." This mindset shift can redefine your career and elevate your success by aligning your solutions with your clients' deepest needs.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to actually fall in love with your client’s problems
- The one thing a truly great advisor does for their clients
- How regular, proactive client engagement with valuable insights will help you be more successful
I hope you enjoyed this quick and powerful episode. Remember, falling in love with your clients' problems is the key to providing unparalleled value and growing your career.
Don't forget to check out my new book, Give to Grow, releasing on August 27th, 2024, and sign up for the free companion course at givegrow.info for additional training and tools.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Give to Grow
Get the Supplemental materials for Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Have you ever wondered what to focus on when you’re planning for upcoming client meetings? I’m back with another short and sharp episode for you today. In this episode, I’m diving into an important insight from my upcoming book, Give to Grow: Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career, coming out on August 27th, 2024. I’m discussing the single most important focus for your client meetings: engagement.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why engagement is the key to successful client meetings
- How this one thing will help you win the work you want with the clients you want
- Practical tips on how to ask the right questions to deepen client relationships and move your projects forward
Remember, client meetings should be about creating meaningful dialogue and collaboration. That’s how you’ll find the most success.
For more detailed strategies, check out our upcoming book and the free six-part video training series available at givetogrow.info! This resource is designed to help you implement these techniques and grow your business relationships effectively. Grab your copy now!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the free Give To Grow training
Pre-order your copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Turning down opportunities because you have too much on your plate? That could be holding you back from success! In this episode, I’m going solo and diving into one of the biggest mental roadblocks that are probably holding you back- the thought that you’re just “too busy”. This is something I discuss in my upcoming book, Give to Grow: Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career, and I’m going to be unpacking this lie that we tell ourselves and share a few actionable tips that will keep the momentum going even when your schedule feels too full.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The harmful mindset you have to push through if you want long-term success
- What an old, stalled pickup truck can teach us about the power of momentum
- A simple and effective way to incorporate business development into your day, even when you’re busy
Remember, staying busy can be your biggest ally if you leverage it right. Incorporate small, consistent actions now to benefit your future self.
For more insights and practical strategies, sign up for our free six-part video course at givetogrow.info.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the free Give To Grow training
Pre-order your copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
I've got a quick and impactful solo episode for you, and it is based on something you’ll find in my upcoming book, Give to Grow: Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career, which is set to release on August 27th, 2024. There's a chapter in the book called “Success In The Moment”, and in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m discussing a critical concept from the book—achieving success in any moment by maintaining control and responding with generosity, no matter the outcome.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How you can maintain emotional stability and ensure that it's always your move
- The impactful ways you can use generosity to deepen relationships, no matter what’s going on
- The simple mindset shift that will help you view every situation as an opportunity to increase your success so you can win more work
I hope you enjoyed this episode! Remember, the key to sustained success is all about viewing every moment as an opportunity to deepen relationships and be helpful. This mindset will keep you resilient and proactive, no matter what comes your way.
Don't forget to check out our free training course at GiveToGrow.info! It’s our give so that you can grow.
If you like what you heard and want to learn more, make sure to pre-order Give to Grow now!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the free Give To Grow training
Pre-order your copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this solo episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I'm sharing another short, sharp, and insightful solo episode. I’m discussing a startling fact that can be a big unlock for many of you. While writing my upcoming book, Give to Grow, I stumbled upon some fascinating insights about top performers and what sets them apart. Tune in to find out how a simple shift in mindset and strategy can elevate your business and career so that you too can be a top performer.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising statistics about how top performers compare to average performers
- The key difference between closed systems (like sports) and open systems (like business)
- How top performers leverage their teams to maximize impact
- What you need to know about sizing your offers while expecting nothing in return
Remember, the secret to becoming a top performer lies in making more offers of helpfulness and strategically leveraging your time and team.
Don't forget to check out our free training course at GiveToGrow.info! It's our investment in your success so you can grow.
If you like what you heard and want to learn more, make sure to pre-order Give to Grow now!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the free Give To Grow training
Pre-order your copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing a short and sharp solo episode on the number one insight I’ve seen over the last several years that our clients are loving. I’m diving into the pivotal mindsets and strategies necessary for balancing the distinct phases of winning and doing the work. I’m also sharing how you can effectively transition between these modes to enhance your relationship development and ultimately, your success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The key difference between winning the work and doing the work that you have to remember if you want to succeed
- How you can adapt quickly to your client's needs depending on which realm of work you are in
- The one pro tip that top performers live by
I hope this episode was a big unlock for you and provided valuable insight to help you navigate the balance between winning and doing the work. These transitions are crucial to relationship development and success!
We have a free training course over at GiveToGrow.info that we've built that surrounds the book that will help you unlock your next level of success. Check it out!
If you like what you heard and want to learn more, make sure to pre-order Give to Grow now!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the free Give To Grow training
Pre-order your copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
How can we drive growth and lead teams with generosity in a way that feels great?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with the generous leader himself, Joe Davis. He’s here to talk about his book The Generous Leader and how we can learn to embrace vulnerability, authenticity, and generosity to become better leaders and create deeper relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The one thing that you need to do if you want to become a generous leader
- What happens when you truly try to lead with generosity and authenticity
- The magic of seeing your clients as people, not just as someone who can hire you
- What it really means to be a curious leader and what happens when you do
- The power of using tough love and pushing others to use their seat both internally and externally
- What you need to do if you want to embrace vulnerability in the right way
- How to be vulnerable with clients in a way that will deepen your relationship
A generous leader starts a ripple through their organization that changes the way we engage with one another. So take the time this week to reach out to your teammates and tell them how much they mean to you and how much you appreciate them. By doing your own generous act and letting people know you care about them, it will create a ripple that is bigger than yourself.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Joe! To learn more about being a generous leader, make sure to get a copy of his book and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your copy of the Grow Big Playbook
Pre-Order Give to Grow on Amazon
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, join me as I delve into the world of effective communication with Vinca LaFleur, a seasoned speechwriter who wrote speeches for a former American president. From her experiences in the Clinton Administration to founding her own company, West Wing Writers, Vinca has mastered the art of crafting compelling communications for senior leaders. I’m excited to have her on the show today to talk about how you can structure your communication. From one-time speeches to long-term campaigns, Vinca shares invaluable insights and practical tips to help you refine your messaging skills and captivate your audience.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Vinca's remarkable journey from the White House to founding West Wing Writers
- The best formulas for elevating your communications like a pro
- Excellent examples of effective communication structures in action
- The difference between presenting solutions and creating a vision and why it matters
- Quick tricks to catch your audience's attention while speaking
- A secret strategy for effective communication on the fly
- The secret to making sure your communications don’t go awry
- The key to long-term communication success
I hope you are able to use these fantastic tips from Vinca to enhance your communication skills and foster genuine connections in both your personal and professional life today!
If you want to learn more from Vinca, make sure to check out the West Wing Writers website or you can get in touch with her at lafleur@westwingwriters.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit the West Wing Writers' website
Get in touch with Vinca: lafleur@westwingwriters.com
Listen to my conversation with Todd Henry
Get your copy of the Grow Big Playbook
Pre-Order Give to Grow on Amazon
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What is the secret to scaling? That’s the topic of this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue with Barrett Brooks! Most people think that growth stops once you have enough business to support yourself, but the best of the best take it another step forward. They learn the art of scaling across teams and entire organizations. Join us as Barrett tells us exactly how to do it!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The three secrets to scaling that you might be overlooking
- Even the most talented people in the world need this one thing
- The secret to truly setting your people up for success
- The number one thing you need to know if you are leading a team
- The most compassionate way to be in a relationship
- The art of understanding priorities and the greatest points of leverage
- The difference between Growth Mode and Profit Mode
- Mapping out your vision for the future
- The best way to communicate in your organization
- Tips for setting effective team standards
- Building trusting relationships among the members of your team
- The one thing successful scalers always do
- The biggest shift leaders have to follow if they’re ready to scale
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Barrett about the secret to scaling. I know I had several unlocks and I hope you did too.
If you loved hearing from Barrett and want to learn more, make sure to check out his podcast Good Work with Barrett Brooks! You can also learn more about his coaching offers by visiting his website.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Barrett’s podcast
Visit Barrett’s coaching site
Get your copy of the Grow Big Playbook
Pre-Order Give to Grow on Amazon
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
One of the best ways to develop a book of business to enhance your value in the marketplace is to work with other experts who are complementary to your services. By partnering with other experts, you can add even more value to clients. However, most people don't know how to develop meaningful partnerships with others that are outside their organization. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Jean Oelwang, author of Partnering, to talk about how you can develop partnerships that help you give your clients maximum value.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The impact of the relationships we have in our lives
- The power of the ability to build deep connections
- The true value of a strategic partner
- The mindset shift that will propel you into success
- Ways to construct mutually beneficial partnerships
- How to create an ecosystem of virtues
- The six virtues of partnerships
- Trust building tips
- How to build these partnerships at scale
- The power of proximity
- Why the people we choose to partner with matter so much
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jean and that it inspired you to truly look into how you can deepen partnerships that grow your relationships and add even more value to your clients.
If you are interested in learning more from Jean, I highly recommend you check out her book here. You can also check out her website and all of the tools available to you there.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Give to Grow
Get a copy of Jean’s book Partnership
Check out Jean’s website and all of her tools
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we dive into the most significant productivity hack I've discovered in the past year: building a second brain. I'm joined by Thomas Frank, a YouTube sensation and productivity expert, who shares insights on how you can create your own second brain, drawing inspiration from Tiago Forte's concepts.
Thomas goes deep into the mechanics of setting up a second brain and demonstrates how this system can transform your productivity.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why a second brain matters
- The Benefits of having a second brain
- Thomas’s second brain setup on Notion
- Practical tips for setting up your system
- A dive into what Flylighter and Ultimate Brain are and what they do
- How to voice record and get an AI summary and transcription
- Tips and ideas for what to put in your second brain
- Additional tools and resources you can use for your second brain setup
Creating a second brain doesn't have to be overwhelming. Even if you start small, these insights and suggestions from Thomas Frank can guide you through the process, helping you develop a system that fits your unique needs!
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Thomas! If you want to learn more from him, visit his website and check out his templates and free resources. You can also check out the other tools and resources mentioned in this episode at the links below!
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
Get a copy of The PARA Method by Tiago Forte
Listen to my interview with Tiago Forte
Grab Flylighter here
Get the Ultimate Brain template
Get all of Thomas’s templates
Visit Thomas’s website
Check out the YouTube video showing how to set up the voice recording to AI summary and transcription
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Are you ready to truly flourish in your life and career? You’re going to love this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue. I sat down with Corey Keyes, the brilliant mind behind the book Languishing. We talked about the Five Vitamins for Flourishing essential to anyone who wants more growth and fulfillment in all aspects- particularly for those who are creating possibilities for others or growing a book of business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What it means to languish
- The differences between languishing and flourishing
- The profound impact of mental health on our ability to thrive
- The power of helping others in the world
- Why learning something new is so important
- Transcending the world through spiritual or religious practices
- The impact of prioritizing warm, trusting relationships
- The importance of active leisure time
- How a quiet mind helps you put your best foot forward
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Corey! I highly recommend you take these Five Vitamins of Flourishing and apply them to your daily life today.
If you’d like to learn more from him, make sure to get a copy of his book Languishing. You can also get in touch with him at ckeyes@emory.edu.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Languishing on Amazon
Check out the Languishing Book Website
Get in touch with Coreyl: ckeyes@emory.edu
Pre-order a copy of Give to Grow
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with a friend and thought leader, Kathryn Valentine. She uses research-based strategies to help companies advance and retain female talent with the idea that we need to build tools specifically for women that can work for women professionally. We are diving into all things female talent today and I can’t wait to share some of her insights with you in this episode.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why not all solutions are right for everyone
- How diversity in companies impacts their success
- How to approach talent allocation without biases
- The power of going slow to go fast with allocation
- Practical tips that you can do to embrace female talent
- The importance of looking at how to negotiate as a woman
- Why you should be doing internal bias audits
- The four steps to asking for what you want as a woman
- The key to retention with female talent
- The research behind women in the workplace
I hope you enjoyed hearing more about female talent with Kathryn! If you are interested in diving into the research, make sure to check out the links to the studies below.
You can find more information about working with Kathryn on her company website here. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn here.
Resources Mentioned:
Preorder Give to Grow now
Kathryn’s company website
Kathryn’s LinkedIn
Additional Research Notes From Kathryn:
Companies with above-average gender and racial/ethnic diversity in leadership roles are eight times more likely to be in the top 10% of organizations for financial performance: DDI
Women given team sizes that are 25% smaller as first-level managers and 40% smaller once they reach Executive levels. Original research here; as explained in WSJ here.
Women do 200 hours of non-promotable tasks at work every year: HBR article here; full book here (deep dive on the consulting study - where senior partners who are women work an additional 200 hours every year to compensate for the NPTs they are asked to do and thus this is a leading factor in burnout is on page 47).
Women 13% less likely to be promoted to manager, which is where the talent pipeline is currently getting squeezed (what is leading to lack of women in leadership): McKinsey report
Also – The New York Times published an article right after we recorded our episode. In an attempt to bolster its economy, Japan introduced a "womenomics" approach to get more women into the work force. They expected 800K more women and got 3M - evidence of a) the completely underutilized talent pool sitting here and b) the positive impact of female talent to grow the economy. Article here.
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Dr. Josh Spitalnick who is a high-performance psychologist and author of The Complete Guide to Overcoming Health Anxiety for a one-of-a-kind episode. He is here to talk about improving your mental fitness and share some high-achieving mental frameworks we can use for growth. He’s diving into what high-performing people do to achieve, what they do that gets in their way, and how they switch from running away from something to going towards exactly what they want.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The negative narratives we have that keep us in a small space
- The mindset of living with fear and approaching things that are scary with intentionality
- What you have to remember about the “and vs. or” mentality
- How the “worst” can actually be a great opportunity to deepen a relationship
- The top things that get in the way of high-performers
- The different layers of thoughts that we all have
- How we can change the way we react to the things that happen to us to win more
- The true win of relationship-building
- How to authentically handle focusing on concepts not content
- What to do with the negative thoughts that pop up
- Why the word “should” is so toxic
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Josh! It’s all about making your world bigger, not smaller. Or when it comes to business development, it’s about making your book of business and your relationships bigger, not smaller with these mental frameworks.
If you want to go deeper and learn more from Dr. Josh, make sure to get yourself a copy of his book and check out his practice!
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Dr. Josh’s book
Check out Dr. Josh’s practice
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Performing is not learning. And if you're just doing the work from day to day, that doesn't mean you're improving. What we're going to do in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue is mashup Eduardo Briceno's amazing book called The Performance Paradox with The Snowball System and share some simple, practical activities, mindsets, and tools that you can put in place right away that can help you improve in your life, relationships, and business development.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The difference between learning and performing
- How business development skills are learned
- How to flip your feelings towards sales and make it enjoyable
- The power of deliberate practice in becoming skilled at what you do
- How we can utilize knowledge to grow in our skills
- Dialing on one thing at a time
- What Blitzscaling is and how it applies to business development
- The best way to ask for feedback
- Tips on reviewing data and having your own “off-season”
- How to reconnect with your “why” in a really deep way
- The Mistakes Matrix and the four different types of mistakes
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Eduardo! The Performance Paradox is one of the best books I’ve ever read about doing the work and doing it really, really well. The work Eduardo is doing is really important.
If you are interested in learning more from Eduardo, make sure to get a copy of his book. You can also visit his website and follow him on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Eduardo on LinkedIn
Get a copy of his book
Visit Eduardo’s website
Listen to the Kelley O’Hara podcast episode
Listen to the Mohamed Massaquoi episode
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What if I told you there is one thing you can do to guarantee relationship and business development success? That’s exactly what I’m doing in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue! I sat down with worldwide expert Todd Henry, author of The Brave Habit. He’s here to talk to us about how we as high-achieving professionals can overcome our fears and lean in with bravery to achieve levels of success we have never reached before.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The tremendous amount of uncertainty we are facing in this day and age
- How fear prevents us from acting bravely
- The impact of acting bravely in the threat of potential consequence
- How a sense of agency leads to more bravery
- How we can all lean into agency in our own teams
- What happens when teams feel powerless
- The power of making bravery instinctual
- The investment in long-term payoff in business development
- Why bravery should always be about something other than yourself
- Todd’s favorite tools to help him continually learn
- How to reengage your bravery after setbacks
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Todd! As he said, bravery is contagious so don’t ever be afraid to lean into it and do the right thing for those around you. You’ll find much more success in life and business if you do.
If you want to learn more from Todd, make sure to get a copy of his book The Brave Habit now! You can also check out his last episode on the podcast here.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Todd’s book The Brave Habit
Listen to Todd’s other episode on the show
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
What does belonging mean to you? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Brad Deutser, author of Belonging Rules: Five Crucial Actions that Build Unity and Foster Performance. He’s here to dive into this idea of belonging and impact and how we can foster that amongst our teams and clients in a way that is beneficial to everybody.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What belonging really is and why it matters in your organization
- How we can work together as a team to create more of an impact
- How a sense of belonging on your team can have a leveraged impact
- The number one indicator of higher performance on a team
- What the five belonging rules are and how you can use them to achieve more success
- How to effectively listen without labels
- Why the word “why” is one of the most destructive words you can use
- How to define the identity of your team
- How to determine what your culture ecosystem looks like
- Why challenge should be a part of your company’s core identity
- How leaders can help facilitate change
At the end of the day if you want to create a sense of belonging you need to just be human. Be open, be honest, tell people what’s going on, have compassion, be vulnerable, and reach your hand out. Reach your hand out to physically invite people in.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Brad! If you are interested in going deeper, make sure to get yourself a copy of his book Belonging Rules. You can also follow him on LinkedIn to stay up to date. If you want to get in touch, you can email him at bdeutser@deutser.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Grab a copy of Belonging Rules
Email Brad at bdeutser@deutser.com
Follow him on LinkedIn
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Wondering how you can become a better team with not only the people you work with but also with your clients? You’re in luck because, in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Rob Whitfield, an expert in teaming. He’s sharing how we can team up in a way that is a win for all and that will elevate your outcomes.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How teaming up can put you leaps and bounds ahead
- How to get started becoming better teams internally
- The importance of a conscious choice for teaming
- How to have the conversation about how you’ll team effectively
- The critical inflection point that changes how your team works together
- How to exponentially increase your outcomes
- How this concept can transform your team
- The important practical things you need to know about successful teams
- How to incorporate these ideas with your client team
I hope you enjoyed learning about effective teaming with internal teams and clients with Rob! If you get started now and apply these strategies, you’ll love the results of how your internal and client teams perform.
If you are ready to benchmark how you see your team, make sure to get your gratis team diagnostic at redefinewinning.com. If you’d like to get in touch with Rob, you can fill out the contact form on his website.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get your gratis team diagnostic
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Feeling the burnout blues? Wondering if there's a secret to turn your daily grind into something that brings you joy and fulfillment?
If so, you’re going to love this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue. I sat down with Michael Rucker, the mastermind behind The Fun Habit. He’s here to discuss the power of infusing fun into your professional and personal life so that you can experience more success and joy. Michael is sharing some practical tips and frameworks that you can start using now in your business development and relationship building to overcome burnout and find more joy.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The epidemic of burnout and its widespread effects
- How prioritizing fun can be a game-changer for your life and success
- Techniques to add joy- even in high-stress positions
- Elevating your personal and professional relationships through enjoyment
- How to use the SAVOR model for a fun-filled life
- Hacks like activity bundling and time blocking to turn mundane tasks into enjoyable moments
- What the PLAY model is and how it can help you prioritize what brings you joy
- How you can enjoy what you do more and enjoy more agency and autonomy
Remember, it’s not selfish to take time for yourself! Prioritizing enjoyment in your life actually lowers burnout and increases productivity and success. I hope this episode with Michael will help you get started applying the Fun Habit to your life!
If you loved hearing from Michael, make sure to get a copy of The Fun Habit and check out his website!
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Michael’s website
Get a copy of The Fun Habit
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with one of our coaches, Bradley Humbles. He’s joining me today to talk about the idea of creating curiosity with potential clients and how we can use it to reach our goals. This is a powerful concept that just doesn’t get enough attention. He’s also exploring the leadership role in sales and how we can get more buy-in from our teams and give actionable steps that lead to more wins.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to actually create curiosity with your potential clients
- The first step in the curiosity creation process
- Tips to use Give to Gets to generate curiosity
- Building trust and curiosity with uncertainty
- The power of not knowing it all
- What cliffhangers are and why they work
- How leaders can effectively get buy-in from their team
- How to create actionable steps for your team with things in their control
- Switching to the leader mindset
- How Bradley helps leaders in the GrowBIG Training
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Bradley. He’s so passionate about helping leaders achieve big things and I was so happy to have him on the show to share the things he’s passionate about with you.
If you want to get in touch with Bradley, you can email him at bradley.humbles@bunnellideagroup.com. He loves hearing from you all so don’t hesitate to reach out!
Resources Mentioned:
Get in touch with Bradley at bradley.humbles@bunnellideagroup.com
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with David Burkus who is a returning guest to the show. He is the author of Best Team Ever, a short and sharp read about the fundamentals of team culture. His goal is to help you understand the elements of team culture that really drive performance and take action to move the needle forward on your own team culture. We are either all on teams or leading them, so I know that everyone can get a tremendous amount of value out of this conversation so that you can have the best teams ever.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The three elements of the team culture triangle and why they’re so important
- How empathy can help you predict behavior on the team and shape your own behavior in the best way possible
- Why having conversations about conversations and communication is so powerful
- The importance of psychological safety so that you can make failure safe and build trust with your team
- Tips for being an active listener and supporting others
- Why teams that know they’re making an impact are more likely to succeed
- Practical things you can do to show and reinforce pro-social impact
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with David! His pro-social purpose is to make work better. If we build the best team ever, we're building an environment at work and an environment in life for more people that's engaging, inspiring, and motivating.
If you want to learn more from David, make sure to check out his website and get a copy of his book Best Team Ever. This book is easy to read and powerful, so I know you’re going to love it. Make sure to also check out his TED Talk!
Resources Mentioned:
Visit David’s website
Get a copy of David’s book Best Team Ever
Check out the TED Talk we mentioned
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Let’s talk strategy! In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Rich Horwath, strategy expert and author of the book Strategic. Rich has a unique approach to strategy and he is going to explain the three big layers of how it works to help us learn how to use strategy for increased growth and success. Whether you realize it or not, everything you do is either tactical or strategic. How we're using our time, our talent, and any budget day in and day out is going to dictate the real strategy that we have, no matter what we might think. Rich is here to show us how to leverage strategic thinking for maximum success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What dictates our real strategy
- What strategy is and what it is not
- Best practices of differentiating yourself with a strategy that’s unique to us
- How to break free of caution and practice strategic risk-taking
- The power of investing time in thinking about our future state
- The three C’s of strategically shifting our focus and offers
- Why we need to focus on value creation and delivery
- The three A framework to think more strategically on a daily basis
- Why excellence is a deviation from the norm
- What people need to know about leadership fitness and mental toughness
- How to increase organizational fitness
- The number one thing you should focus on with communication fitness
Remember, strategy is not only done at the CEO or leadership level. Anyone can start implementing strategy into your relationships, brand, and book of business at any level.
If you loved learning how you can become more strategic, I highly recommend you check out Rich’s book. You can also check out his free resources and graphic novel!
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Rich’s book Strategic
Free resources from Rich
More free resources
Get the Strategy graphic novel
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Robyn Addis who is an expert in community building. There is so much power in relationships, vulnerability, and authenticity, and Robyn is sharing her insights into why communities that embrace these things can bring you more success. She also shares some valuable tips on how to create a community or host a successful event yourself!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How communities allow for elevated levels of success
- The power of meaningful relationships
- The perfect blend of authenticity and expertise
- How to be the hub of a network
- Why vulnerability is so powerful and how to show it authentically
- Why people like to be asked for help
- The dangers of earned dogmatism
- The impact of realizing you’re not alone
- How to use the fishbowl to get people talking
- Advice for putting on successful events
It’s so important to remember that you’re not alone, and there is a whole community of people out there like you who would love to connect with you and support you. That’s why building communities has such an impact.
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Robyn. If you want to learn more, make sure to visit the Follow Friday Conference website and connect with Robyn on LinkedIn. You can also reach out to her directly at robyn@followfridayconference.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit The Follow Friday Conference website
Contact Robyn: robyn@followfridayconference.com
Connect with Robyn on LinkedIn
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
We all have teams. We all have team habits. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Charlie Gilkey, the expert in team habits! Charlie is the author of the book Team Habits and he’s here to help us understand how truly impactful good internal and external team habits can be. Don’t let the simplicity of team habits fool you into thinking that you don’t need to prioritize it. Charlie’s showing us how to lean into interpersonal power and co-agency and work better together going forward.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The difference between individual habits and team habits
- The three dimensions of power at work
- The 8 different types of team habits
- How to improve your client team habits
- The ripple effect of changing team habits
- Why your relationships are key to creating habits that work
- Tips for coming together to find out what works
- The core team habits that truly matter
- Growth activities that can improve our internal team habits
- The right way to do goal-setting
- Why everything leads back to making an impact
- How to use a Media Map to create habits for where to communicate
- Ways to make sure you’re always on the path to excellence
I hope you enjoyed learning about team habits with Charlie! Remember, what's more important than whether you have alignment and everybody agrees on everything is whether you get together as a team and figure out how to get in alignment.
If you want to take the Team Habits quiz or learn more about creating team habits, head over to betterteamhabits.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Charlie’s website and take the Team Habits quiz
Listen to my conversation with James Clear
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Ready to become more consciously inclusive? I am so excited to share this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue with you today because I sat down with Andrés T. Tapia who has done more work on diversity and inclusion than anyone I know.
He has made a profound impact on me and I am so happy to have him here to talk about his books that are all about the 5 disciplines of inclusivity. He’s sharing how we can apply these disciplines to leadership, teams, and enterprise-wide to the entire organization.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The five disciplines of organizations
- The power of authenticity in organizations and leaders
- How to find the courage to do the right thing
- How you can commit to adding more diversity in your teams
- The commercial aspect of embracing diversity
- The practical steps to become consciously inclusive
- Why curiosity is the skeleton to becoming more diverse
- The invisible aspects of diversity
- The two main elements of inclusion
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Andrés and are able to apply the 5 disciplines of inclusivity and diversity to your organization, teams, and leadership.
If you want to learn more from Andrés, make sure to check out his website, subscribe to his LinkedIn newsletter, and check out his books The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders and The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Organizations.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Andrés’ website
Follow Andrés on LinkedIn and get his newsletter
Check out his Books:
The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leaders
The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Organizations
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Have you read the book or seen the movie Molly’s Game? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Molly Bloom. She is sharing how at only 24 years old, she built up a hugely successful book of business by leveraging the power of authentic relationships. She truly blasted through her fear in a way that I think any of us could be inspired by.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Molly overcame such great adversity in her life
- The opportunity Molly was presented with and how she created a business with it
- How Molly learned about making genuine connections with other humans
- The power of a giving mindset
- Why the way you make people feel is so important
- The impact of effective presence
- Why taking notes on people you meet is so important
- How you can grow massively over your competition
- Focusing on integrity over short-term gain
- How breaking her own rules led to Molly losing everything
- What Molly learned about integrity from her experiences
Integrity is the ultimate edge, and Molly is such a good example of that. She truly shows the power of building authentic relationships and focusing on giving rather than receiving.
If you want to learn more from Molly, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your copy of the GrowBIG Playbook
Follow Molly on Twitter
Follow Molly on Instagram
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
How can you really improve your customer or client experience?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Susan Salgado. Susan has a PhD in organizational psychology and she focuses on customer or client experience. We will dive into some exciting things about client experience, your associate or employee experience, and how they're intertwined. And we're going to talk about things at a strategic level like how to make this a true differentiator. Plus, we're going to talk about it at a tactical level, so we’re sharing things you can put in place right away to achieve greater success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The power of a customer's emotional experience
- The best icebreaker for building relationships
- Top tips for finding commonalities with people
- The three things a client needs from you
- How to get better at client and employee experience
- The three ways that toxic workplaces are formed
- Why employees need to feel seen and valued by their supervisors
- How we can show our team members that they have our attention
- How the quality of working relationships has changed since the pandemic
- Why we have to remember that we are the same people at work as we are at home
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Susan. It’s so important that we remember that in order to build deeper relationships with those around us, whether it’s our team members or clients, we need to understand that they are people and we care about them as a whole.
If you’d like to learn more from Susan, you can find her website here. You can also find her on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Susan’s website
Connect with Susan on LinkedIn
Learn more about building deeper relationships in season 4 of the podcast
Listen to my conversation with Dave Crenshaw
Check out the Work-Home Resources Model research
Make sure to get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Ever wondered how you could personalize your messaging to your potential clients for increased success? You’re in luck because, in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Brennan Dunn who is an expert in all things personalization. He’s the author of This Is Personal and he’s here to share how to scale personalized messages to prospects and clients in your email marketing and beyond for maximum impact. This conversation is packed with value so you don’t want to miss it!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Brennan approaches making things more personalized in emails
- The middle ground between scale and personalization
- The power of segmentation in your emails
- How to use Voice of Customer language to customize your language and offers
- The three levels of personalization and how to work through them
- The trick to getting people to read your emails
- The impact of automation when it comes to speaking to your clients
- Examples of how people in different industries can automate their personalization
- How personalization makes it easy to get new clients
- Tips for taking notes and gathering data on your contacts that you can use to personalize
I hope you found this episode as powerful and impactful as I did! Brennan really knows his stuff and I was so excited to get to sit down with him and talk all things personalization and scaling.
If you want to learn more, I highly recommend you check out his book This is Personal. I know you’ll really love it!
If you’d like to get our value add for scaling growth skills across a team or organization, which we used as an example in today’s episode, you can find that here.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Brennan’s book This Is Personal on his website
Get a copy of Brennan’s book This is Personal on Amazon
Learn more about Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Wondering how you can unlock massive growth? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Tiffani Bova. She is the Senior Leader at Salesforce and author of The Growth IQ and The Experience Mindset. We are discussing both of these books and learning from Tiffani how we can best grow our organization and book of business by enhancing the experience of the customers and employees and the role technology plays in it all.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The growth levers that companies use to grow their business
- The power of company culture and values
- How we can actually deliver greater growth rates
- Why companies are falling woefully short on employee experience for the sake of customer experience
- The data on why you can grow more by focusing on customer and employee experience
- Why the experience of working with you matters so much
- The impact technology has on the customer and employee experience
- Practical actions you can take to optimize the technology you’re using
- Simple steps to enhance client experience
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Tiffani! Take a week and map out how you can optimize your time and technology to improve the experience of your customers and employees so you can work smarter, not harder. This is the true path to growth.
If you want to learn more from Tiffani, I highly recommend you connect with her on LinkedIn and get a copy of her books The Growth IQ and The Experience Mindset.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Growth IQ
Get a copy of The Experience Mindset
Connect with Tiffani on LinkedIn
Follow Tiffani on X
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
Get a copy of your GrowBIG Playbook today!
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Dr. Michelle King who is the author of the book How Work Works. She is here to talk about ways that you can navigate the workplace using science and simple steps. Michelle has been researching this topic for a while and she is sharing what it really takes to get ahead in your career.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The single most important factor in your career success
- The ambiguity paradox in the new world of work
- Why having social skills is so important, especially now
- The power of building trust within your network and managing your reputation
- The impact of building informal networks
- The top thing you can do to build deep and personal relationships
- Why you have to diversify your efforts
- How to dial up your self-awareness
- How to ask for feedback that is effective and helpful
- How informal development works and why you have to take ownership of it
- How to give yourself meaning in work
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Michelle and that you’re able to take these simple steps to get ahead and navigate the workplace in a way that increases your success.
Learn more about Michelle and download her 52-week program on How Work Works at https://www.michellepking.com. You can also check out her new book here!
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Mohamed Massaquoi
Read my four-part series on Annual Process
Get Michelle’s book How Work Works
Download Michelle’s 52-week program
How do you get things done that are high-priority on your to-do list? How do you do that in a way that makes a big impact? And how do you ensure that you're leaving a legacy not just next month with the work you’re meant to be doing, but also over your entire career and lifetime?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I brought on a guru across multiple disciplines, Dave Crenshaw, to talk about these topics and the idea of productive leadership so that you can find more success in your business and life by managing your time for maximum impact.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The grandparent principle and the mindset shift to become mentors and leaders
- How you can prioritize your time based on your most valuable activities
- Why you should create an ideal schedule to guide your actual schedule
- When and how to budget time for your least valuable activities
- The question that the most successful people ask themselves about their schedule
- How to determine your “distance to empty”, and how you can stretch it as long as possible
- The best way to add structured breaks into your schedule
- What happens when people in our lives know that they can depend on us
- The power of understanding how much is “enough”
- The six areas of success
- The impact studying business can have on your life
- The problem with multitasking
Dave really offers so much value in this conversation and I hope it inspires you to take action and allocate your time to maximize your own success.
If you want to dive deeper into Dave’s work, make sure to check out his podcast, The Dave Crenshaw Success Project, where he shares tons more. You can also visit his website to see all of his offers and check out his LinkedIn Learning course.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Dave’s main website: davecrenshaw.com
Check out Dave’s gratis LinkedIn Learning course: davecrenshaw.com/time
Check out Dave’s Success Project Podcast: successproject.show
Check out Arnold B. Bakker’s work: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FTl3bwUAAAAJ
Check out Lieke ten Brummelhuis’s work: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=A0cTZjYAAAAJ
Check out the interesting study Staying Engaged During the Week: The Effect of Off-Job Activities on Next Day Work Engagement: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229154478_Staying_Engaged_During_the_Week_The_Effect_of_Off-Job_Activities_on_Next_Day_Work_Engagement
Take a look at the work-home resources model research we talked about: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-09461-001
Listen to my conversation with Dorie Clark: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxt4X2nLK_eElBtVe-pCIw8RV5vyIArDK
Did you know that you can learn how to be more likable?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I'm excited to introduce one of our most unique guests ever, Jack Schafer. Jack, a former FBI behavior analyst, professor, and accomplished author, will delve into the fascinating realm of likability. Drawing on his extensive expertise, Jack will explore topics such as building rapport, utilizing nonverbal cues for likability, effective advice-seeking, employing flattery, and much more. He’s here to guide us on how we can leverage these tools to grow our relationships and book of business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Three powerful nonverbal things you can do to be more likable
- The golden rule of getting people to like you
- Tricks for keeping the focus on the other person when you meet someone new
- How to build rapport using flattery
- The right way to ask for advice while also making people feel important
- The three attributes of the Friendship Formula
- How to use a “bridge back” to pick back up on rapport-building
- Tips for handling rocky situations
- How to get people to tell you things
- Tips for using these techniques for good in your business relationships
- The power of empathic statements
I hope you enjoyed this fascinating conversation with Jack! The next time you meet someone new, make sure to use these tips to become more likable, build rapport, and create stronger relationships with those around you.
If you want to learn more from Jack, you can get a copy of his books The LIKE Switch and The Truth Detector and read his posts on Psychology Today. If you’d like to reach out to him personally, you can do so at jr-schafer2@wiu.edu.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Jack’s book The LIKE Switch
Check out Jack’s new book The Truth Detector
Read all of Jack’s posts on Psychology Today
Connect with Jack here: jr-schafer2@wiu.edu
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Ryan Grelecki who is one of our top facilitators and coaches! He is here to talk about the areas of our content that he loves the most. He has a different perspective than I do so I know you’re going to love this episode. We are doing a deep dive into ways to bring value to your relationships, the benefits of data analysis, how to set yourself apart from the crowd, and so much more!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Our origin story of working together
- The power of having multiple different opportunities
- Getting intentional about managing your relationships and adding value
- How to get past the fear of being annoying
- Why something doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful
- The power of a quick voice message to stand apart
- Why you have to track your follow-ups and leverage your data
- How to leverage CRMS to help you track your data and reach your goals
- Ryan’s pro tips for the MIT process
- Staying in touch with younger people to continue learning
- Ways to find the time when you’re “too busy”
When it comes to professional development, don’t get caught believing the lies that you are going to be annoying, that you don’t have the time, or that you can’t bring value. Use these tips from Ryan to stay on top of it and reach your goals faster!
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ryan. If you loved hearing from him, you can reach out to him at ryan.grelecki@bunnellideagroup.com, connect with him on LinkedIn, and listen to his podcast with Parker!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Ryan by email at ryan.grelecki@bunnellideagroup.com
Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn
Here’s a link to the personal CRM app we talked about
Listen to Parker’s podcast
Check out the free course we have on relationships
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Ken Sterling. Ken has overcome some tremendous challenges in his life and has now found incredible success and we are going to talk about some truly powerful stuff. We are diving into why human connection is the secret to growth, tips for deal-making and negotiation, and so much more. Ken is also going to speak on his organization called Big Speak. It is one of the premier speaker’s bureaus for businesses and I think you’re going to find a lot of value in this conversation.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Ken went from homelessness to the massively successful professional he is now
- The power of being tenacious and not being afraid to reach out to those around you
- Tips for getting over your own self and asking for help when you need it
- How to have a human-centric approach to business relationships
- Keeping the highest good in mind in everything you do
- Embracing optimism and graciousness
- Investing in people when there’s nothing to purchase
- The impact that Big Speak is making
- Seeing setbacks as a cul-de-sac instead of a dead end
I hope you enjoyed this impactful conversation with Ken! There is so much value in remembering that behind each deal and each interaction, there is a human. And prioritizing human connection above all else will pay off in a big way.
If you want to reach out to Ken and connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Ken on LinkedIn
Check out the interview with the CEO of BBDO, Andrew Robertson
Listen to the interview with the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear
Check out the book Double Double
This episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue is about to be considered one of your favorite episodes of all time! I sat down with Erin Carlson and we are sharing some completely new content that we have never shared on the show before!
Whether you have a client-facing role, you’re a leader, or you’re a marketing professional, Erin is going to give you some world-class tips on things like how to hold yourself accountable, how to create the right habits, how to track the right things, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The impact of having the right people on your team
- Why we have to be the ones creating the best opportunities for growth
- The power of having a strategic thought partner
- The critically important aspect of business development strategy
- Finding the times to have important conversations with clients
- Why you need to fall in love with your client's problems and find ways to help
- How to manage the planning piece in your big meetings
- Ways to help people do the hard things that they will be glad they did later
- Why having data-driven recommendations is essential
- Lagging and leading data that is making the most impact
- Erin’s pro tips for metrics
- How to influence those around you by asking for help
- The power of asking for favors to create influence
The things Erin and her team are doing are the best I’ve seen in the world, and she’s always on the lookout for new talent so reach out if you or someone you know is a good fit.
I hope you found this episode with Erin as helpful as I did! If you want to learn more from Erin, you can follow her on LinkedIn and reach out to her at carlson.erin@bcg.com.
Resources Mentioned:
To connect with her on LinkedIn
To connect with Erin: carlson.erin@bcg.com
Check out the Influence Is Your Superpower book by Zoe Chance
Listen to my conversation with Mike Deimler
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
I have a really unique and interesting episode for you today! I sat down with Cade Joiner who is an expert at helping entrepreneurs be successful. He's got a three-part structure that we're going to talk through today so that you can learn to find more success in your life and business too. Cade has helped hundreds of people start businesses and find tremendous success by getting the funding they want, taking that, leveraging it, creating, and having the impact that they want to have in life. It’s such a unique perspective and I’m excited to share this conversation with you today!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Cade stays elite in family, community, and business
- The keys to being successful at listening and asking questions
- Asking thoughtful and thought-provoking questions
- The power of building rapport and making sure everyone is comfortable
- How to become better at helping others
- How to help and give strategically
- The importance of following up and how to add value when you do
- The broad definition of helping that we need to understand
- The power of collaboration over competition
I hope you found tons of value in this conversation with Cade! To apply these insights to your own life and business, start by actively listening, asking thoughtful questions, building rapport, and embracing collaboration over competition.
Take action on these principles, and you'll be on your way to more success than ever! If you want to learn more from Cade, you can find him on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Cade on LinkedIn
Learn more about when self-perceptions of expertise increase closed-minded cognition: The earned dogmatism effect
Wondering how you can learn to communicate more effectively?
I have such a fun episode for you on this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue! I sat down with Michael Weitz who is a communication guru! Michael came from the world of theater and what he brought with him to the world of business is the notion that it's not just about presence, it's not just about having great stories and great data and great content. It's not just having a great strategy. You need all these things to really be an impactful communicator and to really have mastery. That’s what he does for his clients and he’s sharing all of his tips with us today.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why communication is one of the top skills you can have for success
- The power communication has to really impact your audience
- The two parts of inspiring that you need to understand
- The four questions to ask to get the core of any conversation or story
- Story-driven ways to inspire change
- The power of getting clear about your values
- How to tap into conviction and integrity when communicating
- Using sensory language and emotion in our communication
- Finding out your presence
- Tips for managing dopamine
Effective communication can inspire true change. There’s a lot that goes into being a good communicator, but taking the tips Michael shared today and putting them into practice when you are communicating with clients or an audience will be a game-changer for you.
If you want to hear more from Michael, you can find him on LinkedIn or send him an email at michael@virtuozo.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelweitz/
Get in touch with Michael: michael@virtuozo.com
Check Out Ander Huberman’s Podcast Episode on Managing Dopamine
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Jay Thompson, one of my favorite facilitators and coaches that we get to work with. He has led countless sessions and coaching groups applying GrowBIG and all of our trainings, so he really knows his stuff.
In this episode, we are diving into Jay’s favorite parts of the GrowBIG training and the 16 proven methods to start new relationships with people. Jay has tons of tips that I know you’ll find really valuable so I’m excited to share this conversation with you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What GrowBIG is all about
- The three things that make an incredible difference with our trainings
- Why everybody can learn business development
- The importance of understanding your own growth pace
- The power of becoming an expert in understanding your client
- Making the buying experience easy and enjoyable for the clients
- How to actually get to know your prospects or clients
- The power of value and trust
- The 16 methods of beginning new relationships with people
- Jay’s top tips to keep learning
I hope you found this episode valuable! There are so many different methods to begin new relationships with people. Focusing on value and trust is key to your success.
If you want to learn more from Jay, you can check out his Hike the Mountain website and follow him on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Jay Thompson on LinkedIn
Check out the Hike the Mountain website
Follow Jay on Instagram
Reach out to us at the BIG email: contact@bunnellideagroup.com
Listen to Dr. Anders Ericsson’s interview on Freakonomics Radio
Check out the 7.5 Lessons About the Brain book
Check out the playlist for the comprehensive BD skills in Season 4 of this show
Building a Second Brain book by Tiago Forte
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, let’s party! I sat down with Nick Gray, who is an expert at throwing parties. He is the author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party and he’s going to share how we can use cocktail parties to gather potential clients or prospects together before an event and further our business development. With Nick’s formula, you’ll be seen as a super-connector and a host who truly cares. You’ll be amazed at how it grows your network!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to use the Nick Party Formula for a successful cocktail party
- How people treat you when you are the one who organizes events
- The power of an abundance mentality
- Why even introverts can be successful at hosting events
- The key number of people you need at your cocktail party
- Why you should be collecting interesting people that you want to know
- Tips for starting with a low-stakes affair
- Platforms and tools to use to organize your event
- How to get people excited about your events
- How to be seen as a host who cares
- How to use value additive questions in your party
If you haven’t planned your own party or event for networking before, I hope this episode inspires you to get out there and start planning the perfect cocktail party so you can grow your network and book of business!
If you want to learn more from Nick, make sure to check out his book. You can also visit his website and get his newsletter!
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party
Helpful links for planning your network event:
32 Funny Ideas for Anything but a Cup Party
Icebreaker Card Games: Questions & Review of 5 Popular 2023 Decks
31 Summer Camp Activities for Adults
Icebreakers: The Ultimate Guide for 2023
7 Small Trade Show Booth Ideas for 2023
The Friendship Recession site
Visit Nick’s website
Sign up for Nick’s newsletter
Wondering how to accelerate trust in your business relationships? You’re going to love this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue! I sat down with Michael Ventura to discuss his two books: Applied Empathy and Prioritizing Purpose. Michael dives into the topics of empathy and purpose, and shares why you can’t have one without the other.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to get better at empathy in your relationships
- The power of genuine curiosity and thoughtful action when talking to others
- Tips for applying empathy in your life and business
- Ways to accelerate trust in your relationships
- The Depersonalization Model for breakdowns in communication
- Michael’s new book about prioritizing your purpose
- How to get started thinking about your purpose
- What you need in order to be productive in your life
- The power of saying no to the wrong things so you can say yes to the right things
- The key to finding your potential
Empathy can be one of the biggest unlocks for leadership development, and I hope this conversation with Michael inspired you to add more empathy into your relationships.
If you want to learn more from him, make sure to check out his books. You can also learn more about him on his website and on LinkedIn.
If you want to check out David Burkus’s TED Talk on finding and communicating purpose in a large organization, you can check it out here. You can listen to Jenny Blake's episode all about finding more free time in your business here.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Michael’s website
Find Michael on LinkedIn
Check out David Burkus’s TED Talk on finding and communicating purpose in a large organization
Listen to Jenny Blake’s Real Relationship Real Revenue interview -"How to Find More Free Time in Your Business with Jenny Blake"
How can you scale your business development efforts and reach higher levels of success? In this solo episode, I’m sharing how you can make it happen through marketing. Marketing has always had a bit of a bad rap because, in the past, you couldn’t always tell what worked. However, now you can easily see what’s working in your marketing efforts and what’s not. In fact, I like to call it pre-business development because it’s so important. So I’m sharing how you can scale your marketing impact in ways that perfectly align with your business development.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why marketing is so important for business development
- Examples of brilliant marketing techniques
- How often you should be marketing
- Weekly and monthly, quarterly, and annual things you can do to market yourself
- How to implement these types of marketing efforts
- Why consistency is so crucial to your success
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you got some valuable tips for marketing to scale your business development efforts. Remember, consistency is the key to success here. You just have to pick your cadence and keep going.
If you want to check out the examples I mentioned, you can find them linked below. To get the GrowBIG Playbook, you can find it here.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out MoloLamken’s Supreme Court Business Briefing
Check out Scottmadden Energy Industry Update
Get the GrowBIG Playbook
Check out the interview with Dennis Baltz where he describes his newsletter
Want to come up with better ideas?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Jeremy Utley who is the coauthor of the book Idea Flow. This book has undoubtedly been a game-changer for me when it comes to cultivating ideas, particularly in the context of large-scale enterprises. It's a paradigm shift—it's not about improving the quality of ideas, but rather, it's about amplifying the quantity. Jeremy is here to dive into the foundations of this concept and share how we can harness it to generate outstanding ideas at the enterprise level.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The simple idea behind idea flow and how organizations can increase it
- The easiest way to measure your idea flow
- How you can dial up your idea flow when it comes to skill development
- Why it’s important to attend to the input of your thinking in order to change the output
- The importance of connections when generating more ideas
- Why the inspiration you need might be outside your organization
- The power of having multiple perspectives when creating ideas
- The cool AI projects Jeremy is working on
- Embracing low-stakes failures for large-scale successes
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jeremy and that you're excited to put his tips into action to supercharge your idea flow and kickstart a flood of new ideas. Remember, the real magic of exceptional ideas happens when you embrace the flow and let your creativity lead the way.
If you want to learn more from Jeremy, make sure to get a copy of his book. You can also follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter, subscribe to his newsletter, and tune in to his podcast.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Jeremy’s website
Check out his newsletter
Listen to Jeremy’s podcast
Try Ten tool
Check out Freespin Capital
View the interactive overview of all the major cognitive biases
Listen to my interview with Josh Scott
How do you generate more referrals for your business? Referrals are one of the best ways to grow your book of business if you approach it with a strategy. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I invited John Jantsch, the referral and marketing strategy expert and author of The Referral Engine, to discuss ways that you can grow your business and network so that you can turn your business into a referral machine.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you need to get intentional about generating referrals
- The mindset of success you need if you want to bring in more clients
- Why asking for help has such a big impact on your relationships
- How to ask someone to refer you to others plus a strategy to do it that you can start using now
- Ways to get referrals without asking for them
- The secret to using strategic partners to bring in more referrals
- How to find the right strategic partners for you
- How you can go about setting a marketing strategy
- The seven customer journey stages that make people want to buy with you
- What you need to know about AI in the marketing industry
- Ways to use AI to take your marketing strategy to the next level
Referrals are like gold for any business. They not only bring in high-quality leads but also come with a built-in trust factor that's invaluable in today's marketplace.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with John on how to create a solid marketing strategy and find the right fit strategic partners so that you can get more referrals and grow your book of business. If you want to learn more from John, you can get a copy of his book The Referral Engine here. Also, make sure to get your hands on his AI prompts and check out all of the amazing resources on his website.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of The Referral Engine
Visit the Duct Tape Marketing website
Get John’s free AI prompts
How can you get your clients to buy into the idea of building something together?
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with one of our top facilitators, Anna Boon, to talk about her favorite parts of the GrowBIG® Training- Building Everything Together. We are going deep into the topic and Anna is sharing what you need to know so that you can learn to co-create something amazing with your clients. If you want to elevate your expertise and stand out in your field, this episode is for you!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The benefits of Building Everything Together
- Strategies to make this happen with your clients
- The Ikea Effect and how it relates to this principle
- The science behind how this idea works
- How we can overcome objections to this strategy
- The value in vulnerability
- The different areas of Building Everything Together
- A good practice to begin to leverage this concept with your clients
- Anna’s trick for continuous learning and holding herself accountable
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Anna! There is really something powerful about getting your clients to buy into co-creating with you. If you want to learn more about the science behind it, check out the studies on The IKEA Effect here.
If you want to get in touch with Anna, you can follow her on LinkedIn or contact her at contact@bunnellideagroup.com!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Anna Boon on LinkedIn
BIG Email: contact@bunnellideagroup.com
The IKEA Effect research
Did you know that regardless of your industry, life, career stage, or circumstances, you can create meaningful and sometimes radical change, improvement, or growth in just one year? Lisa McCarthy joins me in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue to dive into how you can make it happen with the Five Power Principles. Her new book FAST FORWARD: 5 Power Principles to Create the Life You Want in Just One Year is made to challenge any limiting beliefs, and she is giving you a proven system to do just that.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The five principles to create meaningful change
- An exercise to help you define what extraordinary success looks like for you
- Why you should commit to outcomes even if you don’t know how to achieve them
- The power of getting your goals on paper
- Why you should always write your goals in the past tense
- Why your mindset matters so much
- Creating uncomfortable outcomes
- How to plan the work and work the plan
- The importance of finding stuff to subtract from your time
- How to use language of action
- The science and power of curiosity
We just don't know how long that we've got here, so why not live the life we want? I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Lisa and that it inspires you to set big, audacious goals for yourself!
I really think you should get a copy of her book and take a weekend to read it. Work through her process and watch your life transform!
If you want to learn more about 7 ways to deepen your relationships in five minutes or less, make sure you get a copy of the GrowBIG Playbook.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Lisa’s book FAST FORWARD: 5 Power Principles to Create the Life You Want in Just One Year
Get a copy of the GrowBIG Playbook
Visit Lisa’s website
Check out the Pseudo Set Framing research
I have a special treat for you in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue! I sat down with Kirstin Ferguson whose new book The Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership just came out and it is perfect for anyone tuning into this show. You are the people who have one foot in deep technical expertise, but you've also got to lead teams. You've got to lead strategic partner relationships to do the great work that you do, and in this episode, Kirstin is going to teach us how to do that even better.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What the art of the modern leader really is
- Why feedback is crucial for modern leaders
- The small moments that leave a big impact as a leader
- How you can assess your modern leadership for free
- The important attributes of leadership
- The power of self-awareness as a leader
- Why it’s so important to lead with courage
- The art of moving from personal to professional relationships
- The innate curiosity we all have and what happens when we apply it to clients
- The wisdom in decision-making
- The correlation between perspective and empathy
- Practical tips to implement modern leadership principles
I hope this episode helps you discover the art of staying present, nurturing humility, and embracing self-awareness as you navigate the world of modern leadership.
If you want to learn more from Kirstin, I highly recommend you get a copy of her book Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership, take the free Head & Heart Leader Scale assessment, and follow her on social media.
Resources Mentioned:
Buy Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Head-Heart-Art-Modern-Leadership/dp/152300620X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=head+and+heart+the+art+of+modern+leadership&qid=1682416957&sprefix=head+and+heart+the+%2Caps%2C332&sr=8-1
Take the Head & Heart Leader Scale and self-assess your modern leadership: https://headheartleader.com/
Learn more about Kirstin Ferguson and book her for an event: https://www.kirstinferguson.com/
Follow Kirstin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstinferguson/
Follow Kirstin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirstinferguson/
Follow Kirstin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirstinferguson
Follow Kirstin on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@kirstinferguson
Follow Kirstin on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/kirstinferguson
Listen to the episode with Gina: https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/how-to-pitch-and-close-the-deals-that-you-want-with-gina-king/
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Micheal Melcher, the author of Your Invisible Network: How to Create, Maintain, and Leverage the Relationships That Will Transform Your Career. This book is jam-packed with so much value and I know you will love it. In this episode, Michael and I dive into what your “invisible network” is and why and how you can learn network and relationship skills that could change your career trajectory.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why your relationships are actually a form of wealth that you get to control
- What your invisible network is and why you need to have one
- Pushing past discomfort in order to grow and push into new levels of success
- The six rules of relationships and why they matter
- The influence your network has on the decisions you make
- The demystification of relationships
- The mutually beneficial nature of great relationships
- How to completely differentiate yourself from others when you’re building relationships or working with clients
- Strategies for creating a relationship portfolio
- The role of vulnerability in relationship building and why it doesn’t impact your credibility
- The ratios you need to keep in mind when reaching out to your network
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Michael! As he said, relationships are a form of wealth that you can control, and you can grow your wealth of relationships with these tips that Michael shared today.
If you want to learn more about Michael, make sure to check out his book. You can also visit his website resource page, get the 7 Types of Relationships download, and use it to reach out to your weak ties today.
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Michael’s book: https://michaelmelcher.com/yourinvisiblenetwork/
Check out Michael’s resources https://michaelmelcher.com/resources/
I have a real treat for you in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue! I sat down with Tiago Forte, the author of Building a Second Brain, which is one of my favorite books ever. Tiago is here to share more about the absolute superpower of building a “second brain” and how you can use his mnemonics and systems, such as the PARA Method, to take your business development to the next level. Truly, his methods will help you separate yourself from 95% of other people when building relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why building a second brain is such a superpower and how you can build your own
- The power of having a system for cataloging important information
- The ability to think once, and then capitalize on it again and again
- Why anyone can benefit from having a second brain
- Where to put the information that you capture so that you can maximize its value
- The key to overcoming information overload
- How to apply the PARA Method in your business development process
- The true power of making learning a priority
- How to separate yourself from 95% of people in business and life
- Tiago’s favorite apps for creating your second brain
- The 4 archetypes that will help you find the perfect app for you
- What you need to know about team knowledge management
I hope you found some value in this episode with Tiago! There is so much power in having a “second brain” to store all of the information that you have gathered throughout your career. It can be really instrumental in standing out in your business development efforts.
If you were as inspired by Tiago as I was and want to learn more, visit his website to check out all of his resources and find the YouTube videos we spoke about. Make sure to also get yourself a copy of Building A Second Brain. I know you won’t regret it!
Resources Mentioned:
Get a copy of Building A Second Brain: https://a.co/d/d1ViFR7
Check out all of Tiago’s resources and YouTube videos: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/
Check out Tiago’s new book focusing on and going deeper into the PARA method: https://a.co/d/bTsN0zm
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Jay Papasan, one of the co-authors of The One Thing, which was a major unlock for me! He joined me to talk about the power of consistently writing to your email list. Even if you don’t have an audience right now, starting a newsletter is something that will compound over time and provide you with extraordinary results.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The possibilities available to you with writing
- Why you don’t need a huge audience to start a newsletter
- The power of email marketing
- Why consistency matters more than anything when it comes to newsletters
- The relationship-building you can do with an email list
- What to say to your email list- even if you think you don’t have anything to say
- Tricks Jay uses when writing and organizing his thoughts
- The secret to getting clarity on what we need to be doing to achieve our goals
- Why accountability is so important
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jay! If you don’t have a copy of The One Thing, I highly recommend you get it. And if you do have a copy, give it a reread. It is such a powerful tool for growth.
If you want to learn more from Jay, check out his email list The Twenty Percenter.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Jay’s email list The Twenty Percenter: https://www.thetwentypercenter.com
Check out The One Thing: https://the1thing.com
Check out Nathan Barry on Leveraging the Power of Automation All The Way to $25 Million in Revenue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZelomTIw4XU
Check out Purpose in Business Development with Dennis Baltz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGvu6hXDTm0
Listen to Growing Business Development Relationships with Henning Streubel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNFvu1mL4Rw
Listen to Ron Friedman on Finding Success By Learning to Reverse Engineer Greatness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVsINZkF-Ec
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am bringing on one of our top facilitators and coaches, Paul Weigall. He has implemented GrowBIG in organizations globally and I know this episode is going to be a real treat. We are going to teach you a rock-solid method on how to prepare for client meetings so that you can have more success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why failing to prepare for your meetings means you don’t win them
- The truth about why people fail to prepare for their meetings
- How to frame your goals to your clients’ liking
- Why setting goals helps keep everyone on track and how many to set
- The importance of flexibility with your meetings
- How to ask the right questions to move your clients forward
- How to nail the positioning of the features and benefits in a meeting
- Tips for planning the content of your meetings
- The importance of following the six steps to prepare for your client meetings
- How cliffhangers can influence the outcome of your meetings
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Paul and learned some valuable tips on how to properly prepare for your meetings with clients so that you win more often. To connect with Paul, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also get in touch at paul.weigall@bunnelideagroup.com.
If you would like to learn more about the research about asking for things face-to-face by Vanessa Bohns, you can check that out here.
Resources Mentioned:
Paul Weigall LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-weigall-3b572a17/
Get in touch about BIG: contact@bunnellideagroup.com
Check out the 34x research by Vanessa Bohns: https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Charlie Green, the author of the first book that really made an impact on me - The Trusted Advisor. There are so many books out there that are all about closing the next deal, and not enough about the relationship aspect. You can have relationships and be proactive, and do it in a way that’s a win for everybody, and Charlie is here to dive into that topic and share three big ideas on the topic of trust with us today.
Prior to founding Trusted Advisor Associates in 2001, Charlie spent 20 years in management consulting. He has an MBA from Harvard, and a BA in Philosophy from Columbia, where he also drove a NYC taxi part-time. He is the co-author of The Trusted Advisor, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, and author of Trust-based Selling.
He has worked with over 100 clients in industries from law, consulting, and accounting to technology, financial services, and pharmaceuticals, helping individuals and teams to get better at trusting and being trusted.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The advantages of focusing on trust in relationships
- How to take risks while also being trustworthy in business
- The power of The Trust Equation
- Showing vulnerability as an expert and how it builds trust
- The myths around trust
- The emotional or “soft” stuff that will get you the sale
- What happens when you stop being self-centered and let go of resentment
- The power of follow-up questions and showing interest during conversations
- How to keep the goal of helping others at the front of mind during your conversations
- Why the enemy is not objection, the enemy is disconnection in business agreements
- Why you should always follow your curiosity
- The importance of leading with your mindset
I hope you found as much value in this conversation with Charlie as I did! His work has truly impacted the way I do business so I am thrilled that I got the chance to have him on the show. Building trust can really benefit your relationships so I encourage you all to take these tips from Charlie and apply them to your own work today.
If you want to chat with Charlie, feel free to email him at cgreen@trustedadvisor.com and visit his website and learn more about how you can become more trustworthy in your relationships. I also highly recommend you check out his book The Trusted Advisor.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the Klask Game: https://www.klaskgame.com
Get in touch with Charlie: cgreen@trustedadvisor.com
Visit Charlie’s website: https://trustedadvisor.com
In a recent episode with Leidy Klotz, we discussed how our brains are wired to add, not subtract. This means that we need prompts to help us figure out what to subtract from our lives for increased success. So in this solo episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am sharing some tips for you on how to focus on the right things and subtract the wrong things.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to find your Grow Big Index
- How understanding your value in the marketplace can help you find what you need to get rid of
- The two calendar-driven ways to find what to subtract
- The event-driven ways to subtract
- How you can keep these three triggers top of mind during your workflow
As Leidy says, to do great things, we need to subtract the less valuable things. Baking these three triggers into your workflow should help you keep this top of mind so you can regularly remove the things that you need to.
If you haven’t already listened to the episode with Leidy Klotz, make sure to do so. It was a fantastic interview and Leidy had so much value to offer. You can tune in here.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Leidy Klotz
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Leidy Klotz to talk about the mindset of subtracting versus adding. Often when we want to make something better, we want to add to it, but sometimes the answer is actually to take something away. Lady is here to explain this concept to us and show us how we can apply that to our work in our organizations for increased success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why we automatically think to add instead of subtract
- Strategies to decide when to add and when to take away
- How the rule of three applies to this concept
- How to apply the idea of subtraction to deepening relationships
- Subtracting things to get your time back
- What to do when you’re finding yourself overwhelmed
- How to figure out what to subtract
- How we can be more successful in managing our energy
- The power of a to-don’t list
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Leidy! As he says, when you add something, you are saying no to every other possible thing so it’s very important to be mindful about what you add to your plate as opposed to taking away.
If you want to learn more about Leidy, you can check out his website here.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about Leidy including his speaking
Check out the research and book showing how to spend money to save time (and other ways to spend money to make you happy)
Listen to the episode with Molly Fletcher on Being Relentlessly Curious and Over-Delivering In Your Relationships
Tune in to our episode with Vanessa Van Edwards where she illustrates how to captivate your prospect
Check out Voxer
Check out Marco Polo
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Gina King, one of our facilitators, to talk about the top three areas she sees the biggest impact or transformation with when she goes to a city to train a new team.
You're going to see exactly what things you can put in place right away to be successful.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why listening and learning is so impactful, no matter where you are in your career
- What really happens when we perceive ourselves as experts in our fields
- Gina’s hot take on advisors and what being an advisor really means
- The power of sharing the right story when helping others
- How the rule of three makes your message more memorable
- How to convert your accolades or experience into a benefit for your customers
- How to use the stakeholder impact when sharing your accolades and benefits
- Incorporating strategic fit and alignment into your pitches
- The four big value drivers
- Gina’s top tips for dynamic meeting preparation
- Framing your meetings from the beginning to make sure everyone is on the same page
- What you should bring to your meetings, and what you shouldn’t
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Gina! I loved hearing all of her insights into the biggest impacts she sees when working with customers on the GrowBIG Training.
If you want to connect with Gina, you can follow her on LinkedIn and email her at gina.king@bunnellideagroup.com.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow Gina on LinkedIn
Reach out to Gina: gina.king@bunnellideagroup.com
Check out The Earned Dogmatism research
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Trey Taylor to talk about the importance of company culture and his unique and provocative perspective on what leaders should do.
Trey Taylor is the M.D. of Threadneedle, the Taylor Family Office, C.E.O. of Taylor Insurance Services, M.D. of trinity | blue consulting, and Founding Partner of Ascend Partners.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Emory University and a Juris Doctor degree in Tax & Corporate Transactions from Tulane.
In 2020, Trey published his first book, A CEO Only Does Three Things. Since that publication, he has appeared on 60+ podcasts and been featured in publications like INC., Entrepreneur, SHRM, and others. He speaks frequently as a keynote speaker challenging audiences to be more intentional, find more focus, and get the right things done.
In his private time, Trey is a WSET-certified sommelier and private pilot with a Cirrus SR22T. He and his wife, Sheya, are the proud parents of Ret, Emmaline, and Mary Salter. They make their home in South Georgia, traveling frequently for work and pleasure.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Trey got started as a CEO
- Why you should treat your team culture like a garden
- The importance of ritualizing your values with your team
- How to incorporate company culture into your recruiting process
- How Trey approaches retention with his team
- Tips for dialing in on our team as individuals and showing acts of love
- The number one thing we can do as leaders
- Setting goals as CEOs
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Trey. He has such a refreshing and unique approach to leadership and I enjoyed learning from him. If you want to learn more from him, I highly recommend you check out his newsletter and his book. You can also follow him on Instagram and Facebook.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Trey’s newsletter: https://plantyourflag.substack.com
Visit Trey’s website: https://trey-taylor.com
Check out Trey’s consulting firm: https://trinity-blue.com
Get a copy of Trey’s book, A CEO Only Does Three Things: https://a.co/d/1P3SzLb
Learn more about the Psychological Momentum research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seppo-Iso-Ahola/publication/263918129_Psychologica[…]fde9/Psychological-Momentum-Why-Success-Breeds-Success.pdf
Check out the Ownership Thinking book by Brad Hams: https://a.co/d/baGu0yY
Follow Trey on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CEOTreyTaylor
Follow Trey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TreyTaylorCEO
Follow Trey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ceotreytaylor/
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Polina Marinova Pompliano to talk about her new book Hidden Genius and how she takes the biographies of the most successful people and weaves them together into themes so that we can learn from the best thinkers of the world.
Polina Marinova Pompliano is the author of HIDDEN GENIUS and the founder of The Profile, a media organization that studies successful people and companies.
Previously, she spent five years at FORTUNE where she covered technology and venture capital. As the author and editor of Term Sheet, FORTUNE’s industry-leading dealmaking newsletter, Polina interviewed the industry’s most influential dealmakers, including Melinda Gates, Steve Schwarzman, Chamath Palihapitiya, and more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Polina’s journey to where she is now
- Why Polina has a fascination with learning from other people
- The importance of mental toughness when striking up relationships with new clients
- The personification of pain and how it can help us grow
- How we can reframe our thoughts on failure
- The power of taking action and reaching out to people, despite your fear
- Tips for creating healthy relationships
- Why it’s the mundane things that make your life extraordinary
- Little things you can do for your clients to keep the magic alive
- Why it’s the motivation behind your actions that really matters when it comes to building relationships
- The difference between an audience and a community
- Ways to create your community
- The systems that Polina uses to capture and catalog everything that she learns
- Why you should tie your identity to your own name only
- How Polina handles her setbacks
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Polina! Her desire to learn is incredible and she has so much valuable advice she can share because of it. I highly recommend you check out her book Hidden Genius so that you can learn more from her and the best of the best. You can also check out her website here.
If you want to get a copy of the Grow Big Playbook, you can get that here.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit The Profile website
Check out the Hidden Genius book
Get a copy of the Grow Big Playbook
Follow Polina on Twitter
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Amanda Goodall, author of the book Credible, to talk about the power of expert leaders. We are diving into why experts are better leaders, the impact it has on the people all around them, how to spot them, and how to build talent. Everyone has a deep technical expertise and Amanda is going to show you how to leverage that so you can get the results you want in your organization and have the impact that you want on your client.
Amanda Goodall is professor of leadership at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London, where she specialises in how leaders and managers influence performance. She began her career as a fashion model at the age of sixteen. At twenty-two she lived on a small development project in Andhra Pradesh, India, and spent the next few years working with international NGOs.
In 1997, she completed a degree at the London School of Economics and subsequently a PhD, at Warwick Business School, focused on leaders’ characteristics. After two years at IZA Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, in 2012 she joined Bayes Business School’s Faculty of Management. She has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University, the University of Zurich, and Yale University.
Dr Goodall is widely published in academic journals, practitioner publications and the media. She is a committed environmentalist, an ambassador for Save Wild Tigers, and a founder member of Pembrokeshire Seal Research Trust.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Amanda got started researching experts in leadership
- Amanda’s best tips for moving into a leadership position
- How to hold the mirror up to yourself to understand how you influence others
- The humility needed to keep learning despite your expertise
- How expert bosses create a happy and productive workplace
- The effect of happy and fulfilled employees on an organization
- The importance of incentivizing people to step into leadership roles
- Ways to diversify the pool of candidates for leadership roles
- The five capabilities experts need to lead
- Lies experts tell themselves about leadership
- Tips for staying on track despite setbacks
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Amanda. There is so much power in experts in leadership roles, and I hope this inspires you to continue to learn and grow in your expertise so you can step into leadership as well.
If you want to learn more from Amanda, make sure to visit her website and check out her book Credible: The Power of Expert Leaders.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Amanda’s website
Listen to Embracing Vulnerability to Build Better Relationships with Your Clients with Ernesto Pagano
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Jeff Goins who is an expert at helping people actually make money with their expertise. We discuss the best way to stand out in your industry, finding the right systems for winning clients and business development, and so much more.
Jeff Goins is a writer, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur with a reputation for challenging the status quo. He is the best-selling author of five books including The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve.
He is also the creative force behind the ghostwriting agency, Fresh Complaint ( freshcomplaint.com ). A husband, father of two, and a guacamole aficionado, Jeff lives just outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What we can all learn from Michelangelo
- How to artfully break the rules to stand out from the crowd
- The best way to be different in your industry
- Why you never need to reinvent the wheel
- Tips for finding the right systems for you
- The true cost of doing something yourself rather than getting help
- The systems you need around winning the work and business development
- How Jeff approaches continuous learning
- Lies Jeff sees people telling themselves
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jeff! The stories we tell ourselves about what is possible for us is what really matters. Making money with your expertise is possible for anyone, it’s all about how you see it and your mindset around it.
If you are interested in learning more from Jeff, make sure to visit his website and check out his book Real Artists Don’t Starve. If you’ve ever thought about writing a book, check out his agency.
Resources Mentioned:
More on Jeff Goins and his writing
Get a copy of Real Artists Don’t Starve
More on Jeff’s agency and ghostwriting
Check out my weekly newsletter
Get a copy of Jeff Walker’s book Launch
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Erick Rheam to talk about how to become great at speaking in a way that you can use to meet people and generate leads systematically so that you can grow your book of business and relationships.
Erick Rheam is a speaker and published author. He communicates and educates on topics related to discovering significance and the art of mastering human dynamics to achieve success.
Speaking is one of the most powerful ways to get your message out because it scales, so I’m so excited to dive into this episode today.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Erick got into speaking and how it has changed his career
- Why speaking is such a powerful way to share your message
- Where to get started if you want to get into professional speaking
- The importance of knowing your audience clearly when speaking
- The key elements you need to crush it on stage
- How to create a powerful call to action in your speech
- What lead generators are and why they are crucial to your success while speaking
- Ways to find new gigs after your events
- Tips for optimizing your bio for speaking engagements
- Ways to use your experiences in your speech to add value and exceed expectations
- Erick’s signature message and how he uses them while speaking
Speaking can make a huge impact on the success of your business or career. I hope you enjoyed these tips from Erick for how to craft your own signature message, create a powerful call to action, and utilize the key elements he shared today to crush it on stage.
If you want to learn more from Erick, make sure to check out his page on The Speaker Lab website to learn more about if speaking is right for you.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Erick’s page on The Speaker Lab’s website
Connect with Erick on LinkedIn
Follow Erick on Instagram
Visit Erick’s website
Get a copy of Rise Above Chaos
Check out the Significance Assessment
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m coming to you solo to talk about something that people really seem to need right now. I'm sharing a way that you can tackle any type of slowdown that you see in the economy, in your book of business, in your business results, or in your particular expertise. These kinds of ebbs and flows happen all the time, and it’s important that we know how to handle them so that we can keep paving the way for success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The surprising statistics behind business growth during challenging times
- How you can completely differentiate yourself from anyone else
- The power of opening up a dialog with a client when they can’t invest in you
- What you can offer to a team during tough times
- Give To Gets you can offer clients or prospects that will likely transition into a mutually beneficial relationship
- What to do when your outcomes are twice as hard
So many people think that uncertain times are when you should pull back, but I hope these practical tips will help you understand the importance of doubling down instead. Offer value and really build and deepen your relationships. If you do this, you’ll win both in the short term and in the long term.
If you want to learn more about our Demand Creation Give To Get model, you can check it out here. If you want to check out the McGraw Hill study, you can do that here.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about our Demand Creation Give To Get model
Check out the McGraw Hill study
Prepare to become legendary! In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Tommy Breedlove who just wrote a book called Legendary that I got a ton of value out of and I know you will too. As someone who has spent time in prison, Tommy has a really unique journey and perspective and he’s sharing how we can learn to prioritize ourselves first, take control of our life and time, become laser-focused on what matters, and become legendary.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Tommy’s journey and the low point that changed everything
- The people he met in prison that transformed his life
- Why he started working with entrepreneurs and high-achieving people
- The number one way we can live with purpose
- The power of time-blocking and focusing on your zone of brilliance
- The importance of getting laser-focused on the things that move the ball in your business
- The mindset, attitude, and skill of managing money
- Why we need to get rid of the word “busy” and why your time is your second greatest asset
- How we can learn to say no
- Unconditional self-love and how we can achieve it
- The power of taking control of your life and being the captain of your own ship
I hope you enjoyed this powerful conversation with Tommy. As he says, you are your number one asset and you have to prioritize yourself first. It’s not selfish, it’s actually the most selfless thing you can do. I hope you read his book, take his advice, learn to lead, love, and respect yourself first every day, and become a world-class elite in your life.
Get your copy of Tommy’s book today. You can also visit his website to learn more about his retreats and events.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Tommy’s book Legendary
Check out Tommy’s website and learn more about his retreats and events
Check out The ONE Thing
There is no force more influential on human behavior than culture. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Marcus Collins to delve into how we can build a culture around our work, our lives, and our interests. And how, as a result, we’ll find opportunities, ideas, products, and experiences that we may not have found on our own.
Dr. Marcus Collins is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator with one foot in the world of practice—serving as the head of strategy at Wieden+Kennedy New York—and one foot in the world of academia—as a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why culture is so difficult to operationalize in business
- The opportunities that can arise when you focus on company culture
- How culture can help you build your book of business
- How to find ecosystems in business based on your beliefs and values
- How to get with your team and determine what you believe
- What artifacts are and how we give things meaning
- The way that the language we use signals to the world who we are
- How culture can impact who you work with
- The social aspect of consumption
- The human desire for connection and how it impacts our behavior and decisions in life and business
- The power of offering connections in business
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Marcus. From identifying the artifacts that give meaning to our culture, to the language we use to signal who we are, it’s important to take a thoughtful and intentional approach to building a culture that reflects our vision and aspirations so that we can find the right people and more success.
If you have a vested interest in helping people adopt behavior, Marcus’s book will be very helpful for you. You can get a copy here.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Marcus’s website
Get a copy of For the Culture
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Joel Neeb. Not only has he escorted the president of the United States around in Air Force One, but he has also done a lot of incredible work in the business-wise. From working as a fighter pilot to becoming a CEO of a consultancy, and now working with the third-largest software company in the world, he has a breadth of experience and I’m excited to chat with him today.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How he got started as a pilot
- The life-changing diagnosis that he received and the clarity it brought
- The three G’s he found in the darkest moments of his life
- The two summits in life we should strive for
- Why we have to get out of our comfort zone to grow
- Why you can’t be afraid to reinvent yourself
- The importance of mentorship in your professional life
- Why gratitude is a superpower
- The rose, bud, thorn method for practicing gratitude and optimism
- How to create a new habit
Joel has some incredible insight into the power of gratitude, growth, and getting out of your comfort zone for massive growth in your personal and professional life. As he says, you can’t be afraid to reinvent yourself so go after the success you desire.
If you want to learn more from Joel, make sure to follow him on LinkedIn and check out his book The Survivor’s Obligation. All proceeds go to charity so make sure to support this amazing cause.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Survivor’s Obligation
Follow Joel on LinkedIn
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Yiannis Gavrielides who is the CEO of a really cool tech startup called Covve that is focused on deepening relationships. I’m excited to have him on the show to talk about how this technology is helping people everywhere remember to do their reach-outs and follow-ups and how to do so effectively for building and deepening those relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Covve is helping people make a habit of nurturing relationships
- The importance of differentiating yourself in growth and career
- How relationships help build trust
- Ways you can deepen your relationships
- The benefits of just trying to be helpful to people
- Why you should always take notes when relationship building
- Why you should focus on human connections and vulnerability
- Ways to stay top of mind with people you meet
- Following up as the introducer and as the introduction recipient
- How Yiannis continues to learn through meeting people
- Lies people tell themselves about networking
- What Yiannis does to stay on track
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Yiannis. Building and deepening your relationships is so important if you want to grow your book of business. Yiannis is working to help people make habits of nurturing their relationships with his new tech and I am so excited to see how this grows.
If you want to learn more from Yiannis, check out the Covve website and connect with him on LinkedIn here. You can email him at Yiannis@covve.com. Yiannis is offering a special discount code for our listeners - click here to get the Premium Covve Personal CRM App with the discount already applied, or use code “BIG2023” at checkout!
If you want to learn more about the High Impact Relationship Deepeners, you check it out here.
Resources Mentioned:
Add Yiannis on LinkedIn
Visit the Covve website
Check out the Wired to Socialize series on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts
Email Yiannis at Yiannis@covve.com
Check out High Impact Relationship Deepeners
Check out the GrowBIG Playbook
Listen to my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into collaboration with Deb Mashek. The problems that have the biggest impact for your clients are the ones that require collaboration across teams internally, so this is a super important topic and I’m excited to explore it today. Deb is sharing her best secrets for success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why collaboration ends up being harder than expected
- How to take the Ecosystem approach to collaboration
- The importance of relationship quality and interdependence
- The trust it takes to be interdependent with others
- The brilliant way to ask for help
- The number one correlation to our success
- Why we need to be using the right language when communicating
- Using collaboration for cross-selling
- How to break down walls and build trust internally
- What collaborative action is and why it’s important
- The necessity of collaborative culture and how to achieve it
- Defining what collaboration means to your organization
- The things people get wrong about collaboration
- How Deb continues to learn
Collaboration is not always as simple as it seems. You want to define what collaboration means to your organization and what that looks like. Creating a culture of collaboration will make a huge difference in the way your team works together internally.
Social psychologist Deb Mashek helps organizations create the conditions for collaboration to thrive. An experienced business advisor, professor, and nonprofit executive, her writing appears in MIT-Sloan Management Review, Fortune, ReWorked, The Hechinger Report, and Psychology Today. Deb has been an invited speaker on collaboration and viewpoint diversity at leading organizations including the United Nations and the American Psychological Association. She is the international bestselling author of Collabor(h)ate.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Deb. If you want to learn more about the things we talked about today, you can check out the Mashek Matrix, the Ecosystem Model, the article on hiring collaborative people, and the HBR piece on social class and collaboration. You can learn more about Deb by visiting her website.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Debs website
Check out Mashek Matrix
Check out the Ecosystem Model
Read the ReWorked article on hiring collaborative people
HBR piece on social class and collaboration
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Stefan Falk, author of the book Intrinsic Motivation, to talk about his story and how to find intrinsic motivation in your life so that you can learn to love your work and succeed like never before. Stefan has a fascinating background that led him to where he is now and I think you’re going to really love hearing his perspective on things as a successful business coach.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
• The starting point for what Stefan does today • How Stefan strives to help people in their lives and careers • What triggers intrinsic motivation • The power of experimenting in your career • The mindset needed to add value to others • Becoming a thought leader and advisor to senior leaders • Tips for handling anxiety when it comes to business development • Why you should leave people with more energy after meeting you than they had before • Why we are the only ones holding ourselves back
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Stefan. I love how he points out that a little bit of anxiety or pain from a business development perspective is a good thing! It’s a sign of growth, so don’t get discouraged.
If you are interested in learning more from Stefan, make sure to check out his website. Make sure to also check out his book Intrinsic Motivation.
If you want to learn more about deepening your business relationships quickly, make sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get the GrowBIG Playbook.
Resources Mentioned: Check out Stefan’s website Get a copy of Intrinsic Motivation Sign up for my Weekly Newsletter GrowBIG Playbook Get a copy of Flow Get a copy of Finding Flow Get a copy of Creativity
I’m joined by journalist, speaker, and best-selling author Joanne Lipman in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue to talk all about reinvention. We’re digging into why so many people feel the need to reinvent themselves in today’s workforce, why we think reinvention is so cool, and what exactly happens when you decide it’s time for a reinvention. Joanne is even sharing the four stages of reinvention, which is something I promise you don’t want to miss.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Changes happening in the workforce right now
- How to navigate changes in your career
- What to do when you feel like it’s time to reinvent yourself
- The four stages of reinvention
- What leads people to pivot in their careers
- How to start pivoting without leaving your current career
- Why the “overnight success” myth is damaging
Joanne has built an incredible career for herself in the journalism world and I’m so thrilled to get the opportunity to sit down with her and share our conversation with you!
If you want to learn more about reinvention, you’re in luck, because Joanne just wrote a book all about it and I’m pretty sure that once you pick it up you’re not going to want to put it down. Head down to your local independent bookstore and pick up a copy of Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work today!
Resources Mentioned:
Check Out Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work by Joanne Lipman
Visit Joanne's Website
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am joined by Thanh Pham, one of the top couple people worldwide universally known for really being great at efficiency, productivity, and getting the most out of your day with a limited amount of time. It can be really tough to get done all of the things that you want to get done in your day, and Thanh is here to help with that.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How he developed his own methodology for efficiency
- How happiness leads to productivity
- The power of prioritizing
- The benefits of scaling through people
- Three questions to ask yourself when planning your week
- Why energy is the most underrated aspect of performance
- Tips for increasing the amount of sleep you get every night
- How to focus your attention for a productive day
- Why productivity is a skill
- The importance of trust in client relationships
I hope you enjoyed these tips for increasing your productivity. Remember, you don’t have to be born with the ability to be productive. It’s a skill. Everybody can be more organized. Everybody can be more efficient. Everybody can learn this.
If you want to learn more from Thanh, make sure to tune into his podcast The Productivity Show. You can also get his free Ultimate Time Management Guide.
Resources Mentioned:
Get the free Ultimate Time Management Guide
Listen to The Productivity Show
Speed Up by Slowing Down: Sleep Secrets to Boost Your Focus and Maximize Your Productivity
Introducing TEA: A Simple Framework for Getting Unstuck and Achieving Your Goals
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Ernesto Pagano, the managing director and partner of Boston Consulting Group. He has a passion for serving his clients and building relationships so I knew he would be a great guest for the show. He is killing it when it comes to creating relationships, adding value, and creating a massive impact.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Ernesto goes above and beyond for his clients
- Why you have to be interested in order to be interesting
- The importance of leveraging curiosity with your clients
- Helping clients co-create ideas with you
- How vulnerability helps you define your value add
- The mindset shift needed for growth
- Why growth comes with discomfort
- How Ernesto continues to learn
- Why you need to be there when clients need you, not when it’s convenient
Ernesto adds so much value and goes above and beyond for his clients, which has led to so much growth and success for him. It’s important to be a good listener and show vulnerability and curiosity so that you can build strong, lasting relationships with your clients, just like Ernesto does.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Ernesto, make sure to check out the Boston Consulting Group website. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn here.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the Boston Consulting Group website
Connect with Ernesto on LinkedIn
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Terry Isner from Jaffe PR. Terry has a deep expertise in law firm topics, PR, business development, and so much more. He’s here to talk about all of these things and dive into how we can change the way that boardrooms think and act today. No one wants to be a vendor or a client anymore, we want to be partners, and that requires a shift in the way we do things in business so we can embrace the humanity of it all.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why we need to be more people-centric in boardrooms
- The impact of social issues on businesses today
- How to find your company culture
- How we can all lead when it comes to the issues we face in the boardroom
- Why changing the terminology you use in business changes the mindset
- How empathy, compassion, and kindness are linked to your bottom line
- Ways to get everyone in the organization involved in bringing in ideas
- Getting immersed in learning opportunities for continued growth
- The importance of allowing people to be themselves in business
- The business opportunities available to us when we adapt to change
- How to tackle the hard and scary challenges in business
A lot has changed in business in recent years, and the power exists with the people now. To be successful, it’s important for businesses to shift the way they are doing things and focus more on the human-centric aspects and how they can give everyone a voice.
If you enjoyed this conversation and want to connect with Terry and learn more about what we discussed today, make sure to visit his website to check out the resources there.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit the Jaffe PR website
Listen to my conversation with Julia
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Brittany Hodak, the author of Creating Super Fans. This ties in directly with the things we cover on the show such as deepening relationships, so I am happy to have her on to talk about the idea of creating super fans and why it’s important to grow your book of business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why it’s important to create super fans
- Why you should be creating experiences that people love
- The five-step framework to creating super fans for your business
- Tips for fine-tuning your story
- Why testimonials are so powerful
- Getting clarity on what your audience wants or needs
- Why you should start with your empathy over authority
- Personalizing your customer's experience
- Why you should try to exceed expectations for your clients
- Creating net positive experiences
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Brittany. As she says, your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s actually what your clients tell their friends about you. By following Brittany's SUPER framework, you can create super fans that love your work and share it with everyone they know.
If you enjoyed this conversation and want to learn more about Brittany, make sure to check out her website here. If you want to read her book, you can check it out here.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Brittany’s website
Get a copy of Brittany’s book
Check out Tim Grahl’s podcast episode
Listen to the Storytelling episode
This YouTube with an interview of Joseph Sugarman
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I had the amazing opportunity to sit down with Josh Scott. If you don’t know him, he’s the owner of JHS Pedals, one of the largest guitar pedal companies in the world, and in this episode, he shares how he built his business from nothing to a massive organization. No matter your profession, there are golden nuggets in this episode for you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How Josh started his company
- Josh’s outside-the-box approach to marketing
- Why making assumptions is destructive in marketing
- The importance of being yourself in your business
- How YouTube impacted his company
- What contagious marketing is and why it works
- The power of digital media
- How Josh builds trust in his industry
- Why every business venture is a creative task
- The idea of adjacent possibilities for your business
- Why you have to overcome imposter syndrome
- Why accountability is a key to creativity
Josh harnessed the power of being creative, authentic, and collaborative, which built deep trust in his industry and grew his business. I know that it is something we can all learn from no matter what industry we are in because as Josh says, business is creativity, and creativity is collaborative.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Josh as much as I did. To hear more from him, make sure to follow JHS Pedals on Instagram and check out his personal Instagram as well.
Resources Mentioned:
Follow JHS Pedals on Instagram
Follow Josh on Instagram
Check out his YouTube channel
In business, many of us are looking to grow and scale. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Pam Slim to discuss her new book and how she works with entrepreneurs to really grow their businesses. We discuss creating the right culture in your business, finding and connecting with ideal clients, making offers that your clients can’t refuse, tips for partnerships, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Empire vs. ecosystem culture
- Why you need to understand your business’s purpose
- Tips for making an offer that your client can’t refuse
- Utilizing “watering holes” to access your ideal clients
- Why you should go into partnerships slowly
- Tips for strengthening your business entity
- The phases of scaling your business
- How Pam ensures that she is always learning
- Why growing doesn’t mean you’ll lose control of your life
Remember, your life isn’t going to be out of control if you grow your business. Embrace these tips that Pam shared today so that you can grow your book of business and reach your goals.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Pam! She has helped so many people through the business journey. If you are building a business, I can’t recommend her enough. If you want to connect with her, you can do that by visiting her website here.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Pam’s website
Listen to my conversation with Mike Deimler
Are you ready to create thought leadership that attracts clients to you? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Bob Buday to talk about how we can bring this concept into our own businesses and attract clients. We discuss topics like the nine elements of great content, the culture of thought leadership, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why thought leadership is so important
- The demand and supply aspect of thought leadership
- The culture of thought leadership
- The timeline you should expect for results
- The nine elements of great content
- The Ripples in the Pond of thought leadership
Thought leadership is an incredible way to build relationships with your potential clients which naturally attracts them to you. It lets you use your expertise to make the impact you want to have on the world.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Bob, I highly recommend you check out his book Competing on Thought Leadership. You can also learn more about what he does on his website or email him at bob@budaytlp.com
Resources Mentioned:
Get Bob’s book on thought leadership
Visit Bob’s website
Get the Grow Big Playbook
One of the top skills that people need to learn in business is how to tell great stories. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I have one of the world's experts on this topic, Tim Grahl. He has one foot in deep expertise and one foot in building a book of business, just like all of you so he is the perfect person to talk to. He’s diving into the details of what types of stories you need and how to fine-tune them so you can use them to grow your business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Helping people feel like the hero in their own story
- The types of stories you need to have ready to use
- Overcoming objections with a story
- The power of a professional origin story
- The five commandments of storytelling
- Tips for fine-tuning your stories
- Bringing emotion into your stories
- The importance of knowing your wrong
- How Tim stays on track
Having a professional origin story, a testimonial story, and a story for overcoming objections is so powerful when it comes to growing your business. I hope these tips today from Tim will help you prepare some stories that you can use to grow your business and your career.
If you are interested in writing better stories, you can get a free copy of Story Grid 101 at storygrid101.com. You can also visit storygrid.com/books to check out Tim’s books.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Brian Caffarelli
Get your free copy of Story Grid 101
Check out Tim’s book
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m super excited to chat with Julia Fabris McBride. She has an amazing book coming out called When Everyone Leads. She is here today to help us redefine leadership and apply the concepts she teaches in her books to our work so that we can become better leaders and grow our book of business, relationships, and selves.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Leadership is available to everyone
- Why we need to think of leadership as an activity
- The importance of everyone working together
- Energizing each other to own their work
- Technical work vs. adaptive work
- Why people have to grow for organizations to grow
- Julia’s system for continuously learning
- The power of forming a mastermind
- The role of authority in adaptive work
- How Julia manages successes and setbacks
- How Julia gets big projects done
It’s so important for people to understand that leadership is not a position, it’s an activity and it’s available to anyone. In order to grow an organization, the people have to grow. And becoming leaders and taking ownership of your work is the best way to grow.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Julia. If you want to learn more from her, make sure to check out her book and learn more about the Kansas Leadership Center here.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out When Everyone Leads
Learn more about the Kansas Leadership Center
In this replay episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, Kelley O’Hara, one of the top athletes on the planet, reveals her secrets of focusing on what she can control to perform at a world-class level. I apply Kelley’s principles to developing relationships and growing a book of business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to have a learning mindset
- Setting up tracking systems
- Staying motivated through challenges
- How to prepare for high-stakes events
Whether you perform on the field or in the boardroom, this episode will elevate your game.
Resources Mentioned:
Bdhabits.com
Kelley O’Hara on Instagram
Kelley O'Hara's favorite BEAST® products
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I sat down with Mohamed Massaquoi. He is passionate about helping high-performing teams achieve more and he is here today to talk about what we can do to grow our book of business, relationship ecosystems, and career. In this episode, we cover getting help to get better at your work, how he measures his success, staying on track despite setbacks, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Mo’s journey as an athlete
- Taking risks
- The importance of providing value
- Human ways to be helpful
- Examples of how you can add value
- Mo’s system for continued learning and impact
- Measuring meaningful conversations
- Measuring what you can control
- Why there’s always room for improvement
- Strategically setting yourself up for success later
- Staying on track despite setbacks
- Getting back up after you fall
- How Mo schedules time off
- Why it’s the impact that matters most
- Improving your feedback loop
Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn. It’s all about getting in the right mindset and getting back up, even when things don’t go the way you want them to. This combined with a determination always to be improving and adding value is how you can achieve more and grow your business.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Mo, make sure to check out his website, and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with Kelley O’Hara
Visit Mo’s website
Connect with Mo on LinkedIn
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am delighted to sit down with my friend, author, and thought leader Jenny Blake. She strategically wrote a book in the language of entrepreneurship for those in business that find themselves struggling to find more free time. In this episode, we dove into topics like burnout, automation, the Cyrano Strategy, delegation, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Tips for finding more free time
- The importance of making the most of your billable hours
- The burdensome Bs
- Why we should automate everything we can
- The Cyrano Strategy
- How Jenny’s book could help us grow our book of business
- How to get rid of the stuff you don’t want to do
- Calendar design
- Digital media
- The energy of complaining or lack
- Delegating tasks you don’t enjoy
How you bake is just as important as what you make. When you’re in baking mode and doing the work, it’s important that you take the time to find the things that you don’t enjoy doing and shed them so that you can do the things that you are really meant to do.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Jenny, make sure to visit her website and get the Book Toolkit. You can also check out her book Free Time and listen to her podcast Free Time with Jenny Blake.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about the Cyrano Strategy
Visit Jenny’s website
Check out Jenny’s book
Get the Book Toolkit
Listen to the Free Time with Jenny Blake podcast
Welcome back to Real Relationships Real Revenue! This season, we are going back to long-form interviews and I am really excited to dive in with you. The theme of this season is going to be centered around the mindset of growth - both personally and in your book of business. And who better to kick this season off with than the person who wrote the book on mindset soundtracks, Jon Acuff!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The Venn diagram to a bestselling idea
- The three things you’ll learn from Jon’s new book
- How to tackle identity if you have a broken soundtrack
- How to follow up in a non-naggy way
- Why crisis is an invitation to innovation
- Idea bankruptcy
- Why writing things down matters
- Lies we tell ourselves
- How to handle setbacks and successes
- Why goals are hard for many people
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jon. I love how he focuses not only on starting the things you say you will, but seeing them all the way through to the middle and end as well. He is such an inspiring person to talk to, especially if you are ready to finally start achieving the goals that matter to you.
If you want to learn more about Jon, make sure to check out his website and join his free challenge here. It’s a three-day goal challenge to help you reach your goals this year. You can also listen to his podcast All It Takes Is A Goal and get your hands on his books here.
Resources Mentioned:
Visit Jon’s website
Check out Jon’s books
Join Jon’s free challenge
Listen to Jon’s podcast
Check out the Finish Calendar
In the last five episodes of this series, I’m giving you five macro lessons. I’m going meta with these lessons and these are some things I want you to keep in mind as we close out this series. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m tying it back to the beginning and discussing how business development is a learnable skill, why you should approach BD like a pro athlete approaches training, why habits matter, the most important habit you need to develop, and why getting good at growth gives you control.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is a learnable skill
- How we never stop learning
- How you should be thinking about business development
- Why you should find a way to measure your BD activities
- Why habits are so important
- The types of habits you should develop
- What you should be doing weekly
- Why you should pick three things to advance opportunities the next week
- How to pick what three things to focus on
- Why getting great at growth gives you more control, not less control
- The 4 big ways it gives you control
I hope you enjoyed these meta lessons. These are the top things that I want you to take away from this series. Getting good at these things and taking business development seriously will get you good at growth. And getting good at growth gives you control over creating the life and business that you want.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Dan Pink
Listen to my conversation with Kelley O’Hara
Listen to my conversation with James Clear
Check out BD Habits
Check out The Snowball System
This is the last of the 100 micro power-packed episodes series, and I have saved the best for last. There has been one meta lesson that has been underneath all of the other 99 episodes in this series, and that’s what I’m sharing now. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the number one reason why you should be focusing on getting great at growth. And the reason is that getting great at growth gives you control.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why getting great at growth gives you more control, not less control
- The 4 big ways it gives you control
The idea I want you to leave with in this episode is that if you become great at growth, you're going to get control. Not only to live the professional life you want, but those four big wins also impact your personal life as well. It'll give you control to live the life you want in the way that you want.
If you want to go deeper into this topic, make sure to check out The Snowball System. It covers everything we talk about here in greater detail and I know you’ll love it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
In the last few episodes, we talked about how business development is a learnable skill and how you should approach it like a pro athlete would approach training. We also talked about the power of habits. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about the most important habit for you to develop. And that’s your weekly habits.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What you should be doing weekly
- Why you should pick three things to advance opportunities the next week
- How to pick what three things to focus on
When you choose these three things, I want you to think of B.I.G.. They should be big impact, in your control, and growth-oriented. This is the most important skill because if you do one thing in this whole system, it's the weekly cadence of always making consistent progress that will also give you a double win because your skills are going to improve immensely as well.
Head over to bdhabits.com if you want to go deeper into this process and find out how to activate the idea of the weekly habits you need to grow your business and relationships.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out BD Habits
In the first few episodes this week, we talked about business development as a learnable skill, and in the second we talked about how I want you to attack your business development skill like a pro athlete would attack their sport. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I want to talk about habits and why they are so important.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why habits are so important
- The types of habits you should develop
Avoid falling into the trap of not mapping out your habits. Just start with one thing. I would recommend starting with weekly habits, which we will go into in the next episode. Don’t let your business development happen willy-nilly. You’ve got to have a system if you’re going to do it well.
To learn more about atomic habits and systems, make sure to tune in to my conversation with James Clear. He did a great job in this episode and I really recommend it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with James Clear
In our last episode, we talked about how business development is a learnable skill, and in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m building on that. You need to think about business development like a pro athlete would think about developing their skills. If they’re at the top of their game, they are focused on improving in any way possible. That’s how you should be approaching business development.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How you should be thinking about business development
- Why you should find a way to measure your BD activities
When you think about these 100 micro lessons, I want you to go back to the ones that were meaningful to you. I want you to go back to the ones that you want to try. I want you to find a way to measure the most important elements of your activities, your business development, and your success. Attack it in a way that you're always striving to get a little bit better.
If you want to learn more about this topic, listen to my conversation with Kelley O’Hara. We talk about a lot of things in this episode that apply to business development and how you should approach it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Kelley O’Hara
In the last five episodes of this series, I’m giving you five macro lessons. I’m going meta with these lessons and these are some things I want you to keep in mind as we close out this series. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m tying it back to the beginning and discussing how business development is a learnable skill.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is a learnable skill
- How we never stop learning
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to be born with this skill. You can always improve your skills and that includes business development. We are never done learning.
To dive deeper into this topic, make sure to check out my conversation with Dan Pink. We talk about business development as a skill that can be learned because we are all salespeople in some way. It’s a great conversation and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Dan Pink
In this set of videos, we are going to be talking about early-stage relationships. There’s a lot of science around this but in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing tips for getting your interactions just right early in your relationships for momentum that lasts. I share ways to take notes for hireable and human follow-ups, why you should keep them short, and how to develop systems for implementation.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why your early interactions matter
- Why following up is so important with new relationships
- How to take notes when meeting new people
- Why you need to do this immediately when meeting someone
- Why you want to focus on human follow-ups too
- How to show commonality
- What types of notes to take
- How to build a plan
- Why short interactions are better than long follow-ups
- Why it’s important to have reminders
- Tools to use to stay organized
- The time frame to use to send out your follow-ups
You have to avoid treating new relationships like you would a relationship that you’ve had for a long time. You need extra care, extra value, and extra attention in the first month or two of a relationship. You don’t have to do this for everybody. But for your most important new relationships, you want to have a system for following up and adding value. Using these tips will help you build momentum and create relationships that stick.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about this study from Dr. Hanan Shteingart
Listen to my conversation with Linda Klein
Listen to my conversation with Grant Baldwin
Listen to my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner
Check out BD Habits
In the last four episodes, we covered the science of early-stage relationships, and how important it is to have a lot of positive interactions within the first couple of weeks and months that you meet someone, also known as the Campaign of Helpfulness. We also covered how to follow up in hireable and helpful ways. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about how you can map them out and create a time-based reminder system to help you send out those reminders.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why it’s important to have reminders
- Tools to use to stay organized
- The time frame to use to send out your follow-ups
Avoid having too few touchpoints during this process. When you do these types of follow-ups for a while, your relationships will stick. You’re showing the other person that you care, you’re paying attention, you’re thinking of them, and trying to be helpful. That is going to be well-received.
The key is having systems. To learn more about a great business development system, make sure to check out BD Habits.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out BD Habits
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m pulling from the last few episodes where we talked about orchestrating a campaign of helpfulness for a very important person that you met recently. We covered notes that you can take so that you can follow up in a hireable way and in a human way. Now we are talking about how you’re going to build a plan.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to build a plan
- Why short interactions are better than long follow-ups
After a business meeting, avoid falling into the trap of sending one email with all of the business-related follow-ups you can think of. This squashes your momentum. It will just be deferred. You want to instead focus on lots of back and forth that builds momentum.
If you want to learn more about this, make sure to listen to my conversation with the best networker I’ve ever met, Dr. Ivan Misner. He has a very specific way that he does his follow-ups after meeting someone and I think you’ll enjoy hearing about it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner
In the last episode, I covered hireable ways that you can follow up with new people that you meet. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing a second, completely different way to follow up that shows that you’re human. Of course you want to be hireable, but you want to show that you’re human too.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you want to focus on human follow-ups too
- How to show commonality
- What types of notes to take
If you take notes on hireable follow-ups and human follow-ups, then you end up having a big huge list of meaningful ways to follow up. Avoid only using hireable follow-up methods. It is so important to be human too.
If you want to learn more about following up in a human-centric way, make sure to listen to my interview with Grant Baldwin. We had a great conversation about it and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Grant Baldwin
In the last episode, we talked about how to have a system, plan, or campaign of helpfulness in place for the first couple of months when you meet someone new. This is something that you don’t want to do for everyone but for a few really important people that you meet. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing ways to follow up in a hireable way.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to take notes when meeting new people
- Why you need to do this immediately when meeting someone
The most important thing you can do is write those things down. It will help you remember that person and give you some great things to follow up on. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ll come up with new ways to follow up after the fact.
If you want to learn more about following up and how much success it can bring you, make sure to listen to my conversation with Linda Klein. I think it’ll really bring to life the idea of helpful follow-up.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Linda Klein
In this set of videos, we are going to be talking about early-stage relationships. There’s a lot of science around this but in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are focusing on one study from Dr. Hanan Shteingart that shows that if you get your interactions right early on in your relationships, the momentum will stick with you for years to come.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why your early interactions matter
- Why following up is so important with new relationships
You have to avoid treating new relationships like you would a relationship that you’ve had for a long time. You need extra care, extra value, and extra attention in the first month or two of a relationship. You don’t have to do this for everybody. But for your most important new relationships, you want to have a system for following up and adding value.
If you want to learn more about this study by Dr. Shteingart, make sure to check it out here.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about this study from Dr. Hanan Shteingart
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m wrapping up the last several videos where we discussed different methods for meeting new people. I shared several different ways to meet whomever you want, and in this episode, you’ll learn tips for using webinars and speaking engagements, social media for lead generation, Episodic Writing, and so much more.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The types of scalable methods
- How to get started with these methods
- How to be successful during these events
- How to create a call to action
- Who should use social media
- How to do it properly
- How to be successful with this method
- What Episodic Writing is
- Where to publish your content
- How to use this method to meet people
- How to get started
- Figuring out who to target
- Pro ninja tips for making these methods work for you
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can’t make this happen. I shared several different ways to meet whomever you want, and next, I want you to think through and find a couple of methods that you could best leverage your strengths with.
Different methods work for different people, and it’s important for you to find what’s best for you. Start with who exactly you want to meet and how you can best offer them value. Then, using your strengths, use one of these methods and I know you’ll find success.
Resources Mentioned:
Read The Snowball System
Check out my conversation with Pat Quinn
Listen to my conversation with Katrina Johnson
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m wrapping up the last 15 videos where we discussed different methods for meeting new people. I shared several different ways to meet whomever you want, and next, I want you to think through and find a couple of methods that you could best leverage your strengths with.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to get started
- Figuring out who to target
- Pro ninja tips for making these methods work for you
Different methods work for different people, and it’s important for you to find what’s best for you. Start with who exactly you want to meet and how you can best offer them value. Then, using your strengths, use one of these methods and I know you’ll find success.
If you want to go even deeper on this topic and learn more about targeting, I highly recommend you check out my conversation with Katrina Johnson. She shares a lot of really interesting stuff in this interview and I know you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Katrina Johnson
The last couple of weeks we have been talking about forming new relationships, getting introduced to whoever you want, and how to do all of this in a scalable way. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the last method in scalable ways to meet new people. It’s called Episodic Writing. This is when you write about a topic when something relevant happens as a way to meet certain people.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What Episodic Writing is
- Where to publish your content
- How to use this method to meet people
Avoid thinking that you are done as soon as the piece you wrote posts. You need to think of this as the starting line, not the finish line. Many people try to use this method but they don’t do it right. You want to be strategic with your time and efforts so that it gets in front of the right people.
There’s so much more on this topic in The Snowball System in chapter 6. Make sure to check it out for some really useful information that will help you find success with this method.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about how you can use social media as a lead generation tool. This one is tricky because few people do this well. There is a method that you’ll want to stick to when going this route. Essentially, you want to post content and use social media to amplify it. Then, you get targeted about who you want to meet and get that content in front of them.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Who should use social media
- How to do it properly
- How to be successful with this method
The goal with this method is that you want to go from social media to actually talking in person. Avoid using a spray-and-pray approach. You want to orchestrate this correctly so that you can get into a conversation with the person you’re hoping to so that you can create new relationships and potentially get hired.
If you want to learn more about social media for lead generation, make sure to check out The Snowball System. It has some really great information on the topic in chapter six.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m covering two scalable ways that you can meet new people. One is speaking and one is webinars. These are both related so we are putting them together in this episode so you can learn how to make the most of them. Speaking is an in-person, live event, and webinars are digital live events. So they are both real-time and very powerful.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to be successful during these events
- How to create a call to action
The keys to success with these methods are offering a ton of value and having a call to action. You want to offer super valuable information that leads into your simple call to action that is a natural next step. When done correctly, this method has a very high acceptance rate.
If you want to learn more about speaking and connecting with your audience in a way that converts, make sure to check out my conversation with Pat Quinn. This is an incredible interview and Pat crushes it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with Pat Quinn
In this set of episodes, we are continuing our conversation about how to get introduced to anyone you want. In the last couple of sets, we talked about how to use targeted methods that you can use to create new relationships. In this set, we are talking about really scalable ways to get introduced to many people. Scalable methods are incredibly important. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing why these are so important and what’s coming up.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The types of scalable methods
- How to get started with these methods
To make the most of this information, be thinking about the groups of people that you want to get introduced to. Think of buckets of people and the places that they go to. In these episodes, I’ll show you ways that you can get in front of them, offer value, and create relationships with them.
If you want to learn more, make sure to check out The Snowball System and read chapter 6. We go really deep into this topic and I think you’ll find it really helpful.
Resources Mentioned:
Read The Snowball System
In the last set of episodes, we talked about growing your relationships in a targeted way. In this set, we are talking about how you can do it in a way that we call Targeted with Scale. That’s because this blends scaled methods. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m covering the mindset around developing new relationships or rekindling ones that have gone dormant, using in-person forums, value groups, strategic partners, and email marketing.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What targeted with scale means
- What I love about this method
- What in-person forums look like
- What to discuss at these events
- Using scarcity for your event
- The importance of following up
- What value groups are
- How to create a value group
- Examples of strategic partners
- How to utilize a strategic partnership
- How to use email marketing as a lead generation tactic
- Why this method is so effective
- Ways to tackle email marketing
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can’t meet new people or that you can’t do it in a targeted and scalable way. These methods are incredibly effective and I know that if you give them a shot and stick with them consistently, you’ll love the results you’ll get.
Resources Mentioned:
Read chapter 6 of The Snowball System
Listen to my conversation with Craig Budner
Listen to my conversation with Sandy Lutton
Listen to my conversation with Dorie Clark
Listen to my conversation with Nathan Barry
This is our last episode of lead generation tactics using the Targeted with Scale method. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be talking about email marketing. This is an area that has so much more potential than people realize.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to use email marketing as a lead generation tactic
- Why this method is so effective
- Ways to tackle email marketing
This method is incredibly powerful. The scale you get is huge. It’s such a personal way to add value to the lives of the people on your list and it may lead to them sending it along to other people who might find it valuable. You’ll be amazed at the results.
To learn more about this topic, make sure to listen to my conversation with Nathan Barry, the CEO of Convertkit. He has some really interesting insights on how to become successful with email marketing.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Nathan Barry
In these episodes, we have been talking about how to use the Targeted with Scale method to meet new people and develop new relationships. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about a method called Strategic Partners. These are people in your circle that are noncompetitive that you can utilize to help you meet new people and deepen relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Examples of strategic partners
- How to utilize a strategic partnership
Don’t go too fast with this method. The key is to go slow. Start with just one partnership. Engage in the conversation and find out how you can help each other in introductory and non-introductory ways. Really take the time to build that trust and it will pay off big time in the long run.
To learn more about this topic, listen to this conversation with Dorie Clark who has great tips on optimizing for interest. She brings so much great energy and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Dorie Clark
In these episodes, we are talking about using the Targeted with Scale method to meet new people and create new relationships. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing how you can use value groups to build relationships. These are different from in-person forums. The topics are important but they are secondary to relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What value groups are
- How to create a value group
As the person that puts the value group together, everyone will look up to you and you’ll be viewed on a much higher level. You get to choose who to include and who to build relationships with. This type of event leads with networks or relationships and it’s incredibly powerful.
If you want to learn more about value groups, make sure to listen to my conversation with Sandy Lutton. She tells the story of how she won a great relationship advantage with her value group.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Sandy Lutton
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about in-person forums or what some people call roundtables. They’re basically one-time events that are in-person. Getting people together to talk about a topic is going to forever be a great way to meet new people and build new relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What in-person forums look like
- What to discuss at these events
- Using scarcity for your event
- The importance of following up
You want people that you already know and people that you don’t know. That’s what makes this a great lead-generation technique and something that fosters new relationships. Get people to come to your event, orchestrate conversations, and then make sure to follow up. The magic is in the follow-ups.
If you want to learn more about roundtables, make sure to check out this conversation with Craig Budner. He has an incredible way of explaining it all and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Craig Budner
In the last set of episodes, we talked about growing your relationships in a targeted way. In this set, we are talking about how you can do it in a way that we call Targeted with Scale. That’s because this blends scaled methods. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m covering the mindset around developing new relationships or rekindling ones that have gone dormant.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What targeted with scale means
- What I love about this method
In the coming episodes, I will cover the different ways you can use this method. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can’t meet new people or that you can’t do it in a targeted and scalable way. I’m going to show you exactly how to do it in these next few episodes.
If you want a resource that goes into a lot more detail about how to meet people that you haven’t met yet, make sure to check out chapter six of The Snowball System.
Resources Mentioned:
Read chapter 6 of The Snowball System
How do you meet new people in a very targeted way? This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be diving deep into this topic. Making new relationships is really important for anybody, regardless of who you are. You can get introduced to anyone you want to meet if you approach it the right way. In this episode, we cover turning personal relationships into commercial relationships, getting referrals, asking for help, and interviewing others.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The importance of establishing new relationships
- How to meet anyone you want to
- Why people want personal and commercial relationships
- How to broach the topic
- The importance of making it easy to opt-out
- The power of referrals
- The proper way to ask for referrals
- How to use the Asking for Help technique
- The success rate for this technique
- What the Interviewing Others method is
- How to find the right platform to use
- Why this method works
There are a million creative ways you can offer value based on the person you’re wanting to meet. Don’t be afraid to dive in and try these out. You may end up being surprised by the results because these are really powerful methods.
Utilizing these techniques will drastically improve your chances of success, and not only will you meet the exact people that you want to, but you’ll deepen those relationships and grow your book of business and career.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
Listen to my conversation with Josh Kaufman
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King about referrals
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King about asking for help
Listen to my conversation with James Barclay
This is the final episode about how you can get introduced to the people you want to with the Targeted Method. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m covering how powerful it can be to interview someone as a way to meet them. This is called the Interviewing Others Method and it is really powerful and simple.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What this method is
- How to find the right platform to use
- Why this method works
This isn’t a difficult method to understand - it’s actually really simple. You want to find a reason and platform for the interview and make it meaningful. This is an excellent way to get in front of those people that you really want to meet. With it, you’ll also get several touch points so that you can deepen the relationship and show them that you’re human first and hirable second.
If you want more practical examples of what this method is and how it works, make sure to check out my conversation with James Barclay. He did a great job explaining it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with James Barclay
This week, we have been covering how you can get introduced to anyone you want using the Targeted Method. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m giving another way of how you can make this happen. It’s called the “Ask For Help” technique. This method has been around for a while and it is a great way to meet new people and create new relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to use this technique
- The success rate for this technique
When you think of asking for help in a way that helps you and helps the new person, you are much more likely to get a yes. Don’t falter before you even get out of the gate. You’re going to be surprised by this method because it works really well.
In the last episode, I linked to Marissa King, and in this one, I want to link to a conversation with her again so that you can check out where she talks about why asking for help is a relationship-deepener. It’s really good and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
We’ve been covering how you can get introduced to someone you want to meet in a very targeted way. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into the topic of referrals. Referrals have always been around, it’s one of the classic ways to meet someone new. Referrals work best when it is ridiculously clear how this introduction is a win for everybody.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The power of referrals
- The proper way to ask for referrals
Try not to lean on your clients to make an introduction. You can actually harm your relationships if you do this the wrong way. You don’t want to make it all about you. You want to make referrals a win for everyone involved.
If you want to dive deeper into the topic of asking for referrals, make sure to check out my conversation with Marissa King. She talks about leveraging your social networks for referrals and I think you’ll find a lot of value in our conversation.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
We’ve been covering how you can get introduced to someone you want to meet in a very targeted way. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into the topic of referrals. Referrals have always been around, it’s one of the classic ways to meet someone new. Referrals work best when it is ridiculously clear how this introduction is a win for everybody.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The power of referrals
- The proper way to ask for referrals
Try not to lean on your clients to make an introduction. You can actually harm your relationships if you do this the wrong way. You don’t want to make it all about you. You want to make referrals a win for everyone involved.
If you want to dive deeper into the topic of asking for referrals, make sure to check out my conversation with Marissa King. She talks about leveraging your social networks for referrals and I think you’ll find a lot of value in our conversation.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
This week we’re talking all about meeting new people that can help you grow your book of business and achieve your goals. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we’re talking about how you can develop a business relationship with someone that you have an existing personal relationship with. Many people have mental blocks around these types of relationships, but it’s important to change your mindset because it’s a disservice to your friends if you can help them but don’t offer to.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why people want personal and commercial relationships
- How to broach the topic
- The importance of making it easy to opt-out
If you have commercial solutions that could help a person out in their organization, you are harming them by not bringing it up or not helping them to the fullest extent. So it’s important to get rid of the barrier making you believe that you can’t help them commercially. The key is to not hesitate to offer, don’t try to sell anything, and make it really easy for them to opt-out.
To dive more into this topic, check out my interview with Josh Kaufman. He talks a lot about trust and I think it’s a great addition to this episode so make sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Josh Kaufman
This week we’re talking all about meeting new people that can help you grow your book of business and achieve your goals. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we’re talking about how you can develop a business relationship with someone that you have an existing personal relationship with. Many people have mental blocks around these types of relationships, but it’s important to change your mindset because it’s a disservice to your friends if you can help them but don’t offer to.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why people want personal and commercial relationships
- How to broach the topic
- The importance of making it easy to opt-out
If you have commercial solutions that could help a person out in their organization, you are harming them by not bringing it up or not helping them to the fullest extent. So it’s important to get rid of the barrier making you believe that you can’t help them commercially. The key is to not hesitate to offer, don’t try to sell anything, and make it really easy for them to opt-out.
To dive more into this topic, check out my interview with Josh Kaufman. He talks a lot about trust and I think it’s a great addition to this episode so make sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Josh Kaufman
How do you meet new people in a very targeted way? This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be diving deep into this topic. Making new relationships is really important for anybody, regardless of who you are. You can get introduced to anyone you want to meet if you offer enough personalized value and if that value is communicated in an individualized and trustworthy way.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The importance of establishing new relationships
- How to meet anyone you want to
There’s a million creative ways you can offer value based on the person you’re wanting to meet. In the next episode, I’m covering what to do if you know the person personally but you don't know them commercially. That way, you can get on those terms with them and potentially work with them in the future.
In The Snowball System, we go over topics similar to this and it really focuses on meeting new people, sales, and marketing. Particularly, we go deep into this topic in chapter six so be sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
How do you meet new people in a very targeted way? This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be diving deep into this topic. Making new relationships is really important for anybody, regardless of who you are. You can get introduced to anyone you want to meet if you offer enough personalized value and if that value is communicated in an individualized and trustworthy way.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The importance of establishing new relationships
- How to meet anyone you want to
There’s a million creative ways you can offer value based on the person you’re wanting to meet. In the next episode, I’m covering what to do if you know the person personally but you don't know them commercially. That way, you can get on those terms with them and potentially work with them in the future.
In The Snowball System, we go over topics similar to this and it really focuses on meeting new people, sales, and marketing. Particularly, we go deep into this topic in chapter six so be sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of business development habits and how you can create better habits for yourself with the MIT, or Most Important Things, process. I’m covering why you need to make it a priority, why you need to review your opportunities and relationships lists often, how to choose three actions to take each week for BD, and how to pre-plan your failure for more success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is so important
- How to incorporate it into your business
- Why scarcity is a good thing in your business
- Taking a look at your opportunity list
- Knowing where you are in the step to step process
- Finding the next thing you can do to move forward incrementally
- Continuously evaluating your First Among Equals list
- Deciding if you have a way that you can invest in them weekly
- Why it’s important to keep your relationship list visible
- What BIG stands for
- How to use this method to move your business forward
- Writing down the things that get you stuck
- How to brainstorm ways to overcome those obstacles
The key here is consistency. By staying consistent with this method, reviewing your lists, and picking your three most important things every week and getting them done, you will create unstoppable momentum.
You’ll soon find that this process is a game-changer. You’ll always be moving your opportunities and relationships forward which will lead to more success in the long run. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed with the results.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with James Clear
Listen to my conversation with Brian Caffarelli
Listen to my conversation with Bill Ruprecht
Check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk
Listen to my conversation with Cyril Peupion
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of business development habits and how you can create better habits for yourself with the MIT, or Most Important Things, process. I’m covering why you need to make it a priority, why you need to review your opportunities and relationships lists often, how to choose three actions to take each week for BD, and how to pre-plan your failure for more success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is so important
- How to incorporate it into your business
- Why scarcity is a good thing in your business
- Taking a look at your opportunity list
- Knowing where you are in the step to step process
- Finding the next thing you can do to move forward incrementally
- Continuously evaluating your First Among Equals list
- Deciding if you have a way that you can invest in them weekly
- Why it’s important to keep your relationship list visible
- What BIG stands for
- How to use this method to move your business forward
- Writing down the things that get you stuck
- How to brainstorm ways to overcome those obstacles
The key here is consistency. By staying consistent with this method, reviewing your lists, and picking your three most important things every week and getting them done, you will create unstoppable momentum.
You’ll soon find that this process is a game-changer. You’ll always be moving your opportunities and relationships forward which will lead to more success in the long run. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed with the results.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with James Clear
Listen to my conversation with Brian Caffarelli
Listen to my conversation with Bill Ruprecht
Check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk
Listen to my conversation with Cyril Peupion
In this set of videos, we have been covering the MIT, or Most Important Things, process. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m discussing the traps that you might fall into that will get you off of your game. This is going to be super individual to you, but it’s important to think about them so that you can overcome them.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Writing down the things that get you stuck
- How to brainstorm ways to overcome those obstacles
There is a certain positivity in negativity. By brainstorming the things that could go wrong, you can pre-plan for your failure and be ready to overcome those obstacles. This will help you develop those BD habits and find more success. Sprinkle these habits out. A little bit goes a long way when you’re doing it over time.
To learn more about the power of habits and how you can pull discipline into everything you do, make sure to tune into my conversation with Cyril Peupion. This interview covers more than just business development and I think you’ll find it really useful.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Cyril Peupion
In this set of videos, we have been covering the MIT, or Most Important Things, process. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m discussing the traps that you might fall into that will get you off of your game. This is going to be super individual to you, but it’s important to think about them so that you can overcome them.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Writing down the things that get you stuck
- How to brainstorm ways to overcome those obstacles
There is a certain positivity in negativity. By brainstorming the things that could go wrong, you can pre-plan for your failure and be ready to overcome those obstacles. This will help you develop those BD habits and find more success. Sprinkle these habits out. A little bit goes a long way when you’re doing it over time.
To learn more about the power of habits and how you can pull discipline into everything you do, make sure to tune into my conversation with Cyril Peupion. This interview covers more than just business development and I think you’ll find it really useful.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Cyril Peupion
In the last two episodes, we discussed the importance of taking a quick scan of your opportunity list and relationships, or first among equals list. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing step three of this method. In this step, you’re going to pick three actions that you’re going to take in the next week that are going to either move your relationships or your opportunities forward.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What BIG stands for
- How to use this method to move your business forward
The key here is consistency. By staying consistent with this method and picking your three most important things every week and getting them done, you will create unstoppable momentum. It’s a game-changer. You’ll always be moving your opportunities and relationships forward which will lead to more success.
To go deeper into this topic, check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk. She has some really great tips and advice that I think you’ll enjoy.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk
In the last two episodes, we discussed the importance of taking a quick scan of your opportunity list and relationships, or first among equals list. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing step three of this method. In this step, you’re going to pick three actions that you’re going to take in the next week that are going to either move your relationships or your opportunities forward.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What BIG stands for
- How to use this method to move your business forward
The key here is consistency. By staying consistent with this method and picking your three most important things every week and getting them done, you will create unstoppable momentum. It’s a game-changer. You’ll always be moving your opportunities and relationships forward which will lead to more success.
To go deeper into this topic, check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk. She has some really great tips and advice that I think you’ll enjoy.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Teresa Amabile’s TED Talk
In the last episode, I gave you step one of the Most Important Things process, or MIT: Look at your opportunities. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about how to review the other key part of this process - your relationships. It’s about anchoring your mind on your most important relationships for your future success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Continuously evaluating your First Among Equals list
- Deciding if you have a way that you can invest in them weekly
- Why it’s important to keep your relationship list visible
This whole process only takes about 15 minutes of your time weekly. You’ll do this right after you take a look at your opportunity list. Avoid making your relationship list and then forgetting about it. It’s really easy to do but you have to look at it quickly every week so that you can keep those relationships strong.
If you want to learn more about relationships, make sure to check out my conversation with Bill Ruprecht. We dove into the topic of relationship discipline and I think you’ll find it fascinating.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Bill Ruprecht
In the last episode, I gave you step one of the Most Important Things process, or MIT: Look at your opportunities. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about how to review the other key part of this process - your relationships. It’s about anchoring your mind on your most important relationships for your future success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Continuously evaluating your First Among Equals list
- Deciding if you have a way that you can invest in them weekly
- Why it’s important to keep your relationship list visible
This whole process only takes about 15 minutes of your time weekly. You’ll do this right after you take a look at your opportunity list. Avoid making your relationship list and then forgetting about it. It’s really easy to do but you have to look at it quickly every week so that you can keep those relationships strong.
If you want to learn more about relationships, make sure to check out my conversation with Bill Ruprecht. We dove into the topic of relationship discipline and I think you’ll find it fascinating.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Bill Ruprecht
In the last episode, we covered the mindset of business development habits. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the first of three steps you need to remember when it comes to your business development habits. It’s ridiculously simple, but also very important so you don’t want to forget it.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Taking a look at your opportunity list
- Knowing where you are in the step to step process
- Finding the next thing you can do to move forward incrementally
So think about who you’re going to be seeing in the next week and use these tips to find out the next thing you can do to move your business forward incrementally based on your opportunity list.
If you want to learn more about moving things forward incrementally over time, make sure to listen to my interview with Brian Caffarelli. It’s a really great episode to listen to if you are ready to go deeper on this topic.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Brian Caffarelli
In the last episode, we covered the mindset of business development habits. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the first of three steps you need to remember when it comes to your business development habits. It’s ridiculously simple, but also very important so you don’t want to forget it.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Taking a look at your opportunity list
- Knowing where you are in the step to step process
- Finding the next thing you can do to move forward incrementally
So think about who you’re going to be seeing in the next week and use these tips to find out the next thing you can do to move your business forward incrementally based on your opportunity list.
If you want to learn more about moving things forward incrementally over time, make sure to listen to my interview with Brian Caffarelli. It’s a really great episode to listen to if you are ready to go deeper on this topic.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Brian Caffarelli
In this set of videos, we are talking all about business development habits. This might be the most important topic, so make sure to listen closely. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am talking about the mindset of business development habits. Don’t ever think that it’s business development or delivery. If you think you’re too busy for this, you won’t succeed.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is so important
- How to incorporate it into your business
- Why scarcity is a good thing in your business
Don’t wait until you’re not busy to make time for business development. Remember, people value your time more when you’re busy. You’re more scarce and people want more of what there is less of. When you offer your time when you’re busy, it has more heft than when you’re not. You want to think about BD and delivery, not BD or delivery.
If you want to learn how you can have better business development habits, make sure to check out my conversation with James Clear. We talked about atomic habits and I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with James Clear
In this set of videos, we are talking all about business development habits. This might be the most important topic, so make sure to listen closely. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am talking about the mindset of business development habits. Don’t ever think that it’s business development or delivery. If you think you’re too busy for this, you won’t succeed.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why business development is so important
- How to incorporate it into your business
- Why scarcity is a good thing in your business
Don’t wait until you’re not busy to make time for business development. Remember, people value your time more when you’re busy. You’re more scarce and people want more of what there is less of. When you offer your time when you’re busy, it has more heft than when you’re not. You want to think about BD and delivery, not BD or delivery.
If you want to learn how you can have better business development habits, make sure to check out my conversation with James Clear. We talked about atomic habits and I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with James Clear
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about effective and strategic client planning. Many people make mistakes when it comes to this so we will be covering how you can do this really well, where you can get the most ROI on your time invested, and how to do it in a way that your clients will love.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The biggest mistakes we see with client planning
- Anchoring and the status quo bias
- Earned dogmatism
- Self-enhancement bias
- Why you need to be looking toward the future
- Questions to ask yourself about your clients
- Future vision
- Why you should focus on the top three things
- Using mnemonic devices, alliteration, or rhyming
- Creating your to-do list
- Creating your to-don’t list
- The say no nicely model
- Thinking about business development meetings as agile sprints
- Spending time in the meeting looking forward
- Tying everything back to the strategy
- Celebrating incremental progress
The most important thing for you to remember when it comes to client planning is to look forward. Don’t spend all of your time looking into the past and examining what did or didn’t work. Give it ten minutes and then switch to your future vision. It’s the only thing you can control.
These tips and strategies will help you look at the current situation, plan for the future, come up with effective strategies, take the necessary tactical steps, and manage everything ongoing. If you implement these tips, you are sure to find more success.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about the status quo bias
Check out my conversation with Michael Hyatt
Check out my conversation with Jane Allen
Watch the video on saying no nicely
Check out the Winning More PDF
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about effective and strategic client planning. Many people make mistakes when it comes to this so we will be covering how you can do this really well, where you can get the most ROI on your time invested, and how to do it in a way that your clients will love.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The biggest mistakes we see with client planning
- Anchoring and the status quo bias
- Earned dogmatism
- Self-enhancement bias
- Why you need to be looking toward the future
- Questions to ask yourself about your clients
- Future vision
- Why you should focus on the top three things
- Using mnemonic devices, alliteration, or rhyming
- Creating your to-do list
- Creating your to-don’t list
- The say no nicely model
- Thinking about business development meetings as agile sprints
- Spending time in the meeting looking forward
- Tying everything back to the strategy
- Celebrating incremental progress
The most important thing for you to remember when it comes to client planning is to look forward. Don’t spend all of your time looking into the past and examining what did or didn’t work. Give it ten minutes and then switch to your future vision. It’s the only thing you can control.
These tips and strategies will help you look at the current situation, plan for the future, come up with effective strategies, take the necessary tactical steps, and manage everything ongoing. If you implement these tips, you are sure to find more success.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about the status quo bias
Check out my conversation with Michael Hyatt
Check out my conversation with Jane Allen
Watch the video on saying no nicely
Check out the Winning More PDF
This is the final episode around proper, groundbreaking, and efficient client planning. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m getting into how you can manage things ongoing. I’m sharing my top three tips to help you succeed.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Thinking about business development meetings as agile sprints
- Spending time in the meeting looking forward
- Tying everything back to the strategy
- Celebrating incremental progress
Don’t get caught up in focusing on the tactical aspects, you want to relate everything in your meetings back to the overall strategy and ongoing agile sprints to reach your goals. It’s so important that you don’t forget to celebrate those wins as well because the happiest and most productive people are the ones that celebrate incremental progress.
To dive into this topic more and learn about measuring success, check out this Winning More PDF we wrote about how to roll out your training and have more success in major organizations. If you run big client teams or are a big part of an organization, you’re going to want to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the Winning More PDF
This is the final episode around proper, groundbreaking, and efficient client planning. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m getting into how you can manage things ongoing. I’m sharing my top three tips to help you succeed.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Thinking about business development meetings as agile sprints
- Spending time in the meeting looking forward
- Tying everything back to the strategy
- Celebrating incremental progress
Don’t get caught up in focusing on the tactical aspects, you want to relate everything in your meetings back to the overall strategy and ongoing agile sprints to reach your goals. It’s so important that you don’t forget to celebrate those wins as well because the happiest and most productive people are the ones that celebrate incremental progress.
To dive into this topic more and learn about measuring success, check out this Winning More PDF we wrote about how to roll out your training and have more success in major organizations. If you run big client teams or are a big part of an organization, you’re going to want to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the Winning More PDF
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m getting really tactical. Our first three episodes covered the current state, future state, and strategic themes, and to follow that up I’m covering your to-do list, your to-don’t list, and how to say no nicely.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Creating your to-do list
- Creating your to-don’t list
- The say no nicely model
These tactical steps covered in this episode are so important. This idea of being able to say no in a nice way that retains the relationship shows empathy, but also is very crystal clear on what you can and can't do with math, numbers, and logic.
If you want to learn more about how to say no nicely, check out this video. It’s incredibly powerful and important when it comes to client planning.
Resources Mentioned:
Watch the video on saying no nicely
In our last episode, we talked about really pinning down your current state and future vision during client planning. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about strategies. To get your clients from where they are today to where you want them to be, you need to get it down to three strategies.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you should focus on the top three things
- Using mnemonic devices, alliteration, or rhyming
The trap you need to avoid is having too many or too few strategies for your team. Three is the optimal amount to have. Do them in a way that people will remember using literary techniques. Remember, people buy into what they help create, so your client team is buying into these strategies when they help create them, themselves.
If you are interested in learning more about thinking about a vision, I recommend you check out my conversation with Jane Allen. It’s really inspirational and I think you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with Jane Allen
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m giving you a rock-solid first step to start your client planning. These are the most important things to getting your team grounded. We’re going to be covering your current state and future state. This first step will get your team unstuck and looking toward the future instead of the past.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you need to be looking toward the future
- Questions to ask yourself about your clients
- Future vision
This will help you avoid the trap of being way too focused on the past. We’ll blitz through all of the science that we talked about in the last episode and get you clear on where you’re at today and where you want to be in the future. The future vision conversation is the most important part.
If you are interested in crafting a vision for anything, make sure to check out my conversation with Michael Hyatt. We talked about some really interesting ways to craft a vision for yourself or your organization.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with Michael Hyatt
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about effective and strategic client planning. Many people make mistakes when it comes to this so we will be covering how you can do this really well, where you can get the most ROI on your time invested, and how to do it in a way that your clients will love. These are the three scientific headwinds that are against you when it comes to retention and growth.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The biggest mistakes we see with client planning
- Anchoring and the status quo bias
- Earned dogmatism
- Self-enhancement bias
We’re probably biased toward staying where we are at or even shrinking, but we need to be thinking about how we can be bringing new experts, new activities, and new solutions to our clients in a way that is helpful and proactive.
To learn more about the status quo bias, make sure to check out the Wikipedia page on it. It is very interesting and it might be a great thing to share with your team.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about the status quo bias
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about preparing for business development meetings using a technique or method that we call Dynamic Meeting Prep, or DMP. I’m covering how to get in the right mindset, create goals, frame your meetings, prepare for anything, and use cliffhangers.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to think about client meetings
- Preparing for different scenarios
- Why you shouldn’t have multiple goals
- The reason why only one goal benefits you more
- Why framing your meetings is so important
- How to frame your meeting
- How the framing engages the other side
- Why you should be ready for anything
- Negative visualization and planning for things that go wrong
- Why curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
- How to use cliffhangers between meetings
It’s so important to prepare for these meetings ahead of time. Don’t fall into the trap of not preparing in advance for anything that might come up. You don’t want to practice what to say, you want to prepare for flexibility.
There are so many things that could happen in your meeting so you want to think about those different scenarios and segments of the meetings and what you do in each one. Make sure you have one goal only and use a cliffhanger to create excitement for your next meeting. These simple steps will drastically increase your chances of success.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Linda Klein
Check out the study by Dr. Edwin Locke
Listen to my conversation with Tyler Sweatt
Learn more about negative visualization from Ryan Holiday
Check out the study on uncertainty
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m tying this episode back to Episode 22 where we talked about cliffhangers. This is the final episode about business development meetings and I’m sharing how you can develop a cliffhanger between this meeting and the next one to increase your chances of success.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
- How to use cliffhangers between meetings
Don’t assume that just because you got the meeting then you’re all set. You want to add that cliffhanger because that’s going to give you the opportunity to get the person excited for their next meeting with you. Without that cliffhanger or intrinsic curiosity, there’s a higher chance that the meeting won’t occur.
If you want to learn more about this, I recommend you check out this study. It says that when you show uncertainty about what will happen, you build more trust with the person you’re communicating with while also building curiosity.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the study on uncertainty
In the last few episodes, we have been covering dynamic meeting prep and helping people get out of the habit of not preparing for meetings by showing them how to prepare very efficiently for the big day. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing how you can be ready for anything.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you should be ready for anything
- Negative visualization and planning for things that go wrong
Business development meetings rarely go the way you expect them to. They may want to talk about something different than you do, the meeting could go long, they could want to introduce you to people, etc. There are so many things that could come up and you want to be prepared. Really think it through so that you can have more successful meetings.
If you want to learn more about negative visualization and how it can help you succeed, make sure to check out what Ryan Holiday has to say about it all. It is really interesting and I think you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about negative visualization from Ryan Holiday
We’ve covered how you should prepare for your business meetings and why you should only have one goal. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I want to talk about those first few minutes of the client meeting. It’s what I like to call, “framing the meeting.” It’s very simple but very important.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why framing your meetings is so important
- How to frame your meeting
- How the framing engages the other side
Avoid not framing your meeting. Many people feel intimidated or hesitant about doing this, but if you don’t state your intent, the other side is probably wondering why they are there. By framing your meeting, you’re sharing the goal of your interaction in a way that shows a clear benefit to the person you’re meeting with.
If you want to learn more about the concept of dynamic meeting prep and framing your meetings, make sure to tune in to my conversation with Tyler Sweatt. He has a really unique way of framing things and he is excellent at beginning his meetings.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Tyler Sweatt
In the last episode, we talked about mindset and how you should think about and prepare for your business development meetings. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I just have one message to share, and it’s that for each client development meeting, you should have only one goal.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you shouldn’t have multiple goals
- The reason why only one goal benefits you more
Try to avoid having too many goals in your meetings. The idea of only having one goal is so important because it centers your mind on the most important thing. By creating that one goal and writing it down, you’re in a really great place.
If you want to learn more about the research behind goal setting, check out this study by Dr. Edwin Locke. It’s really interesting and I think you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the study by Dr. Edwin Locke
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be talking about preparing for business development meetings using a technique or method that we call Dynamic Meeting Prep, or DMP. There’s a lot of research that shows that you play how you practice, so how you mentally prepare for these meetings is how you play.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to think about client meetings
- Preparing for different scenarios
It’s so important to prepare for these meetings ahead of time. Don’t fall into the trap of not preparing in advance. You don’t want to practice what to say, you want to prepare for flexibility. There are so many things that could happen in your meeting so you want to think about those different scenarios and segments of the meetings and what you do in each one.
If you want to learn more about dynamic meeting preparation, make sure to check out my interview with Linda Klein. The way she prepares and communicates is fantastic so I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Linda Klein
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about creating demand with your expertise and the way you can add value professionally. I’m diving into the idea of giving first and the Give to Get technique. You’ll learn how to scale it up or down, the six levers of influence, the science of commitment, and what to do when things go wrong.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why we hate to be sold to but we love to buy
- What a great Give to Get is
- Why this method will convert to more sales
- Determining the size of your Give to Get
- Why you should scale it up or down
- Types of Give to Gets you can offer
- Likeability
- Reciprocity
- Scarcity
- Authority
- Social Proof
- Commitment
- The way to get commitment
- Why you need to talk face to face
- How to create a simple and obvious next step
- What to do if you don’t get a “yes”
- Why you shouldn’t make your Give to Get too small or too big
- Making the end of the meeting clear
- Having the right people in the room
The trick is to go into each meeting with some idea of how you can be helpful to your client. You want to roll up your sleeves and start showing them what you can do, and you’ll be amazed at the results.
These episodes are designed to tell you how to make the right investments, who to make them with, how to frame them, and how to actually design and execute the meeting so that you have the highest chance of success. If you start using these tips, I know you’ll be happy with the outcome.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
Listen to my interview with Andrew Cogar
Learn more about the levers of influence
Get Dr. Cialdini’s book
Check out Freedman’s research
Listen to my conversation with Mike Deimler
If nothing else, the Give to Get technique deepens relationships which is always a winning strategy. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I want to dive into the science of commitment. Of the six levers we covered in the previous episode on Give to Gets, this one is the most important.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The way to get commitment
- Why you need to talk face to face
- How to create a simple and obvious next step
- What to do if you don’t get a “yes”
You want to be ridiculously simple on what the next step is in working with you. If you get a no, make sure you have a fallback position because this is the perfect time to ask for it. It’s a smaller and easier option to say yes to and it gets you started contractually.
Make sure you’re thinking about the end of the conversation with a lot of precision. Approach it with this stuff in mind and you have a much higher chance of success.
If you want to learn more about Freedman’s research on commitment and consistency, you can check out the article.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Freedman’s research
If nothing else, the Give to Get technique deepens relationships which is always a winning strategy. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I want to dive into the science of commitment. Of the six levers we covered in the previous episode on Give to Gets, this one is the most important.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The way to get commitment
- Why you need to talk face to face
- How to create a simple and obvious next step
- What to do if you don’t get a “yes”
You want to be ridiculously simple on what the next step is in working with you. If you get a no, make sure you have a fallback position because this is the perfect time to ask for it. It’s a smaller and easier option to say yes to and it gets you started contractually.
Make sure you’re thinking about the end of the conversation with a lot of precision. Approach it with this stuff in mind and you have a much higher chance of success.
If you want to learn more about Freedman’s research on commitment and consistency, you can check out the article.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Freedman’s research
This episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue is an important one. It’s all about the six key things you need to audit when it comes to your Give to Gets that will tell you if they will succeed or fail. You’re probably already doing the first few, but it’s the latter ones that are often missed. They are all extremely important.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Likeability
- Reciprocity
- Scarcity
- Authority
- Social Proof
- Commitment
A great Give to Get is like a sidewalk; it leads to one destination. Don’t assume that every investment is the same because they are not. As you think about your investments and your Give to Gets and the way you design them, consider these levers of influence. That will determine your flow-through rates and your success.
If you want to learn more about the six levers of influence, check out this link. You can also check out Dr. Cialdini’s book.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about the levers of influence
Get Dr. Cialdini’s book
In the last episode, I talked about the concept of Give to Gets. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing why you want to scale your Give to Gets up or down relative to the size of the commercial opportunity. Based on the size of the project you may be selling, you want to do more or less on your own dime in order to start the conversation and start helping them solve their problem.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Determining the size of your Give to Get
- Why you should scale it up or down
- Types of Give to Gets you can offer
Try not to give away too much or not give away enough. You want to think of the level of investment first. Then, come up with something that is low-cost for you, adds value to your client, cuts them off, and leads them to the next step of working with you. Everyone wins with this approach.
If you want to go deeper into this topic, make sure to check out my conversation with Andrew Cogar. He uses Give to Gets across his entire organization and they are growing like crazy.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my interview with Andrew Cogar
This week, we are talking about creating demand with your expertise and the way you can add value professionally. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the idea of giving first. You have to give to get. Instead of talking about what you do to your clients or prospects, you just do what you do.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why we hate to be sold to but we love to buy
- What a great Give to Get is
- Why this method will convert to more sales
When you get your Give to Gets down to a science so they work efficiently, you can start seeing a 50-90% conversion rate to paid work. Your clients will love it because you’re solving a problem for them.
The trick is to go into each meeting with some idea of how you can be helpful to your client. You want to roll up your sleeves and start showing them what you can do - you’ll be amazed at the results.
Make sure to check out my book The Snowball System. Chapter 5 is all about the idea of Give to Get and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out The Snowball System
In the last set of videos, we talked a lot about building strong relationships and we touched on adding value. This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to be diving into the topic of adding value even more and how you can have a long-term mindset when it comes to relationships. We cover things like the Mere Exposure Effect, creating an asset list, asking for help, proper cadence, and tracking what you can.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The Mere Exposure Effect
- Likability and frequency matter
- The importance of having systems for outreach
- Systems for collecting interesting things
- Creating an asset list
- Places to store your assets
- Why you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help
- How the act of helping correlates with likeability
- Ways to ask for help or advice
- Why monthly is the perfect cadence for outreach
- How to add value each month
- Setting reminders
- How to disconnect from the outcome
- Adding value without expecting anything in return
- How to track what you can control
Don’t be afraid to become a collector of assets and really dive into adding value to your first among equals. Come up with a system to track the ways in which you are adding value and don’t make the mistake I see so many people make and give up too soon.
Studies show that people like you more when they see or interact with you often and they feel like they are helping you in some way. By creating systems to consistently reach out to people at the proper cadence and add value in unexpected and unpaid ways, you are sure to win and deepen that relationship. Remember, you don’t win when you get a reply, you win by simply offering the value. If you do this, you will be amazed at the results.
Resources Mentioned:
Read more about the Mere Exposure Effect
Listen to my conversation with Ron Friedman
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
Listen to my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner
Listen to my conversation with Ron Friedman about tracking things
This is our fifth and final episode on how to add value to your most important relationships. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I want to talk about types of measurement and accountability. You have to measure what you can control.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- How to disconnect from the outcome
- Adding value without expecting anything in return
- How to track what you can control
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you win when they reply back and say it was valuable. You win when you offer the value. This is so important but most people quit too soon. If you’re being authentic and offering value in unique ways, that will be received well the vast majority of the time. You will win and deepen the relationship.
If you want to go even deeper, make sure to check out my conversation with Ron Friedman linked below. We talked about how to hack your own habits by tracking things and I think you’ll really enjoy that conversation.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Ron Friedman
In the last several episodes we have talked about adding value in a systematic and mutually beneficial way. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into the topic of proper cadence when it comes to outreach for your top 7 to 10 people or your first among equals.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why monthly is the perfect cadence for outreach
- How to add value each month
- Setting reminders
Having systems when it comes to your monthly reach-outs is so important. You need to make sure that you don’t forget to add value each month. You can do this by setting reminders for yourself so you can manage your relationships like a project.
If you want to learn more about this, I highly recommend you check out my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner. He is a genius when it comes to networking and relationship building and we had an excellent conversation that I think you’ll find really interesting.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Dr. Ivan Misner
In the last episode, I talked about ways to add value by creating an asset list. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing ways you can add value that you can’t put on an asset list. It’s simply asking for help. This is because the science shows that we like the people we help.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help
- How the act of helping correlates to likeability
- Ways to ask for help or advice
Never hesitate when it comes to asking for help. The science is there, it makes you much more likeable to the person you are connecting with. So find a way to do it. Challenge yourself to do this over the next couple of weeks and you’ll be amazed at the results. It’s one of those things that most people don’t do but it’s really powerful when you do.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, make sure to check out my conversation with Marissa King. She throws down some amazing advice for asking for help and gives even more robust advice than I do here so you don’t want to miss it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Marissa King
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of becoming a collector. For anything that is important in your life, you can become a collector. That means that you can become a collector of ways to add value to your relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Systems for collecting interesting things
- Creating an asset list
- Places to store your assets
The idea of becoming a collector, having an asset list, and making it as frictionless as possible is super powerful. It doesn’t have to be a complicated system, you can copy and paste things into your notes app or OneNote. The important thing is to just get started. The more assets you have, the more value you can give to other people.
If you are interested in learning more about this topic, tune in to my conversation with Ron Friedman at the link below. He had a lot of really interesting things to say and I know you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Ron Friedman
In the last set of videos, we talked a lot about building strong relationships and we touched on adding value. This week, we are going to be diving into the topic of adding value even more and how you can have a long-term mindset when it comes to relationships. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, you’ll learn about the Mere Exposure Effect and how to add value to your most important relationships regularly.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The Mere Exposure Effect
- Likeability and frequency matter
- The importance of having systems for outreach
It’s important that you create a system of outreach to identify the most important people you want to have relationships with and reach out to them. You don’t want to just wait for life to send people your way, you want to take control of your relationships so that you can add the most value.
Think about how you can use the Mere Exposure Effect and have some kind of unexpected, unpaid outreach where you’re really helpful to somebody.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Mere Exposure Effect, make sure to check out the Wikipedia page I linked below. It has a lot of interesting information on it.
Resources Mentioned:
Read more about the Mere Exposure Effect
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are focusing on relationships. I’m going to give you a ton of steps and mindset tips about how to deepen your relationships. A great deal can make your year, but a great relationship can make your career. By taking the time to strengthen your relationships and making the most of them, you can find more success in both the short-term and the long-term.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Commonality
- Frequency
- Mutual benefit
- Balance
- Uniqueness
- The importance of writing down your most important relationships
- The types of people you have relationships with
- Adding value to the lives of people you have relationships with
- Targets
- Acquaintances
- Curious Skeptics
- New clients
- Solid working relationships
- Loyal clients
- Raving fans
- Adding value in the commercial sense
- Adding value in non-paid ways
- Tips for creating an asset list
- The importance of choosing things that allow relationships to flourish
- The benefits of choosing paths that deepen long-term relationships
- How to be “Other-ish”
Don’t underestimate the power of good relationships. Building strong relationships, adding value, and creating raving fans will be a game-changer for your career. You have to avoid thinking in the short term and focusing on money. It’s when we are selfish that we get stuck.
So take the time and focus on what others need and how you can add value to their lives. When you focus on the path that allows your long-term relationships to flourish, you will always win.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out BD Habits
Check out my conversation with Sandy Lutton
Listen to my conversation with Mark Harris
Listen to my conversation with James Barclay
Listen to my conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m finishing our conversation about relationships. You have to start thinking about your relationships as much or more than anything else. This simple mindset shift is going to give you what you need to succeed over the long term.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The importance of choosing things that allow relationships to flourish
- The benefits of choosing paths that deepen long-term relationships
- How to be “Other-ish”
When you focus on the path that allows your long-term relationships to flourish, you will always win. You have to avoid thinking in the short term and focusing on money. It’s when we are selfish that we get stuck.
Instead, try to always be thinking of others. By doing this, you’ll win the long-term game and the short-term game too.
For more on relationships, check out my conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards. She is a relationship genius and we talked a lot in this episode about how to be more likable, other-ish, and relationships-focused.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Vanessa Van Edwards
In the last few episodes, we have been dialing in on building and utilizing relationships in your business. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing how you can add value in non-paid ways so that you can really strengthen your relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Adding value in the commercial sense
- Adding value in non-paid ways
- Tips for creating an asset list
The trick to adding value is to really engage in conversations with people you have a relationship with and understand their goals and what’s important to them.
Become a collector of things that you find interesting. Create an asset list by finding articles that you find interesting and saving the URL’s somewhere on your phone. You can use this to add value to people’s lives over time.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, check out my conversation with James Barclay. He shares how he uses first among equals relationships and asset lists along with so much more.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with James Barclay
This week, we have been diving deep into how to build deeper relationships. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about the seven steps to a raving fan. There are several levels to relationships and if you can get them to the last level, it can have a huge impact on your business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Targets
- Acquaintances
- Curious Skeptics
- New clients
- Solid working relationships
- Loyal clients
- Raving fans
Creating raving fans in your business can be a game-changer. They’re almost like a fractional salesperson for you. If you have raving fans out on the marketplace saying that what you do is great, it could have a massive impact on your business.
One of my favorite people that have worked in this framework is Mark Harris. I interviewed him and he talked about how he thinks about relationships and how he's always thinking about the other person that he's calling on and how he can add immense value to them. Make sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Mark Harris
Strong relationships are probably the most important things in your professional life, but some people don’t actually have a pipeline of relationships. Many people anchor their minds on their relationships with people in the past instead of the future - however, you can’t anchor on that. You want to focus on the future. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing how you can be strategic about your most important relationships.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The importance of writing down your most important relationships
- The types of people you have relationships with
- Adding value to the lives of people you have relationships with
Everyone is important, but with your list, you’ve got some first among equals. Don’t skip writing these down. It is so incredibly important that you make this strategic. Like any project, if you want to get good at it, you’ve got to write stuff down.
For more on deepening relationships, make sure you check out my conversation with Sandy Lutton. She’s one of the most interesting people I have ever met and in this conversation, we talked about how she thinks about relationships. I know you’ll really like it so make sure to check it out.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out my conversation with Sandy Lutton
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are focusing on relationships. I’m going to give you a ton of steps and mindset tips about how to deepen your relationships. A great deal can make your year, but a great relationship can make your career. In this episode, I’m sharing the science of building relationships and the science of likeability.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Commonality
- Frequency
- Mutual benefit
- Balance
- Uniqueness
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that likeability is innate. It’s not! It’s a learnable skill and you can get better at it. You can take these tips and dial up your likeability for your most important relationships.
Make sure to check out this free mini-course called BD Habits. This will help you dig way deeper into how to create a system to manage your opportunities, manage your relationships, and manage yourself.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out BD Habits
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we dive deep into the topic of money. The way you talk about money with your client matters, and it all starts with your mindset. I share tips for how to be confident when delivering your pricing, value anchors and price anchors, how to own your pricing, tips for healthy negotiations, and when to provide options to your clients.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Auditing how you talk about money
- Why bad experiences outweigh good experiences
- The importance of speaking with confidence about money
- What the value anchor is
- Why estimates are fine when talking with clients
- What the price anchor is
- Setting your price anchor at a rate that will keep you in the game
- What to think about if you are more expensive
- Why people want you more if you own your pricing
- Why it’s a vote of confidence when people think you’re expensive
- Healthy negotiations.
- Why everything has to cost something
- Why exact prices are trusted more
- When to provide options
- The power of three when providing options
- The benefits of providing a good, better, and best option
Many people wilt when it comes to the money conversation, but it’s so important that you’re engaged and confident when you talk about money and how great your work is.
Own your pricing. Get aligned. If you share how great you are and you have high pricing, it all makes sense. It is a wonderful compliment when someone says that you are expensive. That is actually a vote of confidence.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Baumeister study
Check out Galinsky’s research on price offers as anchors
Check out Conley’s research on pricing
Check out the research on why you should use exact prices
Listen to my conversation with Maria
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about something that is rarely done with service-based offerings. It’s a pro-ninja tip that I think is going to help you a lot in certain situations. I’m sharing why from time to time, you want to provide options for your clients to move forward. When it’s clear that there’s one offer, you want to go down that road. However, there are times when the client isn’t sure how they want to proceed so you’ll want to give them a few different options to choose from.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- When to provide options
- The power of three when providing options
- The benefits of providing a good, better, and best option
Providing options is a great way to get your client to agree to work with you when they aren’t sure what is best for them. Just make sure to avoid providing too many options. Three really is the magic number in this case.
When you use this construct, make it as simple as possible. Make it clear what the value, work, and investment is. You want to get into your consulting mode and make it clear what is the best option for them.
For more tips on talking about money, make sure to check out my conversation with Maria Kelly linked below. It was an excellent conversation and I know you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Maria
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about something that is rarely done with service-based offerings. It’s a pro-ninja tip that I think is going to help you a lot in certain situations. I’m sharing why from time to time, you want to provide options for your clients to move forward. When it’s clear that there’s one offer, you want to go down that road. However, there are times when the client isn’t sure how they want to proceed so you’ll want to give them a few different options to choose from.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- When to provide options
- The power of three when providing options
- The benefits of providing a good, better, and best option
Providing options is a great way to get your client to agree to work with you when they aren’t sure what is best for them. Just make sure to avoid providing too many options. Three really is the magic number in this case.
When you use this construct, make it as simple as possible. Make it clear what the value, work, and investment is. You want to get into your consulting mode and make it clear what is the best option for them.
For more tips on talking about money, make sure to check out my conversation with Maria Kelly linked below. It was an excellent conversation and I know you’ll enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Maria
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about the principle that we need to make everything cost something. We all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Many times clients will ask for something at a lower rate or they’ll ask for something to be thrown in for free. There will be times when you do that. However, in this episode, we are talking about negotiating a specific project and why you should always ask for something in return.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Healthy negotiations.
- Why everything has to cost something
- Why exact prices are trusted more
When your client asks for something, you have to ask for something in return. That is the bottom line. If they call and ask for a favor, take your time and think about what you can ask for in return. You don’t want to make it too easy for them. This will help you get farther faster.
It’s also important to remember that you’ll get more wins by not rounding the number of your price. Keep it exact and you will build more trust and increase your ability to raise prices going forward. Check out the research on why rounded prices should be avoided at the link below!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the research on why you should use exact prices
In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about the principle that we need to make everything cost something. We all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Many times clients will ask for something at a lower rate or they’ll ask for something to be thrown in for free. There will be times when you do that. However, in this episode, we are talking about negotiating a specific project and why you should always ask for something in return.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Healthy negotiations.
- Why everything has to cost something
- Why exact prices are trusted more
When your client asks for something, you have to ask for something in return. That is the bottom line. If they call and ask for a favor, take your time and think about what you can ask for in return. You don’t want to make it too easy for them. This will help you get farther faster.
It’s also important to remember that you’ll get more wins by not rounding the number of your price. Keep it exact and you will build more trust and increase your ability to raise prices going forward. Check out the research on why rounded prices should be avoided at the link below!
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the research on why you should use exact prices
This week we have been talking all about money. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about the idea that what costs more is worth more. We have all heard the saying “you get what you pay for.” In general, what costs more is more desirable, and this is important to keep in mind when you consider your pricing.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What to think about if you are more expensive
- Why people want you more if you own your pricing
- Why it’s a vote of confidence when people think you’re expensive
If you own your pricing and talk about it calmly, people will want you more. Do you want a car that is cheaper or more expensive? The mental heuristic is what costs more is more desirable. So don’t doubt yourself if you’re more expensive.
Own your pricing. Get aligned. If you share how great you are and you have high pricing, it all makes sense. It is a wonderful compliment when someone says that you are expensive. That is actually a vote of confidence.
Conley’s research on this topic is extremely interesting and I highly recommend you read it if you want to dig in deeper.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Conley’s research on pricing
This week we have been talking all about money. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about the idea that what costs more is worth more. We have all heard the saying “you get what you pay for.” In general, what costs more is more desirable, and this is important to keep in mind when you consider your pricing.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What to think about if you are more expensive
- Why people want you more if you own your pricing
- Why it’s a vote of confidence when people think you’re expensive
If you own your pricing and talk about it calmly, people will want you more. Do you want a car that is cheaper or more expensive? The mental heuristic is what costs more is more desirable. So don’t doubt yourself if you’re more expensive.
Own your pricing. Get aligned. If you share how great you are and you have high pricing, it all makes sense. It is a wonderful compliment when someone says that you are expensive. That is actually a vote of confidence.
Conley’s research on this topic is extremely interesting and I highly recommend you read it if you want to dig in deeper.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Conley’s research on pricing
So far we have covered how to have the right mindset when talking about money, and in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about how to price your offers. There are two specific anchors that you want to think about when you talk about the value of your pricing so that clients are compelled to work with you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What the value anchor is
- Why estimates are fine when talking with clients
- What the price anchor is
- Setting your price anchor at a rate that will keep you in the game
This stuff is so important so you don’t want to go into the money conversation without thinking of these things beforehand. Get your team together and think long and hard about what your desired price is and set your price anchor at the maximum level.
There is so much contextual significance that there’s no way I could tell you what’s right or wrong. It all depends on the context!
If you want to learn more, I highly recommend you check out Galinsky’s research on this topic. There’s a lot of very good information in there.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Galinsky’s research on price offers as anchors
So far we have covered how to have the right mindset when talking about money, and in this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking about how to price your offers. There are two specific anchors that you want to think about when you talk about the value of your pricing so that clients are compelled to work with you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What the value anchor is
- Why estimates are fine when talking with clients
- What the price anchor is
- Setting your price anchor at a rate that will keep you in the game
This stuff is so important so you don’t want to go into the money conversation without thinking of these things beforehand. Get your team together and think long and hard about what your desired price is and set your price anchor at the maximum level.
There is so much contextual significance that there’s no way I could tell you what’s right or wrong. It all depends on the context!
If you want to learn more, I highly recommend you check out Galinsky’s research on this topic. There’s a lot of very good information in there.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Galinsky’s research on price offers as anchors
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking all about money. In this episode, we are diving into the topic of money mindset. How you talk about money matters. Many people wilt when it comes to the money conversation. It’s so important that you’re engaged when you talk about money and how great your work is with confidence.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Auditing how you talk about money
- Why bad experiences outweigh good experiences
- The importance of speaking with confidence about money
You are the expert. You know what clients can do and what they can’t do. You should have the same level of confidence when you talk about your expertise as you do when you talk about money.
Bring up your pricing just like you do with everything else. Hold your shoulders back, use a calm tone, and just be confident.
Make sure to check out the Baumeister study. It’s classic peer-reviewed literature, and it’s really powerful stuff.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Baumeister study
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are talking all about money. In this episode, we are diving into the topic of money mindset. How you talk about money matters. Many people wilt when it comes to the money conversation. It’s so important that you’re engaged when you talk about money and how great your work is with confidence.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Auditing how you talk about money
- Why bad experiences outweigh good experiences
- The importance of speaking with confidence about money
You are the expert. You know what clients can do and what they can’t do. You should have the same level of confidence when you talk about your expertise as you do when you talk about money.
Bring up your pricing just like you do with everything else. Hold your shoulders back, use a calm tone, and just be confident.
Make sure to check out the Baumeister study. It’s classic peer-reviewed literature, and it’s really powerful stuff.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Baumeister study
How do you position yourself uniquely so that you can win more often? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of positioning. I have found that this is very rarely taught but it’s a critical skill to make yourself unique in the mind of the buyer. I’m sharing tips for creating your three key messages, how to become more memorable, pro tips for communicating, and so much more so that you can truly stand out amongst the competition.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The law of positioning
- Why people don’t care about your accolades
- The three words to use when talking to a client
- Why three is the perfect number
- Why you need to include three reasons a client should work with you
- The research that supports this method
- Why 3s and 4s are more memorable
- The three levels at which you might talk about your positioning
- Why it’s up to you to determine how to add more value
- The five things you need to choose your three key messages
- The four reasons that clients choose someone else
- When to be bold in your positioning
- Using one to two words per message
- How exactly to word your three messages
- The benefits of using rhyming or alliteration
It is up to you to figure out how you're clearly going to add more value than anybody else. Boil it down to three things, because that's more believable and memorable to your clients. Show how in this exact position, you are going to provide a unique value.
Make sure your team is on board so everything is aligned and make sure you learn how to communicate effectively using the tips I shared today so that clients will choose you more often. If you do these things right and embed them in your habits, you can use them forever!
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Cryder research
Read Dr. Suzanne Shu’s research
Read the Rouder research about 3s
Check out the positioning Wikipedia page
Get the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning
Read the study about rhyming
How do you position yourself uniquely so that you can win more often? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of positioning. I have found that this is very rarely taught but it’s a critical skill to make yourself unique in the mind of the buyer. I’m sharing tips for creating your three key messages, how to become more memorable, pro tips for communicating, and so much more so that you can truly stand out amongst the competition.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The law of positioning
- Why people don’t care about your accolades
- The three words to use when talking to a client
- Why three is the perfect number
- Why you need to include three reasons a client should work with you
- The research that supports this method
- Why 3s and 4s are more memorable
- The three levels at which you might talk about your positioning
- Why it’s up to you to determine how to add more value
- The five things you need to choose your three key messages
- The four reasons that clients choose someone else
- When to be bold in your positioning
- Using one to two words per message
- How exactly to word your three messages
- The benefits of using rhyming or alliteration
It is up to you to figure out how you're clearly going to add more value than anybody else. Boil it down to three things, because that's more believable and memorable to your clients. Show how in this exact position, you are going to provide a unique value.
Make sure your team is on board so everything is aligned and make sure you learn how to communicate effectively using the tips I shared today so that clients will choose you more often. If you do these things right and embed them in your habits, you can use them forever!
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Cryder research
Read Dr. Suzanne Shu’s research
Read the Rouder research about 3s
Check out the positioning Wikipedia page
Get the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning
Read the study about rhyming
The last few episodes have been all about positioning yourself uniquely in the mind of your client or decision-maker. You’ll want to use these methods and frameworks every time you are speaking with a client and especially when the stakes are high. You want them to see you as the only one who can give them what they are looking for. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing some pro tips on how exactly you can communicate these three messages more effectively.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Using one to two words per message
- How exactly to word your three messages
- The benefits of using rhyming or alliteration
You're striving for simplicity, believability, the benefit to your client, and all these other things that we've been talking about in these episodes. The last thing I want is for you to do all of the work to come up with your unique positioning and then not communicate them effectively.
If you do these things right and embed them in your habits, you can use them forever. If you want to learn more about the study of why rhyming is so effective, check it out here. It’s a super interesting study.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the study about rhyming
The last few episodes have been all about positioning yourself uniquely in the mind of your client or decision-maker. You’ll want to use these methods and frameworks every time you are speaking with a client and especially when the stakes are high. You want them to see you as the only one who can give them what they are looking for. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing some pro tips on how exactly you can communicate these three messages more effectively.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Using one to two words per message
- How exactly to word your three messages
- The benefits of using rhyming or alliteration
You're striving for simplicity, believability, the benefit to your client, and all these other things that we've been talking about in these episodes. The last thing I want is for you to do all of the work to come up with your unique positioning and then not communicate them effectively.
If you do these things right and embed them in your habits, you can use them forever. If you want to learn more about the study of why rhyming is so effective, check it out here. It’s a super interesting study.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the study about rhyming
In the last few episodes, we have talked all about the science of positioning. We talked about how to show your clear value and how to be more believable and memorable to clients when you’re sharing why they should work with you. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we’re talking about how to get your team together to have a discussion on the five key elements to arrive at your three key messages.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The five things you need to choose your three key messages
- The four reasons that clients choose someone else
- When to be bold in your positioning
This is a very important conversation and you want to have it at the very beginning of this process. If you do this, then throughout your communication, proposal, and any other formal or informal process when the stakes are high, you will have your three key messages ready to go which will set you apart.
Your team will buy into this better if they’re the ones shaping it, so make sure to get everyone involved in the process. When you do it upfront, everything is aligned throughout the entire process.
Make sure to check out the Wikipedia page on positioning. You can also grab the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning if you want to go deeper and make sure to get the 20th-anniversary edition NOT the original because it has pictures and illustrations.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the positioning Wikipedia page
Get the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning
In the last few episodes, we have talked all about the science of positioning. We talked about how to show your clear value and how to be more believable and memorable to clients when you’re sharing why they should work with you. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we’re talking about how to get your team together to have a discussion on the five key elements to arrive at your three key messages.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The five things you need to choose your three key messages
- The four reasons that clients choose someone else
- When to be bold in your positioning
This is a very important conversation and you want to have it at the very beginning of this process. If you do this, then throughout your communication, proposal, and any other formal or informal process when the stakes are high, you will have your three key messages ready to go which will set you apart.
Your team will buy into this better if they’re the ones shaping it, so make sure to get everyone involved in the process. When you do it upfront, everything is aligned throughout the entire process.
Make sure to check out the Wikipedia page on positioning. You can also grab the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning if you want to go deeper and make sure to get the 20th-anniversary edition NOT the original because it has pictures and illustrations.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out the positioning Wikipedia page
Get the Al Ries and Jack Trout book on positioning
In the last couple of episodes, we talked about the power of positioning. We covered how you can communicate value to your client and the importance of using three reasons to make it more believable. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into how using three is more memorable as well.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why 3s and 4s are more memorable
- The three levels that you might talk about your positioning
- Why it’s up to you to determine how to add more value
It is up to you to figure out how you're clearly going to add more value than anybody else. Boil it down to three things, because that's more believable and memorable to your clients. Show how in this exact position, you are going to provide a unique value.
Don’t just rely on simple marketing-driven differentiation. I want you to go up two notches to the “deal” level and help them understand how you are truly unique and how working with you will benefit them. Make sure to check out the research about why 3s are more memorable.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Rouder research about 3s
In the last couple of episodes, we talked about the power of positioning. We covered how you can communicate value to your client and the importance of using three reasons to make it more believable. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are diving into how using three is more memorable as well.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why 3s and 4s are more memorable
- The three levels that you might talk about your positioning
- Why it’s up to you to determine how to add more value
It is up to you to figure out how you're clearly going to add more value than anybody else. Boil it down to three things, because that's more believable and memorable to your clients. Show how in this exact position, you are going to provide a unique value.
Don’t just rely on simple marketing-driven differentiation. I want you to go up two notches to the “deal” level and help them understand how you are truly unique and how working with you will benefit them. Make sure to check out the research about why 3s are more memorable.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Rouder research about 3s
This week we are talking about positioning and how you can communicate your value in a way that’s memorable and clearly benefits the client, so you can start getting chosen more often. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the Power of Three and why it matters when talking to clients.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why three is the perfect number
- Why you need to include three reasons a client should work with you
- The research that supports this method
Having too many reasons a client should work with you is too confusing; having too few reasons can be confusing as well. There is research that shows three is the perfect number of reasons you should include when talking to a potential client about why they should work with you.
If you want to learn more about the research about this from Dr. Suzanne Shu, make sure to check it out here. This study is actually quite readable and the concept is incredibly powerful so I highly recommend that you dig in.
Resources Mentioned:
Read Dr. Suzanne Shu’s research: https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.11.0504
This week we are talking about positioning and how you can communicate your value in a way that’s memorable and clearly benefits the client, so you can start getting chosen more often. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the Power of Three and why it matters when talking to clients.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why three is the perfect number
- Why you need to include three reasons a client should work with you
- The research that supports this method
Having too many reasons a client should work with you is too confusing; having too few reasons can be confusing as well. There is research that shows three is the perfect number of reasons you should include when talking to a potential client about why they should work with you.
If you want to learn more about the research about this from Dr. Suzanne Shu, make sure to check it out here. This study is actually quite readable and the concept is incredibly powerful so I highly recommend that you dig in.
Resources Mentioned:
Read Dr. Suzanne Shu’s research: https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.11.0504
How do you position yourself uniquely so that you can win more often? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of positioning. I have found that this is very rarely taught but it’s a critical skill to make yourself unique in the mind of the buyer.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The law of positioning
- Why people don’t care about your accolades
- The three words to use when talking to a client
People don’t care about your accolades, they care about how you are going to impact them. So try to avoid talking too much about yourself when speaking to clients. Simple messages win. You want to shape the decision criteria and convey your messages so that it shows a clear benefit to the client.
This may seem nebulous, but I’m going to give you the process of how to accomplish this over the next couple of videos. Make sure to check out the Cryder research that I mentioned in this episode. This research is incredibly powerful and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Cryder research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.08.002
How do you position yourself uniquely so that you can win more often? In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m diving into the topic of positioning. I have found that this is very rarely taught but it’s a critical skill to make yourself unique in the mind of the buyer.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- The law of positioning
- Why people don’t care about your accolades
- The three words to use when talking to a client
People don’t care about your accolades, they care about how you are going to impact them. So try to avoid talking too much about yourself when speaking to clients. Simple messages win. You want to shape the decision criteria and convey your messages so that it shows a clear benefit to the client.
This may seem nebulous, but I’m going to give you the process of how to accomplish this over the next couple of videos. Make sure to check out the Cryder research that I mentioned in this episode. This research is incredibly powerful and I think you’ll really enjoy it.
Resources Mentioned:
Read the Cryder research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.08.002
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for business growth. It’s even more important than most people realize. Studies show that when people create a story around facts, it drastically increases the ability of people to remember those facts.
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the elements that make up a compelling story and the most important types of stories that you need to have ready to go to really make an impact on your clients.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why storytelling is important
- How stories help people remember what they’re told
- How stories connect people
- The power of using words that convey the five senses
- The importance of taking stories seriously
- What the Call is in a story
- Using a hero and a villain in your story
- When the hero accepts the Call
- How to use the Call when you talk to clients
- What needs to be included in the Conflict
- How to choose the elements to highlight in your conflict
- The most critical part of sharing the Conflict in your story
- The importance of cutting out the extra detail and only including what’s important to the recipient
- What to cover during the Conclusion
- Why stories fall flat without the Conclusion
- Why you should never skip over this part of your story
- Why you need to have an origin story
- The elements to include in your origin story
- Why you need to have a client success story
- How many client success stories you need
- How to perfect your stories
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to get people to remember you and connect with you on a deeper level. When used in business, you can wow your clients by telling compelling stories that illustrate your expertise and experiences.
By including the three essential elements of your story: the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion, you will deliver more powerful stories that people can’t help but remember.
It’s so important that you don’t take these stories for granted. Take the time to figure them out. If you pay attention to the key stories and really tighten the screws, you will use them forever and your time spent will be well worth it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Dr. Bollinger’s study
Listen to my conversation with Nancy about storytelling
Learn more about Joseph Campbell
Check out The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
Watch The Power of Myth videos with Joseph Campbell
Listen to my origin story
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for business growth. It’s even more important than most people realize. Studies show that when people create a story around facts, it drastically increases the ability of people to remember those facts.
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m sharing the elements that make up a compelling story and the most important types of stories that you need to have ready to go to really make an impact on your clients.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why storytelling is important
- How stories help people remember what they’re told
- How stories connect people
- The power of using words that convey the five senses
- The importance of taking stories seriously
- What the Call is in a story
- Using a hero and a villain in your story
- When the hero accepts the Call
- How to use the Call when you talk to clients
- What needs to be included in the Conflict
- How to choose the elements to highlight in your conflict
- The most critical part of sharing the Conflict in your story
- The importance of cutting out the extra detail and only including what’s important to the recipient
- What to cover during the Conclusion
- Why stories fall flat without the Conclusion
- Why you should never skip over this part of your story
- Why you need to have an origin story
- The elements to include in your origin story
- Why you need to have a client success story
- How many client success stories you need
- How to perfect your stories
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to get people to remember you and connect with you on a deeper level. When used in business, you can wow your clients by telling compelling stories that illustrate your expertise and experiences.
By including the three essential elements of your story: the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion, you will deliver more powerful stories that people can’t help but remember.
It’s so important that you don’t take these stories for granted. Take the time to figure them out. If you pay attention to the key stories and really tighten the screws, you will use them forever and your time spent will be well worth it.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Dr. Bollinger’s study
Listen to my conversation with Nancy about storytelling
Learn more about Joseph Campbell
Check out The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
Watch The Power of Myth videos with Joseph Campbell
Listen to my origin story
We have covered the three powerful elements of a story - the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. In today’s episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to learn about the most important types of stories that you’ll want to have memorized and ready to go so that you can share them whenever you need a compelling allusion.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you need to have an origin story
- The elements to include in your origin story
- Why you need to have a client success story
- How many client success stories you need
- How to perfect your stories
It’s important that you really take the time to get these stories right. Your origin story should be only a few minutes but it should give a really compelling story about why you do what you do and how you came to have the expertise you have.
You should have as many client success stories as you have offers. That way, no matter what offer you’re talking about, you have an engaging and compelling story ready to share with that client.
It’s so important that you don’t take these stories for granted. Take the time to figure them out. If you pay attention to the key stories and really tighten the screws, you will use them forever and your time spent will be well worth it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my origin story
We have covered the three powerful elements of a story - the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. In today’s episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, we are going to learn about the most important types of stories that you’ll want to have memorized and ready to go so that you can share them whenever you need a compelling allusion.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why you need to have an origin story
- The elements to include in your origin story
- Why you need to have a client success story
- How many client success stories you need
- How to perfect your stories
It’s important that you really take the time to get these stories right. Your origin story should be only a few minutes but it should give a really compelling story about why you do what you do and how you came to have the expertise you have.
You should have as many client success stories as you have offers. That way, no matter what offer you’re talking about, you have an engaging and compelling story ready to share with that client.
It’s so important that you don’t take these stories for granted. Take the time to figure them out. If you pay attention to the key stories and really tighten the screws, you will use them forever and your time spent will be well worth it.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my origin story
In the last couple of episodes, we covered the first two elements of storytelling - the Call and the Conflict - and why they are so important to your stories. In today’s episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about the third and final element, the Conclusion. In my opinion, this is the most important piece of the puzzle… but so many people miss it. They all think it ends when the hero accomplishes the goal, but it doesn’t! The Conclusion is where you summarize the impact of what really happened.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What to cover during the Conclusion
- Why stories fall flat without the Conclusion
- Why you should never skip over this part of your story
This part of the story is where you really stick the landing. By sharing everything that came out of the story, you really get to share the massive impact that you were able to achieve. You show the clients what is possible in these types of situations.
Now that we have concluded covering the elements of a story and why they all matter, in the next video I’m going to be sharing some important types of stories that you want to have memorized and ready to go so that you can use them over and over again.
Resources Mentioned:
Watch The Power of Myth videos with Joseph Campbell
In the last couple of episodes, we covered the first two elements of storytelling - the Call and the Conflict - and why they are so important to your stories. In today’s episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I’m talking about the third and final element, the Conclusion. In my opinion, this is the most important piece of the puzzle… but so many people miss it. They all think it ends when the hero accomplishes the goal, but it doesn’t! The Conclusion is where you summarize the impact of what really happened.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What to cover during the Conclusion
- Why stories fall flat without the Conclusion
- Why you should never skip over this part of your story
This part of the story is where you really stick the landing. By sharing everything that came out of the story, you really get to share the massive impact that you were able to achieve. You show the clients what is possible in these types of situations.
Now that we have concluded covering the elements of a story and why they all matter, in the next video I’m going to be sharing some important types of stories that you want to have memorized and ready to go so that you can use them over and over again.
Resources Mentioned:
Watch The Power of Myth videos with Joseph Campbell
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we have been diving into the power and science of storytelling in business. There are three main elements to a great story and they are the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. In the last episode, we talked about the Call, and in this episode, we are talking more about the Conflict and why it matters in your storytelling.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What needs to be included in the Conflict
- How to choose the elements to highlight in your conflict
- The most critical part of sharing the Conflict in your story
- The importance of cutting out the extra detail and only including what’s important to the recipient
When explaining the Conflict to your client, you want to eliminate the extraneous detail and only highlight the elements of the story that are important to the client and show them how you can move their life forward. This is a critical part of telling a good story.
A great conflict helps everyone achieve more than they ever thought possible. The setup is in the Call where everyone is reluctant, but the Conflict is where you can truly show how much is really possible when you work together.
Up next, we are diving into the Conclusion. It’s extremely powerful but it is the most often missed element of storytelling and I can’t wait to share how you can use it in your storytelling.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about Joseph Campbell
Check out The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
This week on Real Relationships Real Revenue, we have been diving into the power and science of storytelling in business. There are three main elements to a great story and they are the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. In the last episode, we talked about the Call, and in this episode, we are talking more about the Conflict and why it matters in your storytelling.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What needs to be included in the Conflict
- How to choose the elements to highlight in your conflict
- The most critical part of sharing the Conflict in your story
- The importance of cutting out the extra detail and only including what’s important to the recipient
When explaining the Conflict to your client, you want to eliminate the extraneous detail and only highlight the elements of the story that are important to the client and show them how you can move their life forward. This is a critical part of telling a good story.
A great conflict helps everyone achieve more than they ever thought possible. The setup is in the Call where everyone is reluctant, but the Conflict is where you can truly show how much is really possible when you work together.
Up next, we are diving into the Conclusion. It’s extremely powerful but it is the most often missed element of storytelling and I can’t wait to share how you can use it in your storytelling.
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about Joseph Campbell
Check out The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
For any great story, there are three major elements. Based on Joseph Campbell’s work, we know that those three major elements are the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. These elements are all you need to create a great story. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am diving into the Call.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What the Call is in a story
- Using a hero and a villain in your story
- When the hero accepts the Call
- How to use the Call when you talk to clients
There’s a reason that visionaries like George Lucas use Joseph Campell’s strategy for storytelling. It’s profoundly impactful and makes your audience feel a deep connection to you and what you’re telling them.
It’s easy to want to skip the Call in your story altogether and go straight to the win, but you have to take the time to set the story up properly for it to have the impact you want it to.
In the next couple of episodes, we are going to be diving into the Conflict and the Conclusion and how to use them in your storytelling.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Nancy about storytelling
For any great story, there are three major elements. Based on Joseph Campbell’s work, we know that those three major elements are the Call, the Conflict, and the Conclusion. These elements are all you need to create a great story. In this episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, I am diving into the Call.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- What the Call is in a story
- Using a hero and a villain in your story
- When the hero accepts the Call
- How to use the Call when you talk to clients
There’s a reason that visionaries like George Lucas use Joseph Campell’s strategy for storytelling. It’s profoundly impactful and makes your audience feel a deep connection to you and what you’re telling them.
It’s easy to want to skip the Call in your story altogether and go straight to the win, but you have to take the time to set the story up properly for it to have the impact you want it to.
In the next couple of episodes, we are going to be diving into the Conflict and the Conclusion and how to use them in your storytelling.
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to my conversation with Nancy about storytelling
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for business growth. It’s even more important than most people realize. Studies show that when people create a story around facts, it drastically increases the ability of people to remember those facts.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why storytelling is important
- How stories help people remember what they’re told
- How stories connect people
- The power of using words that convey the five senses
- The importance of taking stories seriously
Not only do stories help us remember what we’re being told, but they also help us become part of the story as we hear it. That makes it hugely connective to the person telling the story and why it is so impactful.
In the next couple of episodes, I’m going to be covering how you construct a story, how you get the benefits, the top stories that you need to memorize and practice, and so much more. But today, I want to emphasize the importance of taking this seriously. Don’t just wing it! It’s so powerful when used correctly. If you do it right, people are going to remember more about you and they’re going to feel more connected to you.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Dr. Bollinger’s study – Need links
Check out the Bauer and Clark study:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Narrative-stories-as-mediators-for-serial-learning-Bower-Clark/a0afe969bac3536ec69c15f4a5c499b5473f61d0
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for business growth. It’s even more important than most people realize. Studies show that when people create a story around facts, it drastically increases the ability of people to remember those facts.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
- Why storytelling is important
- How stories help people remember what they’re told
- How stories connect people
- The power of using words that convey the five senses
- The importance of taking stories seriously
Not only do stories help us remember what we’re being told, but they also help us become part of the story as we hear it. That makes it hugely connective to the person telling the story and why it is so impactful.
In the next couple of episodes, I’m going to be covering how you construct a story, how you get the benefits, the top stories that you need to memorize and practice, and so much more. But today, I want to emphasize the importance of taking this seriously. Don’t just wing it! It’s so powerful when used correctly. If you do it right, people are going to remember more about you and they’re going to feel more connected to you.
Resources Mentioned:
Check out Dr. Bollinger’s study – Need links
Check out the Bauer and Clark study:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Narrative-stories-as-mediators-for-serial-learning-Bower-Clark/a0afe969bac3536ec69c15f4a5c499b5473f61d0
This week we are diving into how you can use Building Everything Together or the IKEA effect to win over your clients. This means you're going to co-create the proposals, contracts, and the way that you do business with your clients in a way that gives them some incremental buy-in on how you're going to do the work. This is an incredibly powerful method to use in business. In this episode, we dive into what the IKEA method is, how to use it during formal processes, having the investment conversation, getting incremental yeses, and what to do when things go wrong. These tips will help you stand out from the competition and get those clients to buy-in to your offer.
Tune in to find out more about:
- The optimal way to use the IKEA effect with your clients
- The four incremental yeses you’re looking for
- What to do if your clients are not engaged
- Using a call to get the first three yeses
- Why assumptions made in a formal proposal don’t work
- Tips for co-creating with a client
- Why you shouldn’t avoid the financial conversation
- How to share your number verbally with your client, not in a proposal
- Why we want to talk about finances in person with our clients
- The mindset shift needed when using the IKEA effect
- The importance of engaging the IKEA effect as much as you can
- Tips for co-creation within the formal process
- What to do when priorities change
- What to do when the timeline changes
- What to do when the team changes
- What to do when there are issues around finances
By getting your clients involved in the way you do business, you’re giving yourself an edge over the competition and ensuring that you stand out. Don’t be afraid to utilize the IKEA effect or Building Everything Together. Even if you don’t think you have any room to use this method, you probably still do, you just need to shift your mindset. Don’t waste your time or your clients' time using methods that don’t work. Make the most of your efforts and increase buy-in drastically by co-creating the perfect offer with your clients!
Mentioned in this episode:
The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/12136084
Listen to my interview with Mike Duffy:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-mike-duffy/
Check out my talk with Jeff Berardi:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-jeff-berardi/
Check out my conversation with Brent Atkins:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/brent-atkins-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Learn from Debby Moorman about how she uses Build Everything Togethe:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/debby-moormans-favorite-business-development-strategy/
This week we are diving into how you can use Building Everything Together or the IKEA effect to win over your clients. This means you're going to co-create the proposals, contracts, and the way that you do business with your clients in a way that gives them some incremental buy-in on how you're going to do the work. This is an incredibly powerful method to use in business. In this episode, we dive into what the IKEA method is, how to use it during formal processes, having the investment conversation, getting incremental yeses, and what to do when things go wrong. These tips will help you stand out from the competition and get those clients to buy-in to your offer.
Tune in to find out more about:
- The optimal way to use the IKEA effect with your clients
- The four incremental yeses you’re looking for
- What to do if your clients are not engaged
- Using a call to get the first three yeses
- Why assumptions made in a formal proposal don’t work
- Tips for co-creating with a client
- Why you shouldn’t avoid the financial conversation
- How to share your number verbally with your client, not in a proposal
- Why we want to talk about finances in person with our clients
- The mindset shift needed when using the IKEA effect
- The importance of engaging the IKEA effect as much as you can
- Tips for co-creation within the formal process
- What to do when priorities change
- What to do when the timeline changes
- What to do when the team changes
- What to do when there are issues around finances
By getting your clients involved in the way you do business, you’re giving yourself an edge over the competition and ensuring that you stand out. Don’t be afraid to utilize the IKEA effect or Building Everything Together. Even if you don’t think you have any room to use this method, you probably still do, you just need to shift your mindset. Don’t waste your time or your clients' time using methods that don’t work. Make the most of your efforts and increase buy-in drastically by co-creating the perfect offer with your clients!
Mentioned in this episode:
The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/12136084
Listen to my interview with Mike Duffy:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-mike-duffy/
Check out my talk with Jeff Berardi:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-jeff-berardi/
Check out my conversation with Brent Atkins:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/brent-atkins-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Learn from Debby Moorman about how she uses Build Everything Togethe:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/debby-moormans-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Today is the final video on Building Everything Together. In this episode, I want to share the four things that can go wrong, and what to do about them. Just because things go wrong doesn't mean that you give up. There are things you can do to adjust and move forward regardless of the issues that come up.
Today we will cover what happens when:
-
Priorities change
-
The timeline changes
-
The team changed
-
There are issues around the finances
You have to avoid getting discouraged when things go wrong. These kinds of things come up. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react. So decode which of those four is the issue. And then with grace, empathy, and extreme helpfulness, you go back to the client and you co-create the solution.
You can engage the IKEA effect during these solutions to help everybody achieve what they want to achieve. When issues arise, it always comes down to one of these four things. Once you know what it is, you can work with your clients to help them help you come to the right conclusion.
Mentioned in this episode:
Learn from Debby Moorman about how she uses Build Everything Together:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/debby-moormans-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Today is the final video on Building Everything Together. In this episode, I want to share the four things that can go wrong, and what to do about them. Just because things go wrong doesn't mean that you give up. There are things you can do to adjust and move forward regardless of the issues that come up.
Today we will cover what happens when:
-
Priorities change
-
The timeline changes
-
The team changed
-
There are issues around the finances
You have to avoid getting discouraged when things go wrong. These kinds of things come up. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you react. So decode which of those four is the issue. And then with grace, empathy, and extreme helpfulness, you go back to the client and you co-create the solution.
You can engage the IKEA effect during these solutions to help everybody achieve what they want to achieve. When issues arise, it always comes down to one of these four things. Once you know what it is, you can work with your clients to help them help you come to the right conclusion.
Mentioned in this episode:
Learn from Debby Moorman about how she uses Build Everything Together:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/debby-moormans-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Many people think that they can’t use the IKEA effect with their clients because of their limited access to the decision-makers in the business. It’s important that you don’t think this way. Though your ability to use the IKEA effect in a formal process is limited, the science is still sound.
Here are the things we will be talking about to explain the IKEA effect in formal processes:
-
The mindset shift needed when using the IKEA effect
-
The importance of engaging the IKEA effect as much as you can
-
Tips for co-creation within the formal process
Do not compare formal processes against informal processes and just say “I can’t do it because I can't do what I can do over here.” That's the wrong comparison. Only compare yourself against your competition. The key is to find out how you can engage the IKEA effect in those formal processes more than your competitors are.
When you take the time to brainstorm all of the ways you can use the IKEA effect during these processes, that’s where you will unlock the winning strategies. You're really smart. You're going to come up with the best solutions, but so is your competition. A bigger differentiator is how you engage in the process rather than the proposal you write.
Mentioned in this episode:
Check out my conversation with Brent Atkins:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/brent-atkins-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Many people think that they can’t use the IKEA effect with their clients because of their limited access to the decision-makers in the business. It’s important that you don’t think this way. Though your ability to use the IKEA effect in a formal process is limited, the science is still sound.
Here are the things we will be talking about to explain the IKEA effect in formal processes:
-
The mindset shift needed when using the IKEA effect
-
The importance of engaging the IKEA effect as much as you can
-
Tips for co-creation within the formal process
Do not compare formal processes against informal processes and just say “I can’t do it because I can't do what I can do over here.” That's the wrong comparison. Only compare yourself against your competition. The key is to find out how you can engage the IKEA effect in those formal processes more than your competitors are.
When you take the time to brainstorm all of the ways you can use the IKEA effect during these processes, that’s where you will unlock the winning strategies. You're really smart. You're going to come up with the best solutions, but so is your competition. A bigger differentiator is how you engage in the process rather than the proposal you write.
Mentioned in this episode:
Check out my conversation with Brent Atkins:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/brent-atkins-favorite-business-development-strategy/
Getting the investment right is an important part of working out a deal. In this episode, we will be building on what we talked about in the last couple of episodes about the framework and science behind the IKEA effect. Today, we are diving into getting the investment right. The conversation that’s about the investment is the one that’s missed the most, but it is an incredibly important piece that you should face head-on.
Here’s what you’ll learn about the investment conversation today:
-
Why you shouldn’t avoid the financial conversation
-
How to share your number verbally with your client, not in a proposal
-
Why we want to talk about finances in person with our clients
The way that you talk about money is actually more important than the dollars and cents themselves. The key is to say your numbers with confidence, in person. Avoid writing up a big fancy proposal that has everything and then send it over and hope and pray that it’s going to work out.
You can lower the scope if the price is too high. You get the verbal commitment if it's good, but either way, have the conversation in person.
In the next video, we will be going into the topic of formal processes. Regardless of who you work with, you can use Building Everything Together in your formal processes and I’ll show you how to do that.
Mentioned in this episode:
Check out my talk with Jeff Berardi:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-jeff-berardi/
Getting the investment right is an important part of working out a deal. In this episode, we will be building on what we talked about in the last couple of episodes about the framework and science behind the IKEA effect. Today, we are diving into getting the investment right. The conversation that’s about the investment is the one that’s missed the most, but it is an incredibly important piece that you should face head-on.
Here’s what you’ll learn about the investment conversation today:
-
Why you shouldn’t avoid the financial conversation
-
How to share your number verbally with your client, not in a proposal
-
Why we want to talk about finances in person with our clients
The way that you talk about money is actually more important than the dollars and cents themselves. The key is to say your numbers with confidence, in person. Avoid writing up a big fancy proposal that has everything and then send it over and hope and pray that it’s going to work out.
You can lower the scope if the price is too high. You get the verbal commitment if it's good, but either way, have the conversation in person.
In the next video, we will be going into the topic of formal processes. Regardless of who you work with, you can use Building Everything Together in your formal processes and I’ll show you how to do that.
Mentioned in this episode:
Check out my talk with Jeff Berardi:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-jeff-berardi/
In the last episode, I talked about engaging your clients using the IKEA effect. In this episode, I’m going to be drilling deeply into the first three incremental yeses you want to get: the goals, the processes, and the team. People buy into what they help create, and these tips I’m sharing with you today will help you make it happen.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
- Using a call to get the first three yeses
- Why assumptions made in a formal proposal don’t work
- Tips for co-creating with a client
It is so easy to think for different reasons that you shouldn't engage the client in co-creation. Maybe it's you want to retain your expertise and you want to be the ones that should tell them what to do. Maybe you're afraid to ask. There can be 100 reasons, and you need to let them go.
If this is important to the client, they will engage. Not only will they engage, but they will like the output even better. You also get to show your expertise more powerfully in a live setting. If something is preventing you from trying this out. Get rid of it, because this stuff works.
Mentioned in this episode:
Listen to my interview with Mike Duffy:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-mike-duffy/
In the last episode, I talked about engaging your clients using the IKEA effect. In this episode, I’m going to be drilling deeply into the first three incremental yeses you want to get: the goals, the processes, and the team. People buy into what they help create, and these tips I’m sharing with you today will help you make it happen.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
- Using a call to get the first three yeses
- Why assumptions made in a formal proposal don’t work
- Tips for co-creating with a client
It is so easy to think for different reasons that you shouldn't engage the client in co-creation. Maybe it's you want to retain your expertise and you want to be the ones that should tell them what to do. Maybe you're afraid to ask. There can be 100 reasons, and you need to let them go.
If this is important to the client, they will engage. Not only will they engage, but they will like the output even better. You also get to show your expertise more powerfully in a live setting. If something is preventing you from trying this out. Get rid of it, because this stuff works.
Mentioned in this episode:
Listen to my interview with Mike Duffy:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/what-business-development-really-means-according-to-mike-duffy/
This week we are talking about what I like to call “Building Everything Together.” Essentially this is how you’re going to co-create the proposals, the contracts, and the way you’re going to do business with your client. It’s called the IKEA effect, and it’s incredibly powerful.
Today we will be talking about
- The optimal way to use the IKEA effect with your clients
- The four incremental yeses you’re looking for
- What to do if they’re not engaged
The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter the role, the title, or the level of the person in an organization. If working with you is important to them, they will engage in building everything together. If working with you is not important to them, they will tell you they don't want to engage or they'll show it through their actions. Don't judge people by their words, judge them by their actions.
If you engage in this idea of the building everything together process or the science called the IKEA effect, you will have massive success because you get out and you quit pursuing. If they do engage, you know you've got something meaty and you're going to have the impact that you want to have.
In the next few episodes, I’m going to show you how to engage in those four big yeses that you want and so much more.
Mentioned in this episode:
The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/12136084
This week we are talking about what I like to call “Building Everything Together.” Essentially this is how you’re going to co-create the proposals, the contracts, and the way you’re going to do business with your client. It’s called the IKEA effect, and it’s incredibly powerful.
Today we will be talking about
- The optimal way to use the IKEA effect with your clients
- The four incremental yeses you’re looking for
- What to do if they’re not engaged
The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter the role, the title, or the level of the person in an organization. If working with you is important to them, they will engage in building everything together. If working with you is not important to them, they will tell you they don't want to engage or they'll show it through their actions. Don't judge people by their words, judge them by their actions.
If you engage in this idea of the building everything together process or the science called the IKEA effect, you will have massive success because you get out and you quit pursuing. If they do engage, you know you've got something meaty and you're going to have the impact that you want to have.
In the next few episodes, I’m going to show you how to engage in those four big yeses that you want and so much more.
Mentioned in this episode:
The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/12136084
This week we are talking about how to create curiosity. This is a really interesting topic because hardly anybody talks about the importance of creating curiosity. In this episode, we’ll be going through how to leverage it as a useful business tool and ensure success in our business relations.
We’ll be discussing things like WHY curiosity is so important, how to create it during and in between meetings, how to use curiosity to make a good first impression, and when to really go the extra mile.
Tune in to find out more about:
- Why curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
- How curiosity creates a heightened sense of arousal
- How curiosity allows you to remember more
- Why you should ask for more data to analyze with the intention to share results during the next meeting
- When to introduce an idea about process improvement or timeline as a next step
- How to suggest an introduction to somebody who has experience in the area of discussion
- Why you should suggest setting up a tailored brainstorming session
- Ways to hint at something that’s coming without fully giving it away
- How to time these hints strategically throughout your meetings
- Why you shouldn’t ignore using curiosity as a helpful business tool
- How to frame the problem you solve
- When to have a dialogue to ensure understanding
- Why you should state what you do
- How to use the unexpected to drive curiosity
- How to add value to your interactions with others
- The importance of creating enjoyable experiences
Retaining the attention of your clients throughout your business relationship (starting even with your very first introduction) is important and vital to the productivity of that relationship. Make the most of your time - and the most of your clients’ time - by delivering an experience that keeps your prospects present and involved.
Keep the curiosity going!
Mentioned in this episode:
This is Your Brain on Curiosity: TEDx Talk with Matthais Gruber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmaTPPB-T_s
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Luke Burgis, Author of Wanting
https://www.bunnellideagroup.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-luke-burgis-author-of-wanting/
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Ron Tite, Author of Think. Do. Say.
https://audio.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-ron-tite-author-of-think-do-say/
How to Use Customer Experience and Marketing to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Jay Baer
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/how-to-use-customer-experience-and-marketing-to-create-and-close-more-opportunities-with-jay-baer/
Glen Jackson on Preeminence – What You Need To Succeed
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/glen-jackson-on-preeminence-what-you-need-to-succeed/
This week we are talking about how to create curiosity. This is a really interesting topic because hardly anybody talks about the importance of creating curiosity. In this episode, we’ll be going through how to leverage it as a useful business tool and ensure success in our business relations.
We’ll be discussing things like WHY curiosity is so important, how to create it during and in between meetings, how to use curiosity to make a good first impression, and when to really go the extra mile.
Tune in to find out more about:
- Why curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
- How curiosity creates a heightened sense of arousal
- How curiosity allows you to remember more
- Why you should ask for more data to analyze with the intention to share results during the next meeting
- When to introduce an idea about process improvement or timeline as a next step
- How to suggest an introduction to somebody who has experience in the area of discussion
- Why you should suggest setting up a tailored brainstorming session
- Ways to hint at something that’s coming without fully giving it away
- How to time these hints strategically throughout your meetings
- Why you shouldn’t ignore using curiosity as a helpful business tool
- How to frame the problem you solve
- When to have a dialogue to ensure understanding
- Why you should state what you do
- How to use the unexpected to drive curiosity
- How to add value to your interactions with others
- The importance of creating enjoyable experiences
Retaining the attention of your clients throughout your business relationship (starting even with your very first introduction) is important and vital to the productivity of that relationship. Make the most of your time - and the most of your clients’ time - by delivering an experience that keeps your prospects present and involved.
Keep the curiosity going!
Mentioned in this episode:
This is Your Brain on Curiosity: TEDx Talk with Matthais Gruber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmaTPPB-T_s
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Luke Burgis, Author of Wanting
https://www.bunnellideagroup.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-luke-burgis-author-of-wanting/
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Ron Tite, Author of Think. Do. Say.
https://audio.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-ron-tite-author-of-think-do-say/
How to Use Customer Experience and Marketing to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Jay Baer
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/how-to-use-customer-experience-and-marketing-to-create-and-close-more-opportunities-with-jay-baer/
Glen Jackson on Preeminence – What You Need To Succeed
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/glen-jackson-on-preeminence-what-you-need-to-succeed/
Today we’re talking about how to add value to your interactions with clients when there’s nothing to really purchase in the moment. Reliability is important, but sometimes going the extra mile is worth more.
Do things without asking. It could be as small as a handwritten note. And because of that small extra effort, that small unexpected gesture, you will add value to yourself in the eyes of your client because they associate you with going above and beyond!
This episode will cover things like:
- Using the unexpected to drive curiosity
- Adding value to your interactions with others
- Creating enjoyable experiences
Incorporating this “Do the Unexpected” principle into your interactions with other people will help to build your business relationships and encourage loyalty.
If you enjoyed listening today, tune in to the next episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue where we’ll be wrapping up our series on using curiosity to advance your business!
Mentioned in this episode:
Glen Jackson on Preeminence – What You Need To Succeed:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/glen-jackson-on-preeminence-what-you-need-to-succeed/
Today we’re talking about how to add value to your interactions with clients when there’s nothing to really purchase in the moment. Reliability is important, but sometimes going the extra mile is worth more.
Do things without asking. It could be as small as a handwritten note. And because of that small extra effort, that small unexpected gesture, you will add value to yourself in the eyes of your client because they associate you with going above and beyond!
This episode will cover things like:
- Using the unexpected to drive curiosity
- Adding value to your interactions with others
- Creating enjoyable experiences
Incorporating this “Do the Unexpected” principle into your interactions with other people will help to build your business relationships and encourage loyalty.
If you enjoyed listening today, tune in to the next episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue where we’ll be wrapping up our series on using curiosity to advance your business!
Mentioned in this episode:
Glen Jackson on Preeminence – What You Need To Succeed:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/glen-jackson-on-preeminence-what-you-need-to-succeed/
First impressions are a very powerful thing. When you first introduce yourself to a new client or prospect, it’s better to avoid simply stating your role within your company or business. Why? It leaves no room for curiosity! There’s no conversation or active listening happening in this kind of single-phrase interaction that’s going on.
Meeting somebody for the first time is where the curiosity should really begin!
Here are the three steps to creating a more engaging introduction:
- Frame the problem you solve
- Have a dialogue to ensure understanding
- State what you do
Having an exchange about your position and your role allows for the person you’re meeting to fully understand the scope of your responsibilities. It also turns a typically one-sided interaction into a conversation, which helps to begin to build that relationship.
If you’re looking to leverage curiosity in all aspects of your business, be sure to tune in as we get into this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
How to Use Customer Experience and Marketing to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Jay Baer:
https://video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/how-to-use-customer-experience-and-marketing-to-create-and-close-more-opportunities-with-jay-baer/
In our last episode, we talked about how to introduce cliffhangers to create excitement and anticipation between meetings. Today, we’ll be discussing how to create that engagement DURING meetings!
Today we’ll be talking about:
- Ways to hint at something that’s coming without fully giving it away
- How to time these hints strategically throughout your meetings
- Why you shouldn’t ignore using curiosity as a helpful business tool
Retaining the attention of your clients during your meetings is vital to the success and productivity of those appointments. Make the most of your time - and the most of your clients’ time - by delivering a meeting that keeps your prospects present and involved.
Don’t be afraid to use curiosity as an advantage in your business development meetings. One of the worst mistakes you can make is overlooking it as a useful tool to help you generate enthusiasm and keep the ball rolling!
I am looking forward to diving into this even further on the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get into this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Ron Tite, Author of Think. Do. Say.
https://audio.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-ron-tite-author-of-think-do-say/
In our last episode, we talked about how to introduce cliffhangers to create excitement and anticipation between meetings. Today, we’ll be discussing how to create that engagement DURING meetings!
Today we’ll be talking about:
- Ways to hint at something that’s coming without fully giving it away
- How to time these hints strategically throughout your meetings
- Why you shouldn’t ignore using curiosity as a helpful business tool
Retaining the attention of your clients during your meetings is vital to the success and productivity of those appointments. Make the most of your time - and the most of your clients’ time - by delivering a meeting that keeps your prospects present and involved.
Don’t be afraid to use curiosity as an advantage in your business development meetings. One of the worst mistakes you can make is overlooking it as a useful tool to help you generate enthusiasm and keep the ball rolling!
I am looking forward to diving into this even further on the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get into this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Ron Tite, Author of Think. Do. Say.
https://audio.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-ron-tite-author-of-think-do-say/
Today we’re talking about how to break up information into digestible and attractive portions, and how to deliver those portions in ways that intrigue and excite your prospects. The best way to gain that momentum and anticipation in your business development meetings is to end the meeting with a cliffhanger.
There a few different kinds of cliffhangers you can utilize in this way, and that’s what I’ll be covering in this episode:
- Ask for more data to analyze with the intention to share results during the next meeting
- Introduce an idea about process improvement or timeline as a next step
- Suggest an introduction to somebody who has experience in the area of discussion
- Suggest setting up a tailored brainstorming session
As you listen to the ways you can use each of these cliffhangers to your advantage, you’ll realize how many opportunities there really are to entice your client and get them excited for their next meeting with you.
It’s okay to spread your agenda out over multiple meetings instead of crowding every topic into a single appointment. Keep your clients engaged and ready to take next steps with you!
I am looking forward to diving into this even further on the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get started in this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Luke Burgis, Author of Wanting:
https://www.bunnellideagroup.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-luke-burgis-author-of-wanting/
Today we’re talking about how to break up information into digestible and attractive portions, and how to deliver those portions in ways that intrigue and excite your prospects. The best way to gain that momentum and anticipation in your business development meetings is to end the meeting with a cliffhanger.
There a few different kinds of cliffhangers you can utilize in this way, and that’s what I’ll be covering in this episode:
- Ask for more data to analyze with the intention to share results during the next meeting
- Introduce an idea about process improvement or timeline as a next step
- Suggest an introduction to somebody who has experience in the area of discussion
- Suggest setting up a tailored brainstorming session
As you listen to the ways you can use each of these cliffhangers to your advantage, you’ll realize how many opportunities there really are to entice your client and get them excited for their next meeting with you.
It’s okay to spread your agenda out over multiple meetings instead of crowding every topic into a single appointment. Keep your clients engaged and ready to take next steps with you!
I am looking forward to diving into this even further on the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get started in this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Luke Burgis, Author of Wanting:
https://www.bunnellideagroup.com/the-top-3-things-you-need-to-implement-from-luke-burgis-author-of-wanting/
This week we are talking about how to create curiosity. This is a really interesting topic because hardly anybody talks about creating curiosity. During a normal sales process, everything’s about us. Today we are talking about why you should be flipping this to the buyer.
Today we are covering the three big scientific elements that allow us to leverage curiosity.
-
Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
-
Curiosity creates a heightened sense of arousal
-
Curiosity allows you to remember more
As you tune in to hear me cover these three elements, you will see why these are the kind of things that you want to give your client. It’s a great experience to help them feel the feeling of curiosity. Avoid trying to do too much too fast and you will allow your clients to feel comfortable taking the next step with you.
Don’t try to close the deal on your first meeting. Spreading out your conversations over a couple of meetings will encourage the buyer to take the next step with you without feeling pushed.
I am looking forward to diving into this even further in the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get started in this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
This is Your Brain on Curiosity: TEDx Talk with Matthais Gruber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmaTPPB-T_s
This week we are talking about how to create curiosity. This is a really interesting topic because hardly anybody talks about creating curiosity. During a normal sales process, everything’s about us. Today we are talking about why you should be flipping this to the buyer.
Today we are covering the three big scientific elements that allow us to leverage curiosity.
-
Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator
-
Curiosity creates a heightened sense of arousal
-
Curiosity allows you to remember more
As you tune in to hear me cover these three elements, you will see why these are the kind of things that you want to give your client. It’s a great experience to help them feel the feeling of curiosity. Avoid trying to do too much too fast and you will allow your clients to feel comfortable taking the next step with you.
Don’t try to close the deal on your first meeting. Spreading out your conversations over a couple of meetings will encourage the buyer to take the next step with you without feeling pushed.
I am looking forward to diving into this even further in the next episode, so be sure to tune in as we get started in this curiosity series.
Mentioned in this episode:
This is Your Brain on Curiosity: TEDx Talk with Matthais Gruber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmaTPPB-T_s
Mo Bunnell reveals the number one skill for creating incredible growth in your career and for deepening relationships in general. Learn the frameworks for asking great questions and how they create a triple win for you and your prospect, the six types of questions you can ask to go deeper and build trust and rapport with anyone, and the biggest mistake you need to avoid for great questions to be effective.
Asking Great Questions that Work Hand in Hand with Your Business Growth Strategy
- Asking great questions gets you a triple win. The first being it creates an enjoyable experience for the other side. When people share information only they know (self-disclosing information), the pleasure center of their brain lights up.
- The second win is that you also become more likable. As people answer great questions, talking more while you talk less, the more they associate you with feeling great.
- The third win is that it allows you to become unique in the mind of the buyer. As they begin sharing, you are going to learn their priorities in their words. Being able to talk about what you do in the context of the other person’s goals and priorities is way more effective.
- When at all possible, avoid going first. If you have to, make your intro brief and shift quickly to asking the other person about their goals. People are dying to share their perspective, give that opportunity to them.
- You’re going to win the meeting if the other person talks more than you do.
- Avoid showing up with a big and clunky Powerpoint, focusing on you. Get to the other person as quickly as possible and offer ways to be helpful.
How Asking Past & Future Related Questions Affects the Success of Your Business Growth Strategy
- Make sure you’re getting the other side to share their personal perspective, something that only they know. Questions focused on the past and the future are great starting places for teasing out that information.
- Past questions include: “What historical data should we use to benchmark the future improvements we’re talking about?”, “What’s your #1 learning from leading teams on initiatives like this from the past?”, “What’s the most important experience you’ve had that's gotten you to this role?”, “What would you say has historically been the most important characteristics of an external partner like us?”
- Future questions get people thinking of ways they want to create value and advance things. Examples include: “What do you think this would look like if it was working well?”, “How much do you think we can improve that important metric you mentioned in three years?”, “How would people feel if we did it the way you would like?”, “What would your role look like if there were no restrictions on you?”, and “What’s the number one thing I can do to be helpful in following up?”
- Avoid asking stock questions, they just reveal that you haven’t done your homework.
- Customize the questions to show you are paying attention and care about the other person’s business.
Use This in Your Business Growth Strategy: Ask Elevating Questions During Sales Calls
- Future questions ask people to articulate what they think a future should look like. Elevating questions explore the present at a high level.
- Examples include: “How do you think your CEO sees this fitting in with your overall strategy?”, “What are the most important personal metrics for you this year, and how does this issue impact them?”, “What’s your favorite thing about your job right now?”, “If you had to choose some personal metrics right now that would elevate your profile and get you a big bonus, what would they be?”
- For questions around a specific issue, you’re focusing on the opposite of elevate and paying more attention to today at a detailed level.
- Examples include: “If you had to pick one process or step that was the most important to get right, what would it be?”, “If you could choose one quick win we could focus on and accomplish, what would it be?”, “What one person should we give some extra attention to in the meeting next week?”, and “What’s the number one thing we can improve in regards to our teams working together?”
- These style of questions require you to do your homework, but if you can design a great question you will get the other person thinking deeply and helping them understand themselves even better.
- You will probably only have the opportunity to ask four or five great questions over the course of an hour. Think deeply about the questions you want to ask.
How Connection Questions are Key to any Business Growth Strategy
- Connection questions are all about lateral thinking and how things fit together. The goal is to use them to get hired, develop trust, and be helpful in general.
- Examples include: “What other projects or teams might benefit from knowing what we’re considering?”, “What other external partners should we connect with to make things easier?”, “What connections can I make for you inside the company?”, “What kinds of updates would be most helpful for me to give you around the topic?”
- The next category is more focused on what’s missing. Ironically, these kinds of questions are the most interesting and most commonly skipped.
- Examples include: “What should we have discussed about this potential project but didn’t?”, “What other data should we begin to collect now so that we have a benchmark to prove success?”, “What kinds of people are you looking to meet?”, “What can I do to be helpful that we haven’t discussed yet?”
- These sorts of questions are very thought provoking and great to drop into the middle of a meeting or near the end.
- The trap to avoid is over indexing on your initial questions and not focusing on the questions you will use to wrap up the conversation.
Crush Your Business Growth Strategy by Avoiding Asking Prospects These Questions
- Research has shown that for commonly used skills, we drastically overestimate our abilities. In one particular study, people’s average percentile ability in the test skill was 12%, but they rated themselves on average at 62%.
- Asking great questions is the lynchpin.
- Earned dogmatism is a mental heuristic that says that the more we view ourselves as an expert in an area, the more close minded we become.
- The skills of curiosity and learning that got us our expertise wane over time unless we fight against the tendency. If you want to continue deepening relationships, you need to fight earned dogmatism by asking more questions instead of always talking about answers all the time.
- Wake up every morning and try to think you don’t know everything about your craft so you’re open to continuing to learn. If you can walk into every conversation with the beginner’s mind, you have a chance to grow your skills and keep getting better.
Mentioned in this Episode:
“Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding” - research article by Diana I. Tamir - pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1202129109
“It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking.” Huang, Karen, et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 113, no. 3, 2017, pp. 430–452. - doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Brian Caffarelli - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000554062611
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Mike Duffy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000539740375
Debby Moorman on Sales – Time To Get Great At Business Development - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000547399956
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Research has shown that for commonly used skills, we drastically overestimate our abilities. In one particular study, people’s average percentile ability in the test skill was 12%, but they rated themselves on average at 62%.
Asking great questions is the lynchpin.
Earned dogmatism is a mental heuristic that says that the more we view ourselves as an expert in an area, the more close minded we become.
The skills of curiosity and learning that got us our expertise wane over time unless we fight against the tendency. If you want to continue deepening relationships, you need to fight earned dogmatism by asking more questions instead of always talking about answers all the time.
Wake up every morning and try to think you don’t know everything about your craft so you’re open to continuing to learn. If you can walk into every conversation with the beginner’s mind, you have a chance to grow your skills and keep getting better.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Research has shown that for commonly used skills, we drastically overestimate our abilities. In one particular study, people’s average percentile ability in the test skill was 12%, but they rated themselves on average at 62%.
Asking great questions is the lynchpin.
Earned dogmatism is a mental heuristic that says that the more we view ourselves as an expert in an area, the more close minded we become.
The skills of curiosity and learning that got us our expertise wane over time unless we fight against the tendency. If you want to continue deepening relationships, you need to fight earned dogmatism by asking more questions instead of always talking about answers all the time.
Wake up every morning and try to think you don’t know everything about your craft so you’re open to continuing to learn. If you can walk into every conversation with the beginner’s mind, you have a chance to grow your skills and keep getting better.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Connection questions are all about lateral thinking and how things fit together. The goal is to use them to get hired, develop trust, and be helpful in general.
Examples include: “What other projects or teams might benefit from knowing what we’re considering?”, “What other external partners should we connect with to make things easier?”, “What connections can I make for you inside the company?”, “What kinds of updates would be most helpful for me to give you around the topic?”
The next category is more focused on what’s missing. Ironically, these kinds of questions are the most interesting and most commonly skipped.
Examples include: “What should we have discussed about this potential project but didn’t?”, “What other data should we begin to collect now so that we have a benchmark to prove success?”, “What kinds of people are you looking to meet?”, “What can I do to be helpful that we haven’t discussed yet?”
These sorts of questions are very thought provoking and great to drop into the middle of a meeting or near the end.
The trap to avoid is over indexing on your initial questions and not focusing on the questions you will use to wrap up the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Debby Moorman on Sales – Time To Get Great At Business Development - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000547399956
Connection questions are all about lateral thinking and how things fit together. The goal is to use them to get hired, develop trust, and be helpful in general.
Examples include: “What other projects or teams might benefit from knowing what we’re considering?”, “What other external partners should we connect with to make things easier?”, “What connections can I make for you inside the company?”, “What kinds of updates would be most helpful for me to give you around the topic?”
The next category is more focused on what’s missing. Ironically, these kinds of questions are the most interesting and most commonly skipped.
Examples include: “What should we have discussed about this potential project but didn’t?”, “What other data should we begin to collect now so that we have a benchmark to prove success?”, “What kinds of people are you looking to meet?”, “What can I do to be helpful that we haven’t discussed yet?”
These sorts of questions are very thought provoking and great to drop into the middle of a meeting or near the end.
The trap to avoid is over indexing on your initial questions and not focusing on the questions you will use to wrap up the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Debby Moorman on Sales – Time To Get Great At Business Development - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000547399956
Future questions ask people to articulate what they think a future should look like. Elevating questions explore the present at a high level.
Examples include: “How do you think your CEO sees this fitting in with your overall strategy?”, “What are the most important personal metrics for you this year, and how does this issue impact them?”, “What’s your favorite thing about your job right now?”, “If you had to choose some personal metrics right now that would elevate your profile and get you a big bonus, what would they be?”
For questions around a specific issue, you’re focusing on the opposite of elevate and paying more attention to today at a detailed level.
Examples include: “If you had to pick one process or step that was the most important to get right, what would it be?”, “If you could choose one quick win we could focus on and accomplish, what would it be?”, “What one person should we give some extra attention to in the meeting next week?”, and “What’s the number one thing we can improve in regards to our teams working together?”
These style of questions require you to do your homework, but if you can design a great question you will get the other person thinking deeply and helping them understand themselves even better.
You will probably only have the opportunity to ask four or five great questions over the course of an hour. Think deeply about the questions you want to ask.
Mentioned in this Episode:
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Mike Duffy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000539740375
Future questions ask people to articulate what they think a future should look like. Elevating questions explore the present at a high level.
Examples include: “How do you think your CEO sees this fitting in with your overall strategy?”, “What are the most important personal metrics for you this year, and how does this issue impact them?”, “What’s your favorite thing about your job right now?”, “If you had to choose some personal metrics right now that would elevate your profile and get you a big bonus, what would they be?”
For questions around a specific issue, you’re focusing on the opposite of elevate and paying more attention to today at a detailed level.
Examples include: “If you had to pick one process or step that was the most important to get right, what would it be?”, “If you could choose one quick win we could focus on and accomplish, what would it be?”, “What one person should we give some extra attention to in the meeting next week?”, and “What’s the number one thing we can improve in regards to our teams working together?”
These style of questions require you to do your homework, but if you can design a great question you will get the other person thinking deeply and helping them understand themselves even better.
You will probably only have the opportunity to ask four or five great questions over the course of an hour. Think deeply about the questions you want to ask.
Mentioned in this Episode:
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Mike Duffy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000539740375
Make sure you’re getting the other side to share their personal perspective, something that only they know. Questions focused on the past and the future are great starting places for teasing out that information.
Past questions include: “What historical data should we use to benchmark the future improvements we’re talking about?”, “What’s your #1 learning from leading teams on initiatives like this from the past?”, “What’s the most important experience you’ve had that's gotten you to this role?”, “What would you say has historically been the most important characteristics of an external partner like us?”
Future questions get people thinking of ways they want to create value and advance things. Examples include: “What do you think this would look like if it was working well?”, “How much do you think we can improve that important metric you mentioned in three years?”, “How would people feel if we did it the way you would like?”, “What would your role look like if there were no restrictions on you?”, and “What’s the number one thing I can do to be helpful in following up?”
Avoid asking stock questions, they just reveal that you haven’t done your homework.
Customize the questions to show you are paying attention and care about the other person’s business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Brian Caffarelli - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000554062611
Make sure you’re getting the other side to share their personal perspective, something that only they know. Questions focused on the past and the future are great starting places for teasing out that information.
Past questions include: “What historical data should we use to benchmark the future improvements we’re talking about?”, “What’s your #1 learning from leading teams on initiatives like this from the past?”, “What’s the most important experience you’ve had that's gotten you to this role?”, “What would you say has historically been the most important characteristics of an external partner like us?”
Future questions get people thinking of ways they want to create value and advance things. Examples include: “What do you think this would look like if it was working well?”, “How much do you think we can improve that important metric you mentioned in three years?”, “How would people feel if we did it the way you would like?”, “What would your role look like if there were no restrictions on you?”, and “What’s the number one thing I can do to be helpful in following up?”
Avoid asking stock questions, they just reveal that you haven’t done your homework.
Customize the questions to show you are paying attention and care about the other person’s business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
What Business Development REALLY Means, According to Brian Caffarelli - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000554062611
Asking great questions gets you a triple win. The first being it creates an enjoyable experience for the other side. When people share information only they know (self-disclosing information), the pleasure center of their brain lights up.
The second win is that you also become more likable. As people answer great questions, talking more while you talk less, the more they associate you with feeling great.
The third win is that it allows you to become unique in the mind of the buyer. As they begin sharing, you are going to learn their priorities in their words. Being able to talk about what you do in the context of the other person’s goals and priorities is way more effective.
When at all possible, avoid going first. If you have to, make your intro brief and shift quickly to asking the other person about their goals. People are dying to share their perspective, give that opportunity to them.
You’re going to win the meeting if the other person talks more than you do.
Avoid showing up with a big and clunky Powerpoint, focusing on you. Get to the other person as quickly as possible and offer ways to be helpful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
“Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding” - research article by Diana I. Tamir - pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1202129109
“It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking.” Huang, Karen, et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 113, no. 3, 2017, pp. 430–452. - doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097
Mo Bunnell breaks down the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and reveals the key insights into how you can tailor your communication to win with anyone and everyone. Learn about the one thing that analytical thinkers care about more than anything, why the top priority of relational thinkers is safety, how to build and convey trust with relational thinkers, and what makes experimental thinkers say yes.
Breaking Down the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to Understand 4 Communication Styles
- How the brain is wired is an emerging science. What we learned in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s no longer applies.
- Research has shown that the brain has a hub and spoke model and is very elastic and flexible. This is the way that the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument views the brain and explains how we communicate.
- The four hubs of how the brain operates act in opposing pairs.
- Analytical/Blue thinking is all about logic, running the number, and making sure everything makes sense. The opposite hub is Relational/Red. That’s where you think about others and the people on your team and is more emotive.
- The other pair is Experimental/Yellow and Practical/Green. When we think experimentally, we think in big visions and very intuitively. Practical thinking is about coming up with the details of getting something done.
- When you put the stats together, 95% of people have more than one strong preference. The vast majority of people have two, three, or all four ways of thinking.
- Avoid the trap of communicating in the way you would purchase something because you aren’t going to connect with them as well as you could if you can flex into their way of communicating.
- Listen for the clues and identify what the other side prioritizes, then adapt your communication to that.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Analytical Thinkers
- When you’re dealing with a high analytical thinker, you should get to the point. To know someone is an analytical thinker, they are often brief and to the point and focus more on the numbers.
- Make it clear that your solution is the highest ROI option available. You may not know what else they are looking at but you can make it very clear about how much money they will save or how much value they will get, and present your price with confidence.
- Make it clear to talk about outcomes and pricing and have a great ROI, and you will win.
- In terms of flexing into this space, it’s not about being ridiculously precise. It’s more about the way you talk than the exact numbers.
- Discuss things in numbers, KPIs, outcomes, and fee structures. As long as you’re discussing logic and numbers with analytical thinkers, you’re going to win the day.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Practical Thinkers
- Practical thinkers want details and all their questions drive around one thing: making a safe choice.
- Give them everything they need to make you the safe choice, whether that’s timelines, hours invested, or the list of things that can go wrong and what you will do when that happens.
- Be early on everything. Arrive to meetings early, and deliver work ahead of schedule. If you’re doing things early, you’re sending a message that you are the safe choice.
- Avoid the trap of skipping over the details. Engage on the details and dive into them to reassure the other person that you are the safe and correct choice. This doesn’t always have to be done by you as long as the person who’s responsible for the client communicates that.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Relational Thinkers
- For high Relational/Red thinkers, you’re going to hear a lot of questions around trust and connectivity.
- Relational decision-makers are looking for answers to three questions: Do I trust you personally? Do I trust your team is going to make my team better? Do I trust that you are going to deliver an amazing result for everyone involved?
- Prioritize showing and building trust in those three ways.
- Do things that are trustworthy. Share what you’re not good at or what you won’t do as part of the project if someone else would be better, and guide them to the right investment.
- Play the long game at every turn and communicate to them that you have their back, and you will help them achieve their goals.
- The biggest opportunities to build trust are when there is not something to purchase.
- Stay in touch in the off-season and invest in the relationship even when there is no commercial opportunity. If you can do that and be helpful all the time, not just when you’re being paid, you are going to always be the first consideration.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Experimental Thinkers
- Experimental thinkers are looking for the big picture. You’re going to see clues around themes, outcomes, brand, and vision.
- They are looking for the right strategic fit. For the work that needs to be done, are you known for that thing?
- Once you find that you’re talking to an Experimental thinker, talk about a clear vision around what you’re known for, and the high-level future state of what you can provide them. Doing things in a fresh, new, or innovative way will get you some bonus points.
- A clever way or alliteration to describe what you do appeals directly to the way Experimental people think.
- Leave things at a high level but let them know that your team will take care of the details.
- Strive for simplicity when you are talking to an Experimental thinker and it will go a long way.
- Avoid the trap of letting them zig and zag too much. Give them the flexibility to change the order but also try to bring them back in.
- Offer new ideas and approaches and always tie the work back into the strategic fit with clever and crisp messaging.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Karim Nehdi on Whole Brain Business Development – What You Need To Succeed - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528586505
How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Karim Nehdi - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528709233
Brian Caffarelli's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000554179371
Mark Harris' Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000553415818
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Mo Bunnell breaks down the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and reveals the key insights into how you can tailor your communication to win with anyone and everyone. Learn about the one thing that analytical thinkers care about more than anything, why the top priority of relational thinkers is safety, how to build and convey trust with relational thinkers, and what makes experimental thinkers say yes.
Breaking Down the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to Understand 4 Communication Styles
- How the brain is wired is an emerging science. What we learned in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s no longer applies.
- Research has shown that the brain has a hub and spoke model and is very elastic and flexible. This is the way that the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument views the brain and explains how we communicate.
- The four hubs of how the brain operates act in opposing pairs.
- Analytical/Blue thinking is all about logic, running the number, and making sure everything makes sense. The opposite hub is Relational/Red. That’s where you think about others and the people on your team and is more emotive.
- The other pair is Experimental/Yellow and Practical/Green. When we think experimentally, we think in big visions and very intuitively. Practical thinking is about coming up with the details of getting something done.
- When you put the stats together, 95% of people have more than one strong preference. The vast majority of people have two, three, or all four ways of thinking.
- Avoid the trap of communicating in the way you would purchase something because you aren’t going to connect with them as well as you could if you can flex into their way of communicating.
- Listen for the clues and identify what the other side prioritizes, then adapt your communication to that.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Analytical Thinkers
- When you’re dealing with a high analytical thinker, you should get to the point. To know someone is an analytical thinker, they are often brief and to the point and focus more on the numbers.
- Make it clear that your solution is the highest ROI option available. You may not know what else they are looking at but you can make it very clear about how much money they will save or how much value they will get, and present your price with confidence.
- Make it clear to talk about outcomes and pricing and have a great ROI, and you will win.
- In terms of flexing into this space, it’s not about being ridiculously precise. It’s more about the way you talk than the exact numbers.
- Discuss things in numbers, KPIs, outcomes, and fee structures. As long as you’re discussing logic and numbers with analytical thinkers, you’re going to win the day.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Practical Thinkers
- Practical thinkers want details and all their questions drive around one thing: making a safe choice.
- Give them everything they need to make you the safe choice, whether that’s timelines, hours invested, or the list of things that can go wrong and what you will do when that happens.
- Be early on everything. Arrive to meetings early, and deliver work ahead of schedule. If you’re doing things early, you’re sending a message that you are the safe choice.
- Avoid the trap of skipping over the details. Engage on the details and dive into them to reassure the other person that you are the safe and correct choice. This doesn’t always have to be done by you as long as the person who’s responsible for the client communicates that.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Relational Thinkers
- For high Relational/Red thinkers, you’re going to hear a lot of questions around trust and connectivity.
- Relational decision-makers are looking for answers to three questions: Do I trust you personally? Do I trust your team is going to make my team better? Do I trust that you are going to deliver an amazing result for everyone involved?
- Prioritize showing and building trust in those three ways.
- Do things that are trustworthy. Share what you’re not good at or what you won’t do as part of the project if someone else would be better, and guide them to the right investment.
- Play the long game at every turn and communicate to them that you have their back, and you will help them achieve their goals.
- The biggest opportunities to build trust are when there is not something to purchase.
- Stay in touch in the off-season and invest in the relationship even when there is no commercial opportunity. If you can do that and be helpful all the time, not just when you’re being paid, you are going to always be the first consideration.
4 Communication Styles: How to Win Over Experimental Thinkers
- Experimental thinkers are looking for the big picture. You’re going to see clues around themes, outcomes, brand, and vision.
- They are looking for the right strategic fit. For the work that needs to be done, are you known for that thing?
- Once you find that you’re talking to an Experimental thinker, talk about a clear vision around what you’re known for, and the high-level future state of what you can provide them. Doing things in a fresh, new, or innovative way will get you some bonus points.
- A clever way or alliteration to describe what you do appeals directly to the way Experimental people think.
- Leave things at a high level but let them know that your team will take care of the details.
- Strive for simplicity when you are talking to an Experimental thinker and it will go a long way.
- Avoid the trap of letting them zig and zag too much. Give them the flexibility to change the order but also try to bring them back in.
- Offer new ideas and approaches and always tie the work back into the strategic fit with clever and crisp messaging.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Karim Nehdi on Whole Brain Business Development – What You Need To Succeed - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528586505
How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Karim Nehdi - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528709233
Brian Caffarelli's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000554179371
Mark Harris' Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000553415818
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Experimental thinkers are looking for the big picture. You’re going to see clues around themes, outcomes, brand, and vision.
They are looking for the right strategic fit. For the work that needs to be done, are you known for that thing?
Once you find that you’re talking to an Experimental thinker, talk about a clear vision around what you’re known for, and the high-level future state of what you can provide them. Doing things in a fresh, new, or innovative way will get you some bonus points.
A clever way or alliteration to describe what you do appeals directly to the way Experimental people think.
Leave things at a high level but let them know that your team will take care of the details.
Strive for simplicity when you are talking to an Experimental thinker and it will go a long way.
Avoid the trap of letting them zig and zag too much. Give them the flexibility to change the order but also try to bring them back in.
Offer new ideas and approaches and always tie the work back into the strategic fit with clever and crisp messaging.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
Experimental thinkers are looking for the big picture. You’re going to see clues around themes, outcomes, brand, and vision.
They are looking for the right strategic fit. For the work that needs to be done, are you known for that thing?
Once you find that you’re talking to an Experimental thinker, talk about a clear vision around what you’re known for, and the high-level future state of what you can provide them. Doing things in a fresh, new, or innovative way will get you some bonus points.
A clever way or alliteration to describe what you do appeals directly to the way Experimental people think.
Leave things at a high level but let them know that your team will take care of the details.
Strive for simplicity when you are talking to an Experimental thinker and it will go a long way.
Avoid the trap of letting them zig and zag too much. Give them the flexibility to change the order but also try to bring them back in.
Offer new ideas and approaches and always tie the work back into the strategic fit with clever and crisp messaging.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Henning Streubel's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000558839387
For high Relational/Red thinkers, you’re going to hear a lot of questions around trust and connectivity.
Relational decision-makers are looking for answers to three questions: Do I trust you personally? Do I trust your team is going to make my team better? Do I trust that you are going to deliver an amazing result for everyone involved?
Prioritize showing and building trust in those three ways.
Do things that are trustworthy. Share what you’re not good at or what you won’t do as part of the project if someone else would be better, and guide them to the right investment.
Play the long game at every turn and communicate to them that you have their back, and you will help them achieve their goals.
The biggest opportunities to build trust are when there is not something to purchase.
Stay in touch in the off-season and invest in the relationship even when there is no commercial opportunity. If you can do that and be helpful all the time, not just when you’re being paid, you are going to always be the first consideration.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Mark Harris' Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000553415818
For high Relational/Red thinkers, you’re going to hear a lot of questions around trust and connectivity.
Relational decision-makers are looking for answers to three questions: Do I trust you personally? Do I trust your team is going to make my team better? Do I trust that you are going to deliver an amazing result for everyone involved?
Prioritize showing and building trust in those three ways.
Do things that are trustworthy. Share what you’re not good at or what you won’t do as part of the project if someone else would be better, and guide them to the right investment.
Play the long game at every turn and communicate to them that you have their back, and you will help them achieve their goals.
The biggest opportunities to build trust are when there is not something to purchase.
Stay in touch in the off-season and invest in the relationship even when there is no commercial opportunity. If you can do that and be helpful all the time, not just when you’re being paid, you are going to always be the first consideration.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Mark Harris' Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000553415818
Practical thinkers want details and all their questions drive around one thing: making a safe choice.
Give them everything they need to make you the safe choice, whether that’s timelines, hours invested, or the list of things that can go wrong and what you will do when that happens.
Be early on everything. Arrive to meetings early, and deliver work ahead of schedule. If you’re doing things early, you’re sending a message that you are the safe choice.
Avoid the trap of skipping over the details. Engage on the details and dive into them to reassure the other person that you are the safe and correct choice. This doesn’t always have to be done by you as long as the person who’s responsible for the client communicates that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Brian Caffarelli's Favorite Business Development Strategy - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1511029567?i=1000554179371
When you’re dealing with a high analytical thinker, you should get to the point. To know someone is an analytical thinker, they are often brief and to the point and focus more on the numbers.
Make it clear that your solution is the highest ROI option available. You may not know what else they are looking at but you can make it very clear about how much money they will save or how much value they will get, and present your price with confidence.
Make it clear to talk about outcomes and pricing and have a great ROI, and you will win.
In terms of flexing into this space, it’s not about being ridiculously precise. It’s more about the way you talk than the exact numbers.
Discuss things in numbers, KPIs, outcomes, and fee structures. As long as you’re discussing logic and numbers with analytical thinkers, you’re going to win the day.
Mentioned in this Episode:
How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Karim Nehdi - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528709233
When you’re dealing with a high analytical thinker, you should get to the point. To know someone is an analytical thinker, they are often brief and to the point and focus more on the numbers.
Make it clear that your solution is the highest ROI option available. You may not know what else they are looking at but you can make it very clear about how much money they will save or how much value they will get, and present your price with confidence.
Make it clear to talk about outcomes and pricing and have a great ROI, and you will win.
In terms of flexing into this space, it’s not about being ridiculously precise. It’s more about the way you talk than the exact numbers.
Discuss things in numbers, KPIs, outcomes, and fee structures. As long as you’re discussing logic and numbers with analytical thinkers, you’re going to win the day.
Mentioned in this Episode:
How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Karim Nehdi - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528709233
How the brain is wired is an emerging science. What we learned in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s no longer applies.
Research has shown that the brain has a hub and spoke model and is very elastic and flexible. This is the way that the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument views the brain and explains how we communicate.
The four hubs of how the brain operates act in opposing pairs.
Analytical/Blue thinking is all about logic, running the number, and making sure everything makes sense. The opposite hub is Relational/Red. That’s where you think about others and the people on your team and is more emotive.
The other pair is Experimental/Yellow and Practical/Green. When we think experimentally, we think in big visions and very intuitively. Practical thinking is about coming up with the details of getting something done.
When you put the stats together, 95% of people have more than one strong preference. The vast majority of people have two, three, or all four ways of thinking.
Avoid the trap of communicating in the way you would purchase something because you aren’t going to connect with them as well as you could if you can flex into their way of communicating.
Listen for the clues and identify what the other side prioritizes, then adapt your communication to that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Karim Nehdi on Whole Brain Business Development – What You Need To Succeed - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528586505
How the brain is wired is an emerging science. What we learned in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s no longer applies.
Research has shown that the brain has a hub and spoke model and is very elastic and flexible. This is the way that the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument views the brain and explains how we communicate.
The four hubs of how the brain operates act in opposing pairs.
Analytical/Blue thinking is all about logic, running the number, and making sure everything makes sense. The opposite hub is Relational/Red. That’s where you think about others and the people on your team and is more emotive.
The other pair is Experimental/Yellow and Practical/Green. When we think experimentally, we think in big visions and very intuitively. Practical thinking is about coming up with the details of getting something done.
When you put the stats together, 95% of people have more than one strong preference. The vast majority of people have two, three, or all four ways of thinking.
Avoid the trap of communicating in the way you would purchase something because you aren’t going to connect with them as well as you could if you can flex into their way of communicating.
Listen for the clues and identify what the other side prioritizes, then adapt your communication to that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Karim Nehdi on Whole Brain Business Development – What You Need To Succeed - podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-relationships-real-revenue-video-edition/id1504330338?i=1000528586505
Mo Bunnell breaks down the perfect buy-in process and how you can create a magnetic and enjoyable buying process that clients love. Learn about the key components of a successful buy-in process, the four big “yeses” you need to get to make closing deals easier, how to use curiosity as a purchasing accelerator, and how to make it 34 times more likely your prospect will say yes.
Closing Deals by Understanding the Major Steps of the Perfect Buy-in Process
- There is an optimal order for how we like to buy.
- Step one is listening and learning. Break the ice, then quickly flip the conversation to the other person.
- As a buyer, you want to feel heard, and like the person on the other side of the table, understand the unique needs in your situation.
- You want to avoid beginning by talking about yourself because that triggers the fight-or-flight response most people have when being sold to.
- Step two is create curiosity. Find a way to be helpful that creates curiosity around going deeper.
- Step three is build everything together. People buy into what they help create.
- Talk about the basic steps of what it would be like were they to hire you to solve their problem. By engaging them in the process of solving their problem, you get the advantage of incremental buy-in.
- If you create a proposal without the prospect's feedback, the only feedback they can give you is negative.
- Step four is gain approval and get the final yes to the project.
- You want to avoid selling and skipping straight to yourself and your presentation. If you can construct a buying experience that starts with the other side, you will have far more success.
Why Listening and Learning is Key for Closing Deals
- There is a triple-win when asking good questions. A person’s pleasure center in the brain lights up when people offer self-disclosing information.
- You learn your prospect’s priorities in their words. This would be impossible if you didn’t begin by listening to them talk.
- Sharing self-disclosed information is highly correlated to likeability. Asking great questions gives the other person more opportunity to talk.
- Great questions could look like: “If you could wave a magic wand and change your organization, what kinds of changes would happen?,” ”If one of your metrics could meaningfully move, which would it be?,” or ”If you could have a broken process fixed, what would the outcome look like?”
- Well-designed questions give the other person the opportunity to share something that only they know.
- With the bulk of your conversations, your prospect or client should be doing most of the talking.
Closing Deals is Easier When Creating Curiosity Through the Perfect Buy-in Process
- Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. You should try to create curiosity for your services as soon as you can in a conversation.
- People are highly motivated to experience curiosity and it’s one of the key elements of a great buy-in process.
- Consider your favorite serialized show. It probably ends each episode with an irresistible cliffhanger. This is a great metaphor for what you can do within and between meetings.
- At the end of your next meeting, talk about the impacts of the next step and how you can’t wait to go over the results.
- If you move too quickly, you squash curiosity. You want things unresolved to give people something to look forward to in the next meeting.
- Think about what you can leave unresolved at the end of your next meeting.
Why You Need the Four Key Incremental “Yeses” for Closing Deals
- Building a project with the prospect taps into the Ikea Effect; we buy into what we help create.
- Making incremental decisions and blending your ideas with a potential client allows you to arrive at the best solution to their problem.
- There are four incremental yeses you need to obtain to secure a project.
- The first is clarifying the outcome of the project and giving the prospect the opportunity to modify the goals.
- The second is getting agreement on the process timeline..
- The third is the team. At what level does the client want to interact with your team?
- The fourth is all about the numbers. Understanding this element is the only way the prospect can finally understand the value of the outcome.
- Depending on the project, you can get those answered all in one meeting or conversation.
- Even in a really formal situation involving RFPs, there is usually opportunity to engage with the prospect. If you can make some of the building-things-together decisions simple, people will engage.
- We all want to add value, so give your prospect a way to engage with the work.
Speeding Up the Perfect Buy-in Process and Closing Deals Like a Champ
- The fastest way to get to the next step is to ask for it.
- A face-to-face ask is 34x more likely to get a yes than a request over email.
- The key point is being able to see each other, whether that’s in person or on Zoom.
- Make the ask in person and in a manner with which everybody wins.
- When things go wrong, or you hear an objection, you have to be flexible, act with grace, then ask a follow up question to pin down the issue.
- Keep asking questions until you are certain of the underlying issue. Once you know that with true specificity, that’s when you can address the issue.
- There are four major objections that people present: not seeing the return on investment, not believing the process is safe, not trusting the team, and failing to understand the strategic value at that moment. Almost everything will boil down to one of those four.
- Ask for next steps in person, if possible, and make sure you dig into any objections before jumping into a resolution.
- You’re in control of the process and how fast things go. You can create a buy-in process that is enjoyable and magnetic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity
hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email
Mo Bunnell breaks down the perfect buy-in process and how you can create a magnetic and enjoyable buying process that clients love. Learn about the key components of a successful buy-in process, the four big “yeses” you need to get to make closing deals easier, how to use curiosity as a purchasing accelerator, and how to make it 34 times more likely your prospect will say yes.
Closing Deals by Understanding the Major Steps of the Perfect Buy-in Process
- There is an optimal order for how we like to buy.
- Step one is listening and learning. Break the ice, then quickly flip the conversation to the other person.
- As a buyer, you want to feel heard, and like the person on the other side of the table, understand the unique needs in your situation.
- You want to avoid beginning by talking about yourself because that triggers the fight-or-flight response most people have when being sold to.
- Step two is create curiosity. Find a way to be helpful that creates curiosity around going deeper.
- Step three is build everything together. People buy into what they help create.
- Talk about the basic steps of what it would be like were they to hire you to solve their problem. By engaging them in the process of solving their problem, you get the advantage of incremental buy-in.
- If you create a proposal without the prospect's feedback, the only feedback they can give you is negative.
- Step four is gain approval and get the final yes to the project.
- You want to avoid selling and skipping straight to yourself and your presentation. If you can construct a buying experience that starts with the other side, you will have far more success.
Why Listening and Learning is Key for Closing Deals
- There is a triple-win when asking good questions. A person’s pleasure center in the brain lights up when people offer self-disclosing information.
- You learn your prospect’s priorities in their words. This would be impossible if you didn’t begin by listening to them talk.
- Sharing self-disclosed information is highly correlated to likeability. Asking great questions gives the other person more opportunity to talk.
- Great questions could look like: “If you could wave a magic wand and change your organization, what kinds of changes would happen?,” ”If one of your metrics could meaningfully move, which would it be?,” or ”If you could have a broken process fixed, what would the outcome look like?”
- Well-designed questions give the other person the opportunity to share something that only they know.
- With the bulk of your conversations, your prospect or client should be doing most of the talking.
Closing Deals is Easier When Creating Curiosity Through the Perfect Buy-in Process
- Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. You should try to create curiosity for your services as soon as you can in a conversation.
- People are highly motivated to experience curiosity and it’s one of the key elements of a great buy-in process.
- Consider your favorite serialized show. It probably ends each episode with an irresistible cliffhanger. This is a great metaphor for what you can do within and between meetings.
- At the end of your next meeting, talk about the impacts of the next step and how you can’t wait to go over the results.
- If you move too quickly, you squash curiosity. You want things unresolved to give people something to look forward to in the next meeting.
- Think about what you can leave unresolved at the end of your next meeting.
Why You Need the Four Key Incremental “Yeses” for Closing Deals
- Building a project with the prospect taps into the Ikea Effect; we buy into what we help create.
- Making incremental decisions and blending your ideas with a potential client allows you to arrive at the best solution to their problem.
- There are four incremental yeses you need to obtain to secure a project.
- The first is clarifying the outcome of the project and giving the prospect the opportunity to modify the goals.
- The second is getting agreement on the process timeline..
- The third is the team. At what level does the client want to interact with your team?
- The fourth is all about the numbers. Understanding this element is the only way the prospect can finally understand the value of the outcome.
- Depending on the project, you can get those answered all in one meeting or conversation.
- Even in a really formal situation involving RFPs, there is usually opportunity to engage with the prospect. If you can make some of the building-things-together decisions simple, people will engage.
- We all want to add value, so give your prospect a way to engage with the work.
Speeding Up the Perfect Buy-in Process and Closing Deals Like a Champ
- The fastest way to get to the next step is to ask for it.
- A face-to-face ask is 34x more likely to get a yes than a request over email.
- The key point is being able to see each other, whether that’s in person or on Zoom.
- Make the ask in person and in a manner with which everybody wins.
- When things go wrong, or you hear an objection, you have to be flexible, act with grace, then ask a follow up question to pin down the issue.
- Keep asking questions until you are certain of the underlying issue. Once you know that with true specificity, that’s when you can address the issue.
- There are four major objections that people present: not seeing the return on investment, not believing the process is safe, not trusting the team, and failing to understand the strategic value at that moment. Almost everything will boil down to one of those four.
- Ask for next steps in person, if possible, and make sure you dig into any objections before jumping into a resolution.
- You’re in control of the process and how fast things go. You can create a buy-in process that is enjoyable and magnetic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity
hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email
The fastest way to get to the next step is to ask for it.
A face-to-face ask is 34x more likely to get a yes than a request over email.
The key point is being able to see each other, whether that’s in person or on Zoom.
Make the ask in person and in a manner with which everybody wins.
When things go wrong, or you hear an objection, you have to be flexible, act with grace, then ask a follow up question to pin down the issue.
Keep asking questions until you are certain of the underlying issue. Once you know that with true specificity, that’s when you can address the issue.
There are four major objections that people present: not seeing the return on investment, not believing the process is safe, not trusting the team, and failing to understand the strategic value at that moment. Almost everything will boil down to one of those four.
Ask for next steps in person, if possible, and make sure you dig into any objections before jumping into a resolution.
You’re in control of the process and how fast things go. You can create a buy-in process that is enjoyable and magnetic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email
The fastest way to get to the next step is to ask for it.
A face-to-face ask is 34x more likely to get a yes than a request over email.
The key point is being able to see each other, whether that’s in person or on Zoom.
Make the ask in person and in a manner with which everybody wins.
When things go wrong, or you hear an objection, you have to be flexible, act with grace, then ask a follow up question to pin down the issue.
Keep asking questions until you are certain of the underlying issue. Once you know that with true specificity, that’s when you can address the issue.
There are four major objections that people present: not seeing the return on investment, not believing the process is safe, not trusting the team, and failing to understand the strategic value at that moment. Almost everything will boil down to one of those four.
Ask for next steps in person, if possible, and make sure you dig into any objections before jumping into a resolution.
You’re in control of the process and how fast things go. You can create a buy-in process that is enjoyable and magnetic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
hbr.org/2017/04/a-face-to-face-request-is-34-times-more-successful-than-an-email
Building a project with the prospect taps into the Ikea Effect; we buy into what we help create.
Making incremental decisions and blending your ideas with a potential client allows you to arrive at the best solution to their problem.
There are four incremental yeses you need to obtain to secure a project.
The first is clarifying the outcome of the project and giving the prospect the opportunity to modify the goals.
The second is getting agreement on the process timeline..
The third is the team. At what level does the client want to interact with your team?
The fourth is all about the numbers. Understanding this element is the only way the prospect can finally understand the value of the outcome.
Depending on the project, you can get those answered all in one meeting or conversation.
Even in a really formal situation involving RFPs, there is usually opportunity to engage with the prospect. If you can make some of the building-things-together decisions simple, people will engage.
We all want to add value, so give your prospect a way to engage with the work.
Mentioned in this Episode:
hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
Building a project with the prospect taps into the Ikea Effect; we buy into what we help create.
Making incremental decisions and blending your ideas with a potential client allows you to arrive at the best solution to their problem.
There are four incremental yeses you need to obtain to secure a project.
The first is clarifying the outcome of the project and giving the prospect the opportunity to modify the goals.
The second is getting agreement on the process timeline..
The third is the team. At what level does the client want to interact with your team?
The fourth is all about the numbers. Understanding this element is the only way the prospect can finally understand the value of the outcome.
Depending on the project, you can get those answered all in one meeting or conversation.
Even in a really formal situation involving RFPs, there is usually opportunity to engage with the prospect. If you can make some of the building-things-together decisions simple, people will engage.
We all want to add value, so give your prospect a way to engage with the work.
Mentioned in this Episode:
hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. You should try to create curiosity for your services as soon as you can in a conversation.
People are highly motivated to experience curiosity and it’s one of the key elements of a great buy-in process.
Consider your favorite serialized show. It probably ends each episode with an irresistible cliffhanger. This is a great metaphor for what you can do within and between meetings.
At the end of your next meeting, talk about the impacts of the next step and how you can’t wait to go over the results.
If you move too quickly, you squash curiosity. You want things unresolved to give people something to look forward to in the next meeting.
Think about what you can leave unresolved at the end of your next meeting.
Mentioned in this Episode:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity
Curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. You should try to create curiosity for your services as soon as you can in a conversation.
People are highly motivated to experience curiosity and it’s one of the key elements of a great buy-in process.
Consider your favorite serialized show. It probably ends each episode with an irresistible cliffhanger. This is a great metaphor for what you can do within and between meetings.
At the end of your next meeting, talk about the impacts of the next step and how you can’t wait to go over the results.
If you move too quickly, you squash curiosity. You want things unresolved to give people something to look forward to in the next meeting.
Think about what you can leave unresolved at the end of your next meeting.
Mentioned in this Episode:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity
There is a triple-win when asking good questions. A person’s pleasure center in the brain lights up when people offer self-disclosing information.
You learn your prospect’s priorities in their words. This would be impossible if you didn’t begin by listening to them talk.
Sharing self-disclosed information is highly correlated to likeability. Asking great questions gives the other person more opportunity to talk.
Great questions could look like: “If you could wave a magic wand and change your organization, what kinds of changes would happen?,” ”If one of your metrics could meaningfully move, which would it be?,” or ”If you could have a broken process fixed, what would the outcome look like?”
Well-designed questions give the other person the opportunity to share something that only they know.
With the bulk of your conversations, your prospect or client should be doing most of the talking.
Mentioned in this Episode:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
There is an optimal order for how we like to buy.
Step one is listening and learning. Break the ice, then quickly flip the conversation to the other person.
As a buyer, you want to feel heard, and like the person on the other side of the table, understand the unique needs in your situation.
You want to avoid beginning by talking about yourself because that triggers the fight-or-flight response most people have when being sold to.
Step two is create curiosity. Find a way to be helpful that creates curiosity around going deeper.
Step three is build everything together. People buy into what they help create.
Talk about the basic steps of what it would be like were they to hire you to solve their problem. By engaging them in the process of solving their problem, you get the advantage of incremental buy-in.
If you create a proposal without the prospect's feedback, the only feedback they can give you is negative.
Step four is gain approval and get the final yes to the project.
You want to avoid selling and skipping straight to yourself and your presentation. If you can construct a buying experience that starts with the other side, you will have far more success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
teachthought.com/critical-thinking/the-cognitive-bias-codex-a-visual-of-180-cognitive-biases/
Mo explores the key business development mindset shifts that you need to make to become great at business development. Find out why business development skills are both learned and earned, how anyone can become great at business development, and how to stay motivated and driven to keep doing the work of building relationships the right way.
Business Development Mindset Is A Learnable Skill
- Dr. Kay Anders Ericsson spent over 30 years studying high-end expertise and discovered that every complex skill is both learned and earned.
- You can look at any expert and you would find decades of deliberate practice that got them to that level. No one is born with all the skills they need to be great at business development.
- Business development is a learnable skill that anyone can build on.
- If you take each individual lesson and apply them to your life, you will be successful.
- If someone tries to tell you that business development skills are not learnable or only for natural born conversationalists, they’re wrong. They just haven’t seen the research.
- If you want to be great at business development, break things down into bite- sized pieces. Break complex tasks down into individual pieces and practice each one as it comes.
Business Development Mindset Rule - You Don't Have To Be An Extrovert To Succeed
- Adam Grant did a study on salespeople and put them on a spectrum of introversion to extroversion.
- For most people they land right in the middle and end up being a mix of both introvert and extrovert, and most successful salespeople were exactly the same way. Ambiverts were the most successful at making sales, not extroverts like people assumed was the case.
- Full-on extroverts might actually have some disadvantages when it comes to making a sale. Their desire to be around people all the time may prevent them from following up effectively or being direct with someone when they need to challenge them.
- Extreme introverts likely just aren’t putting themselves around other people most of the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get energy from interacting with them or can’t be effective salespeople.
- The magic in sales and business development happens at the middle of the curve, where you can connect with people in the moment and follow up thoughtfully later. Luckily for most people, that’s where they fall.
- You don’t have to be extroverted to be successful at sales.
- Great business developers have a wonderful mix of being around people, getting energy from the interactions, asking great questions, and giving great ideas. They can also go back to their quiet surroundings and find ways to follow up thoughtfully.
Becoming Great At Anything By Creating a Business Development Mindset
- Every expertise, no matter the field, is both learned and earned.
- You can become great at anything if you break it down into little pieces and practice each piece.
- You may not become world-class or be able to play in the NBA, but you can certainly become very good at that particular skill, and the key is deliberate practice.
- By breaking down the big skill into smaller micro-skills and deliberately practicing those individually, you build your overall skill set.
- The second component of deliberate practice is having a mentor guide you along the path towards expertise.
- When it comes to business development, what kinds of attractive content can you create to get your name out there? What valuable thing do you have to offer the world that you can get out there and expose others to your way of thinking?
- Once you’ve got a system for generating content and attracting leads, it becomes a matter of turning those connections into one-to-one conversations.
- This is where the Give to Get comes in. Start solving client problems in a small, bite-sized way, and it can open the door to bigger opportunities.
- If you think you can’t do what someone else is doing, toss that out of your mind. Narrow what they do down to a specific skill that you can improve on and get to work.
- Don't worry about how you stack up with others. It doesn't matter. Focus on your own skills, always getting a little bit better all the time.
Having a Business Development Mindset Means Knowing What Motivates a Buyer
- When you’re being sold to, you almost want to run away. You can tell the salesperson has only their best interests in mind, not yours.
- We are happy to buy when the reverse is true. When we’re learning and we feel like the other person is helping us discover the option that’s right for us, the experience is wonderful.
- When we buy something, we’re important. We are being catered to and we’re learning in the process. It’s like having a birthday experience where you feel like the people you’re interacting with really care.
- If you don’t like selling, you need to reframe your perspective. Instead of selling, think that you’re someone that creates wonderful buying experiences that make people feel good.
- Flush the idea of selling and focus on the idea of creating a wonderful buying experience. That one mindset shift will change everything.
- You are 100% in control of the buying experience. You’re helping people succeed, remember that. The more you do that, the more you will win and the more that people will talk about how great you are to their colleagues.
Start Crafting Your Business Development Mindset By Understanding Your Why
- Business development can be hard. You’ve got to figure out a reason to persevere and keep adding value to your relationships, even when it feels like you’re not making much progress.
- To discover your why, ask yourself the Five Whys? Go deeper into the core reasons you do what you do until you discover the truth.
- Start with the question: “Why is getting great at Business Development important to me?” When you’ve got your answer, add a why to the beginning and ask why that thing is important.
- Your fifth answer is where the rubber meets the road, and you discover what’s really driving you. Once you have it, write it down and put it somewhere that will remind you daily why you put in the work.
- Avoid staying too superficial with your motivation and realize that your why might change over time, so it’s a good practice to repeat the exercise every few years or when you feel like you’re not as motivated as you used to be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
freakonomics.com/podcast/peak
faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Grant_PsychScience2013.pdf
bdhabits.com
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
Business development can be hard. You’ve got to figure out a reason to persevere and keep adding value to your relationships, even when it feels like you’re not making much progress.
To discover your why, ask yourself the Five Whys? Go deeper into the core reasons you do what you do until you discover the truth.
Start with the question: “Why is getting great at Business Development important to me?” When you’ve got your answer, add a why to the beginning and ask why that thing is important.
Your fifth answer is where the rubber meets the road, and you discover what’s really driving you. Once you have it, write it down and put it somewhere that will remind you daily why you put in the work.
Avoid staying too superficial with your motivation and realize that your why might change over time, so it’s a good practice to repeat the exercise every few years or when you feel like you’re not as motivated as you used to be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
Business development can be hard. You’ve got to figure out a reason to persevere and keep adding value to your relationships, even when it feels like you’re not making much progress.
To discover your why, ask yourself the Five Whys? Go deeper into the core reasons you do what you do until you discover the truth.
Start with the question: “Why is getting great at Business Development important to me?” When you’ve got your answer, add a why to the beginning and ask why that thing is important.
Your fifth answer is where the rubber meets the road, and you discover what’s really driving you. Once you have it, write it down and put it somewhere that will remind you daily why you put in the work.
Avoid staying too superficial with your motivation and realize that your why might change over time, so it’s a good practice to repeat the exercise every few years or when you feel like you’re not as motivated as you used to be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
When you’re being sold to, you almost want to run away. You can tell the salesperson has only their best interests in mind, not yours.
We are happy to buy when the reverse is true. When we’re learning and we feel like the other person is helping us discover the option that’s right for us, the experience is wonderful.
When we buy something, we’re important. We are being catered to and we’re learning in the process. It’s like having a birthday experience where you feel like the people you’re interacting with really care.
If you don’t like selling, you need to reframe your perspective. Instead of selling, think that you’re someone that creates wonderful buying experiences that make people feel good.
Flush the idea of selling and focus on the idea of creating a wonderful buying experience. That one mindset shift will change everything.
You are 100% in control of the buying experience. You’re helping people succeed, remember that. The more you do that, the more you will win and the more that people will talk about how great you are to their colleagues.
Mentioned in this Episode:
The Snowball System by Mo Bunnell - amazon.com/Snowball-System-Business-Clients-Raving/dp/1610399609
Every expertise, no matter the field, is both learned and earned.
You can become great at anything if you break it down into little pieces and practice each piece.
You may not become world-class or be able to play in the NBA, but you can certainly become very good at that particular skill, and the key is deliberate practice.
By breaking down the big skill into smaller micro-skills and deliberately practicing those individually, you build your overall skill set.
The second component of deliberate practice is having a mentor guide you along the path towards expertise.
When it comes to business development, what kinds of attractive content can you create to get your name out there? What valuable thing do you have to offer the world that you can get out there and expose others to your way of thinking?
Once you’ve got a system for generating content and attracting leads, it becomes a matter of turning those connections into one-to-one conversations.
This is where the Give to Get comes in. Start solving client problems in a small, bite-sized way, and it can open the door to bigger opportunities.
If you think you can’t do what someone else is doing, toss that out of your mind. Narrow what they do down to a specific skill that you can improve on and get to work.
Don't worry about how you stack up with others. It doesn't matter. Focus on your own skills, always getting a little bit better all the time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
bdhabits.com
Adam Grant did a study on salespeople and put them on a spectrum of introversion to extroversion.
For most people they land right in the middle and end up being a mix of both introvert and extrovert, and most successful salespeople were exactly the same way. Ambiverts were the most successful at making sales, not extroverts like people assumed was the case.
Full-on extroverts might actually have some disadvantages when it comes to making a sale. Their desire to be around people all the time may prevent them from following up effectively or being direct with someone when they need to challenge them.
Extreme introverts likely just aren’t putting themselves around other people most of the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get energy from interacting with them or can’t be effective salespeople.
The magic in sales and business development happens at the middle of the curve, where you can connect with people in the moment and follow up thoughtfully later. Luckily for most people, that’s where they fall.
You don’t have to be extroverted to be successful at sales.
Great business developers have a wonderful mix of being around people, getting energy from the interactions, asking great questions, and giving great ideas. They can also go back to their quiet surroundings and find ways to follow up thoughtfully.
Mentioned in this Episode:
faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Grant_PsychScience2013.pdf
Dr. Kay Anders Ericsson spent over 30 years studying high-end expertise and discovered that every complex skill is both learned and earned.
You can look at any expert and you would find decades of deliberate practice that got them to that level. No one is born with all the skills they need to be great at business development.
Business development is a learnable skill that anyone can build on.
If you take each individual lesson and apply them to your life, you will be successful.
If someone tries to tell you that business development skills are not learnable or only for natural born conversationalists, they’re wrong. They just haven’t seen the research.
If you want to be great at business development, break things down into bite- sized pieces. Break complex tasks down into individual pieces and practice each one as it comes.
Mentioned in this Episode:
freakonomics.com/podcast/peak
Mo asks Marty Fagan: If you could record a video about growth or Business Development, and send it back to your younger self, what would you say?
- First thing is to be authentic. If you truly are authentic, people can pick up on that. And if you're not authentic, they can pick up on that as well.
- If you’re talking to someone and you don’t think your solution is a good fit, don’t sell it to them.
- Closing the sale no matter what may work in the short-term, but it’s a terrible strategy in the long-term.
- The second thing is to have a passion for the solution you are offering to your customers. People pick up on your passion, which contributes to that feeling of authenticity.
- Having passion and authenticity establishes trust, and that trust needs to be in place to have a conversation result in a closed deal.
- If you’ve developed a deep expertise, it’s okay to be excited about it and convey that energy to people.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: If you could record a message around growth and business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Early in her career, Sandy was intimidated by business development and felt that she had to win them over while being perfect, but it doesn’t have to be an intimidating process.
- Business development is simply about building relationships. Sandy would want to help her younger self take the fear out of the process. It can be fun and engaging, and you will learn a lot along the way.
- Practice for perfection, but play for progress. You start to see how brilliant your team is when you plan ahead, and even if you don’t win the business, you improve for the next one.
- When you’re in a meeting, look for the little wins and what the next step along the way is. Make sure you tackle all the issues and break things down into small steps. Moving anything forward during a meeting is a win, so keep that in mind.
- Instead of trying to wow the prospect, just give them what they are looking for.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: If you could wave a magic wand and record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- There is very little in business that is as satisfying as business and relationship development. Landing a client and then getting them big wins is fulfilling and it’s a wonderful thing to be good at.
- Define victory as a series of steps, instead of an end result. This makes the journey rewarding and not just about the destination.
- If you can take the first step, which is the hardest, everything else gets easier.
- Start with the end goal in mind, and then break it down into the fundamental steps you need to make each day to achieve that goal, then celebrate when you take those steps. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.
- You can’t control whether a client will say yes, but you can control whether or not you ask them in the first place.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Marty Fagan: If you could record a video about growth or Business Development, and send it back to your younger self, what would you say?
- First thing is to be authentic. If you truly are authentic, people can pick up on that. And if you're not authentic, they can pick up on that as well.
- If you’re talking to someone and you don’t think your solution is a good fit, don’t sell it to them.
- Closing the sale no matter what may work in the short-term, but it’s a terrible strategy in the long-term.
- The second thing is to have a passion for the solution you are offering to your customers. People pick up on your passion, which contributes to that feeling of authenticity.
- Having passion and authenticity establishes trust, and that trust needs to be in place to have a conversation result in a closed deal.
- If you’ve developed a deep expertise, it’s okay to be excited about it and convey that energy to people.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: If you could record a message around growth and business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Early in her career, Sandy was intimidated by business development and felt that she had to win them over while being perfect, but it doesn’t have to be an intimidating process.
- Business development is simply about building relationships. Sandy would want to help her younger self take the fear out of the process. It can be fun and engaging, and you will learn a lot along the way.
- Practice for perfection, but play for progress. You start to see how brilliant your team is when you plan ahead, and even if you don’t win the business, you improve for the next one.
- When you’re in a meeting, look for the little wins and what the next step along the way is. Make sure you tackle all the issues and break things down into small steps. Moving anything forward during a meeting is a win, so keep that in mind.
- Instead of trying to wow the prospect, just give them what they are looking for.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: If you could wave a magic wand and record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- There is very little in business that is as satisfying as business and relationship development. Landing a client and then getting them big wins is fulfilling and it’s a wonderful thing to be good at.
- Define victory as a series of steps, instead of an end result. This makes the journey rewarding and not just about the destination.
- If you can take the first step, which is the hardest, everything else gets easier.
- Start with the end goal in mind, and then break it down into the fundamental steps you need to make each day to achieve that goal, then celebrate when you take those steps. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.
- You can’t control whether a client will say yes, but you can control whether or not you ask them in the first place.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: If you could record a video around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- You learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. Early on in Bill’s career, he had developed a relationship with an art collector, but after the collector passed away the business went to other people because Bill didn’t consider what would happen after that point or lay the foundation to make sure the family would work with him.
- It’s important to not rely on a single individual for your relationship with an organization. You need to create a team of advocates to work with a team of counterparts within the organization.
- Remove your ego from the equation and focus on building a team to team relationship.
- We tend to focus on our expertise and believe that’s how decisions get made, but that’s not the way it works. What should drive those decisions is that your company has a collection of skills to help clients solve their problems.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: If you could record a message to your younger self about how they should think about business development, what would it be?
- Mike’s message would be to essentially to cold call for a couple months right at the beginning to get used to hearing no.
- He would also tell himself to feed his brain. Read books and consume information that keeps you moving.
- Treat your profession like a profession. If you treat your profession the same way that a doctor does and invest in continuing education every year to be a better leader and sales person, you will be successful.
- Mike invests in programs that he’s heard about on podcasts and consumes books referenced in other books that have made an impact on him. You have to invest in yourself if you want to get better.
- Mike also builds relationships with people that are learning themselves and is curious enough to find out more about them. He’s always thinking about how he can add value to a conversation or relationship, and thinking about the questions that allow him to dig deeper.
- When you ask questions, you learn. When you learn, you connect dots, and when you do that, everyone gets better and the effect can snowball. Asking the right questions is instrumental to Mike’s ability to grow.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?
- The bottomline is the idea of sales can be scary because we usually think of our worst sales experience and extrapolate that to everything. Debby’s advice to her younger self would be to take a breath, and realize that it’s all about meeting people and getting to know them, then helping them solve their problems.
- Changing the label from “sales” to “helping people and solving their needs” is a powerful mindset shift.
- People usually don’t realize that they are selling everyday, they just don’t label it that way. If you substitute “solve problems” for “sales”, you’re probably doing it all the time.
- Debby tells the story of an earlier experience where her job was traditional sales, literally going door to door, and how by simply asking questions and identifying the needs of the company, she turned a no into one of the biggest sales of the hotel she was working for.
- Everybody already sells, they just don’t call it that. When you substitute solving problems, you realize that you’re already great at what you do, and if you plug in a process like the Snowball System, you can keep getting better at it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: You get to magically record a video and send it back to your younger self with some advice. What do you say?
- Jonathan spent most of his youth thinking about what he wanted to do instead of who he wanted to be. He would tell his younger self to focus on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’ first.
- If you never fail, it's likely you're not going big enough.
- Hope is built in the community. Volunteering gives you a sense of the community and how you can bring the virtues of kindness and love into the world.
- Following your passion is incomplete. You need to search for the intersection between what you’re passionate about and where your skills, ability, and talent lie.
- Jonathan tells the story of Doris, and how he grew up in a poor neighborhood in North Carolina and how his life completely changed after his mom qualified to buy a Habitat house in Optimist Park. Doris is the first person to grow up in a Habitat for Humanity house and to serve on the board as well.
- The story perfectly encapsulates the mission and purpose of Habitat for Humanity and how giving people a platform and foundation for a stable, healthy life can impact their community and society as a whole.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: If you could record a video on business development and send it to your younger self, what would you say?
- In the early days of Brent’s business development career, he did things very differently. The first thing he would say is to listen. Brent hears more things now during the course of a conversation with active listening, which is the opposite from how his younger self operated.
- There is an impulse when you’re young and fresh to tell everyone what you know, but listening and asking questions are how you really learn how to sell.
- Every product or service has multiple ways you can position it to win. If you listen, you can be much more effective in that effort.
- Brent is a student of business development even now. The first 21 days of a relationship are extremely important to solidify a bond. Reaching out to continue the conversation and creating that bond allows you to come back months or years later and pick up that conversation in the same way you would with an old friend.
- The final tip would be to build your brand. People are taught sales skills and usually want to apply them the exact way they are taught. Take what you’re doing and make it yours.
- Whatever sales skills you are working on, you need to make them authentically yours for them to be effective.
- The great business development rainmakers never stop learning. Brent is always looking to improve and work on his skills, especially in leverage tools like MIT’s and the Protemoi list.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say?
- Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers.
- He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail.
- The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination.
- The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: You get to magically record a video and send it back to your younger self with some advice. What do you say?
- Jonathan spent most of his youth thinking about what he wanted to do instead of who he wanted to be. He would tell his younger self to focus on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’ first.
- If you never fail, it's likely you're not going big enough.
- Hope is built in the community. Volunteering gives you a sense of the community and how you can bring the virtues of kindness and love into the world.
- Following your passion is incomplete. You need to search for the intersection between what you’re passionate about and where your skills, ability, and talent lie.
- Jonathan tells the story of Doris, and how he grew up in a poor neighborhood in North Carolina and how his life completely changed after his mom qualified to buy a Habitat house in Optimist Park. Doris is the first person to grow up in a Habitat for Humanity house and to serve on the board as well.
- The story perfectly encapsulates the mission and purpose of Habitat for Humanity and how giving people a platform and foundation for a stable, healthy life can impact their community and society as a whole.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: If you could record a video on business development and send it to your younger self, what would you say?
- In the early days of Brent’s business development career, he did things very differently. The first thing he would say is to listen. Brent hears more things now during the course of a conversation with active listening, which is the opposite from how his younger self operated.
- There is an impulse when you’re young and fresh to tell everyone what you know, but listening and asking questions are how you really learn how to sell.
- Every product or service has multiple ways you can position it to win. If you listen, you can be much more effective in that effort.
- Brent is a student of business development even now. The first 21 days of a relationship are extremely important to solidify a bond. Reaching out to continue the conversation and creating that bond allows you to come back months or years later and pick up that conversation in the same way you would with an old friend.
- The final tip would be to build your brand. People are taught sales skills and usually want to apply them the exact way they are taught. Take what you’re doing and make it yours.
- Whatever sales skills you are working on, you need to make them authentically yours for them to be effective.
- The great business development rainmakers never stop learning. Brent is always looking to improve and work on his skills, especially in leverage tools like MIT’s and the Protemoi list.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say?
- Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers.
- He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail.
- The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination.
- The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: If you could tape a message to your younger self about business development, what would it say?
- It would simply be one thing: Learn to walk the dog.
- When someone walks a dog, we assume that the person is in control, but that’s not always the case. Our brains work in a similar way.
- The dogwalker is the prefrontal cortex, and the dog is the limbic system that responds and detects threats. The big question is who is in control?
- The truth is that the dog is in control most of the time. Everytime we stick to known associates instead of unknown prospects, or when we expect every email to get a response, the dog is in control.
- The sooner you can learn to walk the dog, the sooner you get to do the work you care about on your own terms.
- Even with the best tools and strategies at our disposal, most of the time we are only half as effective as we could be because we are being dragged around by our limbic system.
- It’s not an issue of ego, as much as it is the part of your brain that has evolved to perceive threats. Threats aren’t always tigers, they can also be getting rejected, feeling embarrassed, or losing status. The first job is to get out of your own way so the tools and strategies can do the work.
- Katrina focuses on awareness first about her emotions and experiences. A quick, simple label can be very effective in reducing the limbic system’s response. Reframing it and considering other reasons something may or may not have happened makes it less emotional.
- Give your emotions context, label them, and reframe them. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. This is a foundational skill in business development.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Cyril describes a restaurant in Paris that is the best in the world in delivering a ribeye and has a queue lined up every single day no matter the weather conditions. Cyril would tell himself to become the master of one trade and become extraordinary at one thing.
- Follow your heart and become the expert in that area.
- Habits are what build expertise and world-class skills. There is a lot of joy in embracing the boring excellence that makes you great.
- Cyril does one thing and does it very well. He’s more than happy to refer work that’s not in his wheelhouse to other experts he knows can take care of it.
- If you can find something that you are passionate about, that the market will pay a premium rate for, and you are good at, you have found something worth pursuing.
- Cyril would also recommend never stopping learning. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Gandhi
- Block time to read every day. Set aside time every quarter to attend new training. Surround yourself with great mentors and a supportive community.
Mo asks Mark Harris: If you could record a message around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- The first thing Mark would say is that business development is a marathon, not a sprint.
- The second thing is that the role is a learned skill. People are not born great sales, it’s something you can learn and master.
- The third thing is to help others when you can. You’ll be happier helping others with their success than you will ever be with your own success.
- When people first get into sales they often sprint towards their first sale, but when they do that they forget about the long-term marathon of relationship building. When you build relationships on that level, the tiny sprints toward each sale become easier over time.
- Sales didn’t come naturally to Mark, but when he realized that he was getting better each day that became a big motivation and opened the door to becoming excellent at it.
- Helping others when you can helps you be happier, which cycles back to building trust and reinforces the first three lessons.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
wslb.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Linda Klein: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Business development is about passion. Life is about passion. Don’t lose your passion for getting involved. Helping others is the most satisfying thing you can do.
- In so many ways it’s easier to make a dollar than it is to make a difference, but you can do both at the same time.
- Take the time to get good at what you do first, and then you’ll have something valuable to sell. If you’re going to say no, say it with kindness.
- “People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
- Treat people right. People you interact with today may be future clients and you should treat them with respect and kindness.
- If you’re passionate about what you do, it will come through in your authenticity.
- Some of your best experiences will come from wasting time. If you rigidly plan, you might say no to something that is an incredible opportunity.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: If you could record a video around relationship development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Henning would send three points back. The first is that you have to care about the people. You can only develop relationships when you care about the other person and their issues.
- When you are engaging with them, it’s not about just showcasing your expertise and what you know. It’s about listening to them and what they want. If you come with a cookie-cutter approach, you won’t establish trust. Understanding what the other person needs and bringing a customized approach is the key to trust.
- This kind of work is a team sport. Think about how you can compliment your own skills and strengths with your team so you can offer a holistic value to your clients.
- The basis for all those lessons is that you aren’t born with these skills and consistently learning them over time is okay.
- It is vital to respect the individual clients and companies that you work with.
- Not everything goes to plan. For Henning, he overcomes setbacks very quickly by looking forward rather than backwards. Feel the pain and then move on.
- Everybody needs to find their own way of processing pain, leverage the learning, and move forward again. It doesn’t help us as a society or as leaders to dwell on setbacks for too long. For Henning, that means going for a run or a bike ride. For others, that could be having a conversation with someone they trust.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- If you think selling is hard, buying is harder. Brian would want to tell his younger self that if he was more in tune and empathetic to the struggles of the buyer, sales wouldn’t be as hard.
- When you feel stuck with sales, realize that the buyer is even more stuck.
- To create a great buying experience, deconstruct as many of the little decisions that need to be made before the purchase decision. Get a sense of where you are in the process and the personal motivations of the other person for the stage they are at.
- As the guide, it’s your job to help the buyer understand what the next step is and move them forward when they are ready.
- Look into the past and see if your organization or you personally did something similar before. You might find challenges that were overcome and lessons that can be applied right now.
- In the early stages of the buying journey, the buyer doesn’t necessarily realize the enormity or the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve. When trying to create demand, it’s problem knowledge and not product knowledge that moves the needle.
- Empathy is the keyword. Buyers are trying to make a really hard decision and the better you understand the buying challenges the more likely you are to being able to solve their problem.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- There was one project that stands out for Andrew, where he and the founder of his firm, Jim Strickland, had the chance to not only create an awesome property but also restore and support the local ecology as well.
- During the meeting, Jim and the client discovered they shared a mutual friendship and instead of talking about the project they started geeking out on chicken coops. That kind of interest was exactly what the client was looking for, a firm that was completely authentic to themselves.
- Andrew set the table for that approach that allowed Jim to be Jim to the fullest.
- It’s all about being true to yourself, listening, and then connecting.
- The way that you win work is to actually start doing the work. The right thing to do is to start adding value.
- When you do those things, you aren’t competing anymore. This gets the client excited about the person who is facilitating their vision. It takes them from a leap of faith to “When can we start?”
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: Tell me of a business development story that you are deeply proud of.
- When Bonneau started the business, he made sure that he was selling for a reason. Even when they weren’t making any money, he made sure that every sale gave back to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hospital and it’s become the most rewarding business activity he’s ever done.
- Having clients is not about a single transaction. Bonneau wants to grow with his clients and for the company to have a footprint beyond real estate. By pairing sales with a noble endeavor, he makes the mission of the organization more than just profit.
- Visiting the hospital in addition to donating money is part of the company culture.
- When things get hard, the charitable aspect of the business helps but he has a deep desire to win that keeps him going. Overcoming his natural weaknesses and leveraging his strengths also allows him to stay motivated.
Mo asks John Tigh: Tell me of a business development that you are particularly proud of.
- During John’s time working as a consultant while working for a top-10 pharmaceutical company. He had a chance to meet another top-10 pharmaceutical company and help them implement a new technology.
- John had a productive initial meeting but hadn’t really heard from them for two years. Eventually, John was contacted to pick up the project after another consulting company dropped the ball.
- Disaster struck and the leader that was meant to guide the project left the company. John put his hand up to help them move the project forward as long as they were willing to trust the team to get things done. Over time, the team grew and John ran that project from the outside for three years and grew the business to the tune of multiple millions of dollars.
- All of that came from one initial meeting and building trust by offering some expertise and help with no strings attached.
- He was the one who wrote the strategy that transformed the business as well as the leader and operations person who helped make that happen.
- John’s biggest achievement during that time was in overcoming his own inner critic. By learning about and practicing meditation each day, he learned how to get out of his own way.
- Having a moment at the start of each day to throw off the doubts and the worries and focus on doing what he can do has changed the rest of John’s life.
- One of the biggest blessings of a high performing team that has your back and believes in you is that they can help you manage your own inner critic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
bonneauansley.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks Jane Allen: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Jane tells the story from the early 2000’s during a time when the people they were serving in corporate America were being overwhelmed by the explosion of data. One fateful dinner and “what if” scenario later, Jane started collaborating with a firm to solve real world problems with a solution that was unheard of at the time.
- As an entrepreneur, Jane didn’t take time to reflect on the success since she was so focused on the execution. Looking back now, finding a partner that was willing to take a risk and then deliver something that enabled her clients to practice law in a completely different way is something she’s very proud of.
- In terms of her career, Jane is most proud of the incredible people she worked with and learned from, as well as being willing to take the chance on herself and her vision for her business.
- Reach for your goals and take the chance. Rejection is a part of life, but you will never achieve anything if you don’t try.
Mo asks Read Davis: Tell me about a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Read formerly worked for one of the largest brokerage firms in the world, and when he first came to work with McGriff they were often David going up against Goliath.
- Read recalls several different stories where the relationships they built helped their clients take care of their people. Each experience gave Read additional skills and confidence to take into the next.
- One, in particular, stands out where Read was handling a casino in Las Vegas. As the real estate guy on the team, Read was meeting with banks and people on the team to help them through the financial crisis.
- They broke the paradigm by bringing people in from all over to show the client what they could do. The best part of the sales story is that four years later the casino was sold to Blackstone and the client referred Read and his team as the broker of choice to the new buyer.
- It’s all about the connectivity of the relationships and adding value while playing the long game.
- The team was what made the difference. By listening intently to what the prospect needed, that got the team motivated to deliver. They recognized that the deal was a major opportunity for the firm and they rose to the challenge.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is a business development story that you are particularly proud of?
- Katrina’s story occurred five years ago when she went on a trip to meet a candidate for a President role at a textile manufacturer. Katrina knew she was skeptical, but didn’t realize how skeptical.
- After the candidate was hired, Katrina ended up working with her for the first six months and through her unique knowledge of how that particular organization functioned was able to help considerably.
- Her relationship with this one skeptical person led to additional relationships and business.
- To win her over Katrina did three things. She didn’t make it about her and take the skepticism personally, she got curious about why she was skeptical and what it could teach her, and she waited for holes to open for her to go deeper.
- It’s easy to take offense from skepticism, but Katrina had to learn early on as a physician that you have to earn respect.
- You can’t look at things from a scientific perspective when you’re stuck in your own head. Being curious about the root of the person’s skepticism makes it objective and less about you.
- Being candid with the client and honest about her perspectives was key to building trust and winning the skeptic over.
- Divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on doing the right thing.
- Quieting the anxious and emotional part of us can lead to more creativity and effectiveness. Focusing on process instead of outcomes is how you can control that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: What is a business development story that you are really proud of?
- One moment in particular stands out from Sandy’s career in regards to business development. Part of her role at the Speaker’s Bureau was to secure talent, and Sandy was working on securing a famous world leader. The twist in the story was that the first in-person meeting with the CEO didn’t go well which made landing this client much harder than they expected.
- They spent too much time talking about who they represent.
- The big influencer in the decision was the Chief of Staff, and by uncovering their goals it changed the dynamic of the relationship. In listening to them and finding out what they needed, Sandy was able to put the right team in place to support them.
- Understanding what they ultimately wanted to achieve was critical in the decision-making Just like the Snowball System teaches, keeping them involved in the process was crucial, and in the end they won the business without giving everything away for free.
- Many people fold too quickly when it comes to high pressure proposals. Challenge yourself when you feel like you have to go in at your lowest price in order to win the business, because it might not be true.
- Sandy is most proud of the fact that they landed the client by identifying the right team and making it clear that going to the lowest price wasn’t the right move. Resist the urge to discount your service by negotiating too soon.
Mo asks Chris Graham: What growth story are you most personally proud of?
- Making the pivot from law to private equity is the thing that Chris is the most proud of. The pivot was hard and took a long time but it has allowed him to make more impact than ever before.
- One of the examples that Chris talks about is a company where Chris implemented his methodology of growth and after 19 months they grew from $2.3 million to $4.9 million in profit. Rather than just generate more sales, Chris helped them become more process efficient.
- Chris grew up in a trailer park back in the 70’s where there was still a sense of community. That experience is why Chris is so dedicated to the mission of rehabilitating those kinds of communities now.
- It was a long process of learning and growing before Chris was able to connect all the dots. Being raised in a poor community, Chris wasn’t exposed to the idea of entrepreneurship and the impact you can have at that level until after he began his career in law.
- Chris is insatiably curious, which is a trait that has propelled him throughout his career. That curiosity is what allowed Chris to make the jump from each level to the next.
- After working with families that owned businesses for 17 years, Chris could see things that they couldn’t. This was a big motivation for buying the first business.
- Chris realized that, over the period of growing the law firm from eight lawyers to 22 lawyers over 24 months, he got himself into a position where he couldn’t use his strengths. Instead of floundering, Chris made the hard decision to cut back to what was working before, which allowed him to eventually make the transition to bigger and better things.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- The current climate has been challenging, and there is one client in particular that she’s working with right now that she’s proud of.
- She had the opportunity to reconnect with someone she worked with 15 years ago that recently moved into a more senior role. She reached out to them, but with the way things are right now, she couldn’t meet them in person and have a face-to-face conversation with them.
- What Debby was able to do was have a conversation with this person and simply learn about their new role. She started to hear things that indicated the company was going through a number of changes and was able to offer herself as a resource to be more successful in their new job. This led to more conversations and helping them with relevant research, and eventually getting connected with the CHRO.
- This relationship from Debby’s past has developed into a conversation about how they can all work together.
- By cultivating a relationship with this person, Debby has opened the door to working with the organization in a deeper scope that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, simply by being helpful.
- For Debby, the commercial transaction is not a focus when connecting with someone. She brings a curiosity to the table that helps her uncover genuine ways that she can help and by following through, she adds value, builds trust, and creates a real relationship.
- Be helpful and honest, and the solution will happen.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Linda Klein: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Many years ago Linda did a favor for an accountant without sending him a bill. Five years later, the accountant called mainly to thank her and ask if she could help a friend of his.
- The new client was entering a mature market with lots of competition, but after Linda helped him start and grow his business, within nine months his company was the largest client for Linda’s firm.
- Linda was able to make a difference in two people’s lives. For the client, she helped him start a business that changed him and his family’s lives, and for the accountant, she impacted him deeply enough for it to come back to her five years later.
- Linda has developed a business development program by volunteering.
- Linda doesn’t have a lot of free time, but for her, volunteering and being helpful is fun and enjoyable so the business development benefits come naturally.
- If you’re curious and read the news about your clients, you will find opportunities to reach out and be helpful. Being involved in your community gives you scale in meeting new people.
- Find what you like and get involved in that community. There are an infinite number of opportunities to get involved and meet like-minded people.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: Tell us a development or growth story that you're really particularly proud of.
- Jonathan tells the story of a complex corporate partnership between Habitat for Humanity and Hilty, and how they’ve worked together closely after building a relationship over the years.
- Each year, the two organizations began to work more closely together and started developing new innovative approaches to achieving their mutual goals.
- There's not only funding, but it's making both parties better. They are achieving their goals as well inside a full strategic partnership which is much more exciting than just a transactional donor relationship.
- Jonathan’s role was in building trust with the head of the foundation. Without that relationship, the partnership probably wouldn’t exist. It also taught Jonathan a lot about building trust and being direct.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Henning’s story begins with a rough start where a client CEO read an unflattering internal email about himself that he was never meant to see. Henning went to apologize in person and ended up having a great conversation that turned into an offer to have a second lunch in the future.
- During the second conversation the client began to open up about the challenges he had been experiencing, and Henning realized that he had gained this CEOs trust.
- Henning engaged some of his colleagues to help with the challenges the CEO was facing and this created the basis for a larger transformative project with the company. Today, Henning and the CEO are good friends.
- Henning is most proud about being able to overcome his discomfort with the initial situation and doing the right thing.
- Growth and comfort can’t coexist. The skills needed to develop a relationship aren’t innate. You can start right away to develop your skills, and it is possible to add value to someone else’s career even when they have more years of experience than you.
- Henning is always thinking about how to take his professional relationships into a more personal realm because that’s where he can deliver the most value. The challenge is in connecting with people with different personalities and experiences and then helping his team do the same thing.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: Tell me a business development story that you're particularly proud of.
- Andrew tells the story of a client in London that BBDO had been working with for 20 years and how they lost most of that client’s work after delivering a terrible piece starring John Cleese.
- Instead of bailing on the client completely, Andrew and the team decided to stick with the unglamorous work that remained and deliver excellent results for the client, knowing that eventually, the rival company that won their former work would stumble.
- By sticking with the client, they had the opportunity three years later to offer a new brand campaign, which was informed by the fact that they were still involved in the business and understood their needs.
- Andrew signed Jamie Oliver, who wasn’t quite famous yet, after scouring London on Easter weekend physically to find him, and landed the business again.
- Andrew learned three key lessons from the experience: be gracious on the way out, treat a rejection as a “not for now,” not a never, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
- Even when you get fired, those relationships are still valuable and worth keeping alive.
- We show our true selves much more in defeat than in easy victories. How you behave during the bad times says much more about your character than when things are good.
- People are human, and it’s always hard to fire someone you’ve built a relationship with. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be, and keep adding value to the relationship after the fact. How you behave afterward will be remembered.
- Even if you don’t win a project, that’s an opportunity to ask for feedback and give the prospect the opportunity to stay in touch. One loss is not the end, it’s the beginning of the next potential project.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- Kim’s most proud moment was the first real significant opportunity she brought into her firm – the friend, who’s a vice president at an energy company, who she had a conversation with and who realized Kim and the firm she’s part of could help her business.
- Kim is proud of what she did, of having the courage to go outside of her comfort zone a little bit to bring business into a conversation among friends. This was her first success story, and it happened before Kim was a partner at her firm.
- That’s one of the moments that made her realize that BD isn’t about going around knocking on doors trying to sell something, but it’s about helping people, about leveraging and building relationships… and, yes, it’s fun!
- Even though she’s process-driven, Kim recommends not to overthink things too much. Her advice is to just be a little courageous, and give it a try. Just ask the first question, make it natural. Don’t worry about what comes after that, just take the first step and see where it takes you.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is a story of business development that you are particularly proud of?
- A business like Sotheby’s is a transaction business so Bill had been involved in thousands of transactions over the course of his career but one tale in particular stood out to him.
- Bill traveled down to Florida to help an older lawyer sell $20 million in vintage cars and that began a 9-month process of negotiating. After months of back and forth, they finally signed the deal, and the auction itself was widely successful.
- In extended negotiations, as the professional, you know what it will take to make the deal successful. It’s common for the other party to not fully know what they want and the key is to just keep the conversations going.
- When the other party doesn’t know what they want, negotiating becomes a marathon or experimenting and exploring until they land on what was missing from the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Bill began working with Mo because he believed a more disciplined approach to building relationships was critical to the continued growth of his organization.
- When you have 90 offices over 40 countries is an enormous task. Bill recalls a meeting with a number of executives at Sotheby's along with Mo where it became very clear how some people struggled with the process of articulating value, even those who had been in the business for 30 years.
- Every business believes they are unique so they often believe a system of business development couldn’t possibly apply to them. But once they realize that almost everybody runs into the same problems and barriers, they see the value of a disciplined approach to relationships.
- The default assumption that most people make is that business development is not a learnable skill. That some people are just born with it and that assumption prevents them from seeing the possibilities.
- Bill is a born introvert and a learned extrovert. Giving speeches and connecting with people didn’t come naturally to him.
- Being a salesman is something to be proud of because it means you’re being an advocate for whatever you’re walking into the room and trying to do.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The overall mindset of the Snowball Training is what stands out for Cyril. Going from selling to serving and being proud of the value that you are bringing to your clients is pivotal.
- Cyril also appreciates the concept of nurturing raving fans and uses the strategy to make sure he’s always working on the most important relationships associated with his business.
- There is a strong link between performance and joy.
- People value what they help to create. Cyril noticed that the clients that contribute to the work in more of a partnership style relationship usually value the work more.
- Without the mindset shift of going from selling to helping, you will never achieve your true potential in your career.
- “The secret of living is giving.” -Winston Churchill
- When you understand the giving mindset, it will change the way you look at business and life.
- When planning your ideal work for business development, relationship building with your raving fans and developing yourself and your team, are the things that will have the most significant long-term impact. How much time each day do you need to protect to get those done each day?
- The rule is that you can move this meeting time with yourself around, but you can’t delete it.
- Business development is often composed of a lot of little tasks. Cyril uses the Outlook Task tool to categorize emails and tasks he needs to address during the time he’s set aside each day to focus on business development.
- Your calendar should be filled with Meetings With Yourself and you should respect them as much as you do meetings with other people.
- You say no all the time. When you say yes to something, you are saying no to everything else, whether you are conscious of that or not.
- When someone asks you to do something, pause and run through the “Hell Ya/No” framework.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your favorite business development strategy from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Instead of a favorite, Katrina wants to emphasize one strategy that often goes unrecognized for how important it is, which is targeting.
- Targeting is critical to business development and as a student of minimalism, Katrina is always thinking about trade-offs. Minimalists understand trade-offs as an inherent part of life, but instead of thinking about what needs to be sacrificed, it’s more about what to double down on.
- The subconscious emotional layer is what makes targeting tricky. We are evolutionarily primed to avoid loss and are naturally averse to subtraction.
- We only have so much time in our life. We can’t just take on more, we have to target and figure out what are the things to go big on and what to let go of.
- Mo had a similar experience with the training GrowBIG. Every time he refined his method and message and who he wanted to serve by letting go of certain markets, it was a terrifying change but resulted in incredible growth over time.
- Working with a small niche can be scary, but it often leads to greater success as your effort is more refined and focused within your skillsett.
- When Katrina is doing her job well, she’s often not operating at the forefront. In an ideal world, her clients are getting better and she eventually works herself out of a job.
- When someone comes to Katrina with a referral that isn’t within her core focus, she always sets up a call with the person and leverages her own referral network to help that person. She always circles back to the person that refers them to let them know they’ve been taken care of.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Angela’s favorite strategy is the Give to Get. Giving somebody value or knowledge they didn’t have before is a great way to start off a relationship.
- If you continue to show interest in someone personally, and not just professionally, and provide them value that can help them grow their career, they are going to care about you.
- You have to break someone out of the rut of working with someone else if it’s not you. Building trust and deepening the relationship in the beginning is crucial to starting things out.
- Angela has seen a number of her former colleagues help clients and prospects by summarizing the science on particular issues like climate change, sustainability, and environmental compliance.
- There is a big difference between forwarding an article to a client and talking the person through the content.
- The hardest thing is asking for the business, which is why you should simply ask for the next step. No is just another answer.
- You have to be able to explain more and give more so that eventually the answer is going to be yes. You can’t assume your client is going to read and consume the content you send them. You have to ask them for the opportunity to explain how it’s helpful and why you sent it to them.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Henning’s favorite idea is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s vital to understand how you, your team, and your prospects think.
- Henning is an analytical thinker, and understanding this gives him greater insight into how he can communicate with another person who can compliment that with their own thought preferences.
- Henning took his team through the HBDI process to get a good idea of how his team thinks and where there might be any gaps. This allows the team to cover all the quadrants.
- Externally, Henning has a few questions that he asks to get an idea of how a person thinks. Within 30 minutes he usually has an idea on the other person’s thinking style and can start tailoring his communication to cover the aspects that are most important to them.
- When it comes to an analytical thinker, Henning would lay out the numbers and the facts.
- For a procedural thinker, he would lay out the next steps in the process of working together to give them execution certainty and confidence in Henning’s ability to get the job done.
- For an empathic thinker, he would focus on the tools and skills that the client team can learn by working with them and the change management that will help people be successful.
- For a strategic thinker, Henning starts with the purpose of the work. He creates a future perspective and vision around how the work will change the company with a transformative impact.
- The work is done between the first meeting and the last meeting. This is why building it together is so important. Bringing your client into the development of the solution and building their thoughts and concerns into it makes it far more sustainable.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Jonathan’s first favorite is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. He uses it all the time in talking with potential partners and tailoring the conversation to how they process information and think.
- Wrapping your data into a story is a great way to hit on more of the four ways people think, but also make your data more memorable at the same time.
- Jonathan’s second favorite is simply discipline with the Protomoi List. Every month, Jonathan and his team review his list and look at how they are adding value to those relationships.
- The takeaway was the discipline and rigor of being very intentional about your most important relationships. Jonathan makes sure that there is time booked into his calendar to make connections, either physical or digital, with the most important relationships in his life.
- Sending a note to someone has more weight to it when they know you’re busy.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks John Tigh: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- John has been involved in the Snowball System for a long time and the Gravitas Model is a strategy that he uses every single day.
- It’s the perfect framework for taking any conversation where you want to go. It has an incredible level of flexibility and imparts a character to your conversation that people can’t help but enjoy. It also gives you the ability to keep the conversation going.
- When you ask great questions, you get a triple win. With the way the Gravitas Model is designed, they light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind when they are sharing their personal perspective, you learn their priorities in their words, and the questions highly correlate to likability. The more they talk and the less you talk, the more the other person will like you.
- John’s perfect buyer is in the C-Suite or someone dealing with content creation. During a conversation with his perfect buyer, John would talk about what they have in common, the challenges they experienced in the past, and their current role and their current projects.
- Typically, the goal for each meeting is to secure the next meeting.
- By addressing the base level mechanical questions, John can take a conversation up to higher level vision-based goals. He often asks people how calm the seas are and what they think the future holds, with a hook at the end about any questions that John didn’t ask but should have.
- John is always looking for an opportunity to offer value in some way or to make a connection or introduction for the other person in an effort to secure the next meeting. The framework is simply built around looking for ways to make the other person look good.
- Once you get the Gravitas Model in your bones, it really does help every kind of conversation, whether that’s spoken or written.
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Linda never wants to be unprepared in her work, and the same is true in meeting with a client, which is why Dynamic Meeting Prep is Linda’s favorite strategy.
- A potential client’s business always has important area-specific language that they use that you should know.
- It’s amazing how much companies have on their website and what you can learn by doing some research. Those insights are invaluable during a meeting, and preparing for a meeting pays dividends when you land the business because then you have a huge head start.
- Everybody prepares for delivery meetings but rarely do people prepare for the initial meeting.
- You can’t prepare for the first meeting at a dinner before the meeting day. Research is crucial. Make preparation a priority and get the team strategy outlined ahead of time.
- Your team needs to show the client that they are seamless, working together and solving the client’s problems.
- Figure out what your goal for the meeting is, what the frame for the meeting is and how to kick it off, what the big questions that might be asked, natural next steps, and potential cliffhangers you can use to get the next meeting.
- Being direct can be a challenge but being authentic about the fact that you want to simply be helpful is the best approach.
- Be ready to discuss what the client wants to discuss. The more prepared you are in advance, the easier it will be to switch gears and the more comfortable you will be.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Writing down the seven relationships that are the most important to growing the business was a technique that changed the way Andrew thought about business development.
- Andrew has a lot of great relationships with CEOs in various other businesses, but a lot of them didn’t start out at the top. Those relationships were nurtured over time with people that moved up in their organizations or moved around in their industry.
- Think about how you got into your position and where people are right now that you can connect with.
- When asked to list our most important relationships, we tend to think of our best current relationships by default, but that’s the wrong approach. We should think about the relationships that will have the most impact on our business first.
- The number seven forces you to make choices and really identify those relationships that will move the needle.
- Your list should contain people you have a relationship with, people you don’t know but would like to have a relationship with, and the people you need to have a relationship with who won’t necessarily send you business directly but can help you find it elsewhere.
- You only have a limited amount of time, so you need to be clear on your priorities, not just around what you do but who the most important people are.
- Create a shortlist and give yourself a short timeframe to connect and advance the relationship with those people. If someone is not going to make an impact, it’s better to figure that out in three months rather than three years.
- Be thoughtful. Sit on the other side of the desk and empathize with the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks James Barclay: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- For James, the number one strategy is the Protemoi List. These are the people in your circle that are your partners, prospects, and the key people that could be your raving fans.
- Having a focused relationship list is an unbeatable edge.
- When you invest in a relationship, people will move with you. James has had people buy from his company multiple times over multiple jobs.
- Your Protemoi List is a list of five to ten people that have outsized returns on the amount of time and energy you invest in the relationship.
- The first strategy is to simply be useful to them. Offer to take them to events with you that you believe would be helpful to them. Find content and then pass it on to people you think would find it useful.
- Celebrate them at every opportunity. Accelerate them and give them a platform where you highlight them and what they are doing.
- A personal newsletter can be incredibly powerful. You don’t need thousands of people on your list for it to be worth it.
- Build something that is extremely accessible to them, extremely useful to them, and don’t waste their time.
- It can take some time to build momentum, but you have to start somewhere. If you can write something useful for one person you can build it over time and create something really valuable.
- Consistency matters. Find a cadence that works for you and your schedule and stick with it.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Kevin discovered the Snowball System from the podcast after being referred to it by the CEO of HBR Consulting.
- The Most Important Things is one of the key principles that Kevin has embraced. He and his team have made the idea of the top three things as a guiding framework for how they operate.
- Raving fans and assessing the level of the relationship with each client is another big strategy.
- There is power in language. Just by entering the GrowBIG world and embracing the terminology, Kevin and his team have changed the way they think about business development and growth.
- Take a page out of your creative marketing playbook and come out with a theme for your internal program to get your team to buy in.
- Kevin’s team has tried a number of different incentives to get the team excited. They found that recognition and reward among high achievers is a good base to start with, combined with accountability. Create and celebrate short-term wins to spotlight things that are going well and to build momentum.
- Celebrating the small wins is an important piece of creating progress. Doing what you can do today is what leads to the championship.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Dennis loved so much of the GrowBIG Training, but the one that stands out the most is the idea of the Most Important Thing. When working with clients, Dennis uses an MIT one-sheet to communicate all the work streams that they can work on during the engagement as well as including some potentially new approaches they can take advantage of.
- They are using that very effectively to land new clients because it allows them to understand the exact value WTW brings to the table.
- This approach creates strategic conversations and helps build the trust that client’s have in Dennis and his team’s ability to think around corners.
- Structurally, the slide includes important dates for upcoming content or events, the essential work streams for the client, and disruptive ideas.
- Pre-MIT, the client updates were boring and uninspiring. Refining it down to the Most Important Things and communicating them in a single place that’s easy to understand has made it very valuable.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Nathan Barry on ConvertKit, Automation and Engaging Your Audience – What You Need To Succeed (season 2 episode 43)
How to Use ConvertKit to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 44)
How to Use ConvertKit to Deepen Relationships, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 45)
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 46)
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Nathan Barry, Founder of ConvertKit (season 2 episode 47)
Mo asks Maria Kelly: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- One of the most useful things Maria learned from the GrowBIG training was the seven pricing principles. Living in Switzerland, she grew up in a culture that didn’t talk about money and she learned early on in her career that if she didn’t talk about money, she didn’t get the money.
- Many business owners and professionals struggle with asking for what they are worth. When clients push back on the fees, those people don’t know how to respond because they don’t know how to articulate their value and justify their price.
- There are seven common heuristic programs that people use when thinking about money. One of the most common is that your price is directly linked to the quality of your service. In other words, expensive equals good, and cheap equals bad.
- If you’re upfront with the value you are bringing to the table and anchoring to that, no one is going to second guess what you charge.
- With the idea of anchoring on value, you can talk about the result and the magnitude of the value of it and use that as a frame for whatever your fees are. Introduce early on what value you are bringing to the relationship, and your fees will seem small in comparison.
- Most people expect to pay for a service, but when it comes to ourselves we often make assumptions about what other people will think about our own services to others. If someone is hiring you, they want the best. You have to lean into and be confident with your fees.
- At the point you talk about the fees, if you have built up enough value and trust with the person, you will be more confident in your delivery. It’s not about sticking with the number no matter what, it’s about working together to find a solution and a price that fits all parties. Even if you can’t find an alternative, do your best to part on good terms.
- If you can talk about the money with the same excitement and tone that you discuss the team, the scope of the project, and the details, you will feel consistent and confident and get better results.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The blueprint of Monty’s business is think big, start small, scale up.
- Rural Sourcing started out as a 10 person organization and has since scaled up to 1,000 employees, with the future goal of 3,000 employees and 30 centers all over America.
- It’s a growth mindset that can be applied across a 10,000 person organization, but it can also be applied to your personal life. Great intentions can be sabotaged if you try to do too much, too fast.
- Recognize that, as an individual, you will never be able to do it all. You have personal limitations and must be able to recognize those limitations to unlock your business’ potential.
- You’re not going to be perfect on day 1 or day 10,001. The goal is continuous improvement. With that mindset, you can do better, you can get bigger, you can do more.
- Being willing to reinvest is critical to knowing where you can add value and where someone else can add the value that’s missing.
- To scale up to the next level, you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and to know that you need to ask your peers, colleagues, bosses, and people you can trust to give their honest opinion.
- People are usually happy to give you feedback, and when you find someone willing to give it to you because they want you to be successful, you may have found a great mentor.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Warren has been working with Mo during the early days of the GrowBIG training and has been a big fan of the Protemoi list and the step-by-step opportunity process.
- The first part of the opportunity process is listening and learning. Being able to repeat it back to the prospect and proving that they’ve been heard is how you earn the right to go to the next step.
- Weekly, monthly, or quarterly sales targets influence behaviors that always align with the listen-and-learn process. The opportunity process doesn’t require more time, but it does require an emphasis on patience, understanding, and a collaborative approach. Many companies are still struggling with the more rigid, linear mindset of selling.
- Clients don’t want to hear your language or why your company is awesome. You should approach the sales cycle with a fresh-eyes mindset and assume the position of someone just getting started solution-wise.
- Earned Dogmatism is a proven mental heuristic that states the more we believe we have an expertise in some area, the more close-minded we become.
- The Protemoi list is a mental framework that can pay off at any time. Think about the relationships that might be important to you tomorrow, and the frequency of staying in touch that keeps those relationships alive.
- The first step of the Protemoi list is to write it down. Warren uses a spreadsheet to keep track of his list, and one of his weekly MIT’s is to always check in with the people on his list.
- It’s okay for people to drop off. Depending on the situation, Warren reaches out weekly or monthly to stay in touch in any way he can that adds value.
- Warren looks for interesting articles that he can send people or whatever way he can connect with someone on the list that makes sense.
- The Protemoi list also scales to a team or organizational level. You should be having all your people working to build trust and the relationship along the way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bdhabits.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
thebrevetgroup.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your personal definition of business development?
- If you have a craft that you know and love and want to grow, you are naturally going to step into business development so you might as well do it right.
- For Cannon, business development is about connecting people and ideas. He thinks of it as purposeful engagement that connects those two things.
- Connecting people with ideas often becomes deeply personal. During the pandemic, Cannon noticed a number of clients struggling with aging parents so they put a lot of effort into coming up with and connecting clients with ideas to help manage the issue.
- Taxes and the rapidly changing legislative landscape has been another area where Cannon and his team have been working with clients to stay ahead of the curve.
- The foundation is always being helpful rather than looking directly for business. It’s not about the revenue, it’s about enriching lives.
- Sometimes the solution falls outside of the firm’s specialty and that’s okay as long as the end result is helping a person out.
- You have to think of your relationships as a portfolio with investements in people all the time. Being proactive and helpful will eventually pay off.
- Not everything will connect. You have to look for additional opportunities to be helpful and keep reaching out.
- Think about business development as solving problems through connecting people and ideas together. If you are doing a good job, you will naturally get your share of the business. Proactive engagement is vital for service businesses.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is identifying high-value relationships, investing in them, and finding ways to bring value to those relationships.
- It’s about matching what you have to offer with the needs of your market and customizing it for each person.
- Figuring what the client needs is fundamentally about asking the right questions and listening closely to the answer.
- The key in any conversation is that if you’re talking more about yourself than you are about them it’s not been a successful conversation.
- Debby’s personal philosophy is if she can help the other person solve their problem, either with something she can offer or by pointing them in the direction of someone else who can help, then the day will come when she does have something that she can offer them.
- For an hour-long meeting, Debby prepares for at least double that time to make sure she deeply understands the person and the company she is meeting with. The more she can become a student of their business, the more she can make that initial conversation helpful.
- She will write out a handful of open-ended questions to get them talking and sharing about the challenges in their business.
- One of the biggest gaps in a good conversation that leads nowhere is that there needs to be a next step. The questions and preparation get the conversation going, but coming up with two or three paths that could lead to a give-to-get or a second conversation is the goal.
- The goal of the first meeting is to get the second meeting. You need a reason to get back together again.
- A good rule of thumb for a meeting is that the other person should be talking ⅔ of the time. One of the skills that Debby has had to work on over the years is the power of silence. We have a natural inclination to fill the space, but it’s okay to wait. It takes practice to learn these skills but it’s more than worth the effort.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Brian likes to think of business development as the art and science of guiding the buyer through their journey to an informed and confident decision.
- Just because you know the science, that doesn’t mean you’ll be great at business development. It’s equal parts the art of empathy and flexibility, and science of habits and communication.
- Mountain climbing guides are great metaphors for business development. Really good salespeople are helping people reach their own personal summit and get what they need to experience from the mountain.
- The defining characteristic of a guide is the ability to inspire trust. Trust comes before the sale. You need to be able to see ahead of corners for your buyers, and to challenge their thinking where appropriate.
- The challenge for the guide is in focusing on what the buyer needs over their own needs.
- Work on the skills and behaviors that inspire trust in you and live your life with integrity so you are worthy of that trust. Study why people buy, because that is going to be your biggest point of leverage for creating a great buying experience.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development at its best is win/win/win. Your business wins, the client wins, and thirdly, the client is winning so much that they become your best business development ambassador.
- Raving fans turn into your own personal sales force.
- Focusing on the win for the client secures the win for the business. If your client wins enough, they become predisposed to become a raving fan, but you still have to ask for it.
- Do something for them that gets them something of value and gets you even more. Don’t assume it will happen automatically.
- First, recognize that the person you are working with is a person and not just a job title. They have interests and frustrations, and when you understand that there is something you can engage with together.
- Dinner is a great opportunity to connect with someone outside of the confines and constraints of the work. You can also find a time to accompany them on another aspect of their work and learn more about what they do and what they care about in a way that’s not structured like a meeting.
- The best conversations you can have with a client are the ones where you do 20% of the talking. Figure out questions to act as a stimulus and get them talking.
- There is value and benefit for people in just having the opportunity to talk.
Mo asks Mark Harris: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development means something different to everybody. For Mark, it’s all about helping people understand what their needs are (teaching) and then once you find that out it’s helping them find the solution they need.
- Mark focuses on one phrase when going into the first meeting with someone, specifically being “humbly curious”. He’s simply looking to understand what motivates someone and where they are coming from, and what’s going to help them.
- Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody likes to buy, especially from people they like. Focusing on the sale is a short-term strategy.
- Sometimes the right thing is to not sell something. If things aren’t a good fit now but might be later, being upfront and telling the prospect the truth is how you can build trust and empathy and secure a valuable long-term relationship.
- Ask as many questions as you can. When you can train your mind to ask questions and be humbly curious, the world is your oyster and you can bring value to that organization at all times.
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Adding value to a client’s business by solving the problem. Service professionals often only look at a client’s issue through the lens of their own expertise, but that’s not the way to grow a business.
- Asking for the sale before solving the problem (or diagnosing the problem) isn’t going to work.
- Linda looks for ways to solve client problems that keep them from growing their own business. Sometimes that means referring the client to someone else when the issue is outside her area of expertise.
- Linda starts solving the problem before a transaction has occurred. We can sense when someone is trying to sell us before any value has really been added to the relationship and it usually makes us want to run away.
- Go into the first meeting simply to get to know somebody instead of trying to close the sale. When you help someone achieve their goals, you feel great and you increase the odds of them turning into a paying client.
- When following up, think about who you could connect the person with and what the person said in the initial meeting that you continue the conversation with.
- If you have taken your time to get to know the industry your prospect is in, you will know where the pain points are and have opportunities to help.
- The number one thing you can do to be proactive in building relationships is writing down your top five to ten people that are important to your career and using that to make sure you're constantly being helpful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, business development is helping others, connecting dots, and developing healthy and long lasting relationships.
- When you understand who your client is, whoever that happens to be in the moment, and add value for them, that's how you get stuff done.
- Where is the value chain and how are you adding value? It doesn’t end with the person you are talking to right now.
- Servant leadership is the foundation for Mike’s relationship philosophy. He’s always asking himself internally about how he can be helpful to not only his client, but also his client’s clients.
- When you ask the right questions, you get some interesting answers. Questions allow you to understand what motivates and drives someone, what concerns them, and what brings them joy. When you’re in a dot-connecting mode, all of that info helps you know who to link up.
- Helping people when there is no chance of commercial gain is your moment of truth. Connecting dots for people is how you leave a legacy.
- It’s worth the fight. Choose your attitude every day and build your resilience over time so you can keep pushing forward.
- If your definition of business development is helping people, getting a no every once in a while is not an issue.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What story did your parents tell you that shaped how you thought about business development?
- Bill’s mother was always extremely bright and driven, but she wasn’t terribly happy in her life. His father had the knack of being able to find commonality with almost anyone. It was at the dinner table where Bill was constantly challenged with questions on how he would deal with a variety of hypothetical situations.
- When Bill started in the antique business he was working with Persian rug dealers and in the process he learned what was relevant to them and how to build rapport, despite the considerable difference in their culture.
- Bill understood that those conversations with his parents around the dinner table were like batting practice, and those skills served him well in his work later on in life.
- When you do something for a long time, you give yourself the opportunity to get lucky. If you position yourself in the right way and do the work, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful, but it does mean you can get lucky.
- There wasn’t one single pivot moment where Bill got lucky and his career took off. It was a gradual process of taking on more risks and responsibilities over time and pushing past the fear to take the leap each time.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Cyril’s definition has evolved over the years. What began as selling became serving.
- Cyril is very clear on who he helps and how he can do it, as well as the people that he’s not right for.
- Cyril’s passion for what he does is derived from clarity on who can help. When it comes to first meetings, the goal is not to sell his services but to simply find out if they are a good match and to find the right solution for the prospect, even if that means referring them to someone else.
- It’s vital to surround yourself with the right people and have an environment of accountability while keeping a mentality of continuous learning.
- Masterminds and accountability partners are crucial for your personal and business growth. Find people who are playing at the same level as you and with the same giving mindset.
- People typically allow their day to be filled up but all the little things that inevitably come up. One of the first exercises Cyril has leadership teams walk through is creating their ideal week, and then creating a calendar by working backward from the most important things you can do with your time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
wslb.com
Mo asks Jane Allen: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Jane’s definition is simply proactive problem solving. If you are trying to sell something, it should be something they need and may not know they need it. It’s about showing them a problem they have as well as the solution.
- People don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to buy.
- If you’re struggling with being proactive, realize that it’s not the job of the prospect to call you or respond to your email. It’s your job to get the meeting.
- One of the best kinds of meetings is when someone says that they are not going to work with you, then at least you’re not going to waste your time.
- Don’t waste their time. Even if you think you have all the answers, you don’t. The goal of the first meeting is to ask thought provoking questions and to determine whether you have a solution to their problem.
- If you can’t resolve everything in one meeting, the goal is to secure the next. The prospect should understand the importance of the next meeting and you should give them enough of a cliffhanger that they anticipate it.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is creating a pipeline of future growth opportunities. You won’t know when they come to fruition or how, but it’s a steady process of cultivating and building relationships.
- There is never enough when it comes to business development because you never know when the well is going to go dry. By having a large pipeline, you have the ability to choose who you work with rather than having to take whatever comes your way.
- The lack of control is a major source of stress for people. Business development activities give you back the control over who you work with and how.
- You may be busy, but you must set aside time for business development opportunities or you might end up resentful of how much you are working.
- By having more opportunities than you need, you can say no to stuff you don’t want and the more you’re going to get paid. You also regain control on who you work with and which big ideas you get to work on.
- The commonality in cases where people are struggling with business development and people who thrive is fear. For those who are already successful, it’s a fear of losing what they’ve achieved. For those who are struggling, it’s a fear that they can’t be successful or that business development is beyond them.
- When you change the mindset from a fear of not being capable, to being afraid of too much success, you open the door of opportunity. The rainmakers have learned the tools they need to succeed and they have confidence in the process.
- Knowing that business development is a learnable skill is what flips someone from fear to confidence.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Henning prefers the term relationship development, which he considers the foundation of every successful service provider.
- Henning learned early in his career not to take things personally. If someone doesn’t respond to him, he assumes they must be busy and it’s not about the other person not liking him.
- Many experts hesitate to reach out when they don’t get a response right away. It’s important to understand what matters to people and to offer them something they are interested in.
- Understand how their mind works on the professional side and send them information that would appeal to that, but don’t be afraid to also reach out on the personal side.
- The biggest barrier to relationship success is us.
- Henning has a process for understanding where his relationships are in three categories: professional, personal, and friendship. He is always trying to think about how to develop a relationship to take it to the next level.
- Simply writing down the top five to ten relationships that are most important for your future self is a powerful tool.
- Knowing where you want a relationship to go helps you understand how you can be the most helpful.
- One of Henning’s mentors told him early in his career to keep doing the right thing and success will come. Investing in the right relationships will eventually have a commercial benefit.
- You don’t need to have all the answers if you can refer a prospect to someone else who can help.
- Role model the behavior for your team if you want that behavior to permeate. Make the time to show that you put the mindset into practice and celebrate the effort that people are putting into the work.
- Celebrating the little things where you went above and beyond what a normal professional relationship would be. That creates momentum and the right spirit to invest in relationships.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What's your personal definition of growth?
- Ultimately, it's all about impact, but in order to make an impact you need fuel.
- Creating complex partnerships is very aligned with good development practices, which is valuable for Jonathan because growth at Habitat for Humanity means having conversations around fundraising.
- When he made the mindset switch to solving someone’s problem, raising money became much easier and simpler.
- It's not about pressuring, or trying to get somebody to do something they don't want to do. It's about really trying to understand what people are trying to accomplish or the impact they want to have, and then looking for a fit and where there is one, finding ways you can help them have that impact in a really joyful way.
- Before a big meeting, you have to do the research. Jonathan will have a brief on the person’s biographical information, passion, and overall strategic goals so that he can create alignment in the potential partnership.
- Creating win/wins is the goal and when you can do that, growth becomes easy.
- Negotiation is usually won or lost based on preparation and framing, not on the actual tactics of the conversation.
- After the research, the first step of the meeting is creating a point of connection and establishing the relationship.
- The goal of the first meeting is to come away with clear next steps, not to close the deal.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Katrina likes helping people. For her, business development is about cultivating opportunities to help people.
- Business development doesn’t always have a great reinforcement mechanism, but having a process established makes it much more consistent.
- Creating a habit around communication that makes it simpler, more meaningful, and consistent is what has helped Katrina stay the course.
- Using the tools and communication methods that your client uses is crucial. Katrina tries to make her communications quick and useful when touching base with someone and on whatever platform works for them. Lots of little touches can be extremely powerful relationship builders.
- Katrina carves out time on Mondays to reach out to people, but she also has notes on her calendar and a Protemoi list that help her keep track of communications. Just having a list of names of the most important people to you can be enough to encourage you to take action.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, it’s all about value creation.
- The entire spectrum of taking a prospect from completely cold to raving fan is the process of growth.
- Content creation is part of the effort, similar to an at-scale give-to-get. When someone hits the pipeline, Tyler focuses on qualifying them immediately and moving quickly on closing the deal.
- For marketing and lead generation, you need to figure out the three most important metrics you need to cover and orient on those. That will make everything else easier.
- Referrals are a big indicator of both effectiveness and product-market fit.
- Try to avoid measuring too many metrics at the same time.
- You need to think about business development from the customer’s buying process and how you can remove as much friction from their buying process as possible. Make it as easy to buy from you as possible.
- Focus on a positive buying experience and make it easy for the customer. Being customer-centered will be extremely valuable in everything you work on.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
katrina@kcjconsult.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Henning Streubel: When was the moment that growth and business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Henning is intrinsically motivated to help people, but it’s less about business development and sales. Whenever he meets someone, he has a tendency to ask deep questions.
- Early in his career working for a utility client in Germany, he realized that the client’s company had many more problems than he initially thought which he discovered by simply having a deep conversation.
- Because of those conversations, the client was able to take Henning’s thoughts and ideas back to her boss and make positive changes.
- For Henning, relationship development starts with insights, which allows you to create an impact and trust.
- Many highly analytical people have difficulty talking about anything outside of the project. Henning recommends understanding that everyone is a human being which means they share a common foundation.
- Being genuine about being curious is key. Don’t just use small talk as a way to open a conversation.
- Follow up on the topics and go deeper. This shows your interest in them as a human being.
- Establishing a personal relationship makes connecting with them easier outside the context of the work. It creates an entry point that lets you have the impact you want to have.
- When you open up on your experience, you become more vulnerable and that creates a better foundation for trust. This was something that Henning had to learn and practice. Having a few stories in your back pocket can make it easier.
Mo asks Linda Klein: When was the moment that you realized that growth was great?
- Linda separates the ideas of business development and building a relationship. In the beginning of Linda’s career as a lawyer, she spent a lot of time learning about her client’s business and that relationship building always paid off.
- It’s not about developing the business, it’s about developing the relationship.
- Linda tells the story of how her grandfather started a grocery business in the early days of the Great Depression, how understanding and getting to know the people in the community became a crucial reason for their success, how that also inspired Linda and how she built her career.
- When meeting new people, Linda is always looking for the things outside the day-to-day business relationship that are important to them. There is always a place where you can connect.
- It’s important to be hireable and to share your expertise, but it’s more important to be human first.
- Start with something relatable instead of leading with your area of expertise and what services you can offer. The number one correlation to likeability is commonality. Always look for the common areas you can connect on.
- Every conversation and interaction you have will be different, but the person you’re speaking with will always give you clues. By offering details and asking for details, you’re going to find areas of commonality.
- It’s extremely important for diverse members of your team to feel like they can find areas to connect.
Mo asks Mark Harris: Tell me a story of when you realized that you needed to focus on business development.
- Mark takes us back to the summer of 1994 when he took on a job selling books door-to-door, a path that some of the most successful rainmakers have followed.
- It started off as a way to make more money than working at the local McDonald’s but it became a skill that Mark learned he could get better at.
- All skills are both learned and earned. Mark was initially not good at sales at all and after 12 hours of hearing no, he decided to flip his approach and try to make a connection with the person first.
- He also learned that he needed to create little wins throughout the day to manage his energy and motivation.
- The steps to a purchase are the same no matter what you’re selling. Connect with the person first and find out if you can solve their needs.
- Mark also learned how to deal with his emotions at that time, and when he figured out how to do that he became a lot more relatable and fun to be around.
- That whole first summer was all about being more relatable to people immediately after meeting them. After a couple sales, Mark figured out what he was really providing people with, and it wasn’t a book. When he took the focus off the money and made it about helping the other person, the sale became much easier.
- By breaking the process into each individual piece, Mark created a series of small wins that were under his control. Even a rejection can be a learning experience.
- When you put yourself outside your comfort zone, you become more capable emotionally of handling the experience and more likely to overcome the next hurdle, and every hurdle you jump builds your confidence.
- Think about what you can do every single day to get you closer to your ultimate win. You don’t know when your next sale is going to happen, but if you can focus on what you can control it will happen.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Scott Winter: When was the moment that you realized that business development was great?
- Scott started his career off in sales with LexisNexis and that developed into a role in consulting. Eventually he made the switch to a product management position with Interaction where he focused on CRM and client relationships.
- Interaction is the world’s largest CRM system for law firms and by coming up in that environment, Scott learned a lot about the technical aspects of the software which helped him better serve his clients.
- Scott had the typical mindset about sales in college that most people have, but he reframed his perspective after getting some actual experience in sales positions.
- The one key moment when Scott realized that business development was a powerful tool for growth was after having a simple conversation with someone on a plan. Just listening carefully and remembering what he learned blew that person away when they met again many months later.
- Scott has a knack for having a conversation on any subject and being able to find a point of connection. He also tends to add notes in his phone of a particularly interesting detail (powerlifting, ironman training, etc.) and makes use of his CRM to keep track of everything.
- Remembering details about someone is an art and a science, but there are tools you can use to make it easier.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: When did you realize that business development is something that would be interesting to you?
- Dennis’s interest in business development goes all the way back to his high school days in 1987, where he was trying to find people to participate in market studies. It was a tough gig and he had to stretch outside his comfort zone to get things done.
- Knowing that he had something of value to offer to the people gave him the confidence to ask for something they may not be initially open to. Dennis learned to be interested in the person first and think about the value he could provide, instead of assuming the ‘no’ right away.
- Dennis has been on all sides of the transaction when it comes to risk during his career, so that gives him some perspective on what potential buyers are looking for. Initial meetings are simply about identifying problems and how you can be helpful.
- Preparing for the meetings ahead of time is crucial to Dennis’s success. Following up usually involves finding resources or people to connect the prospect with that can help solve the problem in the meantime.
- Introducing techniques from another industry is a great way to appeal to a potential client’s desire for both safety and innovation.
- On the human side of things, Dennis realized that he needed to stay in front of clients at the beginning of the pandemic and that turned into a monthly blog post that he sends to clients and colleagues. Being open and vulnerable, and sharing some of the personal elements of his life, have had a tremendous impact.
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: When did you realize that business development was really important?
- It really clicked when Andrew started thinking about business development not as a means of getting business but as a means for the firm to get the business they need to forge their own path.
- After one particular project that went exceedingly well, Andrew understood that those kinds of projects could become a habit rather than a lucky break.
- The GrowBIG System is essentially about doing the right things so that you have control over the kinds of clients you work with. Being proactive gives you so much work that you can pick and choose the projects that you want most.
- It’s easier to be reactive on the front end because you don’t have to do the introspective work it takes to shape your vision and be proactive on finding the right business. It’s easier in the long term to adopt the right principles to attract the right clientele.
- Mo and Andrew do a review of their recent experience working together. In terms of business development, Andrew was simply looking to get to know Mo and the family and understand what he was looking for.
- As an architect, Andrew is hoping to gauge how open someone is to suggestions and that’s an intentional part of the conversation.
- At the end of the day, who Andrew works for and who he works with, has become more important to him and the firm than what he works on.
- Do a little research before a client meeting and come with a set of questions and follow-up questions for them. Don’t be afraid to give some ideas away during the meeting. When you give away a little, you get value back in the things you learn. If you go in with a sales pitch, you don’t learn anything. Show up with questions, not qualifications.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: When was the moment that you realized that business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Brian’s first job out of college was in selling automobiles as a wholesaler to dealerships. Everything began for Brian with his first sale, and how that came about because of developing a relationship with another human being.
- Seeing salespeople that were successful and respected helped Brian navigate what it took to grow in a sales career. So much of success is simply about being in the environment and paying attention.
- If you want to grow your skills, start with the fundamentals of communication and psychology. It’s also important to apply what you learn along the way instead of just taking it in.
- Consider what you’ve done well and what you could have done better.
- Translating his business development skills to a virtual environment is something that Brian is working on, as well as working on learning new things and being open to seeing things differently.
- A recent study revealed the Learned Dogmatism effect and how people tend to become more closed-minded the more expert they become in a specific domain. One of the keys to Brian’s success is striving against that and always being willing to learn.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: Tell us the moment when you realized that business development was good and worth doing?
- Katrina’s big aha moment was when she realized that the skill of business development can be learned. She started in academia and fell into consulting almost by accident, and she enjoyed her consulting work but she felt like her hands were tied. As a subcontractor, Katrina wasn’t able to deliver the work in the way that she thought would be the most powerful for her clients.
- It wasn’t until Katrina met Mo and learned about the GrowBIG system did she realize what was missing from her work.
- With a background in neural science, Katrina knew that the research and material were pointing her in the right direction, but in some ways digging into the research was also a curse. Katrina sometimes falls into the habit of using research as a way to hide and avoid putting it into practice.
- This is where her second big realization came into play, and that she had some underlying issue that was preventing her from executing. She decided to start off small and refine the process from a place of action.
- She began by going to networking events and trying to follow up with people, most of those efforts didn’t pan out though. She landed a few speaking engagements with small groups of people and used that as a basis to create a relationship with people.
- She embraced deeper relationships rather than looser connections and in doing so stretched herself outside of her comfort zone.
- She doesn’t set out to get meetings with important decision makers, but that often flows from naturally deepening relationships with people and being helpful.
- Katrina learned a lot about the value of targeting over the last year. She realized that when she can work with the management of an organization in some combination of assessment and coaching she’s at her best.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: When did you realize that business development was great?
- There was not one moment, but a story stands out in particular for Cannon. When his father was retiring from the firm he was working at, he told him that he was a great analyst but not a great salesperson, and if he wanted to succeed, he would need to figure that out.
- When a professional services firm reaches a certain revenue threshold, the same things that got them to that point won’t help grow past it. Simply hiring a rainmaker won’t necessarily solve the problem.
- You need a broader team working towards business development to tap a broader network to grow a firm.
- The real mindset shift that unlocks the power of business development is “Are you selling, or are you helping to solve problems?”
- Take the sales hat off and integrate yourself into your client’s lives. Understand what their problems are, and if you can be alongside them during the inevitable transitions in their life, you can deepen the relationship. It’s about relevancy and solving problems. The sales and referrals will come naturally out of that.
- Life has transitions that create challenges along the way. Cannon helps his clients with a wealth plan that keeps their legacy and lifestyle intact.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
katrina@kcjconsult.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Craig Budner: When did you realize that business development is good?
- Craig’s brother was a litigator and from an early age had his own firm. This taught Craig the necessity of creating a brand and cultivating referral sources in order to grow the firm.
- Craig took a slightly different path from his brother in that he joined one of the firms in Texas. It was there that he created the relationships and connections that made him realize the value of being an advisor to someone and not just on legal issues.
- After creating a relationship with one of the firm’s important executive clients, a partner encouraged Craig to run with what he was doing. During his associate days, Craig learned the value of doing a great job for clients and nurturing relationships.
- When he understood that clients were actual multiple sources of revenue, and that if he could cultivate relationships with people directly in his path of work delivery, he started to get the first call. He was being trusted by the people in charge of important projects, and that gave him the opportunity to do more fun kinds of work.
- How do you advise others to think about business development?
- Demystifying business development is the first step. The characteristics of good parents, friends, and listeners are the characteristics that make a good business developer. It’s not about the money at the end of the line, it’s about growth and learning, and getting better at putting yourself in the shoes of someone else.
- What do you think about mutually beneficial relationships?
- You have to be a better listener than a talker to develop deep relationships. If you’re always thinking about what you’re going to say, you’re not going to get enough information out of that relationship to make it mutually beneficial.
- Think about how you can be helpful to that person. You can leave a positive impression on that person by reflecting back that you have heard them and you’re going to try to advance their issue.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: When did you first start thinking about business development as something important that you wanted to do?
- Bill spent many years in business when there were two kinds of business development. The first was a form of gunslinging more focused on extracting value and the second was centered around building more long term relationships. Inevitably, you come to realize that building relationships and adding relevance to potential customers is the way to go.
- There are three ways to differentiate a business: be an innovator and make things that no one has seen before, be cheap and provide the lowest cost service, or you can be customer centric and know more about your customers than anyone else in the world.
- Nobody should own a client. The team should always work together to get the job done well.
- If you have a lot of history with a client or they demand that a particular person is involved, that should be accepted.
- The end result of a deal is always a combination of relationship and price. In Bill’s line of work, certain clients tend to push on price but that always makes things tougher. Chasing the margins on a deal down to the point where the service provider doesn’t care about the outcome is always a poor choice.
- For another client, Bill tells the story of a semi-regular delivery of BLT sandwiches and how they were a barometer of the relationship. They may not have gotten the business because of the sandwiches, but they definitely didn’t hurt.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: When did you first realize that business development or relationship development was a good thing?
- The first time Andrew realized business development was fundamentally about discipline was while working as a barman in Maidenhead where he learned how to connect with people and build rapport very quickly. It was there he met an insurance broker that offered him a job.
- As a student working in the evenings, Andrew learned that if he made 100 phone calls on Monday night he could line up 10 meetings for the rest of the week, which would usually result in 3 sales.
- He started experimenting with the approach he was taught and learned two important lessons very quickly. The method he was taught was tried and tested, and if he didn’t do the work of making the calls, he didn’t get the results he needed. No one else was going to make those calls if he didn’t do it.
- He wasn’t in the relationship-building business yet, that came later. Andrew learned the importance of discipline and trusting the process.
- The idea that people are born with the habits that make them successful is incorrect. Discipline can be learned like any area of expertise.
- The most important thing is to get a meeting, not to have everything prepared. Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you focus on the delivery first, you’ll never set the meeting in the first place.
- You need to pick up the phone and offer them something valuable and interesting as quickly as you can. That’s how you earn the time to develop a relationship afterward.
- Pulling insights from other proposals and using them to intrigue other prospects enough to get a meeting is a good example of an offer that gets people interested.
- You don’t always have to go straight to the ultimate decision maker. Getting a meeting with a mid-level manager can be a great opportunity too. Every meeting is useful in learning more about the company or the industry.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: When was the moment you realized that growth was great?
- Cyril started his own business with a partner after completing his MBA so he had an interest in business development right from the beginning.
- With time, he realized how much he had to learn about sales and relationship building.
- Impact is a keyword in how Cyril views the world. If he had only one principle piece of advice to give to people, it would be to prioritize your calendar according to impact.
- Cyril tells the story of a client he was working with and the impact on their life the work had. As great as getting to inbox zero and having an organized and neat work environment, being able to sleep at night and actually turn off her mind was completely life-changing.
- When you have something as powerful and impactful on people’s lives, business development becomes easy and natural. Cyril considers his business to be in service to his clients.
- When you change your way of working it changes your life, which is why Cyril doesn’t view his work as business development. Instead, he sees it as bringing his service to the people that need it.
- When it comes to prioritizing for impact, you have to start with a mind shift. High performers don’t look at when things are due, they look at the impact of the things they need to do first.
- Think quarterly, plan weekly, and act daily. Thinking quarterly is one of the most effective time frames to think about work while incorporating your long-term vision. Planning each week is an important tempo for progressing your top two or three priorities. A crisis will arrive eventually, but you need to run your tasks through the four-word framework of What Impact Long-Term.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: Tell me the moment when you decided that business development is something that you wanted to focus on.
- Debby fell into business development almost by accident when she was in college after taking a sales job one summer. The key realization was when she figured out that she liked helping people solve their problems, and that was when she decided to shift her focus to professional sales.
- Debby went on to a professional sales role out of college where most of the training was technical in focus. It wasn’t until Debby moved into a national leadership role did she realize that business development skills are just as important as technical skills. That was when she became connected with Mo and the GrowBIG system.
- Now that Debby is consulting, the focus on business development is even more important.
- As a service provider, the reality is that you are helping your clients solve their problems, and that is the essence of business development.
- Companies tend to focus on technical training because there is often so much information to learn and such a large need for that information, businesses are incentivized to pay attention to it. An organization that wants to grow has to invest in its people beyond the technical side.
- Companies often throw structure at an issue in an attempt to solve a problem.
- Take the word sales out of your mind if you’re just getting started with business development. Retool your brain to frame the conversation as a way of figuring out what the other person needs and how you can help. If you can do that, the conversation becomes less intimidating.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: When was the moment that you decided that business development was important and you needed to get great at it?
- Mike’s dad started in sales so he had a front row seat on making sales from the very beginning. He started his sales career by selling ad space in a travel magazine, and once he got out of college, Mike started selling ladies clothes in California.
- He took a $500,000 territory and in 18 months turned it into $2.5 million. He won salesman of the year at the age of 24 and ended up having a beer with his sales manager which led to a conversation that changed everything for him.
- Mike took a deep dive into discovering what really makes a good sales program and he became a student of sales for the rest of his career.
- Mike teaches lawyers business development now under the assumption that he has to sell the idea to his students. The goal is to help them understand that adding value to a relationship or closing a deal is sales by another name.
- If we want to live the life we want, we have to get great at growth.
- Start with the people you are going to call and how you can have a conversation that creates curiosity. That allows you to learn about what they need. Business development is about helping people.
- Business development habits set you apart when it comes to employment as well. It’s hard to ascertain someone’s technical expertise in a 30-minute interview, but it’s obvious when you care, listen intently, and make the conversation about the other person.
- You always have to be thinking about the long game. Some prospects may not turn into clients for years, so you need to focus on just moving the ball a little bit further each day.
- Be transparent, have humility, and be honest. Tell people when they are your #1 target and allow them to shape the relationship in a way that’s valuable for them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Jonathan Reckford shares his incredible experiences at the helm of Habitat for Humanity and how he’s helping to change the world by creating strategic partnerships with other organizations, and how it all starts with building relationships first. Find out how the CEO of Habitat for Humanity, one of the biggest non-profit organizations in the world, can still make time each month to work on his Protomoi List and why aligning a potential partner’s desire for impact with your goals is a great foundation to build a valuable long-term relationship on.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: When did you realize you wanted to grow something big and make an impact?
- Jonathan had a lot of great role models growing up, with his grandmother being one of the first women in Congress. She would always ask Jonathan what he was going to do to be useful, a mindset that he eventually adopted and grew into.
- Jonathan assumed he would follow her footsteps into politics and law, but quickly realized after college that law wasn’t what he wanted to do.
- He later talked his way into a job at Goldman Sachs, received a grant and moved to South Korea to work for the Seoul Olympic committee, and ended up working with the rowing team as their coach for a few years.
- That experience allowed him to reorient his perspective and after returning home, Jonathan came back with a mission. He went into business school and spent the next 15 years helping large organizations grow.
- After that time in the private sector, Jonathan went to India on short-term mission trips. Seeing the challenges and suffering in rural India touched his heart and he realized the power of small interventions in dire situations.
- Jonathan began focusing on helping churches grow and contributing to the mission of alleviating international poverty, ultimately culminating in working for Habitat for Humanity nearly 17 years ago.
- You can’t always connect the dots going forward, but when you look back you see how everything got you to where you are now. Jonathan’s experiences in his career lend themselves perfectly to his current role as the leader of Habitat for Humanity.
- Work on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’. Build your character and skills instead of looking for some grand career plan. No matter what you do in your 20s, consider it continuing your education.
- As long as you’re learning and aligned, you will eventually find your vocation where you have an impact that lines up with your passion and skills.
- Habitat for Humanity is thinking big for the future and is focused on making markets work more effectively to create just societies where really everyone can access safe, decent, affordable housing.
- Really bold leaders are ones that reframe everything.
- If you have the right mission for the problem you're trying to solve, you'll gain the power you need to get there. If you're focused on gaining power, that's ultimately going to be self-defeating.
- Start with crafting a story around why what you’re doing is making the world a better place and get clarity on your true purpose.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What's your personal definition of growth?
- Ultimately, it's all about impact, but in order to make an impact you need fuel.
- Creating complex partnerships is very aligned with good development practices, which is valuable for Jonathan because growth at Habitat for Humanity means having conversations around fundraising.
- When he made the mindset switch to solving someone’s problem, raising money became much easier and simpler.
- It's not about pressuring, or trying to get somebody to do something they don't want to do. It's about really trying to understand what people are trying to accomplish or the impact they want to have, and then looking for a fit and where there is one, finding ways you can help them have that impact in a really joyful way.
- Before a big meeting, you have to do the research. Jonathan will have a brief on the person’s biographical information, passion, and overall strategic goals so that he can create alignment in the potential partnership.
- Creating win/wins is the goal and when you can do that, growth becomes easy.
- Negotiation is usually won or lost based on preparation and framing, not on the actual tactics of the conversation.
- After the research, the first step of the meeting is creating a point of connection and establishing the relationship.
- The goal of the first meeting is to come away with clear next steps, not to close the deal.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Jonathan’s first favorite is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. He uses it all the time in talking with potential partners and tailoring the conversation to how they process information and think.
- Wrapping your data into a story is a great way to hit on more of the four ways people think, but also make your data more memorable at the same time.
- Jonathan’s second favorite is simply discipline with the Protomoi List. Every month, Jonathan and his team review his list and look at how they are adding value to those relationships.
- The takeaway was the discipline and rigor of being very intentional about your most important relationships. Jonathan makes sure that there is time booked into his calendar to make connections, either physical or digital, with the most important relationships in his life.
- Sending a note to someone has more weight to it when they know you’re busy.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: Tell us a development or growth story that you're really particularly proud of.
- Jonathan tells the story of a complex corporate partnership between Habitat for Humanity and Hilty, and how they’ve worked together closely after building a relationship over the years.
- Each year, the two organizations began to work more closely together and started developing new innovative approaches to achieving their mutual goals.
- There's not only funding, but it's making both parties better. They are achieving their goals as well inside a full strategic partnership which is much more exciting than just a transactional donor relationship.
- Jonathan’s role was in building trust with the head of the foundation. Without that relationship, the partnership probably wouldn’t exist. It also taught Jonathan a lot about building trust and being direct.
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: You get to magically record a video and send it back to your younger self with some advice. What do you say?
- Jonathan spent most of his youth thinking about what he wanted to do instead of who he wanted to be. He would tell his younger self to focus on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’ first.
- If you never fail, it's likely you're not going big enough.
- Hope is built in the community. Volunteering gives you a sense of the community and how you can bring the virtues of kindness and love into the world.
- Following your passion is incomplete. You need to search for the intersection between what you’re passionate about and where your skills, ability, and talent lie.
- Jonathan tells the story of Doris, and how he grew up in a poor neighborhood in North Carolina and how his life completely changed after his mom qualified to buy a Habitat house in Optimist Park. Doris is the first person to grow up in a Habitat for Humanity house and to serve on the board as well.
- The story perfectly encapsulates the mission and purpose of Habitat for Humanity and how giving people a platform and foundation for a stable, healthy life can impact their community and society as a whole.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: You get to magically record a video and send it back to your younger self with some advice. What do you say?
- Jonathan spent most of his youth thinking about what he wanted to do instead of who he wanted to be. He would tell his younger self to focus on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’ first.
- If you never fail, it's likely you're not going big enough.
- Hope is built in the community. Volunteering gives you a sense of the community and how you can bring the virtues of kindness and love into the world.
- Following your passion is incomplete. You need to search for the intersection between what you’re passionate about and where your skills, ability, and talent lie.
- Jonathan tells the story of Doris, and how he grew up in a poor neighborhood in North Carolina and how his life completely changed after his mom qualified to buy a Habitat house in Optimist Park. Doris is the first person to grow up in a Habitat for Humanity house and to serve on the board as well.
- The story perfectly encapsulates the mission and purpose of Habitat for Humanity and how giving people a platform and foundation for a stable, healthy life can impact their community and society as a whole.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: Tell us a development or growth story that you're really particularly proud of.
- Jonathan tells the story of a complex corporate partnership between Habitat for Humanity and Hilty, and how they’ve worked together closely after building a relationship over the years.
- Each year, the two organizations began to work more closely together and started developing new innovative approaches to achieving their mutual goals.
- There's not only funding, but it's making both parties better. They are achieving their goals as well inside a full strategic partnership which is much more exciting than just a transactional donor relationship.
- Jonathan’s role was in building trust with the head of the foundation. Without that relationship, the partnership probably wouldn’t exist. It also taught Jonathan a lot about building trust and being direct.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Jonathan’s first favorite is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. He uses it all the time in talking with potential partners and tailoring the conversation to how they process information and think.
- Wrapping your data into a story is a great way to hit on more of the four ways people think, but also make your data more memorable at the same time.
- Jonathan’s second favorite is simply discipline with the Protomoi List. Every month, Jonathan and his team review his list and look at how they are adding value to those relationships.
- The takeaway was the discipline and rigor of being very intentional about your most important relationships. Jonathan makes sure that there is time booked into his calendar to make connections, either physical or digital, with the most important relationships in his life.
- Sending a note to someone has more weight to it when they know you’re busy.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: What's your personal definition of growth?
- Ultimately, it's all about impact, but in order to make an impact you need fuel.
- Creating complex partnerships is very aligned with good development practices, which is valuable for Jonathan because growth at Habitat for Humanity means having conversations around fundraising.
- When he made the mindset switch to solving someone’s problem, raising money became much easier and simpler.
- It's not about pressuring, or trying to get somebody to do something they don't want to do. It's about really trying to understand what people are trying to accomplish or the impact they want to have, and then looking for a fit and where there is one, finding ways you can help them have that impact in a really joyful way.
- Before a big meeting, you have to do the research. Jonathan will have a brief on the person’s biographical information, passion, and overall strategic goals so that he can create alignment in the potential partnership.
- Creating win/wins is the goal and when you can do that, growth becomes easy.
- Negotiation is usually won or lost based on preparation and framing, not on the actual tactics of the conversation.
- After the research, the first step of the meeting is creating a point of connection and establishing the relationship.
- The goal of the first meeting is to come away with clear next steps, not to close the deal.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Mo asks Jonathan Reckford: When did you realize you wanted to grow something big and make an impact?
- Jonathan had a lot of great role models growing up, with his grandmother being one of the first women in Congress. She would always ask Jonathan what he was going to do to be useful, a mindset that he eventually adopted and grew into.
- Jonathan assumed he would follow her footsteps into politics and law, but quickly realized after college that law wasn’t what he wanted to do.
- He later talked his way into a job at Goldman Sachs, received a grant and moved to South Korea to work for the Seoul Olympic committee, and ended up working with the rowing team as their coach for a few years.
- That experience allowed him to reorient his perspective and after returning home, Jonathan came back with a mission. He went into business school and spent the next 15 years helping large organizations grow.
- After that time in the private sector, Jonathan went to India on short-term mission trips. Seeing the challenges and suffering in rural India touched his heart and he realized the power of small interventions in dire situations.
- Jonathan began focusing on helping churches grow and contributing to the mission of alleviating international poverty, ultimately culminating in working for Habitat for Humanity nearly 17 years ago.
- You can’t always connect the dots going forward, but when you look back you see how everything got you to where you are now. Jonathan’s experiences in his career lend themselves perfectly to his current role as the leader of Habitat for Humanity.
- Work on the ‘who’ before the ‘what’. Build your character and skills instead of looking for some grand career plan. No matter what you do in your 20s, consider it continuing your education.
- As long as you’re learning and aligned, you will eventually find your vocation where you have an impact that lines up with your passion and skills.
- Habitat for Humanity is thinking big for the future and is focused on making markets work more effectively to create just societies where really everyone can access safe, decent, affordable housing.
- Really bold leaders are ones that reframe everything.
- If you have the right mission for the problem you're trying to solve, you'll gain the power you need to get there. If you're focused on gaining power, that's ultimately going to be self-defeating.
- Start with crafting a story around why what you’re doing is making the world a better place and get clarity on your true purpose.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
habitat.org
linkedin.com/in/jonathanreckford
Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World by Jonathan Reckford
Marty Fagan shares his strategy for entering new markets at TransUnion and why the Three Legged Stool approach to business development is the most effective way to build relationships with complete strangers. Find out why business development is sales plus thought leadership, why valuable relationships, both in life and in business, begin with authenticity and passion, and why persistence is one of the most powerful success habits you can cultivate in your career.
Mo asks Marty Fagan: Go back in time and tell me of the moment when you realized growth or business development was something you wanted to dive into.
- In his role at TransUnion, Marty is helping the organization explore new areas of the market that the business has never participated in before, and that’s where business development has been a critical component.
- As an unknown entity, it requires an entirely different mindset in how you approach new business.
- If your brand isn’t really well known yet, that can actually be an advantage, as it gives you the opportunity to decide and shape the brand that people will perceive.
- To break into a market, you need to have the mindset of a marketer and sales executive. You have to bring together the tactical and the strategic to win.
- When meeting someone for the first time, Marty tries to glean as much information about them as possible ahead of time using resources like LinkedIn to find people with connections to the person he’s going to talk to.
- Next, he looks at the company’s strategic objectives, vision, and priorities, then moves up to researching the industry as a whole.
- All this research allows Marty to create really customized questions that are highly relevant to the potential client, all within the context of solving a need for the customer.
Mo asks Marty Fagan: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is sales but in a different way. You have to think strategically from a thought leadership perspective instead of tactically.
- Sales and marketing should be integrated, and that’s what happens within the context of business development.
- This is the approach TransUnion uses to enter new markets. They combine the sales, solutions, and marketing into one coordinated effort.
- Marty uses the analogy of the three legged stool. Without the legs of a sales process, a solution to offer the market, and the marketing/outreach of having conversations with people that need your solution, the stool falls over and nothing happens.
- If one of those elements aren’t in place for you, seek out as many subject matter experts on that area as you can to help you develop it. If you don’t have it internally, find it externally.
- When looking at a new market, Marty starts by looking at the solutions his organization already has and how they can apply to that industry to make a customer more effective. It’s an outside-in approach that is very powerful.
Mo asks Marty Fagan: When you think of GrowBig Training or the Snowball System, what's your favorite science, step, or story?
- The Give to Get is the easy answer for Marty.
- By utilizing the Give to Get, Marty’s team establishes a much stronger relationship with their customer and gets them bought in, drastically increasing the odds of landing the business.
- You’re becoming a partner with your customer through the process by investing in them, and in return they often begin investing in you.
- A Give to Get is essentially offering something of value to a prospect that you think they need before you are hired. This can take the form of thought leadership, connections, and more.
- It has three criteria: it adds value for them, it’s relatively worth it, and it’s easy for you to do. The key to a successful Give to Get is that it leads to a next step and the prospect realizing that they can benefit from your expertise.
- Get to a place where you agree on what success looks like, that mutual agreement is what leads to the next step and eventually the close.
- With a Give to Get, you're both agreeing to something, and you're working on this in collaboration with each other. You're both investing time and effort into it and that's what ties it all together. Without both sides escalating the commitment level over time, there won’t be a future together.
- Compared to a blind RFP, the Give to Get approach is almost ten times more effective at landing business.
Mo asks Marty Fagan: I want you to tell me of a business development story that you're particularly proud of.
- Marty tells the story of an opportunity he had been pursuing for three years where his persistence really paid off.
- Despite the lack of traction for multiple years, Marty kept persisting and keeping the lines of communication open because he knew that the area the client needed help in was something they could provide and the importance level was very high for them.
- Having the grit to work through the tough times and the seeming lack of progress has resulted in a great business relationship that Marty is really proud of.
- A lot of business professionals struggle with the front end persistence, where they get little to no response from someone they are trying to build a relationship with. Seeing that as a challenge, instead of an insurmountable obstacle, helps. Marty never lost the belief that he could actually add value to the client, and that gave him the confidence to keep going.
- Early stage relationships are less like a tennis match, where you need the other person to respond in order to continue playing, and more like practicing your serve. Keep giving.
- Persistence shows you are serious about adding value, and that takes time.
Mo asks Marty Fagan: If you could record a video about growth or Business Development, and send it back to your younger self, what would you say?
- First thing is to be authentic. If you truly are authentic, people can pick up on that. And if you're not authentic, they can pick up on that as well.
- If you’re talking to someone and you don’t think your solution is a good fit, don’t sell it to them.
- Closing the sale no matter what may work in the short-term, but it’s a terrible strategy in the long-term.
- The second thing is to have a passion for the solution you are offering to your customers. People pick up on your passion, which contributes to that feeling of authenticity.
- Having passion and authenticity establishes trust, and that trust needs to be in place to have a conversation result in a closed deal.
- If you’ve developed a deep expertise, it’s okay to be excited about it and convey that energy to people.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Mo asks Marty Fagan: If you could record a video about growth or Business Development, and send it back to your younger self, what would you say?
- First thing is to be authentic. If you truly are authentic, people can pick up on that. And if you're not authentic, they can pick up on that as well.
- If you’re talking to someone and you don’t think your solution is a good fit, don’t sell it to them.
- Closing the sale no matter what may work in the short-term, but it’s a terrible strategy in the long-term.
- The second thing is to have a passion for the solution you are offering to your customers. People pick up on your passion, which contributes to that feeling of authenticity.
- Having passion and authenticity establishes trust, and that trust needs to be in place to have a conversation result in a closed deal.
- If you’ve developed a deep expertise, it’s okay to be excited about it and convey that energy to people.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Mo asks Marty Fagan: I want you to tell me of a business development story that you're particularly proud of.
- Marty tells the story of an opportunity he had been pursuing for three years where his persistence really paid off.
- Despite the lack of traction for multiple years, Marty kept persisting and keeping the lines of communication open because he knew that the area the client needed help in was something they could provide and the importance level was very high for them.
- Having the grit to work through the tough times and the seeming lack of progress has resulted in a great business relationship that Marty is really proud of.
- A lot of business professionals struggle with the front end persistence, where they get little to no response from someone they are trying to build a relationship with. Seeing that as a challenge, instead of an insurmountable obstacle, helps. Marty never lost the belief that he could actually add value to the client, and that gave him the confidence to keep going.
- Early stage relationships are less like a tennis match, where you need the other person to respond in order to continue playing, and more like practicing your serve. Keep giving.
- Persistence shows you are serious about adding value, and that takes time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Mo asks Marty Fagan: When you think of GrowBig Training or the Snowball System, what's your favorite science, step, or story?
- The Give to Get is the easy answer for Marty.
- By utilizing the Give to Get, Marty’s team establishes a much stronger relationship with their customer and gets them bought in, drastically increasing the odds of landing the business.
- You’re becoming a partner with your customer through the process by investing in them, and in return they often begin investing in you.
- A Give to Get is essentially offering something of value to a prospect that you think they need before you are hired. This can take the form of thought leadership, connections, and more.
- It has three criteria: it adds value for them, it’s relatively worth it, and it’s easy for you to do. The key to a successful Give to Get is that it leads to a next step and the prospect realizing that they can benefit from your expertise.
- Get to a place where you agree on what success looks like, that mutual agreement is what leads to the next step and eventually the close.
- With a Give to Get, you're both agreeing to something, and you're working on this in collaboration with each other. You're both investing time and effort into it and that's what ties it all together. Without both sides escalating the commitment level over time, there won’t be a future together.
- Compared to a blind RFP, the Give to Get approach is almost ten times more effective at landing business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Mo asks Marty Fagan: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is sales but in a different way. You have to think strategically from a thought leadership perspective instead of tactically.
- Sales and marketing should be integrated, and that’s what happens within the context of business development.
- This is the approach TransUnion uses to enter new markets. They combine the sales, solutions, and marketing into one coordinated effort.
- Marty uses the analogy of the three legged stool. Without the legs of a sales process, a solution to offer the market, and the marketing/outreach of having conversations with people that need your solution, the stool falls over and nothing happens.
- If one of those elements aren’t in place for you, seek out as many subject matter experts on that area as you can to help you develop it. If you don’t have it internally, find it externally.
- When looking at a new market, Marty starts by looking at the solutions his organization already has and how they can apply to that industry to make a customer more effective. It’s an outside-in approach that is very powerful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Mo asks Marty Fagan: Go back in time and tell me of the moment when you realized growth or business development was something you wanted to dive into.
- In his role at TransUnion, Marty is helping the organization explore new areas of the market that the business has never participated in before, and that’s where business development has been a critical component.
- As an unknown entity, it requires an entirely different mindset in how you approach new business.
- If your brand isn’t really well known yet, that can actually be an advantage, as it gives you the opportunity to decide and shape the brand that people will perceive.
- To break into a market, you need to have the mindset of a marketer and sales executive. You have to bring together the tactical and the strategic to win.
- When meeting someone for the first time, Marty tries to glean as much information about them as possible ahead of time using resources like LinkedIn to find people with connections to the person he’s going to talk to.
- Next, he looks at the company’s strategic objectives, vision, and priorities, then moves up to researching the industry as a whole.
- All this research allows Marty to create really customized questions that are highly relevant to the potential client, all within the context of solving a need for the customer.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/martyfagan
Monty Hamilton shares the principles and strategies he used to start his career, launch Rural Sourcing, and grow the company up to 1,000 employees. Find out why business always boils down to relationships, why the key to solving client problems is to appreciate those problems, and discover the framework for growing both a business and your personal skills.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Take us back to the moment when you realized that growth was great and it was something you wanted to focus on.
- Monty landed a job at Arthur Anderson Consulting out of business school, where he got his start learning how to program in COBOL. Business process reengineering and strategy became part of his day to day eventually. It was there that Monty met the group of guys that would start Clarkson Consulting with him in North Carolina.
- Business development came into the picture after Monty realized that if he could sell work where he lived, he wouldn’t have to travel far from his new family. His success became a matter of landing new work, so he decided to become good at it.
- Business all boils down to relationships and solving problems. Monty realized that going into a relationship with the goal of making a sale was counterproductive and so committed to a mindset of helping instead.
- You've got to spend an adequate amount of time appreciating the problem. If you can help a person identify and paint the picture of how gnarly their problem is, then you’re in the right room.
- Appreciating the problem starts with listening and asking good questions, and then discovering whether the issue is a symptom of the problem or if there’s something deeper.
- What are the upstream and downstream effects of the problem? Who else is impacted by it?
- What’s in it for the person you’re talking to if you can help them solve the problem? How will it help their career?
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Growth is simply about relationships. Being valuable to someone is intrinsically rewarding.
- Over the course of Monty’s career, the Give To Get mentality became a core part of how he built the business. Fundamentally, it’s about whether or not you can create a truly authentic and transparent relationship with someone while helping them.
- Don’t focus on what you’re going to get out of a relationship. Instead, focus on being around interesting people that you can also learn from.
- When you’re networking, throw away the title and industry and try to get to know a person’s story. In addition to being more effective at developing business, getting to know someone on a personal level is what makes life more enjoyable.
- Once you land the first meeting, do your research and invest some of your personal time and energy into making their business better, regardless of the end result.
- If you’ve got something valuable and you deliver that in a highly personalized and warm way, you’ve got a chance to meet anyone.
- Come in with some interesting, customized, tailored questions that show your ability to help and bring perspectives that the client could benefit from. The goal of the first meeting should be to secure the second meeting.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The blueprint of Monty’s business is think big, start small, scale up.
- Rural Sourcing started out as a 10 person organization and has since scaled up to 1,000 employees, with the future goal of 3,000 employees and 30 centers all over America.
- It’s a growth mindset that can be applied across a 10,000 person organization, but it can also be applied to your personal life. Great intentions can be sabotaged if you try to do too much, too fast.
- Recognize that, as an individual, you will never be able to do it all. You have personal limitations and must be able to recognize those limitations to unlock your business’ potential.
- You’re not going to be perfect on day 1 or day 10,001. The goal is continuous improvement. With that mindset, you can do better, you can get bigger, you can do more.
- Being willing to reinvest is critical to knowing where you can add value and where someone else can add the value that’s missing.
- To scale up to the next level, you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and to know that you need to ask your peers, colleagues, bosses, and people you can trust to give their honest opinion.
- People are usually happy to give you feedback, and when you find someone willing to give it to you because they want you to be successful, you may have found a great mentor.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Monty’s proudest moment occurred three years ago, when they sold a stake in Rural Sourcing to Bain Capital. It took building the right relationships and getting people to believe in the mission, vision, and story of the organization.
- Monty brought them into the center in Alabama to give them a feel for the culture and the organization beyond the numbers. After visiting the center, Monty and the crew from Bain Capital had their flights delayed, so he had the opportunity of spending five hours in a rental car with them.
- No matter how well you practice and prepare, there are always going to be curveballs thrown your way. If you can take them in stride and play your hand well, you can come out the other side and you will win more than you lose.
- The part of the story that Monty was most proud of was his confidence in himself and his ability to be authentic with people that could have been intimidating. Being confident and authentic is what allows you to perform in business development situations, whether that’s selling your business or selling the next deal.
- When you’re authentic, the other person knows exactly what they’re buying. It’s much worse to pretend and end up delivering subpar results.
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say?
- Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers.
- He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail.
- The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination.
- The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say?
- Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers.
- He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail.
- The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination.
- The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Monty’s proudest moment occurred three years ago, when they sold a stake in Rural Sourcing to Bain Capital. It took building the right relationships and getting people to believe in the mission, vision, and story of the organization.
- Monty brought them into the center in Alabama to give them a feel for the culture and the organization beyond the numbers. After visiting the center, Monty and the crew from Bain Capital had their flights delayed, so he had the opportunity of spending five hours in a rental car with them.
- No matter how well you practice and prepare, there are always going to be curveballs thrown your way. If you can take them in stride and play your hand well, you can come out the other side and you will win more than you lose.
- The part of the story that Monty was most proud of was his confidence in himself and his ability to be authentic with people that could have been intimidating. Being confident and authentic is what allows you to perform in business development situations, whether that’s selling your business or selling the next deal.
- When you’re authentic, the other person knows exactly what they’re buying. It’s much worse to pretend and end up delivering subpar results.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The blueprint of Monty’s business is think big, start small, scale up.
- Rural Sourcing started out as a 10 person organization and has since scaled up to 1,000 employees, with the future goal of 3,000 employees and 30 centers all over America.
- It’s a growth mindset that can be applied across a 10,000 person organization, but it can also be applied to your personal life. Great intentions can be sabotaged if you try to do too much, too fast.
- Recognize that, as an individual, you will never be able to do it all. You have personal limitations and must be able to recognize those limitations to unlock your business’ potential.
- You’re not going to be perfect on day 1 or day 10,001. The goal is continuous improvement. With that mindset, you can do better, you can get bigger, you can do more.
- Being willing to reinvest is critical to knowing where you can add value and where someone else can add the value that’s missing.
- To scale up to the next level, you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and to know that you need to ask your peers, colleagues, bosses, and people you can trust to give their honest opinion.
- People are usually happy to give you feedback, and when you find someone willing to give it to you because they want you to be successful, you may have found a great mentor.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Growth is simply about relationships. Being valuable to someone is intrinsically rewarding.
- Over the course of Monty’s career, the Give To Get mentality became a core part of how he built the business. Fundamentally, it’s about whether or not you can create a truly authentic and transparent relationship with someone while helping them.
- Don’t focus on what you’re going to get out of a relationship. Instead, focus on being around interesting people that you can also learn from.
- When you’re networking, throw away the title and industry and try to get to know a person’s story. In addition to being more effective at developing business, getting to know someone on a personal level is what makes life more enjoyable.
- Once you land the first meeting, do your research and invest some of your personal time and energy into making their business better, regardless of the end result.
- If you’ve got something valuable and you deliver that in a highly personalized and warm way, you’ve got a chance to meet anyone.
- Come in with some interesting, customized, tailored questions that show your ability to help and bring perspectives that the client could benefit from. The goal of the first meeting should be to secure the second meeting.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Take us back to the moment when you realized that growth was great and it was something you wanted to focus on.
- Monty landed a job at Arthur Anderson Consulting out of business school, where he got his start learning how to program in COBOL. Business process reengineering and strategy became part of his day to day eventually. It was there that Monty met the group of guys that would start Clarkson Consulting with him in North Carolina.
- Business development came into the picture after Monty realized that if he could sell work where he lived, he wouldn’t have to travel far from his new family. His success became a matter of landing new work, so he decided to become good at it.
- Business all boils down to relationships and solving problems. Monty realized that going into a relationship with the goal of making a sale was counterproductive and so committed to a mindset of helping instead.
- You've got to spend an adequate amount of time appreciating the problem. If you can help a person identify and paint the picture of how gnarly their problem is, then you’re in the right room.
- Appreciating the problem starts with listening and asking good questions, and then discovering whether the issue is a symptom of the problem or if there’s something deeper.
- What are the upstream and downstream effects of the problem? Who else is impacted by it?
- What’s in it for the person you’re talking to if you can help them solve the problem? How will it help their career?
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
#MinuteWithMonty on YouTube
linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton
Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide, shares the key principles of business development success that every subject matter expert can immediately apply to their career. Learn how to ensure every business relationship is a triple win, the one BD strategy that will change the way you think about who to build relationships with, and why discipline is the most important factor in your ultimate success and why it’s a skill that everyone can master.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: When did you first realize that business development or relationship development was a good thing?
- The first time Andrew realized business development was fundamentally about discipline was while working as a barman in Maidenhead where he learned how to connect with people and build rapport very quickly. It was there he met an insurance broker that offered him a job.
- As a student working in the evenings, Andrew learned that if he made 100 phone calls on Monday night he could line up 10 meetings for the rest of the week, which would usually result in 3 sales.
- He started experimenting with the approach he was taught and learned two important lessons very quickly. The method he was taught was tried and tested, and if he didn’t do the work of making the calls, he didn’t get the results he needed. No one else was going to make those calls if he didn’t do it.
- He wasn’t in the relationship-building business yet, that came later. Andrew learned the importance of discipline and trusting the process.
- The idea that people are born with the habits that make them successful is incorrect. Discipline can be learned like any area of expertise.
- The most important thing is to get a meeting, not to have everything prepared. Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you focus on the delivery first, you’ll never set the meeting in the first place.
- You need to pick up the phone and offer them something valuable and interesting as quickly as you can. That’s how you earn the time to develop a relationship afterward.
- Pulling insights from other proposals and using them to intrigue other prospects enough to get a meeting is a good example of an offer that gets people interested.
- You don’t always have to go straight to the ultimate decision maker. Getting a meeting with a mid-level manager can be a great opportunity too. Every meeting is useful in learning more about the company or the industry.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development at its best is win/win/win. Your business wins, the client wins, and thirdly, the client is winning so much that they become your best business development ambassador.
- Raving fans turn into your own personal sales force.
- Focusing on the win for the client secures the win for the business. If your client wins enough, they become predisposed to become a raving fan, but you still have to ask for it.
- Do something for them that gets them something of value and gets you even more. Don’t assume it will happen automatically.
- First, recognize that the person you are working with is a person and not just a job title. They have interests and frustrations, and when you understand that there is something you can engage with together.
- Dinner is a great opportunity to connect with someone outside of the confines and constraints of the work. You can also find a time to accompany them on another aspect of their work and learn more about what they do and what they care about in a way that’s not structured like a meeting.
- The best conversations you can have with a client are the ones where you do 20% of the talking. Figure out questions to act as a stimulus and get them talking.
- There is value and benefit for people in just having the opportunity to talk.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Writing down the seven relationships that are the most important to growing the business was a technique that changed the way Andrew thought about business development.
- Andrew has a lot of great relationships with CEOs in various other businesses, but a lot of them didn’t start out at the top. Those relationships were nurtured over time with people that moved up in their organizations or moved around in their industry.
- Think about how you got into your position and where people are right now that you can connect with.
- When asked to list our most important relationships, we tend to think of our best current relationships by default, but that’s the wrong approach. We should think about the relationships that will have the most impact on our business first.
- The number seven forces you to make choices and really identify those relationships that will move the needle.
- Your list should contain people you have a relationship with, people you don’t know but would like to have a relationship with, and the people you need to have a relationship with who won’t necessarily send you business directly but can help you find it elsewhere.
- You only have a limited amount of time, so you need to be clear on your priorities, not just around what you do but who the most important people are.
- Create a shortlist and give yourself a short timeframe to connect and advance the relationship with those people. If someone is not going to make an impact, it’s better to figure that out in three months rather than three years.
- Be thoughtful. Sit on the other side of the desk and empathize with the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: Tell me a business development story that you're particularly proud of.
- Andrew tells the story of a client in London that BBDO had been working with for 20 years and how they lost most of that client’s work after delivering a terrible piece starring John Cleese.
- Instead of bailing on the client completely, Andrew and the team decided to stick with the unglamorous work that remained and deliver excellent results for the client, knowing that eventually, the rival company that won their former work would stumble.
- By sticking with the client, they had the opportunity three years later to offer a new brand campaign, which was informed by the fact that they were still involved in the business and understood their needs.
- Andrew signed Jamie Oliver, who wasn’t quite famous yet, after scouring London on Easter weekend physically to find him, and landed the business again.
- Andrew learned three key lessons from the experience: be gracious on the way out, treat a rejection as a “not for now,” not a never, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
- Even when you get fired, those relationships are still valuable and worth keeping alive.
- We show our true selves much more in defeat than in easy victories. How you behave during the bad times says much more about your character than when things are good.
- People are human, and it’s always hard to fire someone you’ve built a relationship with. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be, and keep adding value to the relationship after the fact. How you behave afterward will be remembered.
- Even if you don’t win a project, that’s an opportunity to ask for feedback and give the prospect the opportunity to stay in touch. One loss is not the end, it’s the beginning of the next potential project.
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: If you could wave a magic wand and record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- There is very little in business that is as satisfying as business and relationship development. Landing a client and then getting them big wins is fulfilling and it’s a wonderful thing to be good at.
- Define victory as a series of steps, instead of an end result. This makes the journey rewarding and not just about the destination.
- If you can take the first step, which is the hardest, everything else gets easier.
- Start with the end goal in mind, and then break it down into the fundamental steps you need to make each day to achieve that goal, then celebrate when you take those steps. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.
- You can’t control whether a client will say yes, but you can control whether or not you ask them in the first place.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: If you could wave a magic wand and record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- There is very little in business that is as satisfying as business and relationship development. Landing a client and then getting them big wins is fulfilling and it’s a wonderful thing to be good at.
- Define victory as a series of steps, instead of an end result. This makes the journey rewarding and not just about the destination.
- If you can take the first step, which is the hardest, everything else gets easier.
- Start with the end goal in mind, and then break it down into the fundamental steps you need to make each day to achieve that goal, then celebrate when you take those steps. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.
- You can’t control whether a client will say yes, but you can control whether or not you ask them in the first place.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: Tell me a business development story that you're particularly proud of.
- Andrew tells the story of a client in London that BBDO had been working with for 20 years and how they lost most of that client’s work after delivering a terrible piece starring John Cleese.
- Instead of bailing on the client completely, Andrew and the team decided to stick with the unglamorous work that remained and deliver excellent results for the client, knowing that eventually, the rival company that won their former work would stumble.
- By sticking with the client, they had the opportunity three years later to offer a new brand campaign, which was informed by the fact that they were still involved in the business and understood their needs.
- Andrew signed Jamie Oliver, who wasn’t quite famous yet, after scouring London on Easter weekend physically to find him, and landed the business again.
- Andrew learned three key lessons from the experience: be gracious on the way out, treat a rejection as a “not for now,” not a never, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
- Even when you get fired, those relationships are still valuable and worth keeping alive.
- We show our true selves much more in defeat than in easy victories. How you behave during the bad times says much more about your character than when things are good.
- People are human, and it’s always hard to fire someone you’ve built a relationship with. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be, and keep adding value to the relationship after the fact. How you behave afterward will be remembered.
- Even if you don’t win a project, that’s an opportunity to ask for feedback and give the prospect the opportunity to stay in touch. One loss is not the end, it’s the beginning of the next potential project.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Writing down the seven relationships that are the most important to growing the business was a technique that changed the way Andrew thought about business development.
- Andrew has a lot of great relationships with CEOs in various other businesses, but a lot of them didn’t start out at the top. Those relationships were nurtured over time with people that moved up in their organizations or moved around in their industry.
- Think about how you got into your position and where people are right now that you can connect with.
- When asked to list our most important relationships, we tend to think of our best current relationships by default, but that’s the wrong approach. We should think about the relationships that will have the most impact on our business first.
- The number seven forces you to make choices and really identify those relationships that will move the needle.
- Your list should contain people you have a relationship with, people you don’t know but would like to have a relationship with, and the people you need to have a relationship with who won’t necessarily send you business directly but can help you find it elsewhere.
- You only have a limited amount of time, so you need to be clear on your priorities, not just around what you do but who the most important people are.
- Create a shortlist and give yourself a short timeframe to connect and advance the relationship with those people. If someone is not going to make an impact, it’s better to figure that out in three months rather than three years.
- Be thoughtful. Sit on the other side of the desk and empathize with the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development at its best is win/win/win. Your business wins, the client wins, and thirdly, the client is winning so much that they become your best business development ambassador.
- Raving fans turn into your own personal sales force.
- Focusing on the win for the client secures the win for the business. If your client wins enough, they become predisposed to become a raving fan, but you still have to ask for it.
- Do something for them that gets them something of value and gets you even more. Don’t assume it will happen automatically.
- First, recognize that the person you are working with is a person and not just a job title. They have interests and frustrations, and when you understand that there is something you can engage with together.
- Dinner is a great opportunity to connect with someone outside of the confines and constraints of the work. You can also find a time to accompany them on another aspect of their work and learn more about what they do and what they care about in a way that’s not structured like a meeting.
- The best conversations you can have with a client are the ones where you do 20% of the talking. Figure out questions to act as a stimulus and get them talking.
- There is value and benefit for people in just having the opportunity to talk.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Mo asks Andrew Robertson: When did you first realize that business development or relationship development was a good thing?
- The first time Andrew realized business development was fundamentally about discipline was while working as a barman in Maidenhead where he learned how to connect with people and build rapport very quickly. It was there he met an insurance broker that offered him a job.
- As a student working in the evenings, Andrew learned that if he made 100 phone calls on Monday night he could line up 10 meetings for the rest of the week, which would usually result in 3 sales.
- He started experimenting with the approach he was taught and learned two important lessons very quickly. The method he was taught was tried and tested, and if he didn’t do the work of making the calls, he didn’t get the results he needed. No one else was going to make those calls if he didn’t do it.
- He wasn’t in the relationship-building business yet, that came later. Andrew learned the importance of discipline and trusting the process.
- The idea that people are born with the habits that make them successful is incorrect. Discipline can be learned like any area of expertise.
- The most important thing is to get a meeting, not to have everything prepared. Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you focus on the delivery first, you’ll never set the meeting in the first place.
- You need to pick up the phone and offer them something valuable and interesting as quickly as you can. That’s how you earn the time to develop a relationship afterward.
- Pulling insights from other proposals and using them to intrigue other prospects enough to get a meeting is a good example of an offer that gets people interested.
- You don’t always have to go straight to the ultimate decision maker. Getting a meeting with a mid-level manager can be a great opportunity too. Every meeting is useful in learning more about the company or the industry.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
andrew.robertson@bbdo.com
Dennis Baltz shares the wisdom he’s picked up during his 30-year career in helping people solve some of the most challenging risk problems in the world and how being focused on helping people with a purpose has allowed him to work with dozens of Fortune 1000 companies. Learn how to be strategically helpful and how that eliminates the fear from the sales process, the three question framework that is Dennis’s guiding principle for working with prospects, and why business development isn’t as deep as you think.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: When did you realize that business development is something that would be interesting to you?
- Dennis’s interest in business development goes all the way back to his high school days in 1987, where he was trying to find people to participate in market studies. It was a tough gig and he had to stretch outside his comfort zone to get things done.
- Knowing that he had something of value to offer to the people gave him the confidence to ask for something they may not be initially open to. Dennis learned to be interested in the person first and think about the value he could provide, instead of assuming the ‘no’ right away.
- Dennis has been on all sides of the transaction when it comes to risk during his career, so that gives him some perspective on what potential buyers are looking for. Initial meetings are simply about identifying problems and how you can be helpful.
- Preparing for the meetings ahead of time is crucial to Dennis’s success. Following up usually involves finding resources or people to connect the prospect with that can help solve the problem in the meantime.
- Introducing techniques from another industry is a great way to appeal to a potential client’s desire for both safety and innovation.
- On the human side of things, Dennis realized that he needed to stay in front of clients at the beginning of the pandemic and that turned into a monthly blog post that he sends to clients and colleagues. Being open and vulnerable, and sharing some of the personal elements of his life, have had a tremendous impact.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Helping people with a purpose. Being strategically helpful is the name of the game. Sales can be fun when you are offering something of value to someone, not just making a sale.
- Dennis has a stewardship mindset which fits very well into the risk and insurance industry. Helping protect clients from things like cyber risk is both rewarding and extremely valuable to clients.
- The first step is to understand how people think and what they care about.
- There are three questions that all prospects think about when they are making a decision about you: “Do I like you?”, “Do I trust you?”, and “Can you help me?”. Those three questions are the guiding principle in all Dennis’s business development pursuits.
- To become likable, look for uncommon commonalities. When out of the office, Dennis puts where he’s going on his autoresponder message. The more specific you are, the more opportunities you have to discover those uncommon commonalities.
- Dennis shares as well as asks for engagement from the people he knows.
- Every meeting has an agenda and gets a follow up right after.
- Communicating helpfulness starts with understanding the person’s challenges. It’s about introducing the prospect to things and people that can help them in a way that’s not overwhelming.
- Starting with small projects where you can build on the relationship and add value can open the doors to bigger engagements.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Dennis loved so much of the GrowBIG Training, but the one that stands out the most is the idea of the Most Important Thing. When working with clients, Dennis uses an MIT one-sheet to communicate all the work streams that they can work on during the engagement as well as including some potentially new approaches they can take advantage of.
- They are using that very effectively to land new clients because it allows them to understand the exact value WTW brings to the table.
- This approach creates strategic conversations and helps build the trust that client’s have in Dennis and his team’s ability to think around corners.
- Structurally, the slide includes important dates for upcoming content or events, the essential work streams for the client, and disruptive ideas.
- Pre-MIT, the client updates were boring and uninspiring. Refining it down to the Most Important Things and communicating them in a single place that’s easy to understand has made it very valuable.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: Tell me a business development story that you are really proud of.
- In the insurance and risk industry, the sales cycle is somewhere between three to five years, so it’s definitely about playing the long game.
- Organizations aren’t always ready to implement new ideas, but by building the relationship and sharing ideas with prospects you increase your chances of eventually landing the client.
- One of the business development stories that Dennis is most proud of is an example of that. He got a team together to introduce an interesting, innovative idea to a company they weren’t yet working with and they ended up loving it, but it wasn’t a priority at the time. It wasn’t until three years later, when the company reached out, ready to go and looking specifically for Dennis to get it done. The client knew they were the right team and they didn’t have to compete with anyone for the work because of that initial investment.
- They managed to thread the needle on a number of regulatory issues and help the client overcome those barriers.
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: If you could go back in time and record a video around business development to send to your younger self, what would it say?
- Dennis would say “It’s not that deep” Business development can be simple.
- Trust yourself and start sooner. Dennis spent the first 15 years getting the expertise he thought he needed to be able to sell, but you can start helping people much sooner than that.
- Business development as a discipline is something that’s missing for young people. We need to help organizations teach that business development is not scary.
- Using the whole brain approach to helping people is key.
- Connecting with people doesn’t have to be hard. Dennis will frequently stop and record a quick video to send to someone just to stay in touch and let them know they were thinking of them. Videos allow you to be authentic, and that can’t be replicated with other tools like email.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: If you could go back in time and record a video around business development to send to your younger self, what would it say?
- Dennis would say “It’s not that deep” Business development can be simple.
- Trust yourself and start sooner. Dennis spent the first 15 years getting the expertise he thought he needed to be able to sell, but you can start helping people much sooner than that.
- Business development as a discipline is something that’s missing for young people. We need to help organizations teach that business development is not scary.
- Using the whole brain approach to helping people is key.
- Connecting with people doesn’t have to be hard. Dennis will frequently stop and record a quick video to send to someone just to stay in touch and let them know they were thinking of them. Videos allow you to be authentic, and that can’t be replicated with other tools like email.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: Tell me a business development story that you are really proud of.
- In the insurance and risk industry, the sales cycle is somewhere between three to five years, so it’s definitely about playing the long game.
- Organizations aren’t always ready to implement new ideas, but by building the relationship and sharing ideas with prospects you increase your chances of eventually landing the client.
- One of the business development stories that Dennis is most proud of is an example of that. He got a team together to introduce an interesting, innovative idea to a company they weren’t yet working with and they ended up loving it, but it wasn’t a priority at the time. It wasn’t until three years later, when the company reached out, ready to go and looking specifically for Dennis to get it done. The client knew they were the right team and they didn’t have to compete with anyone for the work because of that initial investment.
- They managed to thread the needle on a number of regulatory issues and help the client overcome those barriers.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Dennis loved so much of the GrowBIG Training, but the one that stands out the most is the idea of the Most Important Thing. When working with clients, Dennis uses an MIT one-sheet to communicate all the work streams that they can work on during the engagement as well as including some potentially new approaches they can take advantage of.
- They are using that very effectively to land new clients because it allows them to understand the exact value WTW brings to the table.
- This approach creates strategic conversations and helps build the trust that client’s have in Dennis and his team’s ability to think around corners.
- Structurally, the slide includes important dates for upcoming content or events, the essential work streams for the client, and disruptive ideas.
- Pre-MIT, the client updates were boring and uninspiring. Refining it down to the Most Important Things and communicating them in a single place that’s easy to understand has made it very valuable.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Helping people with a purpose. Being strategically helpful is the name of the game. Sales can be fun when you are offering something of value to someone, not just making a sale.
- Dennis has a stewardship mindset which fits very well into the risk and insurance industry. Helping protect clients from things like cyber risk is both rewarding and extremely valuable to clients.
- The first step is to understand how people think and what they care about.
- There are three questions that all prospects think about when they are making a decision about you: “Do I like you?”, “Do I trust you?”, and “Can you help me?”. Those three questions are the guiding principle in all Dennis’s business development pursuits.
- To become likable, look for uncommon commonalities. When out of the office, Dennis puts where he’s going on his autoresponder message. The more specific you are, the more opportunities you have to discover those uncommon commonalities.
- Dennis shares as well as asks for engagement from the people he knows.
- Every meeting has an agenda and gets a follow up right after.
- Communicating helpfulness starts with understanding the person’s challenges. It’s about introducing the prospect to things and people that can help them in a way that’s not overwhelming.
- Starting with small projects where you can build on the relationship and add value can open the doors to bigger engagements.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Mo asks Dennis Baltz: When did you realize that business development is something that would be interesting to you?
- Dennis’s interest in business development goes all the way back to his high school days in 1987, where he was trying to find people to participate in market studies. It was a tough gig and he had to stretch outside his comfort zone to get things done.
- Knowing that he had something of value to offer to the people gave him the confidence to ask for something they may not be initially open to. Dennis learned to be interested in the person first and think about the value he could provide, instead of assuming the ‘no’ right away.
- Dennis has been on all sides of the transaction when it comes to risk during his career, so that gives him some perspective on what potential buyers are looking for. Initial meetings are simply about identifying problems and how you can be helpful.
- Preparing for the meetings ahead of time is crucial to Dennis’s success. Following up usually involves finding resources or people to connect the prospect with that can help solve the problem in the meantime.
- Introducing techniques from another industry is a great way to appeal to a potential client’s desire for both safety and innovation.
- On the human side of things, Dennis realized that he needed to stay in front of clients at the beginning of the pandemic and that turned into a monthly blog post that he sends to clients and colleagues. Being open and vulnerable, and sharing some of the personal elements of his life, have had a tremendous impact.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/dennisbaltz
dennis.baltz@willistowerswatson.com
Chris Graham shares his growth story of both personal and professional development, and how he uses his skills and connections in his private equity firm Crown Capital Investments to impact the communities and families of the businesses they’re invested in. Learn how Chris developed the skills needed to create powerful relationships, but also the internal mindset he was missing that prevented him from scaling his impact to what he knew it could be; how to think bigger, quicker, and how to find a mentor and get them invested in your success.
Mo asks Chris Graham: When was the moment you realized growth was a good thing?
- As a lawyer, you’re responsible for the whole gamut of the business. The whole process is about connecting and engaging with clients on a deeper level, and Chris realized that he needed a new approach in order to scale.
- Everybody who is striving to be more has to cut what they are good at, to take a risk at doing something better.
- Chris had a great relationship with his clients but being limited to a one-to-one impact felt restricting for what he wanted to do so he pivoted from law into private equity. He had to give up what he had been building for 20 years to have an opportunity to make an even greater impact.
- His experience over the 20 years of growing his law practice gave him a unique perspective into what entrepreneurs can do to grow their business. Taking that experience into the private equity space, along with the confidence of a few key families, helped Chris find success in his new line of work.
- The transition from one-to-one to one-to-many didn’t happen all at once.
- Chris started things off by taking a lot of the risk on himself. He bet on himself to make it easier for clients to also bet on him too.
- When he decided to move into private equity, Chris scaled back his law firm to give himself more bandwidth and started blocking off time to focus on the new project. This gave him the room to build the new company.
- If you don’t block time, there will always be something to absorb the time you didn’t block for your new venture. You’ll never get off the old ladder if you don’t block off time for the new ladder.
Mo asks Chris Graham: What is your personal definition of growth?
- Chris has always been driven by learning new things. Since he spends nearly all his time now selling, he focuses on reteaching all the things he has learned over the years.
- What people really want is for someone to help them identify problems they didn’t even know they had and help them solve those problems.
- As experts, it’s very easy to get so focused on what you know that you aren’t even aware of the issues that are just outside your expertise.
- The mindset that Chris carries into a meeting is one of being excited to learn and showing how he can help. By being truly concerned about the other person, it’s a lot easier to customize your solution to actually solve their problem.
- When speaking with potential investors, Chris is looking to learn what their investment goals are to see if they are aligned with them. His company has a well defined mission and invests in very specific types of companies. If the opportunity is not a fit, that’s okay.
- If the goals are aligned but the person may not be ready to go yet, Chris tries to break the information into more bite-sized pieces instead of overwhelming them with everything at once.
- Dripping out follow-up content has made building trust with investors a success.
Mo asks Chris Graham: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- One of Chris’s favorite strategies actually came from one of Mo’s Grow Big Playbook emails about how long your emails should be.
- When you’re in a moment, it can be hard to step back and see the bigger picture. Try to get a greater perspective and see if what you are considering is being given too much or too little importance.
- Whenever you’re worried about whether something is worth your time, measure it against whether you’re future self will be proud of it.
- Chris starts his day off at 5 AM with some exercise and reading time to get into the right mindset for the work that day. He also has time blocked off everyday that allows him to focus, think, catch up, and tackle problems that arise.
- Impact isn’t always about the time involved, it can also involve leveraging relationships and connection. When determining what to focus on, Chris looks at impact, connection, and how something aligns with his long-term vision.
- Every mission is a vision of a future that’s better than today. Chris’s vision is one of restoring community capitalism and rebuilding the communities and families that are impacted by those companies.
- Find the intersection between something you are really interested in and having a big impact on the world. The problem with big missions is that they take a long time to fulfill, so you better be interested in it.
Mo asks Chris Graham: What growth story are you most personally proud of?
- Making the pivot from law to private equity is the thing that Chris is the most proud of. The pivot was hard and took a long time but it has allowed him to make more impact than ever before.
- One of the examples that Chris talks about is a company where Chris implemented his methodology of growth and after 19 months they grew from $2.3 million to $4.9 million in profit. Rather than just generate more sales, Chris helped them become more process efficient.
- Chris grew up in a trailer park back in the 70’s where there was still a sense of community. That experience is why Chris is so dedicated to the mission of rehabilitating those kinds of communities now.
- It was a long process of learning and growing before Chris was able to connect all the dots. Being raised in a poor community, Chris wasn’t exposed to the idea of entrepreneurship and the impact you can have at that level until after he began his career in law.
- Chris is insatiably curious, which is a trait that has propelled him throughout his career. That curiosity is what allowed Chris to make the jump from each level to the next.
- After working with families that owned businesses for 17 years, Chris could see things that they couldn’t. This was a big motivation for buying the first business.
- Chris realized that, over the period of growing the law firm from eight lawyers to 22 lawyers over 24 months, he got himself into a position where he couldn’t use his strengths. Instead of floundering, Chris made the hard decision to cut back to what was working before, which allowed him to eventually make the transition to bigger and better things.
Mo asks Chris Graham: If you could record a video around growth skills and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Chris’s message would be simple: Think bigger, quicker.
- Chris had been entrepreneurial his whole career, but he didn’t have the vision at the time to be able to make the leap to start his own law firm.
- Before starting Crown Capital, Chris didn’t know exactly what a private equity firm did on a day-to-day basis, but he knew he was interested and there was an opportunity for him there. He reached out to other private equity firms and sold them on the skills and connections he had to get some experience, and doing that eliminated the mystery.
- Use the value you have and try to get involved. Maybe you’ll have a better way to do it, which is what Chris discovered, or you will learn what you need to know to make a decision.
- Asking somebody to mentor you is a powerful move, people love to mentor when they can and often they can become invested in your success. A great question to ask is, “I need a mentor in this space to make the transition. Are you available?”
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Dan Pink Reveals How to Become a Sales and Business Development Ninja (season 1 episode 9)
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Mo asks Chris Graham: If you could record a video around growth skills and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Chris’s message would be simple: Think bigger, quicker.
- Chris had been entrepreneurial his whole career, but he didn’t have the vision at the time to be able to make the leap to start his own law firm.
- Before starting Crown Capital, Chris didn’t know exactly what a private equity firm did on a day-to-day basis, but he knew he was interested and there was an opportunity for him there. He reached out to other private equity firms and sold them on the skills and connections he had to get some experience, and doing that eliminated the mystery.
- Use the value you have and try to get involved. Maybe you’ll have a better way to do it, which is what Chris discovered, or you will learn what you need to know to make a decision.
- Asking somebody to mentor you is a powerful move, people love to mentor when they can and often they can become invested in your success. A great question to ask is, “I need a mentor in this space to make the transition. Are you available?”
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Mo asks Chris Graham: What growth story are you most personally proud of?
- Making the pivot from law to private equity is the thing that Chris is the most proud of. The pivot was hard and took a long time but it has allowed him to make more impact than ever before.
- One of the examples that Chris talks about is a company where Chris implemented his methodology of growth and after 19 months they grew from $2.3 million to $4.9 million in profit. Rather than just generate more sales, Chris helped them become more process efficient.
- Chris grew up in a trailer park back in the 70’s where there was still a sense of community. That experience is why Chris is so dedicated to the mission of rehabilitating those kinds of communities now.
- It was a long process of learning and growing before Chris was able to connect all the dots. Being raised in a poor community, Chris wasn’t exposed to the idea of entrepreneurship and the impact you can have at that level until after he began his career in law.
- Chris is insatiably curious, which is a trait that has propelled him throughout his career. That curiosity is what allowed Chris to make the jump from each level to the next.
- After working with families that owned businesses for 17 years, Chris could see things that they couldn’t. This was a big motivation for buying the first business.
- Chris realized that, over the period of growing the law firm from eight lawyers to 22 lawyers over 24 months, he got himself into a position where he couldn’t use his strengths. Instead of floundering, Chris made the hard decision to cut back to what was working before, which allowed him to eventually make the transition to bigger and better things.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Mo asks Chris Graham: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- One of Chris’s favorite strategies actually came from one of Mo’s Grow Big Playbook emails about how long your emails should be.
- When you’re in a moment, it can be hard to step back and see the bigger picture. Try to get a greater perspective and see if what you are considering is being given too much or too little importance.
- Whenever you’re worried about whether something is worth your time, measure it against whether you’re future self will be proud of it.
- Chris starts his day off at 5 AM with some exercise and reading time to get into the right mindset for the work that day. He also has time blocked off everyday that allows him to focus, think, catch up, and tackle problems that arise.
- Impact isn’t always about the time involved, it can also involve leveraging relationships and connection. When determining what to focus on, Chris looks at impact, connection, and how something aligns with his long-term vision.
- Every mission is a vision of a future that’s better than today. Chris’s vision is one of restoring community capitalism and rebuilding the communities and families that are impacted by those companies.
- Find the intersection between something you are really interested in and having a big impact on the world. The problem with big missions is that they take a long time to fulfill, so you better be interested in it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Mo asks Chris Graham: What is your personal definition of growth?
- Chris has always been driven by learning new things. Since he spends nearly all his time now selling, he focuses on reteaching all the things he has learned over the years.
- What people really want is for someone to help them identify problems they didn’t even know they had and help them solve those problems.
- As experts, it’s very easy to get so focused on what you know that you aren’t even aware of the issues that are just outside your expertise.
- The mindset that Chris carries into a meeting is one of being excited to learn and showing how he can help. By being truly concerned about the other person, it’s a lot easier to customize your solution to actually solve their problem.
- When speaking with potential investors, Chris is looking to learn what their investment goals are to see if they are aligned with them. His company has a well defined mission and invests in very specific types of companies. If the opportunity is not a fit, that’s okay.
- If the goals are aligned but the person may not be ready to go yet, Chris tries to break the information into more bite-sized pieces instead of overwhelming them with everything at once.
- Dripping out follow-up content has made building trust with investors a success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Mo asks Chris Graham: When was the moment you realized growth was a good thing?
- As a lawyer, you’re responsible for the whole gamut of the business. The whole process is about connecting and engaging with clients on a deeper level, and Chris realized that he needed a new approach in order to scale.
- Everybody who is striving to be more has to cut what they are good at, to take a risk at doing something better.
- Chris had a great relationship with his clients but being limited to a one-to-one impact felt restricting for what he wanted to do so he pivoted from law into private equity. He had to give up what he had been building for 20 years to have an opportunity to make an even greater impact.
- His experience over the 20 years of growing his law practice gave him a unique perspective into what entrepreneurs can do to grow their business. Taking that experience into the private equity space, along with the confidence of a few key families, helped Chris find success in his new line of work.
- The transition from one-to-one to one-to-many didn’t happen all at once.
- Chris started things off by taking a lot of the risk on himself. He bet on himself to make it easier for clients to also bet on him too.
- When he decided to move into private equity, Chris scaled back his law firm to give himself more bandwidth and started blocking off time to focus on the new project. This gave him the room to build the new company.
- If you don’t block time, there will always be something to absorb the time you didn’t block for your new venture. You’ll never get off the old ladder if you don’t block off time for the new ladder.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/company/crowncapitalinvestments
linkedin.com/in/christophertgraham25
cgraham@ccfos.com
crown-inv.com
Crown Capital Investments on YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UCLstgUIyDH9bRFTHH0vWAbg
Cyril Peupion shares his world-class expertise on managing the way you work and dives into how he thinks about business development, making an impact, and nurturing relationships that can change your life. Find out how to shift your mindset to make getting the most important work done the default instead of the exception, how to prioritize impact in everything you do, and the most important lesson Cyril wished he learned decades ago.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: When was the moment you realized that growth was great?
- Cyril started his own business with a partner after completing his MBA so he had an interest in business development right from the beginning.
- With time, he realized how much he had to learn about sales and relationship building.
- Impact is a keyword in how Cyril views the world. If he had only one principle piece of advice to give to people, it would be to prioritize your calendar according to impact.
- Cyril tells the story of a client he was working with and the impact on their life the work had. As great as getting to inbox zero and having an organized and neat work environment, being able to sleep at night and actually turn off her mind was completely life-changing.
- When you have something as powerful and impactful on people’s lives, business development becomes easy and natural. Cyril considers his business to be in service to his clients.
- When you change your way of working it changes your life, which is why Cyril doesn’t view his work as business development. Instead, he sees it as bringing his service to the people that need it.
- When it comes to prioritizing for impact, you have to start with a mind shift. High performers don’t look at when things are due, they look at the impact of the things they need to do first.
- Think quarterly, plan weekly, and act daily. Thinking quarterly is one of the most effective time frames to think about work while incorporating your long-term vision. Planning each week is an important tempo for progressing your top two or three priorities. A crisis will arrive eventually, but you need to run your tasks through the four-word framework of What Impact Long-Term.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Cyril’s definition has evolved over the years. What began as selling became serving.
- Cyril is very clear on who he helps and how he can do it, as well as the people that he’s not right for.
- Cyril’s passion for what he does is derived from clarity on who can help. When it comes to first meetings, the goal is not to sell his services but to simply find out if they are a good match and to find the right solution for the prospect, even if that means referring them to someone else.
- It’s vital to surround yourself with the right people and have an environment of accountability while keeping a mentality of continuous learning.
- Masterminds and accountability partners are crucial for your personal and business growth. Find people who are playing at the same level as you and with the same giving mindset.
- People typically allow their day to be filled up but all the little things that inevitably come up. One of the first exercises Cyril has leadership teams walk through is creating their ideal week, and then creating a calendar by working backward from the most important things you can do with your time.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The overall mindset of the Snowball Training is what stands out for Cyril. Going from selling to serving and being proud of the value that you are bringing to your clients is pivotal.
- Cyril also appreciates the concept of nurturing raving fans and uses the strategy to make sure he’s always working on the most important relationships associated with his business.
- There is a strong link between performance and joy.
- People value what they help to create. Cyril noticed that the clients that contribute to the work in more of a partnership style relationship usually value the work more.
- Without the mindset shift of going from selling to helping, you will never achieve your true potential in your career.
- “The secret of living is giving.” -Winston Churchill
- When you understand the giving mindset, it will change the way you look at business and life.
- When planning your ideal work for business development, relationship building with your raving fans and developing yourself and your team, are the things that will have the most significant long-term impact. How much time each day do you need to protect to get those done each day?
- The rule is that you can move this meeting time with yourself around, but you can’t delete it.
- Business development is often composed of a lot of little tasks. Cyril uses the Outlook Task tool to categorize emails and tasks he needs to address during the time he’s set aside each day to focus on business development.
- Your calendar should be filled with Meetings With Yourself and you should respect them as much as you do meetings with other people.
- You say no all the time. When you say yes to something, you are saying no to everything else, whether you are conscious of that or not.
- When someone asks you to do something, pause and run through the “Hell Ya/No” framework.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: Tell me of a business development story that you are very proud of.
- Years ago, Cyril got in touch with a partner at one of the largest consulting firms in the world. He was invited to present at one of their conferences in Barcelona about the Work Smarter, Live Better strategy and at the end of the presentation, Cyril got a 100% feedback rating from the 100+ people that attended his talk.
- This was the beginning of a great business relationship that is now eight years strong with Cyril’s favorite client.
- Cyril wasn’t a speaker, so the presentation was outside of his comfort zone. He prepared for the speech and took the opportunity very seriously.
- Cyril values continuous improvement very highly, and that presentation was a validation of that core belief.
- Every quarter, Cyril chooses a few things to accomplish that push him out of his comfort zone. He wasn’t always a skilled speaker, so he worked with a speaking coach to improve his skills. When the pandemic hit, he found an ex-director to help train him and his team to be better on camera. Every quarter choose one thing that will put you out of your comfort zone and will help you move the needle on your goals.
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Cyril describes a restaurant in Paris that is the best in the world in delivering a ribeye and has a queue lined up every single day no matter the weather conditions. Cyril would tell himself to become the master of one trade and become extraordinary at one thing.
- Follow your heart and become the expert in that area.
- Habits are what build expertise and world-class skills. There is a lot of joy in embracing the boring excellence that makes you great.
- Cyril does one thing and does it very well. He’s more than happy to refer work that’s not in his wheelhouse to other experts he knows can take care of it.
- If you can find something that you are passionate about, that the market will pay a premium rate for, and you are good at, you have found something worth pursuing.
- Cyril would also recommend never stopping learning. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Gandhi
- Block time to read every day. Set aside time every quarter to attend new training. Surround yourself with great mentors and a supportive community.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Cyril describes a restaurant in Paris that is the best in the world in delivering a ribeye and has a queue lined up every single day no matter the weather conditions. Cyril would tell himself to become the master of one trade and become extraordinary at one thing.
- Follow your heart and become the expert in that area.
- Habits are what build expertise and world-class skills. There is a lot of joy in embracing the boring excellence that makes you great.
- Cyril does one thing and does it very well. He’s more than happy to refer work that’s not in his wheelhouse to other experts he knows can take care of it.
- If you can find something that you are passionate about, that the market will pay a premium rate for, and you are good at, you have found something worth pursuing.
- Cyril would also recommend never stopping learning. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Gandhi
- Block time to read every day. Set aside time every quarter to attend new training. Surround yourself with great mentors and a supportive community.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: Tell me of a business development story that you are very proud of.
- Years ago, Cyril got in touch with a partner at one of the largest consulting firms in the world. He was invited to present at one of their conferences in Barcelona about the Work Smarter, Live Better strategy and at the end of the presentation, Cyril got a 100% feedback rating from the 100+ people that attended his talk.
- This was the beginning of a great business relationship that is now eight years strong with Cyril’s favorite client.
- Cyril wasn’t a speaker, so the presentation was outside of his comfort zone. He prepared for the speech and took the opportunity very seriously.
- Cyril values continuous improvement very highly, and that presentation was a validation of that core belief.
- Every quarter, Cyril chooses a few things to accomplish that push him out of his comfort zone. He wasn’t always a skilled speaker, so he worked with a speaking coach to improve his skills. When the pandemic hit, he found an ex-director to help train him and his team to be better on camera. Every quarter choose one thing that will put you out of your comfort zone and will help you move the needle on your goals.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The overall mindset of the Snowball Training is what stands out for Cyril. Going from selling to serving and being proud of the value that you are bringing to your clients is pivotal.
- Cyril also appreciates the concept of nurturing raving fans and uses the strategy to make sure he’s always working on the most important relationships associated with his business.
- There is a strong link between performance and joy.
- People value what they help to create. Cyril noticed that the clients that contribute to the work in more of a partnership style relationship usually value the work more.
- Without the mindset shift of going from selling to helping, you will never achieve your true potential in your career.
- “The secret of living is giving.” -Winston Churchill
- When you understand the giving mindset, it will change the way you look at business and life.
- When planning your ideal work for business development, relationship building with your raving fans and developing yourself and your team, are the things that will have the most significant long-term impact. How much time each day do you need to protect to get those done each day?
- The rule is that you can move this meeting time with yourself around, but you can’t delete it.
- Business development is often composed of a lot of little tasks. Cyril uses the Outlook Task tool to categorize emails and tasks he needs to address during the time he’s set aside each day to focus on business development.
- Your calendar should be filled with Meetings With Yourself and you should respect them as much as you do meetings with other people.
- You say no all the time. When you say yes to something, you are saying no to everything else, whether you are conscious of that or not.
- When someone asks you to do something, pause and run through the “Hell Ya/No” framework.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Cyril’s definition has evolved over the years. What began as selling became serving.
- Cyril is very clear on who he helps and how he can do it, as well as the people that he’s not right for.
- Cyril’s passion for what he does is derived from clarity on who can help. When it comes to first meetings, the goal is not to sell his services but to simply find out if they are a good match and to find the right solution for the prospect, even if that means referring them to someone else.
- It’s vital to surround yourself with the right people and have an environment of accountability while keeping a mentality of continuous learning.
- Masterminds and accountability partners are crucial for your personal and business growth. Find people who are playing at the same level as you and with the same giving mindset.
- People typically allow their day to be filled up but all the little things that inevitably come up. One of the first exercises Cyril has leadership teams walk through is creating their ideal week, and then creating a calendar by working backward from the most important things you can do with your time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
Mo asks Cyril Peupion: When was the moment you realized that growth was great?
- Cyril started his own business with a partner after completing his MBA so he had an interest in business development right from the beginning.
- With time, he realized how much he had to learn about sales and relationship building.
- Impact is a keyword in how Cyril views the world. If he had only one principle piece of advice to give to people, it would be to prioritize your calendar according to impact.
- Cyril tells the story of a client he was working with and the impact on their life the work had. As great as getting to inbox zero and having an organized and neat work environment, being able to sleep at night and actually turn off her mind was completely life-changing.
- When you have something as powerful and impactful on people’s lives, business development becomes easy and natural. Cyril considers his business to be in service to his clients.
- When you change your way of working it changes your life, which is why Cyril doesn’t view his work as business development. Instead, he sees it as bringing his service to the people that need it.
- When it comes to prioritizing for impact, you have to start with a mind shift. High performers don’t look at when things are due, they look at the impact of the things they need to do first.
- Think quarterly, plan weekly, and act daily. Thinking quarterly is one of the most effective time frames to think about work while incorporating your long-term vision. Planning each week is an important tempo for progressing your top two or three priorities. A crisis will arrive eventually, but you need to run your tasks through the four-word framework of What Impact Long-Term.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
wslb.com
Linda Klein drops the mic with her incredible insights and hard-won wisdom in this episode where she shares her experience working with clients as a lawyer and creating relationships through her passion to help others. Find out how to prepare for a meeting in a way that will make you more confident and comfortable and capable of helping a prospect with their issues, the most important life lesson she learned from her father and how it applies to growing a business, and why you shouldn’t ever lose your passion for getting involved and helping other people.
Mo asks Linda Klein: When was the moment that you realized that growth was great?
- Linda separates the ideas of business development and building a relationship. In the beginning of Linda’s career as a lawyer, she spent a lot of time learning about her client’s business and that relationship building always paid off.
- It’s not about developing the business, it’s about developing the relationship.
- Linda tells the story of how her grandfather started a grocery business in the early days of the Great Depression, how understanding and getting to know the people in the community became a crucial reason for their success, how that also inspired Linda and how she built her career.
- When meeting new people, Linda is always looking for the things outside the day-to-day business relationship that are important to them. There is always a place where you can connect.
- It’s important to be hireable and to share your expertise, but it’s more important to be human first.
- Start with something relatable instead of leading with your area of expertise and what services you can offer. The number one correlation to likeability is commonality. Always look for the common areas you can connect on.
- Every conversation and interaction you have will be different, but the person you’re speaking with will always give you clues. By offering details and asking for details, you’re going to find areas of commonality.
- It’s extremely important for diverse members of your team to feel like they can find areas to connect.
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Adding value to a client’s business by solving the problem. Service professionals often only look at a client’s issue through the lens of their own expertise, but that’s not the way to grow a business.
- Asking for the sale before solving the problem (or diagnosing the problem) isn’t going to work.
- Linda looks for ways to solve client problems that keep them from growing their own business. Sometimes that means referring the client to someone else when the issue is outside her area of expertise.
- Linda starts solving the problem before a transaction has occurred. We can sense when someone is trying to sell us before any value has really been added to the relationship and it usually makes us want to run away.
- Go into the first meeting simply to get to know somebody instead of trying to close the sale. When you help someone achieve their goals, you feel great and you increase the odds of them turning into a paying client.
- When following up, think about who you could connect the person with and what the person said in the initial meeting that you continue the conversation with.
- If you have taken your time to get to know the industry your prospect is in, you will know where the pain points are and have opportunities to help.
- The number one thing you can do to be proactive in building relationships is writing down your top five to ten people that are important to your career and using that to make sure you're constantly being helpful.
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Linda never wants to be unprepared in her work, and the same is true in meeting with a client, which is why Dynamic Meeting Prep is Linda’s favorite strategy.
- A potential client’s business always has important area-specific language that they use that you should know.
- It’s amazing how much companies have on their website and what you can learn by doing some research. Those insights are invaluable during a meeting, and preparing for a meeting pays dividends when you land the business because then you have a huge head start.
- Everybody prepares for delivery meetings but rarely do people prepare for the initial meeting.
- You can’t prepare for the first meeting at a dinner before the meeting day. Research is crucial. Make preparation a priority and get the team strategy outlined ahead of time.
- Your team needs to show the client that they are seamless, working together and solving the client’s problems.
- Figure out what your goal for the meeting is, what the frame for the meeting is and how to kick it off, what the big questions that might be asked, natural next steps, and potential cliffhangers you can use to get the next meeting.
- Being direct can be a challenge but being authentic about the fact that you want to simply be helpful is the best approach.
- Be ready to discuss what the client wants to discuss. The more prepared you are in advance, the easier it will be to switch gears and the more comfortable you will be.
Mo asks Linda Klein: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Many years ago Linda did a favor for an accountant without sending him a bill. Five years later, the accountant called mainly to thank her and ask if she could help a friend of his.
- The new client was entering a mature market with lots of competition, but after Linda helped him start and grow his business, within nine months his company was the largest client for Linda’s firm.
- Linda was able to make a difference in two people’s lives. For the client, she helped him start a business that changed him and his family’s lives, and for the accountant, she impacted him deeply enough for it to come back to her five years later.
- Linda has developed a business development program by volunteering.
- Linda doesn’t have a lot of free time, but for her, volunteering and being helpful is fun and enjoyable so the business development benefits come naturally.
- If you’re curious and read the news about your clients, you will find opportunities to reach out and be helpful. Being involved in your community gives you scale in meeting new people.
- Find what you like and get involved in that community. There are an infinite number of opportunities to get involved and meet like-minded people.
Mo asks Linda Klein: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Business development is about passion. Life is about passion. Don’t lose your passion for getting involved. Helping others is the most satisfying thing you can do.
- In so many ways it’s easier to make a dollar than it is to make a difference, but you can do both at the same time.
- Take the time to get good at what you do first, and then you’ll have something valuable to sell. If you’re going to say no, say it with kindness.
- “People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
- Treat people right. People you interact with today may be future clients and you should treat them with respect and kindness.
- If you’re passionate about what you do, it will come through in your authenticity.
- Some of your best experiences will come from wasting time. If you rigidly plan, you might say no to something that is an incredible opportunity.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Linda Klein: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Business development is about passion. Life is about passion. Don’t lose your passion for getting involved. Helping others is the most satisfying thing you can do.
- In so many ways it’s easier to make a dollar than it is to make a difference, but you can do both at the same time.
- Take the time to get good at what you do first, and then you’ll have something valuable to sell. If you’re going to say no, say it with kindness.
- “People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
- Treat people right. People you interact with today may be future clients and you should treat them with respect and kindness.
- If you’re passionate about what you do, it will come through in your authenticity.
- Some of your best experiences will come from wasting time. If you rigidly plan, you might say no to something that is an incredible opportunity.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Linda Klein: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Many years ago Linda did a favor for an accountant without sending him a bill. Five years later, the accountant called mainly to thank her and ask if she could help a friend of his.
- The new client was entering a mature market with lots of competition, but after Linda helped him start and grow his business, within nine months his company was the largest client for Linda’s firm.
- Linda was able to make a difference in two people’s lives. For the client, she helped him start a business that changed him and his family’s lives, and for the accountant, she impacted him deeply enough for it to come back to her five years later.
- Linda has developed a business development program by volunteering.
- Linda doesn’t have a lot of free time, but for her, volunteering and being helpful is fun and enjoyable so the business development benefits come naturally.
- If you’re curious and read the news about your clients, you will find opportunities to reach out and be helpful. Being involved in your community gives you scale in meeting new people.
- Find what you like and get involved in that community. There are an infinite number of opportunities to get involved and meet like-minded people.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Linda never wants to be unprepared in her work, and the same is true in meeting with a client, which is why Dynamic Meeting Prep is Linda’s favorite strategy.
- A potential client’s business always has important area-specific language that they use that you should know.
- It’s amazing how much companies have on their website and what you can learn by doing some research. Those insights are invaluable during a meeting, and preparing for a meeting pays dividends when you land the business because then you have a huge head start.
- Everybody prepares for delivery meetings but rarely do people prepare for the initial meeting.
- You can’t prepare for the first meeting at a dinner before the meeting day. Research is crucial. Make preparation a priority and get the team strategy outlined ahead of time.
- Your team needs to show the client that they are seamless, working together and solving the client’s problems.
- Figure out what your goal for the meeting is, what the frame for the meeting is and how to kick it off, what the big questions that might be asked, natural next steps, and potential cliffhangers you can use to get the next meeting.
- Being direct can be a challenge but being authentic about the fact that you want to simply be helpful is the best approach.
- Be ready to discuss what the client wants to discuss. The more prepared you are in advance, the easier it will be to switch gears and the more comfortable you will be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Adding value to a client’s business by solving the problem. Service professionals often only look at a client’s issue through the lens of their own expertise, but that’s not the way to grow a business.
- Asking for the sale before solving the problem (or diagnosing the problem) isn’t going to work.
- Linda looks for ways to solve client problems that keep them from growing their own business. Sometimes that means referring the client to someone else when the issue is outside her area of expertise.
- Linda starts solving the problem before a transaction has occurred. We can sense when someone is trying to sell us before any value has really been added to the relationship and it usually makes us want to run away.
- Go into the first meeting simply to get to know somebody instead of trying to close the sale. When you help someone achieve their goals, you feel great and you increase the odds of them turning into a paying client.
- When following up, think about who you could connect the person with and what the person said in the initial meeting that you continue the conversation with.
- If you have taken your time to get to know the industry your prospect is in, you will know where the pain points are and have opportunities to help.
- The number one thing you can do to be proactive in building relationships is writing down your top five to ten people that are important to your career and using that to make sure you're constantly being helpful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Mo asks Linda Klein: When was the moment that you realized that growth was great?
- Linda separates the ideas of business development and building a relationship. In the beginning of Linda’s career as a lawyer, she spent a lot of time learning about her client’s business and that relationship building always paid off.
- It’s not about developing the business, it’s about developing the relationship.
- Linda tells the story of how her grandfather started a grocery business in the early days of the Great Depression, how understanding and getting to know the people in the community became a crucial reason for their success, how that also inspired Linda and how she built her career.
- When meeting new people, Linda is always looking for the things outside the day-to-day business relationship that are important to them. There is always a place where you can connect.
- It’s important to be hireable and to share your expertise, but it’s more important to be human first.
- Start with something relatable instead of leading with your area of expertise and what services you can offer. The number one correlation to likeability is commonality. Always look for the common areas you can connect on.
- Every conversation and interaction you have will be different, but the person you’re speaking with will always give you clues. By offering details and asking for details, you’re going to find areas of commonality.
- It’s extremely important for diverse members of your team to feel like they can find areas to connect.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lklein@bakerdonelson.com
linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw
Henning Streubel shares his thoughts on developing relationships and how to not only go from prospect to client, but from client to friend. He is the Managing Director and Senior Partner // Managing Director of the West Coast System of Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Learn how insight allows you to create impact and trust, why growth and comfort can’t coexist when it comes to doing what’s right and creating deep and meaningful relationships in your life, and how to pick yourself back up after the inevitable setbacks of a growth-oriented mindset.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: When was the moment that growth and business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Henning is intrinsically motivated to help people, but it’s less about business development and sales. Whenever he meets someone, he has a tendency to ask deep questions.
- Early in his career working for a utility client in Germany, he realized that the client’s company had many more problems than he initially thought which he discovered by simply having a deep conversation.
- Because of those conversations, the client was able to take Henning’s thoughts and ideas back to her boss and make positive changes.
- For Henning, relationship development starts with insights, which allows you to create an impact and trust.
- Many highly analytical people have difficulty talking about anything outside of the project. Henning recommends understanding that everyone is a human being which means they share a common foundation.
- Being genuine about being curious is key. Don’t just use small talk as a way to open a conversation.
- Follow up on the topics and go deeper. This shows your interest in them as a human being.
- Establishing a personal relationship makes connecting with them easier outside the context of the work. It creates an entry point that lets you have the impact you want to have.
- When you open up on your experience, you become more vulnerable and that creates a better foundation for trust. This was something that Henning had to learn and practice. Having a few stories in your back pocket can make it easier.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Henning prefers the term relationship development, which he considers the foundation of every successful service provider.
- Henning learned early in his career not to take things personally. If someone doesn’t respond to him, he assumes they must be busy and it’s not about the other person not liking him.
- Many experts hesitate to reach out when they don’t get a response right away. It’s important to understand what matters to people and to offer them something they are interested in.
- Understand how their mind works on the professional side and send them information that would appeal to that, but don’t be afraid to also reach out on the personal side.
- The biggest barrier to relationship success is us.
- Henning has a process for understanding where his relationships are in three categories: professional, personal, and friendship. He is always trying to think about how to develop a relationship to take it to the next level.
- Simply writing down the top five to ten relationships that are most important for your future self is a powerful tool.
- Knowing where you want a relationship to go helps you understand how you can be the most helpful.
- One of Henning’s mentors told him early in his career to keep doing the right thing and success will come. Investing in the right relationships will eventually have a commercial benefit.
- You don’t need to have all the answers if you can refer a prospect to someone else who can help.
- Role model the behavior for your team if you want that behavior to permeate. Make the time to show that you put the mindset into practice and celebrate the effort that people are putting into the work.
- Celebrating the little things where you went above and beyond what a normal professional relationship would be. That creates momentum and the right spirit to invest in relationships.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Henning’s favorite idea is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s vital to understand how you, your team, and your prospects think.
- Henning is an analytical thinker, and understanding this gives him greater insight into how he can communicate with another person who can compliment that with their own thought preferences.
- Henning took his team through the HBDI process to get a good idea of how his team thinks and where there might be any gaps. This allows the team to cover all the quadrants.
- Externally, Henning has a few questions that he asks to get an idea of how a person thinks. Within 30 minutes he usually has an idea on the other person’s thinking style and can start tailoring his communication to cover the aspects that are most important to them.
- When it comes to an analytical thinker, Henning would lay out the numbers and the facts.
- For a procedural thinker, he would lay out the next steps in the process of working together to give them execution certainty and confidence in Henning’s ability to get the job done.
- For an empathic thinker, he would focus on the tools and skills that the client team can learn by working with them and the change management that will help people be successful.
- For a strategic thinker, Henning starts with the purpose of the work. He creates a future perspective and vision around how the work will change the company with a transformative impact.
- The work is done between the first meeting and the last meeting. This is why building it together is so important. Bringing your client into the development of the solution and building their thoughts and concerns into it makes it far more sustainable.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Henning’s story begins with a rough start where a client CEO read an unflattering internal email about himself that he was never meant to see. Henning went to apologize in person and ended up having a great conversation that turned into an offer to have a second lunch in the future.
- During the second conversation the client began to open up about the challenges he had been experiencing, and Henning realized that he had gained this CEOs trust.
- Henning engaged some of his colleagues to help with the challenges the CEO was facing and this created the basis for a larger transformative project with the company. Today, Henning and the CEO are good friends.
- Henning is most proud about being able to overcome his discomfort with the initial situation and doing the right thing.
- Growth and comfort can’t coexist. The skills needed to develop a relationship aren’t innate. You can start right away to develop your skills, and it is possible to add value to someone else’s career even when they have more years of experience than you.
- Henning is always thinking about how to take his professional relationships into a more personal realm because that’s where he can deliver the most value. The challenge is in connecting with people with different personalities and experiences and then helping his team do the same thing.
Mo asks Henning Streubel: If you could record a video around relationship development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Henning would send three points back. The first is that you have to care about the people. You can only develop relationships when you care about the other person and their issues.
- When you are engaging with them, it’s not about just showcasing your expertise and what you know. It’s about listening to them and what they want. If you come with a cookie-cutter approach, you won’t establish trust. Understanding what the other person needs and bringing a customized approach is the key to trust.
- This kind of work is a team sport. Think about how you can compliment your own skills and strengths with your team so you can offer a holistic value to your clients.
- The basis for all those lessons is that you aren’t born with these skills and consistently learning them over time is okay.
- It is vital to respect the individual clients and companies that you work with.
- Not everything goes to plan. For Henning, he overcomes setbacks very quickly by looking forward rather than backwards. Feel the pain and then move on.
- Everybody needs to find their own way of processing pain, leverage the learning, and move forward again. It doesn’t help us as a society or as leaders to dwell on setbacks for too long. For Henning, that means going for a run or a bike ride. For others, that could be having a conversation with someone they trust.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Henning Streubel: If you could record a video around relationship development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Henning would send three points back. The first is that you have to care about the people. You can only develop relationships when you care about the other person and their issues.
- When you are engaging with them, it’s not about just showcasing your expertise and what you know. It’s about listening to them and what they want. If you come with a cookie-cutter approach, you won’t establish trust. Understanding what the other person needs and bringing a customized approach is the key to trust.
- This kind of work is a team sport. Think about how you can compliment your own skills and strengths with your team so you can offer a holistic value to your clients.
- The basis for all those lessons is that you aren’t born with these skills and consistently learning them over time is okay.
- It is vital to respect the individual clients and companies that you work with.
- Not everything goes to plan. For Henning, he overcomes setbacks very quickly by looking forward rather than backwards. Feel the pain and then move on.
- Everybody needs to find their own way of processing pain, leverage the learning, and move forward again. It doesn’t help us as a society or as leaders to dwell on setbacks for too long. For Henning, that means going for a run or a bike ride. For others, that could be having a conversation with someone they trust.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Henning Streubel: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Henning’s story begins with a rough start where a client CEO read an unflattering internal email about himself that he was never meant to see. Henning went to apologize in person and ended up having a great conversation that turned into an offer to have a second lunch in the future.
- During the second conversation the client began to open up about the challenges he had been experiencing, and Henning realized that he had gained this CEOs trust.
- Henning engaged some of his colleagues to help with the challenges the CEO was facing and this created the basis for a larger transformative project with the company. Today, Henning and the CEO are good friends.
- Henning is most proud about being able to overcome his discomfort with the initial situation and doing the right thing.
- Growth and comfort can’t coexist. The skills needed to develop a relationship aren’t innate. You can start right away to develop your skills, and it is possible to add value to someone else’s career even when they have more years of experience than you.
- Henning is always thinking about how to take his professional relationships into a more personal realm because that’s where he can deliver the most value. The challenge is in connecting with people with different personalities and experiences and then helping his team do the same thing.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Henning’s favorite idea is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s vital to understand how you, your team, and your prospects think.
- Henning is an analytical thinker, and understanding this gives him greater insight into how he can communicate with another person who can compliment that with their own thought preferences.
- Henning took his team through the HBDI process to get a good idea of how his team thinks and where there might be any gaps. This allows the team to cover all the quadrants.
- Externally, Henning has a few questions that he asks to get an idea of how a person thinks. Within 30 minutes he usually has an idea on the other person’s thinking style and can start tailoring his communication to cover the aspects that are most important to them.
- When it comes to an analytical thinker, Henning would lay out the numbers and the facts.
- For a procedural thinker, he would lay out the next steps in the process of working together to give them execution certainty and confidence in Henning’s ability to get the job done.
- For an empathic thinker, he would focus on the tools and skills that the client team can learn by working with them and the change management that will help people be successful.
- For a strategic thinker, Henning starts with the purpose of the work. He creates a future perspective and vision around how the work will change the company with a transformative impact.
- The work is done between the first meeting and the last meeting. This is why building it together is so important. Bringing your client into the development of the solution and building their thoughts and concerns into it makes it far more sustainable.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Henning Streubel: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Henning prefers the term relationship development, which he considers the foundation of every successful service provider.
- Henning learned early in his career not to take things personally. If someone doesn’t respond to him, he assumes they must be busy and it’s not about the other person not liking him.
- Many experts hesitate to reach out when they don’t get a response right away. It’s important to understand what matters to people and to offer them something they are interested in.
- Understand how their mind works on the professional side and send them information that would appeal to that, but don’t be afraid to also reach out on the personal side.
- The biggest barrier to relationship success is us.
- Henning has a process for understanding where his relationships are in three categories: professional, personal, and friendship. He is always trying to think about how to develop a relationship to take it to the next level.
- Simply writing down the top five to ten relationships that are most important for your future self is a powerful tool.
- Knowing where you want a relationship to go helps you understand how you can be the most helpful.
- One of Henning’s mentors told him early in his career to keep doing the right thing and success will come. Investing in the right relationships will eventually have a commercial benefit.
- You don’t need to have all the answers if you can refer a prospect to someone else who can help.
- Role model the behavior for your team if you want that behavior to permeate. Make the time to show that you put the mindset into practice and celebrate the effort that people are putting into the work.
- Celebrating the little things where you went above and beyond what a normal professional relationship would be. That creates momentum and the right spirit to invest in relationships.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Mo asks Henning Streubel: When was the moment that growth and business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Henning is intrinsically motivated to help people, but it’s less about business development and sales. Whenever he meets someone, he has a tendency to ask deep questions.
- Early in his career working for a utility client in Germany, he realized that the client’s company had many more problems than he initially thought which he discovered by simply having a deep conversation.
- Because of those conversations, the client was able to take Henning’s thoughts and ideas back to her boss and make positive changes.
- For Henning, relationship development starts with insights, which allows you to create an impact and trust.
- Many highly analytical people have difficulty talking about anything outside of the project. Henning recommends understanding that everyone is a human being which means they share a common foundation.
- Being genuine about being curious is key. Don’t just use small talk as a way to open a conversation.
- Follow up on the topics and go deeper. This shows your interest in them as a human being.
- Establishing a personal relationship makes connecting with them easier outside the context of the work. It creates an entry point that lets you have the impact you want to have.
- When you open up on your experience, you become more vulnerable and that creates a better foundation for trust. This was something that Henning had to learn and practice. Having a few stories in your back pocket can make it easier.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/henning-streubel-phd
on.bcg.com/henning - Use the envelope icon on this page to get in touch with Henning directly
Read Davis, the CEO of McGriff, talks about his experience as one of the top business development professionals and how he discovered that momentum takes time and the key to a successful career in sales is playing the long game. Learn about the fateful conversation and advice that changed the trajectory of Read’s career, why everything in an organization comes down to the success of the salespeople, and why leaders need to eat last.
Mo asks Read Davis: When was the moment you decided to get great at business development?
- You can learn to compete and life is about competition in Read’s mind. There isn’t always a winner and loser in every situation, but measuring success is based on the scoreboard you’re looking at.
- As Read moved into his career out of college, his scoreboard changed. One fateful night while working alongside the CFO and the General Manager, they gave him a piece of advice that changed the way he thought about business.
- If you really want success and to own your career, you have to think about being in the business of the business. For Read, that meant selling and having an impact on the growth of the business.
- Sales and business development transcend everything. It gives you a skill that can be transferred anywhere and if you can get comfortable being uncomfortable you will always be able to find a job.
- Being successful in production is a long-game grind. You have to do the time and the work to get the snowball rolling. Relationships are built over time and the most successful salespeople are relationship-oriented.
- There is a numbers game in every business. Sales and relationships are about solving problems, and the more people you meet and get to know the more opportunities you have to make a sale.
- You need to invest in the process for it to be able to pay off.
Mo asks Read Davis: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Being a CEO wasn’t something that Read ever aspired to. He always enjoyed leadership, sales, and being in the field.
- When he took on the role, he put a challenge to all the business development professionals in the organization to make payroll.
- Every salesperson needs to strive to be a leader. They own the revenue and everyone at the organization is relying on them to bring in the business.
- Leaders eat last. They need to take care of everyone in their world and business development professionals are leaders at heart.
- Business development and leadership go hand-in-hand.
- Building a growth-oriented culture means understanding your mission and getting buy-in on the vision from everyone on the team. Having the support of the delivery of the service is crucial to being able to sell successfully.
- Being empathetic is important as well. There are people from both sides of the business that have a vested interest in your success.
- The objective is to put the sales and services team in front of the organization instead of behind the leadership. Read is a firm believer that the best solutions and companies are driven from the bottom up.
Mo asks Read Davis: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Successful sales and business development is psychology, which is why Read’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s critical to understand who you are and how you learn, as well as how you react when you get challenged.
- The most impactful aspect of business development is the sum of all its various parts.
- Being able to quickly understand who the person is and how they communicate is how you take someone from a cold call to a warm relationship.
- Read prefers going to the office where someone works to have a meeting with them to get a better idea of how they think. It’s possible to observe little details in the environment and how a prospect answers questions that will give you an idea of how they think.
- Try not to measure success in 30, 60, or 90-day intervals. True success is a long-term project and what you do needs to align with your long-term vision.
- Revisit activities that aren’t performing well and see where the holes are in your process. Without identifying your weaknesses you’re going to waste a lot of time. There is always something to get better at.
Mo asks Read Davis: Tell me about a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Read formerly worked for one of the largest brokerage firms in the world, and when he first came to work with McGriff they were often David going up against Goliath.
- Read recalls several different stories where the relationships they built helped their clients take care of their people. Each experience gave Read additional skills and confidence to take into the next.
- One, in particular, stands out where Read was handling a casino in Las Vegas. As the real estate guy on the team, Read was meeting with banks and people on the team to help them through the financial crisis.
- They broke the paradigm by bringing people in from all over to show the client what they could do. The best part of the sales story is that four years later the casino was sold to Blackstone and the client referred Read and his team as the broker of choice to the new buyer.
- It’s all about the connectivity of the relationships and adding value while playing the long game.
- The team was what made the difference. By listening intently to what the prospect needed, that got the team motivated to deliver. They recognized that the deal was a major opportunity for the firm and they rose to the challenge.
Mo asks Read Davis: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- We can’t see around the curve, but we can think about where we want to go.
- Read would start investing in himself and his skills much earlier.
- Don’t think that you have to have it all figured out.
- Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. One of the biggest assets of Read’s leadership team is the environment of challenging each other and asking questions.
- Don’t let pride be your deterrent from being successful.
- People will try to define you but you have to find success in your own way. You have to figure out what the balance of your life is for yourself. What success is to someone else won’t be the same standard for your life.
- When you’re looking for the secret sauce, it takes what it takes and you have to put in the work to make it happen.
- When setting goals, Read doesn’t look at the things he wants to get done now. He tries to keep in mind what he wants to get done when he’s 90 and then figures out what he needs to do now to make it happen.
- Read looks at areas of his life that may have gotten out of balance and then makes those a priority for the year.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
Random but Meaningful Podcast - Convo 06: Dr. Drew Brannon on performance psychology and building a winning CFB National Championship mindset
Mo asks Read Davis: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- We can’t see around the curve, but we can think about where we want to go.
- Read would start investing in himself and his skills much earlier.
- Don’t think that you have to have it all figured out.
- Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. One of the biggest assets of Read’s leadership team is the environment of challenging each other and asking questions.
- Don’t let pride be your deterrent from being successful.
- People will try to define you but you have to find success in your own way. You have to figure out what the balance of your life is for yourself. What success is to someone else won’t be the same standard for your life.
- When you’re looking for the secret sauce, it takes what it takes and you have to put in the work to make it happen.
- When setting goals, Read doesn’t look at the things he wants to get done now. He tries to keep in mind what he wants to get done when he’s 90 and then figures out what he needs to do now to make it happen.
- Read looks at areas of his life that may have gotten out of balance and then makes those a priority for the year.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
Random but Meaningful Podcast - Convo 06: Dr. Drew Brannon on performance psychology and building a winning CFB National Championship mindset
Mo asks Read Davis: Tell me about a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Read formerly worked for one of the largest brokerage firms in the world, and when he first came to work with McGriff they were often David going up against Goliath.
- Read recalls several different stories where the relationships they built helped their clients take care of their people. Each experience gave Read additional skills and confidence to take into the next.
- One, in particular, stands out where Read was handling a casino in Las Vegas. As the real estate guy on the team, Read was meeting with banks and people on the team to help them through the financial crisis.
- They broke the paradigm by bringing people in from all over to show the client what they could do. The best part of the sales story is that four years later the casino was sold to Blackstone and the client referred Read and his team as the broker of choice to the new buyer.
- It’s all about the connectivity of the relationships and adding value while playing the long game.
- The team was what made the difference. By listening intently to what the prospect needed, that got the team motivated to deliver. They recognized that the deal was a major opportunity for the firm and they rose to the challenge.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
Mo asks Read Davis: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Successful sales and business development is psychology, which is why Read’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. It’s critical to understand who you are and how you learn, as well as how you react when you get challenged.
- The most impactful aspect of business development is the sum of all its various parts.
- Being able to quickly understand who the person is and how they communicate is how you take someone from a cold call to a warm relationship.
- Read prefers going to the office where someone works to have a meeting with them to get a better idea of how they think. It’s possible to observe little details in the environment and how a prospect answers questions that will give you an idea of how they think.
- Try not to measure success in 30, 60, or 90-day intervals. True success is a long-term project and what you do needs to align with your long-term vision.
- Revisit activities that aren’t performing well and see where the holes are in your process. Without identifying your weaknesses you’re going to waste a lot of time. There is always something to get better at.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
Mo asks Read Davis: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Being a CEO wasn’t something that Read ever aspired to. He always enjoyed leadership, sales, and being in the field.
- When he took on the role, he put a challenge to all the business development professionals in the organization to make payroll.
- Every salesperson needs to strive to be a leader. They own the revenue and everyone at the organization is relying on them to bring in the business.
- Leaders eat last. They need to take care of everyone in their world and business development professionals are leaders at heart.
- Business development and leadership go hand-in-hand.
- Building a growth-oriented culture means understanding your mission and getting buy-in on the vision from everyone on the team. Having the support of the delivery of the service is crucial to being able to sell successfully.
- Being empathetic is important as well. There are people from both sides of the business that have a vested interest in your success.
- The objective is to put the sales and services team in front of the organization instead of behind the leadership. Read is a firm believer that the best solutions and companies are driven from the bottom up.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
Mo asks Read Davis: When was the moment you decided to get great at business development?
- You can learn to compete and life is about competition in Read’s mind. There isn’t always a winner and loser in every situation, but measuring success is based on the scoreboard you’re looking at.
- As Read moved into his career out of college, his scoreboard changed. One fateful night while working alongside the CFO and the General Manager, they gave him a piece of advice that changed the way he thought about business.
- If you really want success and to own your career, you have to think about being in the business of the business. For Read, that meant selling and having an impact on the growth of the business.
- Sales and business development transcend everything. It gives you a skill that can be transferred anywhere and if you can get comfortable being uncomfortable you will always be able to find a job.
- Being successful in production is a long-game grind. You have to do the time and the work to get the snowball rolling. Relationships are built over time and the most successful salespeople are relationship-oriented.
- There is a numbers game in every business. Sales and relationships are about solving problems, and the more people you meet and get to know the more opportunities you have to make a sale.
- You need to invest in the process for it to be able to pay off.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/readdavis
rdavis@mcgriff.com
James Barclay shares the key content creation strategies that Passel uses to help busy professionals demonstrate the expertise that sets them and their firms apart. Learn about how content creation became the basis for Passel’s business model, how to write and create content for your most important relationships in a way that people will love, and why a podcast is the secret business development hack that most professionals aren’t using right now.
Mo asks James Barclay: When did you realize that business development was great?
- James' first job out of college was as a conference organizer and that’s where he learned the power of selling ideas.
- Selling conferences in the 1990s changed once the internet became more established and James began using websites to promote them, but they discovered that brochure websites weren’t very effective which led to creating content based websites instead.
- The skills that James and his business partners developed in creating those businesses were a natural fit for content online, but he realized that taking the expertise in his head and sharing it online was actually really difficult. That’s where the idea for Passle came from.
- Showcasing your expertise online as an expert is crucial, especially when people are still not visiting businesses physically as much.
- Do something rather than nothing, and realize that you won’t be great at it straight away.
- Run an audit of LinkedIn to see who you are connected to. Compare that list to a list of the people that give you money for what you do, and if you’re not connected with the people who give you money correct that.
- Write short, client focused and timely content at least once a month.
- Your content should be easy to consume and don’t outsource it. Someone shouldn’t be pretending to be you online.
- Taking content that is already published is a great place to start. Just add your own perspective or commentary to something that already exists.
- Picture one of your top ten to twenty clients and write something that you know will resonate with them then publish that on a public space like LinkedIn or your blog. Ask them directly what they would be interested in, and then write content around those answers.
- At the very least share your company’s content and provide some commentary on it. You need to be digitally active. People won’t be thinking of you if you’re not present in the public square that is social media.
- Write for one person instead of writing for everyone. Think of the people that pay you money for your expertise and then write content with one of those people in mind. They are the most likely to share your content and refer you to other people when they find it useful. That’s how you give your raving fans ammunition.
Mo asks James Barclay: Tell me your personal definition of business development.
- Growth is all about your leading indicators. Your behaviors, values, and what you do every day are what will put you in a position to win.
- Focusing on the end of the pipeline will make you look desperate. With the right values and habits, you’ll come up with the right tactics for the people looking to buy from you.
- Helping is the key to growth. If every time someone reaches out you help them, at some point they will ask you what you do and be interested in what you sell, which is way more effective than reaching out to them to buy your stuff.
- When someone asks you what you do, turn it around and ask them about themselves and their challenges while looking for an area that you may be able to help them, either with advice or a connection.
- Curiosity is an emotion that humans love to experience. By getting the other person to ask what you do twice, it increases the curiosity element.
- Business development is about providing a solution when the other person needs it, and this takes patience and consistency is providing value.
- It can be even more powerful to be helpful when the other person is unable to buy your services.
- One of James’ key qualifiers when selling to someone is whether they like him and James likes them as well.
- It’s common for highly analytical people to talk about anything other than their content and expertise. If you find yourself uncomfortable in a sales environment, your clients probably feel the same. Finding the place that you're comfortable with could actually be the sweet spot between you and other analytical prospects.
- Reach out with useful content between billable projects. Sending an asset or an idea is an effective way to keep the conversation going.
Mo asks James Barclay: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- For James, the number one strategy is the Protemoi List. These are the people in your circle that are your partners, prospects, and the key people that could be your raving fans.
- Having a focused relationship list is an unbeatable edge.
- When you invest in a relationship, people will move with you. James has had people buy from his company multiple times over multiple jobs.
- Your Protemoi List is a list of five to ten people that have outsized returns on the amount of time and energy you invest in the relationship.
- The first strategy is to simply be useful to them. Offer to take them to events with you that you believe would be helpful to them. Find content and then pass it on to people you think would find it useful.
- Celebrate them at every opportunity. Accelerate them and give them a platform where you highlight them and what they are doing.
- A personal newsletter can be incredibly powerful. You don’t need thousands of people on your list for it to be worth it.
- Build something that is extremely accessible to them, extremely useful to them, and don’t waste their time.
- It can take some time to build momentum, but you have to start somewhere. If you can write something useful for one person you can build it over time and create something really valuable.
- Consistency matters. Find a cadence that works for you and your schedule and stick with it.
Mo asks James Barclay: Tell me a story about the business development that you are the proudest of.
- James’ challenge in reaching prospects is connecting with CMOs in law firms and working up the chain can take some time. The Passel podcast was born once the team understood how useful it is as a business development tool.
- The podcast gives them an opportunity to talk to their perfect prospects and gives them a chance to talk about the things they are passionate about while getting to know them at the same time. Eventually, the CMO starts asking about James and the team does and it’s a great way to have the right conversations with the right people.
- The more fantastic content you have on a podcast, the more of their target customers become interested in being featured on the podcast.
- James found that short and sharp podcasts perform best. Celebrate what your guest has accomplished and give them a platform. Your podcast should have a specific theme and structure for the episodes, and understand that it’s a skill that takes time to learn and get good at.
- If you can, provide feedback and let your guest know how many people listened to their interview.
- Seasons are a good framework, along with having a set of questions that you can repeat and reuse.
- Repurposing the asset after the fact is another great way to get more exposure.
- Make sure you know what the win is for the interviewee.
Mo asks James Barclay: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- James is naturally impatient, so he would tell his younger self to cultivate patience.
- You can’t sell stuff by shouting at people that they should buy from you. It’s not your sales process, it’s about their buying process.
- Think about the actions that you can do consistently that will lay the groundwork for outcomes instead of focusing on the outcomes themselves.
- Accept the fact that you are often fighting fires and won’t always be perfect at your business development habits. Having a team that can support you and keep you on track when you need it is a big asset. Make sure you are surrounded by people you trust.
- Set some time aside each week to track your most important things and what you got done and what’s still on the list.
- James would always tell his younger self that the best ideas don’t come when you’re looking at a screen. Your best ideas will come when you’re unplugged.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
blog.passle.net
Nathan Barry on ConvertKit, Automation and Engaging Your Audience – What You Need To Succeed (season 2 episode 43)
How to Use ConvertKit to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 44)
How to Use ConvertKit to Deepen Relationships, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 45)
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 46)
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Nathan Barry, Founder of ConvertKit (season 2 episode 47)
Mo asks James Barclay: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- James is naturally impatient, so he would tell his younger self to cultivate patience.
- You can’t sell stuff by shouting at people that they should buy from you. It’s not your sales process, it’s about their buying process.
- Think about the actions that you can do consistently that will lay the groundwork for outcomes instead of focusing on the outcomes themselves.
- Accept the fact that you are often fighting fires and won’t always be perfect at your business development habits. Having a team that can support you and keep you on track when you need it is a big asset. Make sure you are surrounded by people you trust.
- Set some time aside each week to track your most important things and what you got done and what’s still on the list.
- James would always tell his younger self that the best ideas don’t come when you’re looking at a screen. Your best ideas will come when you’re unplugged.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
Mo asks James Barclay: Tell me a story about the business development that you are the proudest of.
- James’ challenge in reaching prospects is connecting with CMOs in law firms and working up the chain can take some time. The Passel podcast was born once the team understood how useful it is as a business development tool.
- The podcast gives them an opportunity to talk to their perfect prospects and gives them a chance to talk about the things they are passionate about while getting to know them at the same time. Eventually, the CMO starts asking about James and the team does and it’s a great way to have the right conversations with the right people.
- The more fantastic content you have on a podcast, the more of their target customers become interested in being featured on the podcast.
- James found that short and sharp podcasts perform best. Celebrate what your guest has accomplished and give them a platform. Your podcast should have a specific theme and structure for the episodes, and understand that it’s a skill that takes time to learn and get good at.
- If you can, provide feedback and let your guest know how many people listened to their interview.
- Seasons are a good framework, along with having a set of questions that you can repeat and reuse.
- Repurposing the asset after the fact is another great way to get more exposure.
- Make sure you know what the win is for the interviewee.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
Mo asks James Barclay: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- For James, the number one strategy is the Protemoi List. These are the people in your circle that are your partners, prospects, and the key people that could be your raving fans.
- Having a focused relationship list is an unbeatable edge.
- When you invest in a relationship, people will move with you. James has had people buy from his company multiple times over multiple jobs.
- Your Protemoi List is a list of five to ten people that have outsized returns on the amount of time and energy you invest in the relationship.
- The first strategy is to simply be useful to them. Offer to take them to events with you that you believe would be helpful to them. Find content and then pass it on to people you think would find it useful.
- Celebrate them at every opportunity. Accelerate them and give them a platform where you highlight them and what they are doing.
- A personal newsletter can be incredibly powerful. You don’t need thousands of people on your list for it to be worth it.
- Build something that is extremely accessible to them, extremely useful to them, and don’t waste their time.
- It can take some time to build momentum, but you have to start somewhere. If you can write something useful for one person you can build it over time and create something really valuable.
- Consistency matters. Find a cadence that works for you and your schedule and stick with it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
Nathan Barry on ConvertKit, Automation and Engaging Your Audience – What You Need To Succeed (season 2 episode 43)
How to Use ConvertKit to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 44)
How to Use ConvertKit to Deepen Relationships, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 45)
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Nathan Barry (season 2 episode 46)
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Nathan Barry, Founder of ConvertKit (season 2 episode 47)
Mo asks James Barclay: Tell me your personal definition of business development.
- Growth is all about your leading indicators. Your behaviors, values, and what you do every day are what will put you in a position to win.
- Focusing on the end of the pipeline will make you look desperate. With the right values and habits, you’ll come up with the right tactics for the people looking to buy from you.
- Helping is the key to growth. If every time someone reaches out you help them, at some point they will ask you what you do and be interested in what you sell, which is way more effective than reaching out to them to buy your stuff.
- When someone asks you what you do, turn it around and ask them about themselves and their challenges while looking for an area that you may be able to help them, either with advice or a connection.
- Curiosity is an emotion that humans love to experience. By getting the other person to ask what you do twice, it increases the curiosity element.
- Business development is about providing a solution when the other person needs it, and this takes patience and consistency is providing value.
- It can be even more powerful to be helpful when the other person is unable to buy your services.
- One of James’ key qualifiers when selling to someone is whether they like him and James likes them as well.
- It’s common for highly analytical people to talk about anything other than their content and expertise. If you find yourself uncomfortable in a sales environment, your clients probably feel the same. Finding the place that you're comfortable with could actually be the sweet spot between you and other analytical prospects.
- Reach out with useful content between billable projects. Sending an asset or an idea is an effective way to keep the conversation going.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
blog.passle.net
Mo asks James Barclay: When did you realize that business development was great?
- James' first job out of college was as a conference organizer and that’s where he learned the power of selling ideas.
- Selling conferences in the 1990s changed once the internet became more established and James began using websites to promote them, but they discovered that brochure websites weren’t very effective which led to creating content based websites instead.
- The skills that James and his business partners developed in creating those businesses were a natural fit for content online, but he realized that taking the expertise in his head and sharing it online was actually really difficult. That’s where the idea for Passle came from.
- Showcasing your expertise online as an expert is crucial, especially when people are still not visiting businesses physically as much.
- Do something rather than nothing, and realize that you won’t be great at it straight away.
- Run an audit of LinkedIn to see who you are connected to. Compare that list to a list of the people that give you money for what you do, and if you’re not connected with the people who give you money correct that.
- Write short, client focused and timely content at least once a month.
- Your content should be easy to consume and don’t outsource it. Someone shouldn’t be pretending to be you online.
- Taking content that is already published is a great place to start. Just add your own perspective or commentary to something that already exists.
- Picture one of your top ten to twenty clients and write something that you know will resonate with them then publish that on a public space like LinkedIn or your blog. Ask them directly what they would be interested in, and then write content around those answers.
- At the very least share your company’s content and provide some commentary on it. You need to be digitally active. People won’t be thinking of you if you’re not present in the public square that is social media.
- Write for one person instead of writing for everyone. Think of the people that pay you money for your expertise and then write content with one of those people in mind. They are the most likely to share your content and refer you to other people when they find it useful. That’s how you give your raving fans ammunition.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/jamesbarclay1
james@passle.net
passle.net
John Tigh shares the business development lessons he learned in the trenches working with top-10 pharmaceutical companies and digital transformation. Learn why business development is a heart-centered sport and why empathy is key to connecting with someone, how to look for disturbances in the force that indicate where you can contribute the most value to people, and get a crash course on the most important growth-focused conversation framework there is.
Mo asks John Tigh: Tell me of the moment that you realized growth is great.
- Eleven years ago, John was bit by a radioactive statement of work and has since gained the superpower of bringing in business.
- Being a consultant is all about having one foot in the work and the other in finding the next gig. John considers himself a relationship person rather than a salesperson.
- The better you can cultivate relationships, the more likely it is that you will have a chance to be of service to those people in the future.
- Business development is a heart and people centered sport. For John, if he can be of service to someone, that really energizes him.
- In the first meeting, John is looking for disturbances in the force. John is on the lookout for something that the other person hesitates about or expresses disappointment in a particular area. Those are places to dig deeper.
- Mission, Vision, and Values should apply at all levels of the organization. At the top of the enterprise, within the work group, and at the level of the individual. Where the gaps are is where John can help the most so that’s where he focuses his effort.
- John is looking for moments of clarity and polarization. Whether you’re selling ideas, products, or services, asking how you might be able to get it done together gets buy-in and accelerates momentum.
- John is a collector of interesting people. You can’t talk heart-centered without being empathetic, and you can’t get into someone else’s shoes without being curious about them. John believes in connecting others. By giving away information of value, he generates reciprocity in the future.
- John goes out of his way to connect awesome people with other awesome people because it makes everything about those relationships better.
- By connecting people, you can generate potentially dozens of interactions.
Mo asks John Tigh: What is your personal definition of business development?
- For John, business development begins and ends with acts of service. It’s all about following up and finding ways to help people.
- The fastest way to build a relationship is to deliver value and not necessarily in a commercial fashion. By being useful and helpful to other people, there are often second, third, and fourth order connections that come as a result of that.
- John aims to put a pause in people's fight or flight response when they hear the word sales, and just focuses instead on being human.
- By asking what makes someone special and giving them space to answer, John is trying to help them identify where their T-shape uniqueness is and how he can broaden the conversation from there.
- People always have areas of commonality. The more John knows about what makes people unique and special, the more opportunity he has to connect them with other people that need their products, services, or talent.
- Whenever John finds one person that they believe should know another person, he goes out of his way to find them interesting people to connect with. He sends an email that he refers to as a gusher about what makes those people awesome and why they would be even greater if they knew each other.
- If you think of business development as acts of service, it’s about learning what’s important to the other person and that creates a great buying process by showing you're trustworthy and you care.
- The habit that John tries to cultivate everyday is around being uncomfortable. The practice of discomfort and stretching his personal and professional boundaries is what put him on the growth path he is on today.
Mo asks John Tigh: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- John has been involved in the Snowball System for a long time and the Gravitas Model is a strategy that he uses every single day.
- It’s the perfect framework for taking any conversation where you want to go. It has an incredible level of flexibility and imparts a character to your conversation that people can’t help but enjoy. It also gives you the ability to keep the conversation going.
- When you ask great questions, you get a triple win. With the way the Gravitas Model is designed, they light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind when they are sharing their personal perspective, you learn their priorities in their words, and the questions highly correlate to likability. The more they talk and the less you talk, the more the other person will like you.
- John’s perfect buyer is in the C-Suite or someone dealing with content creation. During a conversation with his perfect buyer, John would talk about what they have in common, the challenges they experienced in the past, and their current role and their current projects.
- Typically, the goal for each meeting is to secure the next meeting.
- By addressing the base level mechanical questions, John can take a conversation up to higher level vision-based goals. He often asks people how calm the seas are and what they think the future holds, with a hook at the end about any questions that John didn’t ask but should have.
- John is always looking for an opportunity to offer value in some way or to make a connection or introduction for the other person in an effort to secure the next meeting. The framework is simply built around looking for ways to make the other person look good.
- Once you get the Gravitas Model in your bones, it really does help every kind of conversation, whether that’s spoken or written.
Mo asks John Tigh: Tell me of a business development that you are particularly proud of.
- During John’s time working as a consultant while working for a top-10 pharmaceutical company. He had a chance to meet another top-10 pharmaceutical company and help them implement a new technology.
- John had a productive initial meeting but hadn’t really heard from them for two years. Eventually, John was contacted to pick up the project after another consulting company dropped the ball.
- Disaster struck and the leader that was meant to guide the project left the company. John put his hand up to help them move the project forward as long as they were willing to trust the team to get things done. Over time, the team grew and John ran that project from the outside for three years and grew the business to the tune of multiple millions of dollars.
- All of that came from one initial meeting and building trust by offering some expertise and help with no strings attached.
- He was the one who wrote the strategy that transformed the business as well as the leader and operations person who helped make that happen.
- John’s biggest achievement during that time was in overcoming his own inner critic. By learning about and practicing meditation each day, he learned how to get out of his own way.
- Having a moment at the start of each day to throw off the doubts and the worries and focus on doing what he can do has changed the rest of John’s life.
- One of the biggest blessings of a high performing team that has your back and believes in you is that they can help you manage your own inner critic.
Mo asks John Tigh: If you could record a video for your younger self around business development, what would it say?
- John would start things off by telling his younger self to be quiet since he wasn’t always the best listener.
- The other thing he would say is that everything is about growth. Everything is sales related, and it all has to be articulated to get any kind of traction.
- Listen first, and then find ways to be helpful.
- John looks for liminal spaces within conversations. He uses pauses to ask for invitations to speak because getting permission is a much more productive way to speak.
- There is an energy around change, so it’s usually best to try to slow things down and build in pauses to reduce the tension. Pauses and asking for permission can also increase curiosity.
- In dealing with externalities, reacting is not always the most effective way forward. Stopping and saying, “that’s interesting, tell me more” gives you space to respond instead.
- It’s okay to ask someone to restate the question. Being vulnerable shows that you actually care about what’s being said and what the other person is trying to communicate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks John Tigh: If you could record a video for your younger self around business development, what would it say?
- John would start things off by telling his younger self to be quiet since he wasn’t always the best listener.
- The other thing he would say is that everything is about growth. Everything is sales related, and it all has to be articulated to get any kind of traction.
- Listen first, and then find ways to be helpful.
- John looks for liminal spaces within conversations. He uses pauses to ask for invitations to speak because getting permission is a much more productive way to speak.
- There is an energy around change, so it’s usually best to try to slow things down and build in pauses to reduce the tension. Pauses and asking for permission can also increase curiosity.
- In dealing with externalities, reacting is not always the most effective way forward. Stopping and saying, “that’s interesting, tell me more” gives you space to respond instead.
- It’s okay to ask someone to restate the question. Being vulnerable shows that you actually care about what’s being said and what the other person is trying to communicate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks John Tigh: Tell me of a business development that you are particularly proud of.
- During John’s time working as a consultant while working for a top-10 pharmaceutical company. He had a chance to meet another top-10 pharmaceutical company and help them implement a new technology.
- John had a productive initial meeting but hadn’t really heard from them for two years. Eventually, John was contacted to pick up the project after another consulting company dropped the ball.
- Disaster struck and the leader that was meant to guide the project left the company. John put his hand up to help them move the project forward as long as they were willing to trust the team to get things done. Over time, the team grew and John ran that project from the outside for three years and grew the business to the tune of multiple millions of dollars.
- All of that came from one initial meeting and building trust by offering some expertise and help with no strings attached.
- He was the one who wrote the strategy that transformed the business as well as the leader and operations person who helped make that happen.
- John’s biggest achievement during that time was in overcoming his own inner critic. By learning about and practicing meditation each day, he learned how to get out of his own way.
- Having a moment at the start of each day to throw off the doubts and the worries and focus on doing what he can do has changed the rest of John’s life.
- One of the biggest blessings of a high performing team that has your back and believes in you is that they can help you manage your own inner critic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks John Tigh: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- John has been involved in the Snowball System for a long time and the Gravitas Model is a strategy that he uses every single day.
- It’s the perfect framework for taking any conversation where you want to go. It has an incredible level of flexibility and imparts a character to your conversation that people can’t help but enjoy. It also gives you the ability to keep the conversation going.
- When you ask great questions, you get a triple win. With the way the Gravitas Model is designed, they light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind when they are sharing their personal perspective, you learn their priorities in their words, and the questions highly correlate to likability. The more they talk and the less you talk, the more the other person will like you.
- John’s perfect buyer is in the C-Suite or someone dealing with content creation. During a conversation with his perfect buyer, John would talk about what they have in common, the challenges they experienced in the past, and their current role and their current projects.
- Typically, the goal for each meeting is to secure the next meeting.
- By addressing the base level mechanical questions, John can take a conversation up to higher level vision-based goals. He often asks people how calm the seas are and what they think the future holds, with a hook at the end about any questions that John didn’t ask but should have.
- John is always looking for an opportunity to offer value in some way or to make a connection or introduction for the other person in an effort to secure the next meeting. The framework is simply built around looking for ways to make the other person look good.
- Once you get the Gravitas Model in your bones, it really does help every kind of conversation, whether that’s spoken or written.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks John Tigh: What is your personal definition of business development?
- For John, business development begins and ends with acts of service. It’s all about following up and finding ways to help people.
- The fastest way to build a relationship is to deliver value and not necessarily in a commercial fashion. By being useful and helpful to other people, there are often second, third, and fourth order connections that come as a result of that.
- John aims to put a pause in people's fight or flight response when they hear the word sales, and just focuses instead on being human.
- By asking what makes someone special and giving them space to answer, John is trying to help them identify where their T-shape uniqueness is and how he can broaden the conversation from there.
- People always have areas of commonality. The more John knows about what makes people unique and special, the more opportunity he has to connect them with other people that need their products, services, or talent.
- Whenever John finds one person that they believe should know another person, he goes out of his way to find them interesting people to connect with. He sends an email that he refers to as a gusher about what makes those people awesome and why they would be even greater if they knew each other.
- If you think of business development as acts of service, it’s about learning what’s important to the other person and that creates a great buying process by showing you're trustworthy and you care.
- The habit that John tries to cultivate everyday is around being uncomfortable. The practice of discomfort and stretching his personal and professional boundaries is what put him on the growth path he is on today.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Mo asks John Tigh: Tell me of the moment that you realized growth is great.
- Eleven years ago, John was bit by a radioactive statement of work and has since gained the superpower of bringing in business.
- Being a consultant is all about having one foot in the work and the other in finding the next gig. John considers himself a relationship person rather than a salesperson.
- The better you can cultivate relationships, the more likely it is that you will have a chance to be of service to those people in the future.
- Business development is a heart and people centered sport. For John, if he can be of service to someone, that really energizes him.
- In the first meeting, John is looking for disturbances in the force. John is on the lookout for something that the other person hesitates about or expresses disappointment in a particular area. Those are places to dig deeper.
- Mission, Vision, and Values should apply at all levels of the organization. At the top of the enterprise, within the work group, and at the level of the individual. Where the gaps are is where John can help the most so that’s where he focuses his effort.
- John is looking for moments of clarity and polarization. Whether you’re selling ideas, products, or services, asking how you might be able to get it done together gets buy-in and accelerates momentum.
- John is a collector of interesting people. You can’t talk heart-centered without being empathetic, and you can’t get into someone else’s shoes without being curious about them. John believes in connecting others. By giving away information of value, he generates reciprocity in the future.
- John goes out of his way to connect awesome people with other awesome people because it makes everything about those relationships better.
- By connecting people, you can generate potentially dozens of interactions.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
john@clevercognitive.com
linkedin.com/in/johntigh
clevercognitive.com
Jane Allen shares how she built a brand new category of business by taking a chance on trying to solve a problem she saw lawyers facing every single day. Find out about how Jane grew her initial client base for Counsel on Call, how proactive problem solving can be developed into a growth system for business, and why the most important thing you can do in sales is take a chance and ask for what you want.
Mo asks Jane Allen: Tell me of the moment where you realized you wanted to focus on business development.
- Jane originally went to law school because she had read Death of a Salesman in college, and she didn’t want to end up like Willy Loman. It turned out that to be a successful lawyer, you had to be a really good Willy Loman.
- Jane loved working with clients to solve their problems, and when you do that, they want you to solve more problems. Her natural approach of getting to know her clients in order to solve their problems made her realize that she loves the relationship building aspect of the business.
- There are a lot of women leaving the profession of being a lawyer. Prior to launching Counsel on Call Jane started looking for women who were exiting the industry to help her solve client problems in a different way.
- The business became a hybrid solution for meeting a need in the marketplace as well as the lawyers that serviced clients.
- Jane had three children in three years while also working as a lawyer full time. She was never the person that went to networking events, but she did have the advantage of working with very well-respected partners.
- Jane started her business by dialing for dollars out of the Nashville Bar Association book. She committed to making ten phone calls each day, started tracking her metrics, and landing meetings.
- Many said no, but most people said yes and the momentum started to snowball.
- When it comes to extremely technical professions, many people struggle with asking for help. Jane’s approach was the reverse, and focused specifically on asking for help in creating a company that would change her prospect’s business for the better.
- As an entrepreneur trying to solve a problem, Jane needed the voices of people in the industry to understand that a problem really existed and what the possible solution would be.
- To start off, Jane began with one lawyer and one law firm, and after the first few years the company had three offices helping lawyers practice in a way they couldn’t before. By the time Jane sold the company, there were 1,200 lawyers on the team.
- Jane recalls the story of how she helped one lawyer in particular in a relatively minor way, and how her advice allowed his career to flourish, simply by being willing to help.
Mo asks Jane Allen: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Jane’s definition is simply proactive problem solving. If you are trying to sell something, it should be something they need and may not know they need it. It’s about showing them a problem they have as well as the solution.
- People don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to buy.
- If you’re struggling with being proactive, realize that it’s not the job of the prospect to call you or respond to your email. It’s your job to get the meeting.
- One of the best kinds of meetings is when someone says that they are not going to work with you, then at least you’re not going to waste your time.
- Don’t waste their time. Even if you think you have all the answers, you don’t. The goal of the first meeting is to ask thought provoking questions and to determine whether you have a solution to their problem.
- If you can’t resolve everything in one meeting, the goal is to secure the next. The prospect should understand the importance of the next meeting and you should give them enough of a cliffhanger that they anticipate it.
Mo asks Jane Allen: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The personality test was the most fascinating element of the GrowBIG Training that completely transformed the way Jane’s company thought about meetings and communicating with other people.
- Jane has a systems mindset that allows her to scale a business that served her very well in Counsel on Call. Efficiency is a major driver for Jane, and she is always looking for ways to grow that don’t lose the elements of a personal relationship.
- Jane set communication as a priority from the start and then developed systems around that central principle.
- Jane also spent a lot of time developing databases to track metrics like the number of Give-to-Gets completed, objections, and asking for the next steps. Practice and having fun were also built into the system.
- The business has to be bigger than the individual. You have to capture the data to help you learn and evolve and keep yourself and your team accountable.
- If you’re not meeting people who are decision makers or can’t help you get to that point, is it really a good use of your time? You have to get honest about how you spend your time and then get really deliberate about how you spend the time you have.
- Focus first on how you’re different, and then how you’re going to eliminate the prospect’s risk of change.
- Measuring the quantity and quality of your business development efforts is the key to seeing an increase in your results. Try to get one metric of each that matches your book of business and relationships you’re trying to build.
Mo asks Jane Allen: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Jane tells the story from the early 2000’s during a time when the people they were serving in corporate America were being overwhelmed by the explosion of data. One fateful dinner and “what if” scenario later, Jane started collaborating with a firm to solve real world problems with a solution that was unheard of at the time.
- As an entrepreneur, Jane didn’t take time to reflect on the success since she was so focused on the execution. Looking back now, finding a partner that was willing to take a risk and then deliver something that enabled her clients to practice law in a completely different way is something she’s very proud of.
- In terms of her career, Jane is most proud of the incredible people she worked with and learned from, as well as being willing to take the chance on herself and her vision for her business.
- Reach for your goals and take the chance. Rejection is a part of life, but you will never achieve anything if you don’t try.
Mo asks Jane Allen: If you could record a message to your younger self around business development or growth skills, what would it say?
- Jane would tell herself to embrace it. Embrace your intrinsic drive to connect with people.
- Jane wouldn’t have referred to herself as an extrovert, but when it came to her work and her business, she committed herself to getting the job done and connecting with people.
- Jane likes to solve people’s problems and connect them with what they need. Creating systems in her life that drive those actions and allow her focus on that has been the key to her success.
- Before becoming a lawyer, Jane was a school teacher where she loved helping kids understand complex problems. That trait has been a common thread throughout her life.
- Jane now works with entrepreneurs and helps them find resources and mentors through the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Mo asks Jane Allen: If you could record a message to your younger self around business development or growth skills, what would it say?
- Jane would tell herself to embrace it. Embrace your intrinsic drive to connect with people.
- Jane wouldn’t have referred to herself as an extrovert, but when it came to her work and her business, she committed herself to getting the job done and connecting with people.
- Jane likes to solve people’s problems and connect them with what they need. Creating systems in her life that drive those actions and allow her focus on that has been the key to her success.
- Before becoming a lawyer, Jane was a school teacher where she loved helping kids understand complex problems. That trait has been a common thread throughout her life.
- Jane now works with entrepreneurs and helps them find resources and mentors through the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Mo asks Jane Allen: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Jane tells the story from the early 2000’s during a time when the people they were serving in corporate America were being overwhelmed by the explosion of data. One fateful dinner and “what if” scenario later, Jane started collaborating with a firm to solve real world problems with a solution that was unheard of at the time.
- As an entrepreneur, Jane didn’t take time to reflect on the success since she was so focused on the execution. Looking back now, finding a partner that was willing to take a risk and then deliver something that enabled her clients to practice law in a completely different way is something she’s very proud of.
- In terms of her career, Jane is most proud of the incredible people she worked with and learned from, as well as being willing to take the chance on herself and her vision for her business.
- Reach for your goals and take the chance. Rejection is a part of life, but you will never achieve anything if you don’t try.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Mo asks Jane Allen: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- The personality test was the most fascinating element of the GrowBIG Training that completely transformed the way Jane’s company thought about meetings and communicating with other people.
- Jane has a systems mindset that allows her to scale a business that served her very well in Counsel on Call. Efficiency is a major driver for Jane, and she is always looking for ways to grow that don’t lose the elements of a personal relationship.
- Jane set communication as a priority from the start and then developed systems around that central principle.
- Jane also spent a lot of time developing databases to track metrics like the number of Give-to-Gets completed, objections, and asking for the next steps. Practice and having fun were also built into the system.
- The business has to be bigger than the individual. You have to capture the data to help you learn and evolve and keep yourself and your team accountable.
- If you’re not meeting people who are decision makers or can’t help you get to that point, is it really a good use of your time? You have to get honest about how you spend your time and then get really deliberate about how you spend the time you have.
- Focus first on how you’re different, and then how you’re going to eliminate the prospect’s risk of change.
- Measuring the quantity and quality of your business development efforts is the key to seeing an increase in your results. Try to get one metric of each that matches your book of business and relationships you’re trying to build.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Mo asks Jane Allen: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Jane’s definition is simply proactive problem solving. If you are trying to sell something, it should be something they need and may not know they need it. It’s about showing them a problem they have as well as the solution.
- People don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to buy.
- If you’re struggling with being proactive, realize that it’s not the job of the prospect to call you or respond to your email. It’s your job to get the meeting.
- One of the best kinds of meetings is when someone says that they are not going to work with you, then at least you’re not going to waste your time.
- Don’t waste their time. Even if you think you have all the answers, you don’t. The goal of the first meeting is to ask thought provoking questions and to determine whether you have a solution to their problem.
- If you can’t resolve everything in one meeting, the goal is to secure the next. The prospect should understand the importance of the next meeting and you should give them enough of a cliffhanger that they anticipate it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Mo asks Jane Allen: Tell me of the moment where you realized you wanted to focus on business development.
- Jane originally went to law school because she had read Death of a Salesman in college, and she didn’t want to end up like Willy Loman. It turned out that to be a successful lawyer, you had to be a really good Willy Loman.
- Jane loved working with clients to solve their problems, and when you do that, they want you to solve more problems. Her natural approach of getting to know her clients in order to solve their problems made her realize that she loves the relationship building aspect of the business.
- There are a lot of women leaving the profession of being a lawyer. Prior to launching Counsel on Call Jane started looking for women who were exiting the industry to help her solve client problems in a different way.
- The business became a hybrid solution for meeting a need in the marketplace as well as the lawyers that serviced clients.
- Jane had three children in three years while also working as a lawyer full time. She was never the person that went to networking events, but she did have the advantage of working with very well-respected partners.
- Jane started her business by dialing for dollars out of the Nashville Bar Association book. She committed to making ten phone calls each day, started tracking her metrics, and landing meetings.
- Many said no, but most people said yes and the momentum started to snowball.
- When it comes to extremely technical professions, many people struggle with asking for help. Jane’s approach was the reverse, and focused specifically on asking for help in creating a company that would change her prospect’s business for the better.
- As an entrepreneur trying to solve a problem, Jane needed the voices of people in the industry to understand that a problem really existed and what the possible solution would be.
- To start off, Jane began with one lawyer and one law firm, and after the first few years the company had three offices helping lawyers practice in a way they couldn’t before. By the time Jane sold the company, there were 1,200 lawyers on the team.
- Jane recalls the story of how she helped one lawyer in particular in a relatively minor way, and how her advice allowed his career to flourish, simply by being willing to help.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ec.co
jane.allen@ec.co
Andrew Cogar shares the internal and external business development lessons he learned during his career at Historical Concepts and how he knocked Mo off his feet with his approach to building a professional relationship. Find out why the secret to relationships and business development is focusing on the long-term goals and the small-ball tactics, why you have to be true to yourself to be able to connect with someone else in an authentic way, and what it means to be proactive instead of reactive during client meetings.
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: When did you realize that business development was really important?
- It really clicked when Andrew started thinking about business development not as a means of getting business but as a means for the firm to get the business they need to forge their own path.
- After one particular project that went exceedingly well, Andrew understood that those kinds of projects could become a habit rather than a lucky break.
- The GrowBIG System is essentially about doing the right things so that you have control over the kinds of clients you work with. Being proactive gives you so much work that you can pick and choose the projects that you want most.
- It’s easier to be reactive on the front end because you don’t have to do the introspective work it takes to shape your vision and be proactive on finding the right business. It’s easier in the long term to adopt the right principles to attract the right clientele.
- Mo and Andrew do a review of their recent experience working together. In terms of business development, Andrew was simply looking to get to know Mo and the family and understand what he was looking for.
- As an architect, Andrew is hoping to gauge how open someone is to suggestions and that’s an intentional part of the conversation.
- At the end of the day, who Andrew works for and who he works with, has become more important to him and the firm than what he works on.
- Do a little research before a client meeting and come with a set of questions and follow-up questions for them. Don’t be afraid to give some ideas away during the meeting. When you give away a little, you get value back in the things you learn. If you go in with a sales pitch, you don’t learn anything. Show up with questions, not qualifications.
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Andrew’s definition has evolved to simply mean fulfilling relationships on a personal and professional level and not making it any more transactional than that.
- You need to know where you want to go and what the vision of the firm is to know which prospects should be pursued. With a focus on relationships first, even if one project is not the right one at the right time, the next one might be.
- You have to be true to yourself as well as honest and open. Selling a project to someone that doesn’t fit their needs or isn’t in their budget doesn’t do anyone any good.
- Focusing on relationships is focusing on the long term. Doing the right things in the long term comes around ten fold.
- The founder of Historical Concepts baked in the values of vision and integrity, and as the president, Andrew wanted to double down on what Jim taught him. Andrew took the set of axioms they operated on and took it to the rest of the team to make it their own and allow them to add to it. This gave Andrew the confidence to speak for the firm and articulate it to prospects.
- Your purpose is your North Star. Your mission is the external voice of what you’re trying to share. Your vision is your five-year, big, hairy, audacious goal. Articulating those values gives you the lens to see if a client or project aligns with your purpose.
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: What is your favorite science, step, or story in the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- For Andrew, building out their Give-to-Get toolkit stands out the most.
- Showing genuine interest in a prospect and how you can help them got Andrew and the team really excited.
- The Give-to-Get helps you create demand for your expertise by offering a person the experience of working with you. A good metaphor is watching the trailer for the movie before going to the movie theater to watch the whole thing.
- Each town and community are unique, so for Andrew the Give-to-Get is about documenting what excites his team about the town and helps the prospect appreciate the gems in their own backyard.
- It builds trust while showing that Andrew’s team has done their research and some listening and dreaming on what’s possible for their home.
- Robert Cialdini created the framework for influence that people use everyday and he decoded the six most influential factors in a relationship: likability, reciprocity, authority, scarcity, social proof, and commitment. The Give-to-Get checks all those boxes.
- We only have a limited number of hours in the day, and by spending time on something valuable, reaching out is an honest expression of the excitement and enthusiasm of your firm.
- If you figure out who you want to work with, you can free up time by not chasing work you don’t care about, and use the Give-to-Get method to pursue work that you have a greater chance of winning and that you love working on.
- Think small ball. Going for the grand slams makes learning harder, and more often than not, small projects lead to bigger projects.
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- There was one project that stands out for Andrew, where he and the founder of his firm, Jim Strickland, had the chance to not only create an awesome property but also restore and support the local ecology as well.
- During the meeting, Jim and the client discovered they shared a mutual friendship and instead of talking about the project they started geeking out on chicken coops. That kind of interest was exactly what the client was looking for, a firm that was completely authentic to themselves.
- Andrew set the table for that approach that allowed Jim to be Jim to the fullest.
- It’s all about being true to yourself, listening, and then connecting.
- The way that you win work is to actually start doing the work. The right thing to do is to start adding value.
- When you do those things, you aren’t competing anymore. This gets the client excited about the person who is facilitating their vision. It takes them from a leap of faith to “When can we start?”
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: If you could record a video around business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Andrew would tell himself two things. Focus on building meaningful, real relationships as early as possible with as many respected peers and people in your industry as you can.
- The second thing is to figure out what drives you, what you find value in, and what work is meaningful to you.
- Doing the work early can save you a lot of time and there is no reason you can’t start sooner.
- Young people often have a hesitation to reach out but there is no downside. More often than not, they can connect you with someone else who can help even if they say no. There really is nothing to lose.
- There are tons of people out there that want to mentor someone with energy and enthusiasm. Potential mentors want to help high achievers.
- Start with good questions. The more you can question yourself, the more accurate and insightful answers you will come across. Asking those questions leads to a better dialogue with yourself and the mentors you’re asking for advice from.
- Journaling is a key practice that Mo wishes he had started earlier. Reviewing your progress once a week is an easy and simple step that keeps you accountable and honest.
- Having a tool to take a mental inventory of where you want to go and to remind yourself of your big picture goals, it allows you to let go of the small things and stay focused.
- Write down the relationships you would like to go after.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: If you could record a video around business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Andrew would tell himself two things. Focus on building meaningful, real relationships as early as possible with as many respected peers and people in your industry as you can.
- The second thing is to figure out what drives you, what you find value in, and what work is meaningful to you.
- Doing the work early can save you a lot of time and there is no reason you can’t start sooner.
- Young people often have a hesitation to reach out but there is no downside. More often than not, they can connect you with someone else who can help even if they say no. There really is nothing to lose.
- There are tons of people out there that want to mentor someone with energy and enthusiasm. Potential mentors want to help high achievers.
- Start with good questions. The more you can question yourself, the more accurate and insightful answers you will come across. Asking those questions leads to a better dialogue with yourself and the mentors you’re asking for advice from.
- Journaling is a key practice that Mo wishes he had started earlier. Reviewing your progress once a week is an easy and simple step that keeps you accountable and honest.
- Having a tool to take a mental inventory of where you want to go and to remind yourself of your big picture goals, it allows you to let go of the small things and stay focused.
- Write down the relationships you would like to go after.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: Tell us a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- There was one project that stands out for Andrew, where he and the founder of his firm, Jim Strickland, had the chance to not only create an awesome property but also restore and support the local ecology as well.
- During the meeting, Jim and the client discovered they shared a mutual friendship and instead of talking about the project they started geeking out on chicken coops. That kind of interest was exactly what the client was looking for, a firm that was completely authentic to themselves.
- Andrew set the table for that approach that allowed Jim to be Jim to the fullest.
- It’s all about being true to yourself, listening, and then connecting.
- The way that you win work is to actually start doing the work. The right thing to do is to start adding value.
- When you do those things, you aren’t competing anymore. This gets the client excited about the person who is facilitating their vision. It takes them from a leap of faith to “When can we start?”
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: What is your favorite science, step, or story in the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- For Andrew, building out their Give-to-Get toolkit stands out the most.
- Showing genuine interest in a prospect and how you can help them got Andrew and the team really excited.
- The Give-to-Get helps you create demand for your expertise by offering a person the experience of working with you. A good metaphor is watching the trailer for the movie before going to the movie theater to watch the whole thing.
- Each town and community are unique, so for Andrew the Give-to-Get is about documenting what excites his team about the town and helps the prospect appreciate the gems in their own backyard.
- It builds trust while showing that Andrew’s team has done their research and some listening and dreaming on what’s possible for their home.
- Robert Cialdini created the framework for influence that people use everyday and he decoded the six most influential factors in a relationship: likability, reciprocity, authority, scarcity, social proof, and commitment. The Give-to-Get checks all those boxes.
- We only have a limited number of hours in the day, and by spending time on something valuable, reaching out is an honest expression of the excitement and enthusiasm of your firm.
- If you figure out who you want to work with, you can free up time by not chasing work you don’t care about, and use the Give-to-Get method to pursue work that you have a greater chance of winning and that you love working on.
- Think small ball. Going for the grand slams makes learning harder, and more often than not, small projects lead to bigger projects.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Andrew’s definition has evolved to simply mean fulfilling relationships on a personal and professional level and not making it any more transactional than that.
- You need to know where you want to go and what the vision of the firm is to know which prospects should be pursued. With a focus on relationships first, even if one project is not the right one at the right time, the next one might be.
- You have to be true to yourself as well as honest and open. Selling a project to someone that doesn’t fit their needs or isn’t in their budget doesn’t do anyone any good.
- Focusing on relationships is focusing on the long term. Doing the right things in the long term comes around ten fold.
- The founder of Historical Concepts baked in the values of vision and integrity, and as the president, Andrew wanted to double down on what Jim taught him. Andrew took the set of axioms they operated on and took it to the rest of the team to make it their own and allow them to add to it. This gave Andrew the confidence to speak for the firm and articulate it to prospects.
- Your purpose is your North Star. Your mission is the external voice of what you’re trying to share. Your vision is your five-year, big, hairy, audacious goal. Articulating those values gives you the lens to see if a client or project aligns with your purpose.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Mo asks Andrew Cogar: When did you realize that business development was really important?
- It really clicked when Andrew started thinking about business development not as a means of getting business but as a means for the firm to get the business they need to forge their own path.
- After one particular project that went exceedingly well, Andrew understood that those kinds of projects could become a habit rather than a lucky break.
- The GrowBIG System is essentially about doing the right things so that you have control over the kinds of clients you work with. Being proactive gives you so much work that you can pick and choose the projects that you want most.
- It’s easier to be reactive on the front end because you don’t have to do the introspective work it takes to shape your vision and be proactive on finding the right business. It’s easier in the long term to adopt the right principles to attract the right clientele.
- Mo and Andrew do a review of their recent experience working together. In terms of business development, Andrew was simply looking to get to know Mo and the family and understand what he was looking for.
- As an architect, Andrew is hoping to gauge how open someone is to suggestions and that’s an intentional part of the conversation.
- At the end of the day, who Andrew works for and who he works with, has become more important to him and the firm than what he works on.
- Do a little research before a client meeting and come with a set of questions and follow-up questions for them. Don’t be afraid to give some ideas away during the meeting. When you give away a little, you get value back in the things you learn. If you go in with a sales pitch, you don’t learn anything. Show up with questions, not qualifications.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
historicalconcepts.com
Visions of Home
Brian Caffarelli shares his decades of experience in sales and consulting and what he learned about the art and science that is business development. Learn why becoming a guide that inspires trust is one of the most important things you can do to sell more, why success in business development comes down to good habits, and why setting expectations at the beginning is crucial to making the right sale to the right client.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: When was the moment that you realized that business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Brian’s first job out of college was in selling automobiles as a wholesaler to dealerships. Everything began for Brian with his first sale, and how that came about because of developing a relationship with another human being.
- Seeing salespeople that were successful and respected helped Brian navigate what it took to grow in a sales career. So much of success is simply about being in the environment and paying attention.
- If you want to grow your skills, start with the fundamentals of communication and psychology. It’s also important to apply what you learn along the way instead of just taking it in.
- Consider what you’ve done well and what you could have done better.
- Translating his business development skills to a virtual environment is something that Brian is working on, as well as working on learning new things and being open to seeing things differently.
- A recent study revealed the Learned Dogmatism effect and how people tend to become more closed-minded the more expert they become in a specific domain. One of the keys to Brian’s success is striving against that and always being willing to learn.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Brian likes to think of business development as the art and science of guiding the buyer through their journey to an informed and confident decision.
- Just because you know the science, that doesn’t mean you’ll be great at business development. It’s equal parts the art of empathy and flexibility, and science of habits and communication.
- Mountain climbing guides are great metaphors for business development. Really good salespeople are helping people reach their own personal summit and get what they need to experience from the mountain.
- The defining characteristic of a guide is the ability to inspire trust. Trust comes before the sale. You need to be able to see ahead of corners for your buyers, and to challenge their thinking where appropriate.
- The challenge for the guide is in focusing on what the buyer needs over their own needs.
- Work on the skills and behaviors that inspire trust in you and live your life with integrity so you are worthy of that trust. Study why people buy, because that is going to be your biggest point of leverage for creating a great buying experience.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Whole brain thinking stands out the most to Brian. When trying to communicate, it’s easy to over index on the message and under index on the individual receiving the message. The Herrmann Brain Dominance model allows you to understand the preferences of the receiver so you can craft a message that will resonate with them.
- Good questions are the prompt that people need to think out loud and identify the problems they are facing.
- If you’re in a conversation with a prospect, one of your goals should be to reduce the amount of words that are open to interpretation. The more you know exactly what they are saying the better.
- Success in business development often comes down to simply forming really good habits.
- One habit that Brian works hard on is always finding something of value to the client that he holds most dear. This habit keeps them top of mind and helps him identify new opportunities for adding value.
- Brian spends a half an hour each morning scanning for new research with another hour each Saturday.
- Think like your buyer and make that habitual so that becomes the way you enter the conversation.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: Tell me of a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Brian’s most proud of the lesson he learned from his story. Early in his career, Brian was part of a major sales effort with a world-class brand. Negotiations went very well until there was one intractable snag with the contract.
- Brian learned that it wasn’t just about making a sale, it was about making a quality sale. Some clients aren’t right for your organization.
- You will never regret the client you didn’t get, as much as the wrong client you did get.
- Brian had to step up in two dimensions: In being with the buyer through all the steps of the process, and in bridging the gap between the seller’s needs and the buyer’s needs.
- Shared expectations are important. You should be diligent around creating shared expectations before a sale is made so that everyone is on the same page and you can avoid making painful mistakes down the road.
- If something isn’t a fit, it’s better to find that out sooner rather than later.
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- If you think selling is hard, buying is harder. Brian would want to tell his younger self that if he was more in tune and empathetic to the struggles of the buyer, sales wouldn’t be as hard.
- When you feel stuck with sales, realize that the buyer is even more stuck.
- To create a great buying experience, deconstruct as many of the little decisions that need to be made before the purchase decision. Get a sense of where you are in the process and the personal motivations of the other person for the stage they are at.
- As the guide, it’s your job to help the buyer understand what the next step is and move them forward when they are ready.
- Look into the past and see if your organization or you personally did something similar before. You might find challenges that were overcome and lessons that can be applied right now.
- In the early stages of the buying journey, the buyer doesn’t necessarily realize the enormity or the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve. When trying to create demand, it’s problem knowledge and not product knowledge that moves the needle.
- Empathy is the keyword. Buyers are trying to make a really hard decision and the better you understand the buying challenges the more likely you are to being able to solve their problem.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: If you could record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- If you think selling is hard, buying is harder. Brian would want to tell his younger self that if he was more in tune and empathetic to the struggles of the buyer, sales wouldn’t be as hard.
- When you feel stuck with sales, realize that the buyer is even more stuck.
- To create a great buying experience, deconstruct as many of the little decisions that need to be made before the purchase decision. Get a sense of where you are in the process and the personal motivations of the other person for the stage they are at.
- As the guide, it’s your job to help the buyer understand what the next step is and move them forward when they are ready.
- Look into the past and see if your organization or you personally did something similar before. You might find challenges that were overcome and lessons that can be applied right now.
- In the early stages of the buying journey, the buyer doesn’t necessarily realize the enormity or the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve. When trying to create demand, it’s problem knowledge and not product knowledge that moves the needle.
- Empathy is the keyword. Buyers are trying to make a really hard decision and the better you understand the buying challenges the more likely you are to being able to solve their problem.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: Tell me of a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Brian’s most proud of the lesson he learned from his story. Early in his career, Brian was part of a major sales effort with a world-class brand. Negotiations went very well until there was one intractable snag with the contract.
- Brian learned that it wasn’t just about making a sale, it was about making a quality sale. Some clients aren’t right for your organization.
- You will never regret the client you didn’t get, as much as the wrong client you did get.
- Brian had to step up in two dimensions: In being with the buyer through all the steps of the process, and in bridging the gap between the seller’s needs and the buyer’s needs.
- Shared expectations are important. You should be diligent around creating shared expectations before a sale is made so that everyone is on the same page and you can avoid making painful mistakes down the road.
- If something isn’t a fit, it’s better to find that out sooner rather than later.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Whole brain thinking stands out the most to Brian. When trying to communicate, it’s easy to over index on the message and under index on the individual receiving the message. The Herrmann Brain Dominance model allows you to understand the preferences of the receiver so you can craft a message that will resonate with them.
- Good questions are the prompt that people need to think out loud and identify the problems they are facing.
- If you’re in a conversation with a prospect, one of your goals should be to reduce the amount of words that are open to interpretation. The more you know exactly what they are saying the better.
- Success in business development often comes down to simply forming really good habits.
- One habit that Brian works hard on is always finding something of value to the client that he holds most dear. This habit keeps them top of mind and helps him identify new opportunities for adding value.
- Brian spends a half an hour each morning scanning for new research with another hour each Saturday.
- Think like your buyer and make that habitual so that becomes the way you enter the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Brian likes to think of business development as the art and science of guiding the buyer through their journey to an informed and confident decision.
- Just because you know the science, that doesn’t mean you’ll be great at business development. It’s equal parts the art of empathy and flexibility, and science of habits and communication.
- Mountain climbing guides are great metaphors for business development. Really good salespeople are helping people reach their own personal summit and get what they need to experience from the mountain.
- The defining characteristic of a guide is the ability to inspire trust. Trust comes before the sale. You need to be able to see ahead of corners for your buyers, and to challenge their thinking where appropriate.
- The challenge for the guide is in focusing on what the buyer needs over their own needs.
- Work on the skills and behaviors that inspire trust in you and live your life with integrity so you are worthy of that trust. Study why people buy, because that is going to be your biggest point of leverage for creating a great buying experience.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mo asks Brian Caffarelli: When was the moment that you realized that business development was something you wanted to focus on?
- Brian’s first job out of college was in selling automobiles as a wholesaler to dealerships. Everything began for Brian with his first sale, and how that came about because of developing a relationship with another human being.
- Seeing salespeople that were successful and respected helped Brian navigate what it took to grow in a sales career. So much of success is simply about being in the environment and paying attention.
- If you want to grow your skills, start with the fundamentals of communication and psychology. It’s also important to apply what you learn along the way instead of just taking it in.
- Consider what you’ve done well and what you could have done better.
- Translating his business development skills to a virtual environment is something that Brian is working on, as well as working on learning new things and being open to seeing things differently.
- A recent study revealed the Learned Dogmatism effect and how people tend to become more closed-minded the more expert they become in a specific domain. One of the keys to Brian’s success is striving against that and always being willing to learn.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brian.caffarelli@stsconsulting.com
linkedin.com/in/briancaffarelli
Mark Harris went from selling books door-to-door in 1994 to one of the most effective rainmakers at Guardian Life Insurance and he shares the exact framework he used to become great at business development. Learn about the difference between following up on a work level versus an emotional level and why an emotional connection always wins, how to create small wins every single day that snowball into big accomplishments, and why doing business development right leads to happiness and long-term success.
Mo asks Mark Harris: Tell me a story of when you realized that you needed to focus on business development.
- Mark takes us back to the summer of 1994 when he took on a job selling books door-to-door, a path that some of the most successful rainmakers have followed.
- It started off as a way to make more money than working at the local McDonald’s but it became a skill that Mark learned he could get better at.
- All skills are both learned and earned. Mark was initially not good at sales at all and after 12 hours of hearing no, he decided to flip his approach and try to make a connection with the person first.
- He also learned that he needed to create little wins throughout the day to manage his energy and motivation.
- The steps to a purchase are the same no matter what you’re selling. Connect with the person first and find out if you can solve their needs.
- Mark also learned how to deal with his emotions at that time, and when he figured out how to do that he became a lot more relatable and fun to be around.
- That whole first summer was all about being more relatable to people immediately after meeting them. After a couple sales, Mark figured out what he was really providing people with, and it wasn’t a book. When he took the focus off the money and made it about helping the other person, the sale became much easier.
- By breaking the process into each individual piece, Mark created a series of small wins that were under his control. Even a rejection can be a learning experience.
- When you put yourself outside your comfort zone, you become more capable emotionally of handling the experience and more likely to overcome the next hurdle, and every hurdle you jump builds your confidence.
- Think about what you can do every single day to get you closer to your ultimate win. You don’t know when your next sale is going to happen, but if you can focus on what you can control it will happen.
Mo asks Mark Harris: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development means something different to everybody. For Mark, it’s all about helping people understand what their needs are (teaching) and then once you find that out it’s helping them find the solution they need.
- Mark focuses on one phrase when going into the first meeting with someone, specifically being “humbly curious”. He’s simply looking to understand what motivates someone and where they are coming from, and what’s going to help them.
- Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody likes to buy, especially from people they like. Focusing on the sale is a short-term strategy.
- Sometimes the right thing is to not sell something. If things aren’t a good fit now but might be later, being upfront and telling the prospect the truth is how you can build trust and empathy and secure a valuable long-term relationship.
- Ask as many questions as you can. When you can train your mind to ask questions and be humbly curious, the world is your oyster and you can bring value to that organization at all times.
Mo asks Mark Harris: What is your favorite science, step, or story when it comes to the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Without a doubt, the four brain quadrants are the key to connecting to almost anyone. Mark taught his daughter how to pinpoint the four quadrants within the family and use it immediately to connect with each person.
- Out in the marketplace, you’re going to encounter all four different colors. When Mark speaks to a broker that’s in the yellow quadrant, it’s easy to tailor the conversation to speak their language. Putting the framework into practice makes getting the next step easy and natural.
- Asking people how to help them simply elicits a better response. Any decision maker you speak to has goals so get comfortable asking people those questions. Being open-ended and flexible gets people thinking about where they want to be, and that often leads to the other person starting to sell you on helping them.
- If you can follow up on a personal level, you are creating a friend and a relationship for the long-term. When you win on the emotional side, it pays dividends on the work side for eternity.
- Once you put yourself out there and see the success of the emotional wins, it makes it much easier to keep doing it in the future.
Mo asks Mark Harris: Tell me of a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Mark typically works with brokers or consultants, and they typically shop the market as part of their offer.
- One of Mark’s work friends went out on his own to start his own business and reached out to him to talk about what Mark could do to help. When Mark sat down with him, he started off by asking questions about the future of the business and where the other person saw things going. Mark ended the initial conversation by actually recommending he talk to Mark’s competitors!
- By starting the conversation off from a teaching and helping perspective, Mark helped him create an efficient business that now sells only Guardian insurance.
- You can always help someone accomplish their goals, and if that’s your framework you will always be able to help someone.
- If you truly understand how to help someone and approach them from that aspect, you’re not selling them. When you help them, they want to buy.
- Mark is most proud of having the integrity and courage to recommend the other person look elsewhere. Turning down a possible sale is hard, but being willing to make that decision when it was right for the client showed them that Mark cared and ultimately created the foundation for a genuine relationship.
- People who make more relationships are also generally happier, and that’s one of the best aspects of business development.
Mo asks Mark Harris: If you could record a message around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- The first thing Mark would say is that business development is a marathon, not a sprint.
- The second thing is that the role is a learned skill. People are not born great sales, it’s something you can learn and master.
- The third thing is to help others when you can. You’ll be happier helping others with their success than you will ever be with your own success.
- When people first get into sales they often sprint towards their first sale, but when they do that they forget about the long-term marathon of relationship building. When you build relationships on that level, the tiny sprints toward each sale become easier over time.
- Sales didn’t come naturally to Mark, but when he realized that he was getting better each day that became a big motivation and opened the door to becoming excellent at it.
- Helping others when you can helps you be happier, which cycles back to building trust and reinforces the first three lessons.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Mark Harris: If you could record a message around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- The first thing Mark would say is that business development is a marathon, not a sprint.
- The second thing is that the role is a learned skill. People are not born great sales, it’s something you can learn and master.
- The third thing is to help others when you can. You’ll be happier helping others with their success than you will ever be with your own success.
- When people first get into sales they often sprint towards their first sale, but when they do that they forget about the long-term marathon of relationship building. When you build relationships on that level, the tiny sprints toward each sale become easier over time.
- Sales didn’t come naturally to Mark, but when he realized that he was getting better each day that became a big motivation and opened the door to becoming excellent at it.
- Helping others when you can helps you be happier, which cycles back to building trust and reinforces the first three lessons.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Mark Harris: Tell me of a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Mark typically works with brokers or consultants, and they typically shop the market as part of their offer.
- One of Mark’s work friends went out on his own to start his own business and reached out to him to talk about what Mark could do to help. When Mark sat down with him, he started off by asking questions about the future of the business and where the other person saw things going. Mark ended the initial conversation by actually recommending he talk to Mark’s competitors!
- By starting the conversation off from a teaching and helping perspective, Mark helped him create an efficient business that now sells only Guardian insurance.
- You can always help someone accomplish their goals, and if that’s your framework you will always be able to help someone.
- If you truly understand how to help someone and approach them from that aspect, you’re not selling them. When you help them, they want to buy.
- Mark is most proud of having the integrity and courage to recommend the other person look elsewhere. Turning down a possible sale is hard, but being willing to make that decision when it was right for the client showed them that Mark cared and ultimately created the foundation for a genuine relationship.
- People who make more relationships are also generally happier, and that’s one of the best aspects of business development.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Mark Harris: What is your favorite science, step, or story when it comes to the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Without a doubt, the four brain quadrants are the key to connecting to almost anyone. Mark taught his daughter how to pinpoint the four quadrants within the family and use it immediately to connect with each person.
- Out in the marketplace, you’re going to encounter all four different colors. When Mark speaks to a broker that’s in the yellow quadrant, it’s easy to tailor the conversation to speak their language. Putting the framework into practice makes getting the next step easy and natural.
- Asking people how to help them simply elicits a better response. Any decision maker you speak to has goals so get comfortable asking people those questions. Being open-ended and flexible gets people thinking about where they want to be, and that often leads to the other person starting to sell you on helping them.
- If you can follow up on a personal level, you are creating a friend and a relationship for the long-term. When you win on the emotional side, it pays dividends on the work side for eternity.
- Once you put yourself out there and see the success of the emotional wins, it makes it much easier to keep doing it in the future.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Mark Harris: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development means something different to everybody. For Mark, it’s all about helping people understand what their needs are (teaching) and then once you find that out it’s helping them find the solution they need.
- Mark focuses on one phrase when going into the first meeting with someone, specifically being “humbly curious”. He’s simply looking to understand what motivates someone and where they are coming from, and what’s going to help them.
- Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody likes to buy, especially from people they like. Focusing on the sale is a short-term strategy.
- Sometimes the right thing is to not sell something. If things aren’t a good fit now but might be later, being upfront and telling the prospect the truth is how you can build trust and empathy and secure a valuable long-term relationship.
- Ask as many questions as you can. When you can train your mind to ask questions and be humbly curious, the world is your oyster and you can bring value to that organization at all times.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Mo asks Mark Harris: Tell me a story of when you realized that you needed to focus on business development.
- Mark takes us back to the summer of 1994 when he took on a job selling books door-to-door, a path that some of the most successful rainmakers have followed.
- It started off as a way to make more money than working at the local McDonald’s but it became a skill that Mark learned he could get better at.
- All skills are both learned and earned. Mark was initially not good at sales at all and after 12 hours of hearing no, he decided to flip his approach and try to make a connection with the person first.
- He also learned that he needed to create little wins throughout the day to manage his energy and motivation.
- The steps to a purchase are the same no matter what you’re selling. Connect with the person first and find out if you can solve their needs.
- Mark also learned how to deal with his emotions at that time, and when he figured out how to do that he became a lot more relatable and fun to be around.
- That whole first summer was all about being more relatable to people immediately after meeting them. After a couple sales, Mark figured out what he was really providing people with, and it wasn’t a book. When he took the focus off the money and made it about helping the other person, the sale became much easier.
- By breaking the process into each individual piece, Mark created a series of small wins that were under his control. Even a rejection can be a learning experience.
- When you put yourself outside your comfort zone, you become more capable emotionally of handling the experience and more likely to overcome the next hurdle, and every hurdle you jump builds your confidence.
- Think about what you can do every single day to get you closer to your ultimate win. You don’t know when your next sale is going to happen, but if you can focus on what you can control it will happen.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mark_C_Harris@glic.com
linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-9ba1b53
Kim Davenport shares the role relationship building has played for her and why BD is much more than just selling. Learn more about the three steps to D&I, how you would want to be seen when it comes to BD, and Kim’s advice to a younger self.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: Tell me the moment when you decided that business development is something that you wanted to focus on, as well as how to connect with prospects and create wins for clients.
- There isn’t a particular point in time in which Kim said to herself, ‘This is development, I need to focus on clients’ – it’s just something that has always been part of her. Focusing on helping people and building relationships with people has been with her pretty much since day one.
- For Kim, inclusion, diversity and having a passion for helping clients are all components of the same equation. She’s always seeking ways to help others, to build relationships with different people. This is part of diversity and inclusion, and you can’t do one without the other.
- Being seen as someone who’s helping somebody make their way and get better, and as someone who creates opportunities for clients that allow them to be better, is the golden crown of business development.
- Understanding how to get a prospect from a meeting to needing her help and wanting to hire her has been the hardest thing Kim had to learn. The answer lies in connecting, being curious and having conversations that bring prospects on a journey. Becoming someone they can lean on, someone who listens to them, and who just lets them get it all out, can be transformational.
- It’s about asking questions and taking prospects on the journey first. Kim has a current client, who has been her friend for years. After having a long conversation, Kim realized that what her friend was struggling with in her business was something that Kim could help her with.
- The key is to engage in actively listening to who you’re having a conversation with.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is your personal development of business development? And he asks Kim how she goes about addressing D&I.
- Kim looks at business development as a three-part concept. There’s helping the client, then there’s building a relationship with them. And, lastly, there’s helping a client or an organization get better.
- Kim goes beyond the dollar sign. She focuses not only on how a potential opportunity might impact an organization or a client in general terms, but individual people too. It’s important to understand the impact of different projects and how they could impact the individual person or contributor.
- Being proactive and staying on top of things isn’t easy, as Kim admits, but you need to carve out time. Kim, for instance, blocks out time in her calendar from time to time, and spends that time sitting down, thinking about the conversations she has been having and where everything is headed toward.
- When it comes to getting things done in D&I, Kim uses a three-step approach. First, it’s about truly making that a passion and a priority. Step two is about doing whatever is needed – surveys, focus groups, etc. to talk to people and try to figure out where things are at. And, thirdly, try to close the gap.
- Focusing on D&I makes people feel as if they’re operating in an environment where they can be successful, feel valued, and where they want to give it all to the organization they’re part of.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG or the Snowball System?
- Kim’s favorite science is the four-color quadrant – green (the one Kim identifies with the most), blue, red, and yellow.
- She keeps it at the back of her mind whenever she’s about to have an interaction, with the purpose of trying to approach and connect with the person in the way that best suits their personality and where they’re “positioned” in the color quadrant.
- Different people require you to connect with them in different ways, so it’s important to always be listening and be attentive to that.
- Despite her engineering background and being someone who is process-driven, Kim understands the importance of realizing that, even when it comes to work that includes processes, there are emotions involved there.
- As she puts it, you open up a person when you’re able to also relate to them and don’t simply come in with a “black and white” approach.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- Kim’s most proud moment was the first real significant opportunity she brought into her firm – the friend, who’s a vice president at an energy company, who she had a conversation with and who realized Kim and the firm she’s part of could help her business.
- Kim is proud of what she did, of having the courage to go outside of her comfort zone a little bit to bring business into a conversation among friends. This was her first success story, and it happened before Kim was a partner at her firm.
- That’s one of the moments that made her realize that BD isn’t about going around knocking on doors trying to sell something, but it’s about helping people, about leveraging and building relationships… and, yes, it’s fun!
- Even though she’s process-driven, Kim recommends not to overthink things too much. Her advice is to just be a little courageous, and give it a try. Just ask the first question, make it natural. Don’t worry about what comes after that, just take the first step and see where it takes you.
Mo asks Kim Davenport: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?
- In a video she would record for a younger self, Kim would tell her to toss doubts aside and to believe in herself.
- To prepare her prior self, Kim would want her to get smart, be curious, and to be intentional.
- BD is more than just selling business, it’s about trying to be a guide, an advisor, and about trying to be someone that somebody would like to partner with when they need help or counseling.
- Kim recommends to focus less on titles and positions, but to focus more on skills and what you’re getting out of wherever you are now, instead.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Kim Davenport: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?
- In a video she would record for a younger self, Kim would tell her to toss doubts aside and to believe in herself.
- To prepare her prior self, Kim would want her to get smart, be curious, and to be intentional.
- BD is more than just selling business, it’s about trying to be a guide, an advisor, and about trying to be someone that somebody would like to partner with when they need help or counseling.
- Kim recommends to focus less on titles and positions, but to focus more on skills and what you’re getting out of wherever you are now, instead.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- Kim’s most proud moment was the first real significant opportunity she brought into her firm – the friend, who’s a vice president at an energy company, who she had a conversation with and who realized Kim and the firm she’s part of could help her business.
- Kim is proud of what she did, of having the courage to go outside of her comfort zone a little bit to bring business into a conversation among friends. This was her first success story, and it happened before Kim was a partner at her firm.
- That’s one of the moments that made her realize that BD isn’t about going around knocking on doors trying to sell something, but it’s about helping people, about leveraging and building relationships… and, yes, it’s fun!
- Even though she’s process-driven, Kim recommends not to overthink things too much. Her advice is to just be a little courageous, and give it a try. Just ask the first question, make it natural. Don’t worry about what comes after that, just take the first step and see where it takes you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG or the Snowball System?
- Kim’s favorite science is the four-color quadrant – green (the one Kim identifies with the most), blue, red, and yellow.
- She keeps it at the back of her mind whenever she’s about to have an interaction, with the purpose of trying to approach and connect with the person in the way that best suits their personality and where they’re “positioned” in the color quadrant.
- Different people require you to connect with them in different ways, so it’s important to always be listening and be attentive to that.
- Despite her engineering background and being someone who is process-driven, Kim understands the importance of realizing that, even when it comes to work that includes processes, there are emotions involved there.
- As she puts it, you open up a person when you’re able to also relate to them and don’t simply come in with a “black and white” approach.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Kim Davenport: What is your personal development of business development? And he asks Kim how she goes about addressing D&I.
- Kim looks at business development as a three-part concept. There’s helping the client, then there’s building a relationship with them. And, lastly, there’s helping a client or an organization get better.
- Kim goes beyond the dollar sign. She focuses not only on how a potential opportunity might impact an organization or a client in general terms, but individual people too. It’s important to understand the impact of different projects and how they could impact the individual person or contributor.
- Being proactive and staying on top of things isn’t easy, as Kim admits, but you need to carve out time. Kim, for instance, blocks out time in her calendar from time to time, and spends that time sitting down, thinking about the conversations she has been having and where everything is headed toward.
- When it comes to getting things done in D&I, Kim uses a three-step approach. First, it’s about truly making that a passion and a priority. Step two is about doing whatever is needed – surveys, focus groups, etc. to talk to people and try to figure out where things are at. And, thirdly, try to close the gap.
- Focusing on D&I makes people feel as if they’re operating in an environment where they can be successful, feel valued, and where they want to give it all to the organization they’re part of.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Mo asks Kim Davenport: Tell me the moment when you decided that business development is something that you wanted to focus on, as well as how to connect with prospects and create wins for clients.
- There isn’t a particular point in time in which Kim said to herself, ‘This is development, I need to focus on clients’ – it’s just something that has always been part of her. Focusing on helping people and building relationships with people has been with her pretty much since day one.
- For Kim, inclusion, diversity and having a passion for helping clients are all components of the same equation. She’s always seeking ways to help others, to build relationships with different people. This is part of diversity and inclusion, and you can’t do one without the other.
- Being seen as someone who’s helping somebody make their way and get better, and as someone who creates opportunities for clients that allow them to be better, is the golden crown of business development.
- Understanding how to get a prospect from a meeting to needing her help and wanting to hire her has been the hardest thing Kim had to learn. The answer lies in connecting, being curious and having conversations that bring prospects on a journey. Becoming someone they can lean on, someone who listens to them, and who just lets them get it all out, can be transformational.
- It’s about asking questions and taking prospects on the journey first. Kim has a current client, who has been her friend for years. After having a long conversation, Kim realized that what her friend was struggling with in her business was something that Kim could help her with.
- The key is to engage in actively listening to who you’re having a conversation with.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kim-davenport-7732751
kimberlydavenport@scottmadden.com
Tyler Sweatt shares a series of powerfully concise lessons on business development he’s picked up over the years consulting in a wide range of industries. Find out how Tyler and his team solve incredibly complex compliance problems while making the buying process as frictionless as possible, why saying no to some prospects is critical to find the customers, and how planning is the easiest way to set yourself apart from your competition.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: When did you realize that business development was great?
- When Tyler transitioned out of the military, he wasn’t sure which direction to take his career. He cut his teeth at Deloitte where he learned the two basic functions of a business: value creation and value protection.
- You have to figure out which one you need to focus on from a career standpoint. Tyler started thinking about how to build relationships and establish trust since that was the fastest way to grow.
- Tyler found a few partners within the organization that helped him learn the ropes of value creation, and in the process, he got in touch with Toffler Associates. That was where he learned a new approach to consulting that opened up a huge number of opportunities for him.
- Those experiences became unique information that Tyler could share simply by being exposed to it.
- There is no better time than now to invest in yourself and your education. Focusing on your technical expertise, getting exposed to how other businesses work, and growth skills.
- When you’re learning, you should always have the last part be a practical implementation. Test your knowledge and put it into practice.
- Value creation and growth skills are highly transferable.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, it’s all about value creation.
- The entire spectrum of taking a prospect from completely cold to raving fan is the process of growth.
- Content creation is part of the effort, similar to an at-scale give-to-get. When someone hits the pipeline, Tyler focuses on qualifying them immediately and moving quickly on closing the deal.
- For marketing and lead generation, you need to figure out the three most important metrics you need to cover and orient on those. That will make everything else easier.
- Referrals are a big indicator of both effectiveness and product-market fit.
- Try to avoid measuring too many metrics at the same time.
- You need to think about business development from the customer’s buying process and how you can remove as much friction from their buying process as possible. Make it as easy to buy from you as possible.
- Focus on a positive buying experience and make it easy for the customer. Being customer-centered will be extremely valuable in everything you work on.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Too many people focus on just having a meeting and following the script they have in their mind. Dynamic Meeting Prep is one of Tyler’s favorite strategies that solves that problem.
- Using the process, you can solidly prepare for a meeting in under 10 minutes which is a great way to bring many of the other Snowball System strategies.
- Have a goal in mind, but be flexible on how you get there.
- The value is not in the plan, it’s in the planning. You are creating a plan to operate fluidly depending on the situation.
- You can completely separate yourself from your competition in the way that you approach meetings.
- Tyler’s second favorite strategy is Asking For The Advance. Moving along opportunities ties into the Dynamic Meeting Prep and makes the buying process much easier.
- You are 34x more likely to get a yes in person than you are over email. This is why it’s so important to get the next step or next meeting nailed down during your current meeting.
- There are four main reasons you might not win. It’s usually either not a strategic fit, a technical fit, a timing fit, or not a relational fit. You should try to eliminate those potential obstacles during the qualifying process.
- Think about who stands to benefit from the purchase, how to make the purchase as easy as possible, or how you can get the prospect to build the solution with you. Seek early victories.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: Tell me a business development story that you are really proud of.
- At Second Front, Tyler is working to solve some ridiculously complicated problems and building something that has never existed before.
- Tyler has been in several different industries, all of which involve emerging technology and security. In most of those industries, compliance burdens were always an issue and Second Front is working on solving that. They have figured out a solution that solves a pressing national security problem and has opened new doors of opportunity that could be saving lives.
- The Second Front team is the best team he’s been a part of since leaving the military, and he loves the fact that he’s proving people wrong. When somebody tells him that something can’t be done, that motivates Tyler to go and prove them wrong.
- It’s a lot easier to maintain things than it is to create things. At its core, business development is always new and always different, which is something that Tyler appreciates.
- Know what your why is, and it’s okay if that changes over time. For Tyler, being able to set examples for his sons and have teachable moments is the core of why he does what he does in his season of life.
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: If you could record a video around business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Don’t fall in love with titles.
- Identify character traits that you don’t want to emulate.
- Don’t lose sight of the value of saying no. No is the most strategic word in your arsenal.
- Don’t feel obligated to stick around in an organization. You are your own client.
- Tyler is a fan of being brutally transparent. The easiest way to make sure your message is heard the way you want it to be heard is to make it as simple and plain as possible. You are doing the other person a favor by being honest.
- No is a decision, yes is a commitment. Saying yes to something you don’t want to do only creates negative energy and sabotages the relationship over time.
- Figure out what you’re doing that you don’t want to do right now, and start cutting them out so you can focus on the activities that have the highest value to you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: If you could record a video around business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Don’t fall in love with titles.
- Identify character traits that you don’t want to emulate.
- Don’t lose sight of the value of saying no. No is the most strategic word in your arsenal.
- Don’t feel obligated to stick around in an organization. You are your own client.
- Tyler is a fan of being brutally transparent. The easiest way to make sure your message is heard the way you want it to be heard is to make it as simple and plain as possible. You are doing the other person a favor by being honest.
- No is a decision, yes is a commitment. Saying yes to something you don’t want to do only creates negative energy and sabotages the relationship over time.
- Figure out what you’re doing that you don’t want to do right now, and start cutting them out so you can focus on the activities that have the highest value to you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: Tell me a business development story that you are really proud of.
- At Second Front, Tyler is working to solve some ridiculously complicated problems and building something that has never existed before.
- Tyler has been in several different industries, all of which involve emerging technology and security. In most of those industries, compliance burdens were always an issue and Second Front is working on solving that. They have figured out a solution that solves a pressing national security problem and has opened new doors of opportunity that could be saving lives.
- The Second Front team is the best team he’s been a part of since leaving the military, and he loves the fact that he’s proving people wrong. When somebody tells him that something can’t be done, that motivates Tyler to go and prove them wrong.
- It’s a lot easier to maintain things than it is to create things. At its core, business development is always new and always different, which is something that Tyler appreciates.
- Know what your why is, and it’s okay if that changes over time. For Tyler, being able to set examples for his sons and have teachable moments is the core of why he does what he does in his season of life.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Too many people focus on just having a meeting and following the script they have in their mind. Dynamic Meeting Prep is one of Tyler’s favorite strategies that solves that problem.
- Using the process, you can solidly prepare for a meeting in under 10 minutes which is a great way to bring many of the other Snowball System strategies.
- Have a goal in mind, but be flexible on how you get there.
- The value is not in the plan, it’s in the planning. You are creating a plan to operate fluidly depending on the situation.
- You can completely separate yourself from your competition in the way that you approach meetings.
- Tyler’s second favorite strategy is Asking For The Advance. Moving along opportunities ties into the Dynamic Meeting Prep and makes the buying process much easier.
- You are 34x more likely to get a yes in person than you are over email. This is why it’s so important to get the next step or next meeting nailed down during your current meeting.
- There are four main reasons you might not win. It’s usually either not a strategic fit, a technical fit, a timing fit, or not a relational fit. You should try to eliminate those potential obstacles during the qualifying process.
- Think about who stands to benefit from the purchase, how to make the purchase as easy as possible, or how you can get the prospect to build the solution with you. Seek early victories.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, it’s all about value creation.
- The entire spectrum of taking a prospect from completely cold to raving fan is the process of growth.
- Content creation is part of the effort, similar to an at-scale give-to-get. When someone hits the pipeline, Tyler focuses on qualifying them immediately and moving quickly on closing the deal.
- For marketing and lead generation, you need to figure out the three most important metrics you need to cover and orient on those. That will make everything else easier.
- Referrals are a big indicator of both effectiveness and product-market fit.
- Try to avoid measuring too many metrics at the same time.
- You need to think about business development from the customer’s buying process and how you can remove as much friction from their buying process as possible. Make it as easy to buy from you as possible.
- Focus on a positive buying experience and make it easy for the customer. Being customer-centered will be extremely valuable in everything you work on.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Mo asks Tyler Sweatt: When did you realize that business development was great?
- When Tyler transitioned out of the military, he wasn’t sure which direction to take his career. He cut his teeth at Deloitte where he learned the two basic functions of a business: value creation and value protection.
- You have to figure out which one you need to focus on from a career standpoint. Tyler started thinking about how to build relationships and establish trust since that was the fastest way to grow.
- Tyler found a few partners within the organization that helped him learn the ropes of value creation, and in the process, he got in touch with Toffler Associates. That was where he learned a new approach to consulting that opened up a huge number of opportunities for him.
- Those experiences became unique information that Tyler could share simply by being exposed to it.
- There is no better time than now to invest in yourself and your education. Focusing on your technical expertise, getting exposed to how other businesses work, and growth skills.
- When you’re learning, you should always have the last part be a practical implementation. Test your knowledge and put it into practice.
- Value creation and growth skills are highly transferable.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt
secondfront.com
Kevin Clem shares his charm and personality while discussing the biggest business development lessons he’s learned over the years. Learn about the three ways to build and develop a new relationship, how to impress a prospect by doing your homework, and why it’s okay to make the ask.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: When was the moment you realized growth is great and you wanted to focus on business development?
- Kevin has been doing business development for 20 years, but he didn’t always call it that.
- Kevin realized that he had a knack for business development after a repeat client said to him that they keep coming back to work with him, but they never felt sold. Eventually, the CEO offered to make that a formal role.
- Sales became a natural progression of Kevin’s career. Business development is an extension of helping clients solve their problems, and making connections with people allowed Kevin to transition into a more client-focused role.
- Finding ways to form the connection with a client is crucial. Connections are how relationships grow, and when relationships grow, revenue follows.
- Some of the connection effort is organic, but there is a lot of research involved. Kevin will always look for a point of connection that goes beyond the business transactional relationship. There is a goldmine of information on LinkedIn that you can bring up when it makes sense.
- The foundation of all good relationships is connection where you have alignment with someone or can build on their relationship with other people.
- Peppering in the details as your talking about what they are working on is the key to not coming in too strongly. It’s not about manipulating, it’s about organically connecting on some shared experience.
- Business development is like interviewing. It shouldn’t feel weird that you are doing a little homework on the other person.
- Thoughtful follow up questions on the other person’s written content is great.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, making connections and solving problems. It’s always about how you can solve a problem, whether or not there is a direct transaction involved.
- When you solve someone’s problem, either directly or through your network, they will probably come to you first to solve a similar problem in the future.
- Kevin is always listening for an issue that his organization may be able to help with, but he’s also looking for third party connections and resources that may help as well.
- There is always some aspect of a prospect’s experience that you can use as a hook to follow up.
- One of the best pieces of advice that Kevin received was to either make an introduction, bring an insight, or give an invitation to something else.
- Don’t assume that a conversation that doesn’t result in a closed deal is a loss. Business development is about playing the game, and if you can help a person solve their problem, they will probably come to you in the future.
- A successful meeting is when you add value, and a really successful meeting is when you book another meeting.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Kevin discovered the Snowball System from the podcast after being referred to it by the CEO of HBR Consulting.
- The Most Important Things is one of the key principles that Kevin has embraced. He and his team have made the idea of the top three things as a guiding framework for how they operate.
- Raving fans and assessing the level of the relationship with each client is another big strategy.
- There is power in language. Just by entering the GrowBIG world and embracing the terminology, Kevin and his team have changed the way they think about business development and growth.
- Take a page out of your creative marketing playbook and come out with a theme for your internal program to get your team to buy in.
- Kevin’s team has tried a number of different incentives to get the team excited. They found that recognition and reward among high achievers is a good base to start with, combined with accountability. Create and celebrate short-term wins to spotlight things that are going well and to build momentum.
- Celebrating the small wins is an important piece of creating progress. Doing what you can do today is what leads to the championship.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Kevin tells the story of a completely cold lead that turned into a full-fledged prospect after five years of near silence.
- By helping the prospect without asking for anything in return at the beginning, Kevin kicked off a relationship where when the timing was right, the client asked for him to sell him on working with him.
- Of the four parts of the relationship building process, the listen and learn stage is one of the most important. Kevin brought his prospect into a round table conversation that showed how HBR has worked with other clients in the past, and that created the curiosity that led to the sale.
- When you build enough curiosity and do the process the right way, the client is pulling you towards taking the next step instead of you pushing them.
- The best result you can get in professional services is a warm referral. If your client is willing to do that, that shows a huge amount of trust.
Mo asks Kevin Clem: If you could record a business development focused video and send it back to your past self, what would it be?
- One of the biggest lessons that Kevin has learned in his career is that people want to connect and it’s okay to make the big ask.
- If you’ve built the relationship, it’s okay to ask about working together. In many cases, your clients are looking for people that can help solve their problems. They might say no, and that’s okay, but if they say yes, you have an opportunity to work with someone sooner than you would otherwise.
- How you ask matters. Make it clear that working together is a way for the other person to win.
- Selling is an act of service. Some of the greatest leaders in the history of humanity were servant leaders.
- Know your prospect’s goals, and make your ask by referencing what they are trying to achieve.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com/events
“Most Wackiest Kind of a Year” video – tinyurl.com/ClemWacky
Mo asks Kevin Clem: If you could record a business development focused video and send it back to your past self, what would it be?
- One of the biggest lessons that Kevin has learned in his career is that people want to connect and it’s okay to make the big ask.
- If you’ve built the relationship, it’s okay to ask about working together. In many cases, your clients are looking for people that can help solve their problems. They might say no, and that’s okay, but if they say yes, you have an opportunity to work with someone sooner than you would otherwise.
- How you ask matters. Make it clear that working together is a way for the other person to win.
- Selling is an act of service. Some of the greatest leaders in the history of humanity were servant leaders.
- Know your prospect’s goals, and make your ask by referencing what they are trying to achieve.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com/events
“Most Wackiest Kind of a Year” video – tinyurl.com/ClemWacky
Mo asks Kevin Clem: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Kevin tells the story of a completely cold lead that turned into a full-fledged prospect after five years of near silence.
- By helping the prospect without asking for anything in return at the beginning, Kevin kicked off a relationship where when the timing was right, the client asked for him to sell him on working with him.
- Of the four parts of the relationship building process, the listen and learn stage is one of the most important. Kevin brought his prospect into a round table conversation that showed how HBR has worked with other clients in the past, and that created the curiosity that led to the sale.
- When you build enough curiosity and do the process the right way, the client is pulling you towards taking the next step instead of you pushing them.
- The best result you can get in professional services is a warm referral. If your client is willing to do that, that shows a huge amount of trust.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com/events
Mo asks Kevin Clem: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Kevin discovered the Snowball System from the podcast after being referred to it by the CEO of HBR Consulting.
- The Most Important Things is one of the key principles that Kevin has embraced. He and his team have made the idea of the top three things as a guiding framework for how they operate.
- Raving fans and assessing the level of the relationship with each client is another big strategy.
- There is power in language. Just by entering the GrowBIG world and embracing the terminology, Kevin and his team have changed the way they think about business development and growth.
- Take a page out of your creative marketing playbook and come out with a theme for your internal program to get your team to buy in.
- Kevin’s team has tried a number of different incentives to get the team excited. They found that recognition and reward among high achievers is a good base to start with, combined with accountability. Create and celebrate short-term wins to spotlight things that are going well and to build momentum.
- Celebrating the small wins is an important piece of creating progress. Doing what you can do today is what leads to the championship.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
Mo asks Kevin Clem: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, making connections and solving problems. It’s always about how you can solve a problem, whether or not there is a direct transaction involved.
- When you solve someone’s problem, either directly or through your network, they will probably come to you first to solve a similar problem in the future.
- Kevin is always listening for an issue that his organization may be able to help with, but he’s also looking for third party connections and resources that may help as well.
- There is always some aspect of a prospect’s experience that you can use as a hook to follow up.
- One of the best pieces of advice that Kevin received was to either make an introduction, bring an insight, or give an invitation to something else.
- Don’t assume that a conversation that doesn’t result in a closed deal is a loss. Business development is about playing the game, and if you can help a person solve their problem, they will probably come to you in the future.
- A successful meeting is when you add value, and a really successful meeting is when you book another meeting.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
Mo asks Kevin Clem: When was the moment you realized growth is great and you wanted to focus on business development?
- Kevin has been doing business development for 20 years, but he didn’t always call it that.
- Kevin realized that he had a knack for business development after a repeat client said to him that they keep coming back to work with him, but they never felt sold. Eventually, the CEO offered to make that a formal role.
- Sales became a natural progression of Kevin’s career. Business development is an extension of helping clients solve their problems, and making connections with people allowed Kevin to transition into a more client-focused role.
- Finding ways to form the connection with a client is crucial. Connections are how relationships grow, and when relationships grow, revenue follows.
- Some of the connection effort is organic, but there is a lot of research involved. Kevin will always look for a point of connection that goes beyond the business transactional relationship. There is a goldmine of information on LinkedIn that you can bring up when it makes sense.
- The foundation of all good relationships is connection where you have alignment with someone or can build on their relationship with other people.
- Peppering in the details as your talking about what they are working on is the key to not coming in too strongly. It’s not about manipulating, it’s about organically connecting on some shared experience.
- Business development is like interviewing. It shouldn’t feel weird that you are doing a little homework on the other person.
- Thoughtful follow up questions on the other person’s written content is great.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
linkedin.com/in/kevinclem
kclem@hbrconsulting.com
hbrconsulting.com
Sandy Lutton talks about business development and what she learned landing world-class speakers and executives as clients. Find out why you should be treating prospects as clients right from the get-go, the top four business development strategies she uses every single day, and why taking the fear out of the initial meeting can open the doors to building great relationships.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: When was the moment that you realized that you wanted to focus on business development?
- At the beginning of Sandy’s career she started off in a job at a call center doing customer service and she learned that sales were an integral part of success. She realized that she loved solving people’s problems and enjoyed building relationships.
- This led to diving into the world of sales within the telecom industry and eventually software and consulting. The opportunity to engage deeply with a client and understand what their business needs and goals were only made the work more attractive.
- A prospect is not just a prospect, they are in the client process, and Sandy acts accordingly. The prospect stage is about building trust and adding value in a way they need at that point in the relationship.
- Sandy has a passion for helping storytellers get their story out into the world. Sandy is working with a prospect right now by helping get him in touch with writers that can get his story down on paper.
- Treating a prospect like a client and providing the value they need at the stage they are in is how you build the relationship from the ground up. Start with strategy and making introductions while communicating that process early on and getting their buy in on the process.
- As a sole proprietor, it’s important to know at what point they need you specifically and when you can be the most valuable to them.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: What is your personal definition of business development?
- We think of business development as a necessary evil way too often, but it’s simply human interaction. Think of business development as an opportunity to get to know someone, understand what they need from you, and how you can bring value to them.
- Sandy is a firm believer in having a reason to pick up the phone and call a prospect. You need to understand what value you can bring to the other person and then deliver on that.
- Sandy created an informal CFO network for prospects she was working on building relationships with. This kind of value group is a great resource for the prospects and naturally leads to the prospects wanting to do business for you.
- If you have value to add, that gives you license to reach out.
- Put yourself in the potential client’s shoes. The people they take the time to connect with are the ones that are bringing their uniqueness and value to the relationship. It can be as simple as a book recommendation.
- Once you start to invest in a relationship, it’s much easier to find ways to add value. Sandy and Mo list a ton of different ways you can help a prospect and add value to their life.
- Everybody makes the assumption that technical expertise is all the same (even if it’s not), but they always pay attention to the people that care.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: Tell us your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System.
- Sandy’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Model because it opened her eyes to understanding how her pitch was communicated to other people.
- The Protemoi List is another strategy that stands out. Knowing who the most important people are in regards to your business and your success, and building a process around it, is a key element to success. Relationships are paramount, and the Protemoi List puts them front and center.
- Before the Protemoi List, relationships were unstructured. When you have someone on your list, it becomes intentional and mutually beneficial.
- Sandy’s list used to be longer, but over time she narrowed it down as she learned her limitations and the precise value you can bring to the relationship.
- How many people can you proactively reach out to in a month in a helpful way that you don’t get paid for. Ten is a great place to start.
- Give To Get is another favorite strategy. For Sandy, she lays out the overall plan and the steps where the client can engage her to take the next steps. A great Give To Get instills trust in the vision and endears the prospect into working solely with you.
- The last step that Sandy appreciates is the idea of a value group. By building a network of CFOs and building those relationships over time, she has created a group of raving fans that turn into valuable business.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: What is a business development story that you are really proud of?
- One moment in particular stands out from Sandy’s career in regards to business development. Part of her role at the Speaker’s Bureau was to secure talent, and Sandy was working on securing a famous world leader. The twist in the story was that the first in-person meeting with the CEO didn’t go well which made landing this client much harder than they expected.
- They spent too much time talking about who they represent.
- The big influencer in the decision was the Chief of Staff, and by uncovering their goals it changed the dynamic of the relationship. In listening to them and finding out what they needed, Sandy was able to put the right team in place to support them.
- Understanding what they ultimately wanted to achieve was critical in the decision-making Just like the Snowball System teaches, keeping them involved in the process was crucial, and in the end they won the business without giving everything away for free.
- Many people fold too quickly when it comes to high pressure proposals. Challenge yourself when you feel like you have to go in at your lowest price in order to win the business, because it might not be true.
- Sandy is most proud of the fact that they landed the client by identifying the right team and making it clear that going to the lowest price wasn’t the right move. Resist the urge to discount your service by negotiating too soon.
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: If you could record a message around growth and business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Early in her career, Sandy was intimidated by business development and felt that she had to win them over while being perfect, but it doesn’t have to be an intimidating process.
- Business development is simply about building relationships. Sandy would want to help her younger self take the fear out of the process. It can be fun and engaging, and you will learn a lot along the way.
- Practice for perfection, but play for progress. You start to see how brilliant your team is when you plan ahead, and even if you don’t win the business, you improve for the next one.
- When you’re in a meeting, look for the little wins and what the next step along the way is. Make sure you tackle all the issues and break things down into small steps. Moving anything forward during a meeting is a win, so keep that in mind.
- Instead of trying to wow the prospect, just give them what they are looking for.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: If you could record a message around growth and business development and send it to your younger self, what would it say?
- Early in her career, Sandy was intimidated by business development and felt that she had to win them over while being perfect, but it doesn’t have to be an intimidating process.
- Business development is simply about building relationships. Sandy would want to help her younger self take the fear out of the process. It can be fun and engaging, and you will learn a lot along the way.
- Practice for perfection, but play for progress. You start to see how brilliant your team is when you plan ahead, and even if you don’t win the business, you improve for the next one.
- When you’re in a meeting, look for the little wins and what the next step along the way is. Make sure you tackle all the issues and break things down into small steps. Moving anything forward during a meeting is a win, so keep that in mind.
- Instead of trying to wow the prospect, just give them what they are looking for.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: What is a business development story that you are really proud of?
- One moment in particular stands out from Sandy’s career in regards to business development. Part of her role at the Speaker’s Bureau was to secure talent, and Sandy was working on securing a famous world leader. The twist in the story was that the first in-person meeting with the CEO didn’t go well which made landing this client much harder than they expected.
- They spent too much time talking about who they represent.
- The big influencer in the decision was the Chief of Staff, and by uncovering their goals it changed the dynamic of the relationship. In listening to them and finding out what they needed, Sandy was able to put the right team in place to support them.
- Understanding what they ultimately wanted to achieve was critical in the decision-making Just like the Snowball System teaches, keeping them involved in the process was crucial, and in the end they won the business without giving everything away for free.
- Many people fold too quickly when it comes to high pressure proposals. Challenge yourself when you feel like you have to go in at your lowest price in order to win the business, because it might not be true.
- Sandy is most proud of the fact that they landed the client by identifying the right team and making it clear that going to the lowest price wasn’t the right move. Resist the urge to discount your service by negotiating too soon.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: Tell us your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System.
- Sandy’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Model because it opened her eyes to understanding how her pitch was communicated to other people.
- The Protemoi List is another strategy that stands out. Knowing who the most important people are in regards to your business and your success, and building a process around it, is a key element to success. Relationships are paramount, and the Protemoi List puts them front and center.
- Before the Protemoi List, relationships were unstructured. When you have someone on your list, it becomes intentional and mutually beneficial.
- Sandy’s list used to be longer, but over time she narrowed it down as she learned her limitations and the precise value you can bring to the relationship.
- How many people can you proactively reach out to in a month in a helpful way that you don’t get paid for. Ten is a great place to start.
- Give To Get is another favorite strategy. For Sandy, she lays out the overall plan and the steps where the client can engage her to take the next steps. A great Give To Get instills trust in the vision and endears the prospect into working solely with you.
- The last step that Sandy appreciates is the idea of a value group. By building a network of CFOs and building those relationships over time, she has created a group of raving fans that turn into valuable business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: What is your personal definition of business development?
- We think of business development as a necessary evil way too often, but it’s simply human interaction. Think of business development as an opportunity to get to know someone, understand what they need from you, and how you can bring value to them.
- Sandy is a firm believer in having a reason to pick up the phone and call a prospect. You need to understand what value you can bring to the other person and then deliver on that.
- Sandy created an informal CFO network for prospects she was working on building relationships with. This kind of value group is a great resource for the prospects and naturally leads to the prospects wanting to do business for you.
- If you have value to add, that gives you license to reach out.
- Put yourself in the potential client’s shoes. The people they take the time to connect with are the ones that are bringing their uniqueness and value to the relationship. It can be as simple as a book recommendation.
- Once you start to invest in a relationship, it’s much easier to find ways to add value. Sandy and Mo list a ton of different ways you can help a prospect and add value to their life.
- Everybody makes the assumption that technical expertise is all the same (even if it’s not), but they always pay attention to the people that care.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Mo asks Sandy Lutton: When was the moment that you realized that you wanted to focus on business development?
- At the beginning of Sandy’s career she started off in a job at a call center doing customer service and she learned that sales were an integral part of success. She realized that she loved solving people’s problems and enjoyed building relationships.
- This led to diving into the world of sales within the telecom industry and eventually software and consulting. The opportunity to engage deeply with a client and understand what their business needs and goals were only made the work more attractive.
- A prospect is not just a prospect, they are in the client process, and Sandy acts accordingly. The prospect stage is about building trust and adding value in a way they need at that point in the relationship.
- Sandy has a passion for helping storytellers get their story out into the world. Sandy is working with a prospect right now by helping get him in touch with writers that can get his story down on paper.
- Treating a prospect like a client and providing the value they need at the stage they are in is how you build the relationship from the ground up. Start with strategy and making introductions while communicating that process early on and getting their buy in on the process.
- As a sole proprietor, it’s important to know at what point they need you specifically and when you can be the most valuable to them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sandy@designinginfluencers.com
Her Journey Told Podcast
Warren Shiver shares his years of experience developing client relationships and landing new business and reveals why it all comes down to trust. Learn about the concrete, step-by-step process that establishes trust, how to use the Protemoi list to create a pipeline of opportunities for the future, and the most important business development lessons to learn when you’re just getting started.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: At what point in your career did you realize that business development was something you should focus on?
- Warren started his career off in the typical management/consulting track almost exclusively focused on product delivery. Warren’s wife worked for PeopleSoft at the time, and he was able to go on a few president’s club trips with her. Seeing top performing business development professionals treated so well opened his eyes. No engineers get treated to trips to tropical destinations for delivering a project on time.
- Warren was in business school at the time and interviewed for all the top technical positions, but they all wanted to see more sales experience. Warren started to focus more on sales and got the opportunity to build a small team working with companies to improve sales performance. That role forced Warren to focus on business development and kicked off his relationship with Mo.
- As a deep technical expert, the first yes you need to hear is from your internal partners to get introduced to clients. You need to make yourself as relevant and as easily understood as possible to build trust internally before you can get in front of clients.
- Trust is foundational. Your niche solution may not be overall material to the account manager so it represents a significant risk.
- To build trust you need to prove your success. Do you have a track record of prior success in a similar situation?
- The best client-facing team of executives brings a broad selection of skill sets to a project, even if it means going outside the firm, in order to build the trust and relationship with the client.
- The most important element of success is having a process. It takes a steady and disciplined approach to be successful, whether you are selling internally, externally, or a combination of both.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is simply about building trust between people. People buy from people, and that still holds true in the age of Zoom.
- Mo’s wife recently started a non-profit focused on equine therapy. and within two months of the launch they were getting incredible amounts donated to the program. This was because Becky had been building relationships with people in the area for 30 years.
- People are looking for indicators that you do what you’re going to say you’re going to do. Trust is built over the course of your career, and as you help other people be successful, you build your network and your brand, and that helps to sustain your success.
- Your first interaction with someone matters. How can you come prepared for your first conversation with someone with questions and fluency? Whatever the next step is, follow up and follow through with a high rate of precision and speed.
- You can differentiate yourself just by having professional, thorough, and timely follow up.
- Most people aren’t reliable. Reliability starts with being organized.
- Being able to connect the dots for someone across a number of different relationships is very valuable.
- Warren uses his Outlook calendar to stay on top of what he needs to get done alongside Hubspot. He also has a Protemoi list of key relationships and opportunities that he keeps front and center along with his calendar, to keep things on track.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Warren has been working with Mo during the early days of the GrowBIG training and has been a big fan of the Protemoi list and the step-by-step opportunity process.
- The first part of the opportunity process is listening and learning. Being able to repeat it back to the prospect and proving that they’ve been heard is how you earn the right to go to the next step.
- Weekly, monthly, or quarterly sales targets influence behaviors that always align with the listen-and-learn process. The opportunity process doesn’t require more time, but it does require an emphasis on patience, understanding, and a collaborative approach. Many companies are still struggling with the more rigid, linear mindset of selling.
- Clients don’t want to hear your language or why your company is awesome. You should approach the sales cycle with a fresh-eyes mindset and assume the position of someone just getting started solution-wise.
- Earned Dogmatism is a proven mental heuristic that states the more we believe we have an expertise in some area, the more close-minded we become.
- The Protemoi list is a mental framework that can pay off at any time. Think about the relationships that might be important to you tomorrow, and the frequency of staying in touch that keeps those relationships alive.
- The first step of the Protemoi list is to write it down. Warren uses a spreadsheet to keep track of his list, and one of his weekly MIT’s is to always check in with the people on his list.
- It’s okay for people to drop off. Depending on the situation, Warren reaches out weekly or monthly to stay in touch in any way he can that adds value.
- Warren looks for interesting articles that he can send people or whatever way he can connect with someone on the list that makes sense.
- The Protemoi list also scales to a team or organizational level. You should be having all your people working to build trust and the relationship along the way.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: Tell me of a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Warren left his day job and started his own consultancy in 2010. He created his Protemoi list and started working through it to get things started. Warren met Paul Duval, the senior vice-president of sales at Central Garden, a billion dollar provider of lawn and grass products.
- That very first relationship developed into a three-month sales cycle and a seven-figure engagement that kicked off Warren’s consultancy.
- The client gave Warren some feedback after the fact when Warren asked him why they went with his company, and he responded that Warren asked three questions and then shut up and listened as Paul talked for 45 minutes.
- Warren was also able to bring in a couple other key people to show they could build trust as a team and collaboratively build the scope together.
- Listening and learning early on and then building the solution together were the two key things that landed the business.
- It’s way more powerful to learn their priorities using their own words.
- When someone shares their personal perspective, it’s highly correlated to liking you more.
- Early on in the conversation with Paul, it became apparent that he knew what he was doing. He had a vision for what he wanted done, and a pitch from Warren’s point of view wouldn’t have landed right. Listening first helped Warren stand out from the other consultants bidding for the business.
- Even experienced professionals like Mo can fall into the trap of wanting to speak about themselves first.
- Warren’s client was in the process of a complete business transformation, so it was important as a new firm to show that it wasn’t just Warren working on it. There is a lot of power in co-creation and the complementary skill sets of the additional people played a big role in the success of the project.
- A key takeaway is to ask for feedback whether you win or lose the business. It helps keep you grounded and helps you understand what your approach might be missing.
Mo asks Warren Shiver: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Warren’s advice comes in three parts, the first one is: find opportunities around business development as early as possible, get experience, and fail.
- You can be a Hall of Fame level baseball player by hitting 3 out of ten pitches. Sales teams typically win about half the time but even that can be improved on.
- The second message would be to find a mentor to learn from early on. Warren found a couple of mentors at the beginning of his career, but that was around five years into his decision to focus on business development. Doing that earlier would have accelerated the process.
- The third message is having patience. Expertise takes time.
- Harvard Business Review did some research and found that the average age of a successful entrepreneur is 42.
- Business development is a learnable skill and those three messages are the essence of deliberate practice.
- To get involved with more opportunities you have to show interest.
- To find mentors and engage them, you should reach out within your firm. The senior leaders in your organization are looking for people to differentiate themselves and who are wanting to grow.
- If you are the senior leader, go out and find someone to mentor.
- Find a way to expand or grow your skill set in the role that you’re currently in. Warren had the opportunity to be entrepreneurial within his role which gave him a great level of experience that he could apply when he ventured out on his own. Incremental gains in your business development skills, no matter where you practice, will pay off.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bdhabits.com
thebrevetgroup.com
The Seven Steps for Sales Transformation
Why Older Entrepreneurs Have the Edge - knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/age-of-successful-entrepreneurs
Mo asks Warren Shiver: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Warren’s advice comes in three parts, the first one is: find opportunities around business development as early as possible, get experience, and fail.
- You can be a Hall of Fame level baseball player by hitting 3 out of ten pitches. Sales teams typically win about half the time but even that can be improved on.
- The second message would be to find a mentor to learn from early on. Warren found a couple of mentors at the beginning of his career, but that was around five years into his decision to focus on business development. Doing that earlier would have accelerated the process.
- The third message is having patience. Expertise takes time.
- Harvard Business Review did some research and found that the average age of a successful entrepreneur is 42.
- Business development is a learnable skill and those three messages are the essence of deliberate practice.
- To get involved with more opportunities you have to show interest.
- To find mentors and engage them, you should reach out within your firm. The senior leaders in your organization are looking for people to differentiate themselves and who are wanting to grow.
- If you are the senior leader, go out and find someone to mentor.
- Find a way to expand or grow your skill set in the role that you’re currently in. Warren had the opportunity to be entrepreneurial within his role which gave him a great level of experience that he could apply when he ventured out on his own. Incremental gains in your business development skills, no matter where you practice, will pay off.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thebrevetgroup.com
Why Older Entrepreneurs Have the Edge - knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/age-of-successful-entrepreneurs
Mo asks Warren Shiver: Tell me of a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Warren left his day job and started his own consultancy in 2010. He created his Protemoi list and started working through it to get things started. Warren met Paul Duval, the senior vice-president of sales at Central Garden, a billion dollar provider of lawn and grass products.
- That very first relationship developed into a three-month sales cycle and a seven-figure engagement that kicked off Warren’s consultancy.
- The client gave Warren some feedback after the fact when Warren asked him why they went with his company, and he responded that Warren asked three questions and then shut up and listened as Paul talked for 45 minutes.
- Warren was also able to bring in a couple other key people to show they could build trust as a team and collaboratively build the scope together.
- Listening and learning early on and then building the solution together were the two key things that landed the business.
- It’s way more powerful to learn their priorities using their own words.
- When someone shares their personal perspective, it’s highly correlated to liking you more.
- Early on in the conversation with Paul, it became apparent that he knew what he was doing. He had a vision for what he wanted done, and a pitch from Warren’s point of view wouldn’t have landed right. Listening first helped Warren stand out from the other consultants bidding for the business.
- Even experienced professionals like Mo can fall into the trap of wanting to speak about themselves first.
- Warren’s client was in the process of a complete business transformation, so it was important as a new firm to show that it wasn’t just Warren working on it. There is a lot of power in co-creation and the complementary skill sets of the additional people played a big role in the success of the project.
- A key takeaway is to ask for feedback whether you win or lose the business. It helps keep you grounded and helps you understand what your approach might be missing.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thebrevetgroup.com
The Seven Steps for Sales Transformation
Mo asks Warren Shiver: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Warren has been working with Mo during the early days of the GrowBIG training and has been a big fan of the Protemoi list and the step-by-step opportunity process.
- The first part of the opportunity process is listening and learning. Being able to repeat it back to the prospect and proving that they’ve been heard is how you earn the right to go to the next step.
- Weekly, monthly, or quarterly sales targets influence behaviors that always align with the listen-and-learn process. The opportunity process doesn’t require more time, but it does require an emphasis on patience, understanding, and a collaborative approach. Many companies are still struggling with the more rigid, linear mindset of selling.
- Clients don’t want to hear your language or why your company is awesome. You should approach the sales cycle with a fresh-eyes mindset and assume the position of someone just getting started solution-wise.
- Earned Dogmatism is a proven mental heuristic that states the more we believe we have an expertise in some area, the more close-minded we become.
- The Protemoi list is a mental framework that can pay off at any time. Think about the relationships that might be important to you tomorrow, and the frequency of staying in touch that keeps those relationships alive.
- The first step of the Protemoi list is to write it down. Warren uses a spreadsheet to keep track of his list, and one of his weekly MIT’s is to always check in with the people on his list.
- It’s okay for people to drop off. Depending on the situation, Warren reaches out weekly or monthly to stay in touch in any way he can that adds value.
- Warren looks for interesting articles that he can send people or whatever way he can connect with someone on the list that makes sense.
- The Protemoi list also scales to a team or organizational level. You should be having all your people working to build trust and the relationship along the way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bdhabits.com
thebrevetgroup.com
Mo asks Warren Shiver: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is simply about building trust between people. People buy from people, and that still holds true in the age of Zoom.
- Mo’s wife recently started a non-profit focused on equine therapy. and within two months of the launch they were getting incredible amounts donated to the program. This was because Becky had been building relationships with people in the area for 30 years.
- People are looking for indicators that you do what you’re going to say you’re going to do. Trust is built over the course of your career, and as you help other people be successful, you build your network and your brand, and that helps to sustain your success.
- Your first interaction with someone matters. How can you come prepared for your first conversation with someone with questions and fluency? Whatever the next step is, follow up and follow through with a high rate of precision and speed.
- You can differentiate yourself just by having professional, thorough, and timely follow up.
- Most people aren’t reliable. Reliability starts with being organized.
- Being able to connect the dots for someone across a number of different relationships is very valuable.
- Warren uses his Outlook calendar to stay on top of what he needs to get done alongside Hubspot. He also has a Protemoi list of key relationships and opportunities that he keeps front and center along with his calendar, to keep things on track.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thebrevetgroup.com
Mo asks Warren Shiver: At what point in your career did you realize that business development was something you should focus on?
- Warren started his career off in the typical management/consulting track almost exclusively focused on product delivery. Warren’s wife worked for PeopleSoft at the time, and he was able to go on a few president’s club trips with her. Seeing top performing business development professionals treated so well opened his eyes. No engineers get treated to trips to tropical destinations for delivering a project on time.
- Warren was in business school at the time and interviewed for all the top technical positions, but they all wanted to see more sales experience. Warren started to focus more on sales and got the opportunity to build a small team working with companies to improve sales performance. That role forced Warren to focus on business development and kicked off his relationship with Mo.
- As a deep technical expert, the first yes you need to hear is from your internal partners to get introduced to clients. You need to make yourself as relevant and as easily understood as possible to build trust internally before you can get in front of clients.
- Trust is foundational. Your niche solution may not be overall material to the account manager so it represents a significant risk.
- To build trust you need to prove your success. Do you have a track record of prior success in a similar situation?
- The best client-facing team of executives brings a broad selection of skill sets to a project, even if it means going outside the firm, in order to build the trust and relationship with the client.
- The most important element of success is having a process. It takes a steady and disciplined approach to be successful, whether you are selling internally, externally, or a combination of both.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thebrevetgroup.com
Bill Ruprecht pulls from his decades-long career in sales and business development and shares the work-defining stories and lessons he learned along the way. Learn how Bill discovered the keys to building relationships around the dinner table with his parents, why building relationships isn’t solely reserved for people with the natural gift of conversation but is a trainable skill that anyone can figure out, and why being in sales is something you should be proud of.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: When did you first start thinking about business development as something important that you wanted to do?
- Bill spent many years in business when there were two kinds of business development. The first was a form of gunslinging more focused on extracting value and the second was centered around building more long term relationships. Inevitably, you come to realize that building relationships and adding relevance to potential customers is the way to go.
- There are three ways to differentiate a business: be an innovator and make things that no one has seen before, be cheap and provide the lowest cost service, or you can be customer centric and know more about your customers than anyone else in the world.
- Nobody should own a client. The team should always work together to get the job done well.
- If you have a lot of history with a client or they demand that a particular person is involved, that should be accepted.
- The end result of a deal is always a combination of relationship and price. In Bill’s line of work, certain clients tend to push on price but that always makes things tougher. Chasing the margins on a deal down to the point where the service provider doesn’t care about the outcome is always a poor choice.
- For another client, Bill tells the story of a semi-regular delivery of BLT sandwiches and how they were a barometer of the relationship. They may not have gotten the business because of the sandwiches, but they definitely didn’t hurt.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What story did your parents tell you that shaped how you thought about business development?
- Bill’s mother was always extremely bright and driven, but she wasn’t terribly happy in her life. His father had the knack of being able to find commonality with almost anyone. It was at the dinner table where Bill was constantly challenged with questions on how he would deal with a variety of hypothetical situations.
- When Bill started in the antique business he was working with Persian rug dealers and in the process he learned what was relevant to them and how to build rapport, despite the considerable difference in their culture.
- Bill understood that those conversations with his parents around the dinner table were like batting practice, and those skills served him well in his work later on in life.
- When you do something for a long time, you give yourself the opportunity to get lucky. If you position yourself in the right way and do the work, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful, but it does mean you can get lucky.
- There wasn’t one single pivot moment where Bill got lucky and his career took off. It was a gradual process of taking on more risks and responsibilities over time and pushing past the fear to take the leap each time.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Bill began working with Mo because he believed a more disciplined approach to building relationships was critical to the continued growth of his organization.
- When you have 90 offices over 40 countries is an enormous task. Bill recalls a meeting with a number of executives at Sotheby's along with Mo where it became very clear how some people struggled with the process of articulating value, even those who had been in the business for 30 years.
- Every business believes they are unique so they often believe a system of business development couldn’t possibly apply to them. But once they realize that almost everybody runs into the same problems and barriers, they see the value of a disciplined approach to relationships.
- The default assumption that most people make is that business development is not a learnable skill. That some people are just born with it and that assumption prevents them from seeing the possibilities.
- Bill is a born introvert and a learned extrovert. Giving speeches and connecting with people didn’t come naturally to him.
- Being a salesman is something to be proud of because it means you’re being an advocate for whatever you’re walking into the room and trying to do.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is a story of business development that you are particularly proud of?
- A business like Sotheby’s is a transaction business so Bill had been involved in thousands of transactions over the course of his career but one tale in particular stood out to him.
- Bill traveled down to Florida to help an older lawyer sell $20 million in vintage cars and that began a 9-month process of negotiating. After months of back and forth, they finally signed the deal, and the auction itself was widely successful.
- In extended negotiations, as the professional, you know what it will take to make the deal successful. It’s common for the other party to not fully know what they want and the key is to just keep the conversations going.
- When the other party doesn’t know what they want, negotiating becomes a marathon or experimenting and exploring until they land on what was missing from the conversation.
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: If you could record a video around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- You learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. Early on in Bill’s career, he had developed a relationship with an art collector, but after the collector passed away the business went to other people because Bill didn’t consider what would happen after that point or lay the foundation to make sure the family would work with him.
- It’s important to not rely on a single individual for your relationship with an organization. You need to create a team of advocates to work with a team of counterparts within the organization.
- Remove your ego from the equation and focus on building a team to team relationship.
- We tend to focus on our expertise and believe that’s how decisions get made, but that’s not the way it works. What should drive those decisions is that your company has a collection of skills to help clients solve their problems.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: If you could record a video around business development for your younger self, what would it say?
- You learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. Early on in Bill’s career, he had developed a relationship with an art collector, but after the collector passed away the business went to other people because Bill didn’t consider what would happen after that point or lay the foundation to make sure the family would work with him.
- It’s important to not rely on a single individual for your relationship with an organization. You need to create a team of advocates to work with a team of counterparts within the organization.
- Remove your ego from the equation and focus on building a team to team relationship.
- We tend to focus on our expertise and believe that’s how decisions get made, but that’s not the way it works. What should drive those decisions is that your company has a collection of skills to help clients solve their problems.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is a story of business development that you are particularly proud of?
- A business like Sotheby’s is a transaction business so Bill had been involved in thousands of transactions over the course of his career but one tale in particular stood out to him.
- Bill traveled down to Florida to help an older lawyer sell $20 million in vintage cars and that began a 9-month process of negotiating. After months of back and forth, they finally signed the deal, and the auction itself was widely successful.
- In extended negotiations, as the professional, you know what it will take to make the deal successful. It’s common for the other party to not fully know what they want and the key is to just keep the conversations going.
- When the other party doesn’t know what they want, negotiating becomes a marathon or experimenting and exploring until they land on what was missing from the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?
- Bill began working with Mo because he believed a more disciplined approach to building relationships was critical to the continued growth of his organization.
- When you have 90 offices over 40 countries is an enormous task. Bill recalls a meeting with a number of executives at Sotheby's along with Mo where it became very clear how some people struggled with the process of articulating value, even those who had been in the business for 30 years.
- Every business believes they are unique so they often believe a system of business development couldn’t possibly apply to them. But once they realize that almost everybody runs into the same problems and barriers, they see the value of a disciplined approach to relationships.
- The default assumption that most people make is that business development is not a learnable skill. That some people are just born with it and that assumption prevents them from seeing the possibilities.
- Bill is a born introvert and a learned extrovert. Giving speeches and connecting with people didn’t come naturally to him.
- Being a salesman is something to be proud of because it means you’re being an advocate for whatever you’re walking into the room and trying to do.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: What story did your parents tell you that shaped how you thought about business development?
- Bill’s mother was always extremely bright and driven, but she wasn’t terribly happy in her life. His father had the knack of being able to find commonality with almost anyone. It was at the dinner table where Bill was constantly challenged with questions on how he would deal with a variety of hypothetical situations.
- When Bill started in the antique business he was working with Persian rug dealers and in the process he learned what was relevant to them and how to build rapport, despite the considerable difference in their culture.
- Bill understood that those conversations with his parents around the dinner table were like batting practice, and those skills served him well in his work later on in life.
- When you do something for a long time, you give yourself the opportunity to get lucky. If you position yourself in the right way and do the work, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful, but it does mean you can get lucky.
- There wasn’t one single pivot moment where Bill got lucky and his career took off. It was a gradual process of taking on more risks and responsibilities over time and pushing past the fear to take the leap each time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mo asks Bill Ruprecht: When did you first start thinking about business development as something important that you wanted to do?
- Bill spent many years in business when there were two kinds of business development. The first was a form of gunslinging more focused on extracting value and the second was centered around building more long term relationships. Inevitably, you come to realize that building relationships and adding relevance to potential customers is the way to go.
- There are three ways to differentiate a business: be an innovator and make things that no one has seen before, be cheap and provide the lowest cost service, or you can be customer centric and know more about your customers than anyone else in the world.
- Nobody should own a client. The team should always work together to get the job done well.
- If you have a lot of history with a client or they demand that a particular person is involved, that should be accepted.
- The end result of a deal is always a combination of relationship and price. In Bill’s line of work, certain clients tend to push on price but that always makes things tougher. Chasing the margins on a deal down to the point where the service provider doesn’t care about the outcome is always a poor choice.
- For another client, Bill tells the story of a semi-regular delivery of BLT sandwiches and how they were a barometer of the relationship. They may not have gotten the business because of the sandwiches, but they definitely didn’t hurt.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Bonneau Ansley, the #1 real estate agent in the South, shares how he discovered how to take his passion for people and selling, and leverage it into a ridiculously successful real estate company on track to do over $3 billion in sales this year. Learn about some of the nitty gritty business development tactics that Bonneau uses to create a network that helps him develop business 24/7, why Bonneau reinvents himself every year, and how that practice helped him grow his business from $100 million in sales to over $3 billion is seven short years.
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: Tell me of the moment in your life when you realized that business development was something you wanted to focus on.
- Bonneau knew he was going to be a sales guy at the early age of 16 when he was in highschool. He felt that school wasn’t really his thing, but people and classmates were. He started selling t-shirts and hats, which continued into college with his own clothing company, and he realized that selling was something that he clicked with.
- It was in college where he was first exposed to real estate after taking a class that he became completely hooked on the subject. After college, selling real estate became the natural evolution for Bonneau.
- Bonneau has done every facet of real estate including development and sales, with plenty of success and failure along the way. Cycles are common in real estate, and Bonneau has had to reinvent himself more than once.
- Bonneau recalls the story of when he and his wife had lost everything to a house fire in 2004. The fire forced him to give himself a fresh start. As devastating something like a fire can be, it’s a catalyst for change in life.
- Bonneau tries to reinvent himself every year. He works in a very competitive environment so his mindset is always centered around thinking big, doubling his business big. To double your business, you have to create habits that you didn’t do before, and implement those.
- In Bonneau’s seventh year in business, they are on track to sell over $3 billion in sales this year.
- It doesn’t have to take your house burning down or your business to fail with the banking collapse. It’s simply about having a mindset where you always look at what you need to do to do better every single year.
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Bonneau interacts with people for roughly ten hours a day, from his barber to his valet, and each interaction is an exercise in business development. Each person is a part of Bonneau’s sales team with a small incentive to spread the word about him.
- From a business development standpoint, to continue to be the #1 realtor in the South, he needs to be everywhere, and each person he interacts with is a chance to amplify his brand.
- To be successful, you will have to stretch your comfort zone. Creating some new habits, even if you’re not a natural at them, is how you do it.
- If you’re in sales, the more people that know what you sell and that you’re good at it, the more product you’re going to sell, no matter what it is.
- Bonneau has created a network and a platform that allows him to do business development 24 hours a day whether he is present for the individual conversation or not.
- Bonneau is really good at sales, and he’s put himself into a position to succeed by only focusing on that one thing. For the other tasks that don’t come natural to him, he’s built a team to help him continue focusing on business development and sales.
- Everybody is great at something. The key is to figure out what that one thing is and how to monetize that. When Bonneau was in school he struggled, but when he discovered sales he found something he could excel at and figured out a way to thrive.
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- Bonneau has been a real estate agent for 20 years, but when Mo interviewed Bonneau in order to get his house sold, it changed the way he operated.
- They had a conversation about the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and went over the different ways that people communicate, and that conversation transformed how Bonneau presents to his clients. Now he makes sure to cover all four quadrants no matter who he’s talking to to make sure he connects with them.
- The HBDI model has been integrated into Bonneau’s team. He took many of the principles that he learned from the GrowBIG training and the Snowball System and used them as the foundation for building his massive team of agents and executives.
- The HBDI test has helped Bonneau grow his business to over 300 real estate agents that work under his brand.
- In the first year of business, Bonneau’s team did over $100 million in sales and, seven years later, they are on track to do over $3 billion in sales.
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: Tell me of a business development story that you are deeply proud of.
- When Bonneau started the business, he made sure that he was selling for a reason. Even when they weren’t making any money, he made sure that every sale gave back to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hospital and it’s become the most rewarding business activity he’s ever done.
- Having clients is not about a single transaction. Bonneau wants to grow with his clients and for the company to have a footprint beyond real estate. By pairing sales with a noble endeavor, he makes the mission of the organization more than just profit.
- Visiting the hospital in addition to donating money is part of the company culture.
- When things get hard, the charitable aspect of the business helps but he has a deep desire to win that keeps him going. Overcoming his natural weaknesses and leveraging his strengths also allows him to stay motivated.
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: If you could record a message to your younger self around business development, what would it say?
- In school, Bonneau would have told himself to not worry too much about failing Geology and Mrs. Jones is not going to be there to critique you for the rest of your life.
- In college, it would have been to try more things while avoiding some bad influences.
- After college, he would have told himself to go somewhere new. It wasn’t until he left his hometown that he really learned the skills he needed to succeed on his own.
- One key lesson that Bonneau would share is to not be afraid of reinventing yourself. Even with scary situations, there is opportunity to learn. They are all part of your path to discovering what you want to do for the long haul.
- Don’t wait so long to start your business. It’s okay to buck the trend and start something sooner than you think you should. You’re more ready than you realize.
- Mo tells the story of how Bonneau called him up and told that they were going to spend the night at a homeless shelter and plan out what they were going to achieve the next year.
- To climb, Bonneau cuts. To make a greater impact, Bonneau doesn’t hesitate to say no to something that isn’t at the level of what he’s trying to achieve.
- Bonneau does a lot of investing and one of the most important ways he figures out who to work with is by identifying the founders that are passionate for what they are working on beyond the potential profit.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: If you could record a message to your younger self around business development, what would it say?
- In school, Bonneau would have told himself to not worry too much about failing Geology and Mrs. Jones is not going to be there to critique you for the rest of your life.
- In college, it would have been to try more things while avoiding some bad influences.
- After college, he would have told himself to go somewhere new. It wasn’t until he left his hometown that he really learned the skills he needed to succeed on his own.
- One key lesson that Bonneau would share is to not be afraid of reinventing yourself. Even with scary situations, there is opportunity to learn. They are all part of your path to discovering what you want to do for the long haul.
- Don’t wait so long to start your business. It’s okay to buck the trend and start something sooner than you think you should. You’re more ready than you realize.
- Mo tells the story of how Bonneau called him up and told that they were going to spend the night at a homeless shelter and plan out what they were going to achieve the next year.
- To climb, Bonneau cuts. To make a greater impact, Bonneau doesn’t hesitate to say no to something that isn’t at the level of what he’s trying to achieve.
- Bonneau does a lot of investing and one of the most important ways he figures out who to work with is by identifying the founders that are passionate for what they are working on beyond the potential profit.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: Tell me of a business development story that you are deeply proud of.
- When Bonneau started the business, he made sure that he was selling for a reason. Even when they weren’t making any money, he made sure that every sale gave back to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Hospital and it’s become the most rewarding business activity he’s ever done.
- Having clients is not about a single transaction. Bonneau wants to grow with his clients and for the company to have a footprint beyond real estate. By pairing sales with a noble endeavor, he makes the mission of the organization more than just profit.
- Visiting the hospital in addition to donating money is part of the company culture.
- When things get hard, the charitable aspect of the business helps but he has a deep desire to win that keeps him going. Overcoming his natural weaknesses and leveraging his strengths also allows him to stay motivated.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- Bonneau has been a real estate agent for 20 years, but when Mo interviewed Bonneau in order to get his house sold, it changed the way he operated.
- They had a conversation about the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and went over the different ways that people communicate, and that conversation transformed how Bonneau presents to his clients. Now he makes sure to cover all four quadrants no matter who he’s talking to to make sure he connects with them.
- The HBDI model has been integrated into Bonneau’s team. He took many of the principles that he learned from the GrowBIG training and the Snowball System and used them as the foundation for building his massive team of agents and executives.
- The HBDI test has helped Bonneau grow his business to over 300 real estate agents that work under his brand.
- In the first year of business, Bonneau’s team did over $100 million in sales and, seven years later, they are on track to do over $3 billion in sales.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Bonneau interacts with people for roughly ten hours a day, from his barber to his valet, and each interaction is an exercise in business development. Each person is a part of Bonneau’s sales team with a small incentive to spread the word about him.
- From a business development standpoint, to continue to be the #1 realtor in the South, he needs to be everywhere, and each person he interacts with is a chance to amplify his brand.
- To be successful, you will have to stretch your comfort zone. Creating some new habits, even if you’re not a natural at them, is how you do it.
- If you’re in sales, the more people that know what you sell and that you’re good at it, the more product you’re going to sell, no matter what it is.
- Bonneau has created a network and a platform that allows him to do business development 24 hours a day whether he is present for the individual conversation or not.
- Bonneau is really good at sales, and he’s put himself into a position to succeed by only focusing on that one thing. For the other tasks that don’t come natural to him, he’s built a team to help him continue focusing on business development and sales.
- Everybody is great at something. The key is to figure out what that one thing is and how to monetize that. When Bonneau was in school he struggled, but when he discovered sales he found something he could excel at and figured out a way to thrive.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Mo asks Bonneau Ansley: Tell me of the moment in your life when you realized that business development was something you wanted to focus on.
- Bonneau knew he was going to be a sales guy at the early age of 16 when he was in highschool. He felt that school wasn’t really his thing, but people and classmates were. He started selling t-shirts and hats, which continued into college with his own clothing company, and he realized that selling was something that he clicked with.
- It was in college where he was first exposed to real estate after taking a class that he became completely hooked on the subject. After college, selling real estate became the natural evolution for Bonneau.
- Bonneau has done every facet of real estate including development and sales, with plenty of success and failure along the way. Cycles are common in real estate, and Bonneau has had to reinvent himself more than once.
- Bonneau recalls the story of when he and his wife had lost everything to a house fire in 2004. The fire forced him to give himself a fresh start. As devastating something like a fire can be, it’s a catalyst for change in life.
- Bonneau tries to reinvent himself every year. He works in a very competitive environment so his mindset is always centered around thinking big, doubling his business big. To double your business, you have to create habits that you didn’t do before, and implement those.
- In Bonneau’s seventh year in business, they are on track to sell over $3 billion in sales this year.
- It doesn’t have to take your house burning down or your business to fail with the banking collapse. It’s simply about having a mindset where you always look at what you need to do to do better every single year.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
bonneauansley.com
Debby Moorman shares why business development became her career passion and why everybody is better at business development than they think. Find out why the sales label holds so many people back from growing their skills, how being helpful is the foundation for business development, and the aha moment that helped Debby become more effective than ever at building relationships with prospects and clients.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: Tell me the moment when you decided that business development is something that you wanted to focus on.
- Debby fell into business development almost by accident when she was in college after taking a sales job one summer. The key realization was when she figured out that she liked helping people solve their problems, and that was when she decided to shift her focus to professional sales.
- Debby went on to a professional sales role out of college where most of the training was technical in focus. It wasn’t until Debby moved into a national leadership role did she realize that business development skills are just as important as technical skills. That was when she became connected with Mo and the GrowBIG system.
- Now that Debby is consulting, the focus on business development is even more important.
- As a service provider, the reality is that you are helping your clients solve their problems, and that is the essence of business development.
- Companies tend to focus on technical training because there is often so much information to learn and such a large need for that information, businesses are incentivized to pay attention to it. An organization that wants to grow has to invest in its people beyond the technical side.
- Companies often throw structure at an issue in an attempt to solve a problem.
- Take the word sales out of your mind if you’re just getting started with business development. Retool your brain to frame the conversation as a way of figuring out what the other person needs and how you can help. If you can do that, the conversation becomes less intimidating.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is your personal development of business development?
- Business development is identifying high-value relationships, investing in them, and finding ways to bring value to those relationships.
- It’s about matching what you have to offer with the needs of your market and customizing it for each person.
- Figuring what the client needs is fundamentally about asking the right questions and listening closely to the answer.
- The key in any conversation is that if you’re talking more about yourself than you are about them it’s not been a successful conversation.
- Debby’s personal philosophy is if she can help the other person solve their problem, either with something she can offer or by pointing them in the direction of someone else who can help, then the day will come when she does have something that she can offer them.
- For an hour-long meeting, Debby prepares for at least double that time to make sure she deeply understands the person and the company she is meeting with. The more she can become a student of their business, the more she can make that initial conversation helpful.
- She will write out a handful of open-ended questions to get them talking and sharing about the challenges in their business.
- One of the biggest gaps in a good conversation that leads nowhere is that there needs to be a next step. The questions and preparation get the conversation going, but coming up with two or three paths that could lead to a give-to-get or a second conversation is the goal.
- The goal of the first meeting is to get the second meeting. You need a reason to get back together again.
- A good rule of thumb for a meeting is that the other person should be talking ⅔ of the time. One of the skills that Debby has had to work on over the years is the power of silence. We have a natural inclination to fill the space, but it’s okay to wait. It takes practice to learn these skills but it’s more than worth the effort.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG or the Snowball System?
- Debby’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. The science behind what type of thinker we are is incredibly valuable.
- Most people have been through at least one kind of similar training, but they usually can’t put it into use. With HBDI, that’s not the case.
- The brilliant a-ha moment for Debby was realizing that you must assume that you have all four thinking types in the room when you’re meeting with someone new, and you must tailor your conversation to appeal to all four types.
- The best part is that the system is easy to remember and put into practical use.
- HBDI basically says that there are four ways to think based on the physiological structure of the brain. Some people are analytical and some are relational, some are experimental and some are more practical.
- Components of your presentations and discussions should always touch on all four parts.
- Debby’s second favorite principle is the idea of building it together. Spending time together to think through the various options, you aren’t selling them something, you are helping them understand what they need and helping them get that solution.
- Building it together starts with the preliminary market research and understanding what’s happening in their market, and then coming up with a few options for a possible solution. It can take multiple conversations and feedback to figure out the right option for them, but the goal is to match the right solution to the prospect’s particular problem.
- The prospect is probably facing a near infinite number of choices in the beginning. This is the perfect opportunity for you to narrow things down and save the prospect a huge amount of time.
- During a conversation, Debby is trying to uncover which option would be the best fit, or whether a completely different option may be a better path. There is almost always something new learned during the conversation that changes things, but the goal is to always narrow solutions down and getting clarity on the best next step.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- The current climate has been challenging, and there is one client in particular that she’s working with right now that she’s proud of.
- She had the opportunity to reconnect with someone she worked with 15 years ago that recently moved into a more senior role. She reached out to them, but with the way things are right now, she couldn’t meet them in person and have a face-to-face conversation with them.
- What Debby was able to do was have a conversation with this person and simply learn about their new role. She started to hear things that indicated the company was going through a number of changes and was able to offer herself as a resource to be more successful in their new job. This led to more conversations and helping them with relevant research, and eventually getting connected with the CHRO.
- This relationship from Debby’s past has developed into a conversation about how they can all work together.
- By cultivating a relationship with this person, Debby has opened the door to working with the organization in a deeper scope that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, simply by being helpful.
- For Debby, the commercial transaction is not a focus when connecting with someone. She brings a curiosity to the table that helps her uncover genuine ways that she can help and by following through, she adds value, builds trust, and creates a real relationship.
- Be helpful and honest, and the solution will happen.
Mo asks Debby Moorman: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?
- The bottomline is the idea of sales can be scary because we usually think of our worst sales experience and extrapolate that to everything. Debby’s advice to her younger self would be to take a breath, and realize that it’s all about meeting people and getting to know them, then helping them solve their problems.
- Changing the label from “sales” to “helping people and solving their needs” is a powerful mindset shift.
- People usually don’t realize that they are selling everyday, they just don’t label it that way. If you substitute “solve problems” for “sales”, you’re probably doing it all the time.
- Debby tells the story of an earlier experience where her job was traditional sales, literally going door to door, and how by simply asking questions and identifying the needs of the company, she turned a no into one of the biggest sales of the hotel she was working for.
- Everybody already sells, they just don’t call it that. When you substitute solving problems, you realize that you’re already great at what you do, and if you plug in a process like the Snowball System, you can keep getting better at it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Debby Moorman: If you could record a business development tip and send it to your younger self, what would it be?
- The bottomline is the idea of sales can be scary because we usually think of our worst sales experience and extrapolate that to everything. Debby’s advice to her younger self would be to take a breath, and realize that it’s all about meeting people and getting to know them, then helping them solve their problems.
- Changing the label from “sales” to “helping people and solving their needs” is a powerful mindset shift.
- People usually don’t realize that they are selling everyday, they just don’t label it that way. If you substitute “solve problems” for “sales”, you’re probably doing it all the time.
- Debby tells the story of an earlier experience where her job was traditional sales, literally going door to door, and how by simply asking questions and identifying the needs of the company, she turned a no into one of the biggest sales of the hotel she was working for.
- Everybody already sells, they just don’t call it that. When you substitute solving problems, you realize that you’re already great at what you do, and if you plug in a process like the Snowball System, you can keep getting better at it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is one moment around business development that you are really proud of?
- The current climate has been challenging, and there is one client in particular that she’s working with right now that she’s proud of.
- She had the opportunity to reconnect with someone she worked with 15 years ago that recently moved into a more senior role. She reached out to them, but with the way things are right now, she couldn’t meet them in person and have a face-to-face conversation with them.
- What Debby was able to do was have a conversation with this person and simply learn about their new role. She started to hear things that indicated the company was going through a number of changes and was able to offer herself as a resource to be more successful in their new job. This led to more conversations and helping them with relevant research, and eventually getting connected with the CHRO.
- This relationship from Debby’s past has developed into a conversation about how they can all work together.
- By cultivating a relationship with this person, Debby has opened the door to working with the organization in a deeper scope that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, simply by being helpful.
- For Debby, the commercial transaction is not a focus when connecting with someone. She brings a curiosity to the table that helps her uncover genuine ways that she can help and by following through, she adds value, builds trust, and creates a real relationship.
- Be helpful and honest, and the solution will happen.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is your favorite science, step, or story from GrowBIG or the Snowball System?
- Debby’s favorite science is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. The science behind what type of thinker we are is incredibly valuable.
- Most people have been through at least one kind of similar training, but they usually can’t put it into use. With HBDI, that’s not the case.
- The brilliant a-ha moment for Debby was realizing that you must assume that you have all four thinking types in the room when you’re meeting with someone new, and you must tailor your conversation to appeal to all four types.
- The best part is that the system is easy to remember and put into practical use.
- HBDI basically says that there are four ways to think based on the physiological structure of the brain. Some people are analytical and some are relational, some are experimental and some are more practical.
- Components of your presentations and discussions should always touch on all four parts.
- Debby’s second favorite principle is the idea of building it together. Spending time together to think through the various options, you aren’t selling them something, you are helping them understand what they need and helping them get that solution.
- Building it together starts with the preliminary market research and understanding what’s happening in their market, and then coming up with a few options for a possible solution. It can take multiple conversations and feedback to figure out the right option for them, but the goal is to match the right solution to the prospect’s particular problem.
- The prospect is probably facing a near infinite number of choices in the beginning. This is the perfect opportunity for you to narrow things down and save the prospect a huge amount of time.
- During a conversation, Debby is trying to uncover which option would be the best fit, or whether a completely different option may be a better path. There is almost always something new learned during the conversation that changes things, but the goal is to always narrow solutions down and getting clarity on the best next step.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Debby Moorman: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is identifying high-value relationships, investing in them, and finding ways to bring value to those relationships.
- It’s about matching what you have to offer with the needs of your market and customizing it for each person.
- Figuring what the client needs is fundamentally about asking the right questions and listening closely to the answer.
- The key in any conversation is that if you’re talking more about yourself than you are about them it’s not been a successful conversation.
- Debby’s personal philosophy is if she can help the other person solve their problem, either with something she can offer or by pointing them in the direction of someone else who can help, then the day will come when she does have something that she can offer them.
- For an hour-long meeting, Debby prepares for at least double that time to make sure she deeply understands the person and the company she is meeting with. The more she can become a student of their business, the more she can make that initial conversation helpful.
- She will write out a handful of open-ended questions to get them talking and sharing about the challenges in their business.
- One of the biggest gaps in a good conversation that leads nowhere is that there needs to be a next step. The questions and preparation get the conversation going, but coming up with two or three paths that could lead to a give-to-get or a second conversation is the goal.
- The goal of the first meeting is to get the second meeting. You need a reason to get back together again.
- A good rule of thumb for a meeting is that the other person should be talking ⅔ of the time. One of the skills that Debby has had to work on over the years is the power of silence. We have a natural inclination to fill the space, but it’s okay to wait. It takes practice to learn these skills but it’s more than worth the effort.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Mo asks Debby Moorman: Tell me the moment when you decided that business development is something that you wanted to focus on.
- Debby fell into business development almost by accident when she was in college after taking a sales job one summer. The key realization was when she figured out that she liked helping people solve their problems, and that was when she decided to shift her focus to professional sales.
- Debby went on to a professional sales role out of college where most of the training was technical in focus. It wasn’t until Debby moved into a national leadership role did she realize that business development skills are just as important as technical skills. That was when she became connected with Mo and the GrowBIG system.
- Now that Debby is consulting, the focus on business development is even more important.
- As a service provider, the reality is that you are helping your clients solve their problems, and that is the essence of business development.
- Companies tend to focus on technical training because there is often so much information to learn and such a large need for that information, businesses are incentivized to pay attention to it. An organization that wants to grow has to invest in its people beyond the technical side.
- Companies often throw structure at an issue in an attempt to solve a problem.
- Take the word sales out of your mind if you’re just getting started with business development. Retool your brain to frame the conversation as a way of figuring out what the other person needs and how you can help. If you can do that, the conversation becomes less intimidating.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
debby.moorman@willistowerswatson.com
Debby Moorman on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi shares how the business development skills he developed during his career became the foundation for his consulting practice’s success after launching right at the beginning of the pandemic. Discover the mindset shift that takes someone from struggling with business development to becoming the rainmaker of their organization, why you need to understand sales if you want to succeed at marketing, and the counterintuitive way to showcase your expertise and land paying clients that most consultants get completely backward.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: Tell us the story of the time where you realized that business development was great.
- Jeff first realized the importance of business development in the marketing class at business school.
- The first question his professor asked was “Who here is interested in pursuing a career in marketing? And who here is interested in pursuing a career in sales?” The majority of the class had their hands up for the first part and not the second part, and that was the first lesson of the class.
- If you’re thinking about marketing and you don’t have a clear understanding and appreciation for sales you have a fundamental disconnect. Marketing is meant to drive sales.
- Where a lot of organizations fail is turning the one-to-many marketing experience into one-to-one sales conversations.
- Nobody hires someone after they give a speech, they have to talk with them about how they can solve their problems.
- When Jeff took over as CMO, he introduced the organization’s first business development group. A lot of the difficulty an organization faces is when marketing and sales are not in alignment and are treated as completely separate activities.
- Jeff didn’t just publish unique content. He created events around the content and a follow-up process for turning it into actionable conversations.
- The key is to work backwards from the goal of the campaign. For Jeff, that meant showcasing their expertise to companies that they wanted to work with in Europe. He started off with a survey to understand what is happening with potential clients.
- Once the research was conducted, they discovered that some issues were local and some were more widespread, but no matter the scope the research became the basis for the report that could be leveraged in a number of different ways.
- This sort of deep dive research into a client’s problems and needs can be as broad or as narrow as you need it to be.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is creating a pipeline of future growth opportunities. You won’t know when they come to fruition or how, but it’s a steady process of cultivating and building relationships.
- There is never enough when it comes to business development because you never know when the well is going to go dry. By having a large pipeline, you have the ability to choose who you work with rather than having to take whatever comes your way.
- The lack of control is a major source of stress for people. Business development activities give you back the control over who you work with and how.
- You may be busy, but you must set aside time for business development opportunities or you might end up resentful of how much you are working.
- By having more opportunities than you need, you can say no to stuff you don’t want and the more you’re going to get paid. You also regain control on who you work with and which big ideas you get to work on.
- The commonality in cases where people are struggling with business development and people who thrive is fear. For those who are already successful, it’s a fear of losing what they’ve achieved. For those who are struggling, it’s a fear that they can’t be successful or that business development is beyond them.
- When you change the mindset from a fear of not being capable, to being afraid of too much success, you open the door of opportunity. The rainmakers have learned the tools they need to succeed and they have confidence in the process.
- Knowing that business development is a learnable skill is what flips someone from fear to confidence.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: What is your favorite GrowBIG or Snowball System principle?
- Build everything together is Jeff’s all-time favorite principle. When you work with something in conjunction with your prospect they are going to like you, and the work, more.
- Jeff uses the example of bake-at-home cake mixes and how one small change that increased the engagement of the consumer in the process led to an increase in sales.
- Everybody wants to add value in life, and when you send somebody a project that’s done they have no way to participate.
- Even a small step or contribution can increase the sense of ownership on a project. Include your client in the planning process and ditch the inclination to have a perfect fully baked proposal.
- You can’t give too much to the client, but giving them small steps that get them engaged on the big picture helps them understand the value you are bringing to the table. Work together to nail down the scope of the project and get their stamp on what’s going to be done.
- You convey your authority in the details. Not asking for the client’s thoughts and perspective can actually be the weaker position compared to asking for input.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: Tell us about a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Jeff has had a long and successful career, but his proudest business development story happened at the very beginning of the pandemic when he launched his own consulting practice.
- Jeff had the training and the experience leading up to that moment, and the launch of his consulting practice simply became reaching out to his contacts and helping them figure things out.
- Those initial relationships and just being valuable eventually turned into client work. Even when Jeff became busy with client work he made sure to stick to the business development habits that built those relationships.
- Having the Snowball System to rely on was a big asset. The habits of business development combined with being helpful became the basis for Jeff’s consulting success.
- When you experience the result of the process, you get more motivation to keep it going. Finding the time to continue business development activities once you become successful is challenging but vital to continued growth.
- For Jeff, he made sure to put names and tasks in his calendar about following up. These became visual reminders that he couldn’t ignore and kept him on track. To-dos can always be kicked down the road, blocking off time is hard to ignore.
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: If you could record a video and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Jeff would tell himself to ask more questions and to be more intentional on directing the conversation to the ways he could help the other party.
- Asking questions and getting the client engaged is much more beneficial than just telling people what you do. A lot of consultants make the mistake of just wanting to showcase their expertise, but the counterintuitive part is that by getting the other person to talk about what’s happening on their end they view you as having that expertise.
- There are three big benefits of asking questions: they light up the pleasure center of the person being asked, you learn their perspectives in their specific words, and it highly correlates to likeability.
- Asking questions releases the pressure you have when you assume you know what the client needs and then telling them how you can help without really understanding the situation.
- The end goal of your questions is to understand their needs and how you can address them. The essence of the questions is to build trust and also to help the client understand what they need because often they haven’t defined the problem precisely on their own.
- If you uncover their needs over the course of the conversation in an authentic and meaningful way that shows you understand their issues and you have the skill set to help them, it feels less like you aren’t trying to sell them something and more like you are trying to simply help them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: If you could record a video and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Jeff would tell himself to ask more questions and to be more intentional on directing the conversation to the ways he could help the other party.
- Asking questions and getting the client engaged is much more beneficial than just telling people what you do. A lot of consultants make the mistake of just wanting to showcase their expertise, but the counterintuitive part is that by getting the other person to talk about what’s happening on their end they view you as having that expertise.
- There are three big benefits of asking questions: they light up the pleasure center of the person being asked, you learn their perspectives in their specific words, and it highly correlates to likeability.
- Asking questions releases the pressure you have when you assume you know what the client needs and then telling them how you can help without really understanding the situation.
- The end goal of your questions is to understand their needs and how you can address them. The essence of the questions is to build trust and also to help the client understand what they need because often they haven’t defined the problem precisely on their own.
- If you uncover their needs over the course of the conversation in an authentic and meaningful way that shows you understand their issues and you have the skill set to help them, it feels less like you aren’t trying to sell them something and more like you are trying to simply help them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: Tell us about a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- Jeff has had a long and successful career, but his proudest business development story happened at the very beginning of the pandemic when he launched his own consulting practice.
- Jeff had the training and the experience leading up to that moment, and the launch of his consulting practice simply became reaching out to his contacts and helping them figure things out.
- Those initial relationships and just being valuable eventually turned into client work. Even when Jeff became busy with client work he made sure to stick to the business development habits that built those relationships.
- Having the Snowball System to rely on was a big asset. The habits of business development combined with being helpful became the basis for Jeff’s consulting success.
- When you experience the result of the process, you get more motivation to keep it going. Finding the time to continue business development activities once you become successful is challenging but vital to continued growth.
- For Jeff, he made sure to put names and tasks in his calendar about following up. These became visual reminders that he couldn’t ignore and kept him on track. To-dos can always be kicked down the road, blocking off time is hard to ignore.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: What is your favorite GrowBIG or Snowball System principle?
- Build everything together is Jeff’s all-time favorite principle. When you work with something in conjunction with your prospect they are going to like you, and the work, more.
- Jeff uses the example of bake-at-home cake mixes and how one small change that increased the engagement of the consumer in the process led to an increase in sales.
- Everybody wants to add value in life, and when you send somebody a project that’s done they have no way to participate.
- Even a small step or contribution can increase the sense of ownership on a project. Include your client in the planning process and ditch the inclination to have a perfect fully baked proposal.
- You can’t give too much to the client, but giving them small steps that get them engaged on the big picture helps them understand the value you are bringing to the table. Work together to nail down the scope of the project and get their stamp on what’s going to be done.
- You convey your authority in the details. Not asking for the client’s thoughts and perspective can actually be the weaker position compared to asking for input.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is creating a pipeline of future growth opportunities. You won’t know when they come to fruition or how, but it’s a steady process of cultivating and building relationships.
- There is never enough when it comes to business development because you never know when the well is going to go dry. By having a large pipeline, you have the ability to choose who you work with rather than having to take whatever comes your way.
- The lack of control is a major source of stress for people. Business development activities give you back the control over who you work with and how.
- You may be busy, but you must set aside time for business development opportunities or you might end up resentful of how much you are working.
- By having more opportunities than you need, you can say no to stuff you don’t want and the more you’re going to get paid. You also regain control on who you work with and which big ideas you get to work on.
- The commonality in cases where people are struggling with business development and people who thrive is fear. For those who are already successful, it’s a fear of losing what they’ve achieved. For those who are struggling, it’s a fear that they can’t be successful or that business development is beyond them.
- When you change the mindset from a fear of not being capable, to being afraid of too much success, you open the door of opportunity. The rainmakers have learned the tools they need to succeed and they have confidence in the process.
- Knowing that business development is a learnable skill is what flips someone from fear to confidence.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo asks Jeff Berardi: Tell us the story of the time where you realized that business development was great.
- Jeff first realized the importance of business development in the marketing class at business school.
- The first question his professor asked was “Who here is interested in pursuing a career in marketing? And who here is interested in pursuing a career in sales?” The majority of the class had their hands up for the first part and not the second part, and that was the first lesson of the class.
- If you’re thinking about marketing and you don’t have a clear understanding and appreciation for sales you have a fundamental disconnect. Marketing is meant to drive sales.
- Where a lot of organizations fail is turning the one-to-many marketing experience into one-to-one sales conversations.
- Nobody hires someone after they give a speech, they have to talk with them about how they can solve their problems.
- When Jeff took over as CMO, he introduced the organization’s first business development group. A lot of the difficulty an organization faces is when marketing and sales are not in alignment and are treated as completely separate activities.
- Jeff didn’t just publish unique content. He created events around the content and a follow-up process for turning it into actionable conversations.
- The key is to work backwards from the goal of the campaign. For Jeff, that meant showcasing their expertise to companies that they wanted to work with in Europe. He started off with a survey to understand what is happening with potential clients.
- Once the research was conducted, they discovered that some issues were local and some were more widespread, but no matter the scope the research became the basis for the report that could be leveraged in a number of different ways.
- This sort of deep dive research into a client’s problems and needs can be as broad or as narrow as you need it to be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com
Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn
Jeff Berardi's Bio
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Jay Baer.
This is an encore presentation of an episode that aired on July 9, 2021.
- Market your marketing. Most experts put in the time to create some content, but they would be much better served by taking half that time, creating less content overall, and spending the other half marketing that content. Doing this allows you to spend half the time and generate 10x the results.
- There are three components to marketing your marketing: the plan, the lead up before the launch, and what you do after the launch.
- Whatever you are creating, you should spend quite a bit of time upfront developing the outline of the content, who the audience is, and think about the marketing of that content.
- Start with what your audience needs to know and how you can create something that they would die to have. Jay’s example of creating a report on the top 50 university’s websites is perfect.
- If you’re the person that has the data, information, or algorithm, it makes you more magnetic to your prospects.
- Narrow down your audience to specific people. That will help you tailor the content directly to what they care about.
- The goal of your pre-launch is to break down your big piece of content into smaller, bite-size pieces as you can. Get as many people as you can to help promote them and get the word out for the official launch.
- The post launch step is the most important. Your big piece of content is not the finishing line, it’s the start. Post launch you should organize an effort with your strategic partners to funnel people into a meeting with you on how the content impacts them.
- Seize the momentum of your launch to get the meetings where you can actually get hired.
- Most people only do one or two parts of the three steps of the marketing your marketing process. Put all three into practice and watch your results explode.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
talktriggers.com
convinceandconvert.com
jaybaer.com
The Top 3 Things You Need to Implement from Jay Baer, Customer Experience Expert
Mo asks Marissa King: How can we hack our own habits to build the most robust networks?
This is an encore presentation of an episode that aired on May 20, 2021.
- Our networks are often our most valuable asset but very few people are intentional about them.
- You don’t need to invest a lot of time into relationships to grow them, you just need to invest what time you have wisely.
- Pick one day a week and choose a 15-minute window to commit to reaching out to three people who can help meet whatever needs you have. A good place to start is the Give, Thank, or Ask framework. Send them an article or podcast you think they’d like, thank them for something they did, or ask them for something.
- People want to help you. The key is to keep the ask small and specific so it’s easy to answer. If someone doesn’t respond or says no, that’s okay too. It’s about putting yourself out there and creating the habit more than the outcome.
- Studies have shown that people overestimate how many people will say no to them by orders of magnitude. If fear is getting in the way, realize that you are more afraid than necessary.
- If you are struggling with the idea of connecting with other people, know that you are better than you think and people are more likely to say yes than you think.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
socialchemistry.com
assessyournetwork.com
linkedin.com/in/marissadking
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Marissa King
James Clear, author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits, shares the importance of creating a system of habits that makes reaching your goals simple. Mo applies the principles of Atomic Habits directly to the world of business development and shows you how starting small can create huge results in your business.
This is an encore presentation of an episode that aired on June 11, 2020.
- James Clear recounts the story of the high school baseball bat incident, how he realized that something had gone horribly wrong and how he found himself fighting for his life.
- People are building habits all the time, but when your life is completely changed by a traumatic injury, you have to start as small as possible in order to rebuild them. Scaling down to what James could manage was how he was able to regain a sense of control over the life that he’d lost.
- You don’t have control over the random events that come your way, but you do have control over how you respond to those things and that usually comes down to your habits.
- Most people start with one foot in expertise and become great at what they do but once they reach the next level of success, they find themselves in a completely different world. This can often lead to them feeling defeated since they aren’t as skilled in the new area.
- Goals are helpful for setting a direction or a filter but they come with a lot of drawbacks. Your goal is your desired outcome, but your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. If there is ever a gap between your system and your goal, your daily habits will always win. Whatever results you have right now are by definition the byproduct of the system you’ve been running.
- It’s common in business for people to focus on the position or outcome, like doubling revenue or leads, but it’s more important to look at the system that’s running and the trajectory that business systems are driving towards.
- We want our results to change, but it’s not the results that need to change, it’s the habits that precede the result that need to change. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Goals are useful as check-ins, but more time should be invested into the system of habits that lead to the outcome you want.
- The Snowball system’s structure of lead and lag measures is very similar. Everybody is running systems whether they realize it or not. The questions you need to ask yourself are “How do I design a good system?” and “Which habits should I build?” This is where BIG goals come in to send you in the right direction.
- There are three main things that impact your outcomes in life. The first is luck, the second is your choices/strategy, and the third is your system of habits and behaviour. When you master the last two, you increase the surface area for good luck to come your way.
- People will often conflate the outcome they want to achieve with the person that they want to be. James believes you should shift the focus to the identity you desire instead of the goal because the real reason habits matter is that they can shape your sense of self. True behavior change is really identity change.
- Another way of reshaping your identity is to reframe your goal into a question. Instead of trying to close more deals, ask yourself what a successful sales person would do and then use that to select the action that moves you in the right direction.
- Questions are superior to advice because advice is contextual and situations change. Life is dynamic and advice will not always fit the circumstances. Identity-based questions guide you based on the situation.
- There are four fundamental things that increase the odds of getting a habit to stick. The first is to make your good habits obvious and easy to see. The second is to make them attractive and appealing. The third is to make them easy and convenient. The fourth is to make your habits satisfying and associated with a positive emotion. If you want to break a bad habit, just invert those four.
- When it comes to business development, we should look for one-time actions we can take that will help the cause every day from that point on to help mitigate the roller coaster that businesses tend to ride most of the time.
- A lot of business development is done through a screen. Is there an app or a tool that you can use to make business development more obvious and prime yourself and your environment for that use?
- James talks about the idea of the Temptation Bundle, where you combine a task that you know you should do with a task that you want to do in order to encourage the more important action.
- Don’t let one piece of silence prevent you from following up. A failure should not be desired but it should be planned for. When following up, there will also be people who ignore your efforts, but by writing down your next follow-up in your calendar, you will be many times more likely to keep following up.
- Life has a series of seasons and your habits should be different depending on the season of life you’re in. The same idea can be applied to your career. When you reach a new level it will probably require new habits in order to succeed.
- As your career progresses, typically, your responsibility increases. When your responsibility increases your ability to say no to things and to prioritize also needs to increase. Saying no to something is only saying no to one thing, but saying yes to something means saying no to everything else. Everything comes with a trade-off.
- If you’re going through a change of season in your career or your life, it may be the perfect time to reread Atomic Habits. The process of building habits is essentially rebuilding and getting started over and over as your life changes.
- In business development, the goal is not to be the absolute best in the world, it’s just to be a little bit better than your competition. Business is mostly a winner-take-all proposition so put yourself in a position to make more shots and improve your craft, and each day you will be more likely to win.
- Start with doing something small every single day when you don’t know where to begin. Any goal you have can be broken down into a two-minute chunk that will help you master the art of showing up. A habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize and scale it up and expand it into something more.
- One of the most motivating feelings for the human mind is seeing progress. A simple strategy to improve your business development habits is to create a way to visualize your efforts even if you don’t get any direct feedback. A visual cue is a powerful way to see your progress and increase the odds of you keeping pushing forward.
Previous Episode:
bdhabits.com
James Clear on Why Habits Are the Foundation of Business Development Success
Michael Hyatt shares the power of a compelling vision and how it can completely transform your business. Find out how to craft your Vision Script and turn it into a roadmap for your business’s success, while giving you the perfect filter to avoid the trivial many and stay focused on the vital few.
This is an encore presentation of an episode that aired on August 6, 2020.
- Michael tells the story of how he struggled early on when he and a partner started their own book publishing company.
- Michael’s company had a lot of success and opportunity for the first few years, but a disastrous partnership led to them being $1.2 million in debt and having all their assets seized, leaving them with nothing.
- People don’t always see the history of those who succeed. Great things come all of the time when we hit our low points. Never waste a good crisis. Crises are an opportunity to dig deep and be reflective.
- One of the major issues Michael had with his business was the lack of a clear vision as a company about where they were going. Without a clear vision it’s very hard to discern the difference between a distraction and an opportunity.
- Michael’s company found itself fracturing its focus and attention, spread its resources too thin and everything fell apart.
- Michael went back to work for Thomas Nelson and was given responsibility for one of the 14 divisions of the company, specifically the worst performing division in the whole company. This was where Michael first implemented the Vision Script and described what that division would need to be to turn it around.
- The Vision Script became so inspiring for the team that the division managed to become the highest performing division in the company in only 18 months and stayed that way for the next decade.
- No matter where you are in an organization as a leader, being a leader presupposes that you are leading people somewhere, which means you must have clarity and vision.
- There is a big difference between a Vision Script and a Vision Statement. A Vision Script is a detailed document that describes your future business in detail three to five years in the future written in the present tense.
- A Vision Script is broken down into four different sections. The team, the product, the marketing and sales, and finally the impact. This is essentially a whole brain description of your future vision.
- Before executing your vision, you have to create alignment in your organization around that vision. This is not something you can outsource as a leader, you need to do it yourself. Start with the highest level and then cascade it down.
- To get buy in from your team solicit their feedback. People buy into what they help create and this takes the burden off of you as a leader.
- Your Vision Script should be the first thing you check in at your annual planning meeting. You must have a cadence of review in your organization because vision leaks, you need to be constantly repeating the vision and reinforcing the path. When you come up with your annual goals, ask yourself what are the seven to ten things that will move you towards your vision and when they are deliverable.
- Your quarterly goals will inform your weekly priorities, and further down to your daily MIT’s. Limiting yourself to three major goals each quarter is more effective than aiming for a higher number of goals at the same time.
- A vision helps you identify what you’re going to focus on but it also allows you to exclude what you’re not going to focus on if you use it as a filter. If something falls outside the scope of your vision, it becomes an easy “no”.
- Strategy answers the question how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go, and should be revised as often as necessary.
- All progress begins with an honest assessment of where you currently are, because it’s hard to move beyond where you are until you get honest about where you are.
- Establish hard boundaries around your work. When you restrict your work time you force yourself to get things done in the time allotted. With a clarity of vision you are able to create boundaries and choose what is the most important.
- In line with the Pareto Principle, what are the three actions that are going to drive the biggest results in your business?
- A lot of people think that to get more you’ve got to do more, but it’s not what you do, it’s about doing the right things. It all comes down to your vision which gives you the courage to say no to the trivial distractions.
- In order to serve your clients fully you have to be able to say no to lesser opportunities. Michael describes the systems he uses to protect his time and deliver his best every single day. Any structure is better than no structure at all.
- Michael has a powerful system of automation that simplifies his responses and saves him an incredible amount of time that anyone can apply.
- Michael uses the Power of No formula to make sure that he protects his time and honors his commitments without closing any doors permanently. People are used to not getting a response so they end up appreciating this kind of response. Most people can handle a no, what they can’t handle is no response.
- People are vision starved. As a leader, if you have a clear, compelling vision you will be amazed at how confident you will show up and how well your team will respond.
Mentioned in this Episode:
businessaccelerator.com/big
bdhabits.com
Michael Hyatt Reveals How To Create A Vivid Vision That Will Transform Your Business
Maria Kelly shares everything she’s learned over the years on developing client relationships at Sotheby’s and in her own consulting firm helping CEOs and bold leaders get unstuck. Find out about some key insights that will help you charge what you’re worth with confidence, how to communicate effectively in your client’s language and convey your value in a way that they will love, and one simple tactic that anyone can use to forge strong bonds with people and deepen their relationships.
Mo asks Maria Kelly: When did you realize that you really had to focus on business development and client relationships?
- Maria’s career didn’t begin in client-facing roles but they were usually oriented around being helping and finding solutions for people. When she moved into more managerial roles, she was overseeing people who faced the client. It wasn’t until Maria went through the GrowBIG training where she realized that business development had been a part of her life the whole time, and her clients were her colleagues and the people she worked with.
- Everyone who went through the GrowBIG training had the lightbulb moment where they realized that they could be doing business development differently. The ones that embraced the Snowball System started seeing results almost immediately and people took notice.
- Maria started doing bi-weekly meetings specifically focused on business development and the various strategies of the Snowball System. The Give to Get was a particular favorite of the team.
- One of the keys to Maria’s success with her team was in shifting them from retrospectives to thinking and planning for the future. Being proactive and changing the approach to being helpful allowed them to focus on the long-term view of their business.
- For small businesses, they often struggle with many of the same issues that many professional service firms do. Entrepreneurs have to be able to step back from the execution and take some time to focus on the future and growth of the business they are working in.
Mo asks Maria Kelly: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is about creating opportunities and value for other people. Doing that together is what makes business development fun.
- Often, people don’t see their own value and this is reflected in the general disdain for sales. You need to understand what value you bring to the table as a specialist and use that confidence in your skill to bring value to the other person.
- A lot comes to your presentation and how you approach the client. When you are genuine in your intent to help and you believe in your offering, it comes through in how you communicate.
- Email can be easily misconstrued and is a good example of how something can be taken differently depending on your language and other factors. Your client is a human being as well, and showing your human side builds connection.
- Listen to your client before talking. Empathy is important in understanding where they are coming from and how they want to communicate with you.
- To be able to communicate in all four ways of thinking, you first need to be aware of what your primary style is. From there you can be cognizant of how you communicate and be thoughtful of the other styles so you’re always speaking the client’s language.
- Maria works with already successful CEOs and helps them grow further, and how that happens is deeply connected to each individual and the obstacles they face. Maria spends a lot of time getting to know the entire business as a whole so that she can help take the blinders off of the client.
Mo asks Maria Kelly: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- One of the most useful things Maria learned from the GrowBIG training was the seven pricing principles. Living in Switzerland, she grew up in a culture that didn’t talk about money and she learned early on in her career that if she didn’t talk about money, she didn’t get the money.
- Many business owners and professionals struggle with asking for what they are worth. When clients push back on the fees, those people don’t know how to respond because they don’t know how to articulate their value and justify their price.
- There are seven common heuristic programs that people use when thinking about money. One of the most common is that your price is directly linked to the quality of your service. In other words, expensive equals good, and cheap equals bad.
- If you’re upfront with the value you are bringing to the table and anchoring to that, no one is going to second guess what you charge.
- With the idea of anchoring on value, you can talk about the result and the magnitude of the value of it and use that as a frame for whatever your fees are. Introduce early on what value you are bringing to the relationship, and your fees will seem small in comparison.
- Most people expect to pay for a service, but when it comes to ourselves we often make assumptions about what other people will think about our own services to others. If someone is hiring you, they want the best. You have to lean into and be confident with your fees.
- At the point you talk about the fees, if you have built up enough value and trust with the person, you will be more confident in your delivery. It’s not about sticking with the number no matter what, it’s about working together to find a solution and a price that fits all parties. Even if you can’t find an alternative, do your best to part on good terms.
- If you can talk about the money with the same excitement and tone that you discuss the team, the scope of the project, and the details, you will feel consistent and confident and get better results.
Mo asks Maria Kelly: Tell us of a business development moment that you are really proud of.
- One of Maria’s first clients, when she ventured out on her own, was someone she had worked with in the past. This client reached out to her specifically to work with her one on one just as Maria was taking some time off.
- For years, Maria had been telling her team and her clients that they need to charge what they’re worth so when it came to pricing her services she knew she had to follow her own advice.
- What’s the worst that can happen when you ask for what you’re worth? In the worst-case scenario, they say it’s too expensive and there’s room to negotiate. If Maria hadn’t risked asking for what she was worth, she could have been stuck with the negative emotions associated with being undervalued and the fee scale of her first client.
Mo asks Maria Kelly: If you could record a video around business development and give it to your younger self, what would it say?
- The short answer would be to record Mo’s training. The longer answer is to start thinking about business development much earlier. Do not be afraid to reach out and ask for advice.
- Over the last 12 months, Maria has read so many books that would have helped her tremendously when she was younger.
- Highly skilled specialists often struggle with asking for advice, but it’s one of the most powerful things you can do to create bonds with people.
- The more you communicate, the more things come your way. Asking people for advice makes people feel good, and other things can come up during the conversation that can change the way you think.
- One of the ways that Maria had built relationships with clients was by asking them their advice on who she should hire and they loved the idea of having input. The worst that can happen is that the other person will thank you for thinking of them but they’re too busy to help.
- Start with something small that doesn’t require too much of the other person, or by asking someone you are fairly confident will say yes no matter what. When you’re trying a new skill, start small and start safe.
- If you have a business strategy that you aren’t sure of, reach out to your clients and run it by them first. It shows that you value them as a client and their opinion on what you do.
- There are a lot more opportunities than you think that don’t fit into the traditional client opportunity conversation box. Just being human is a simple thing anyone can do. Unstructured moments used to happen naturally in the past, but it’s okay to go out of your way to try and create more of those moments.
- Business development is a learnable skill, and the sooner you embrace it the more it will impact your career.
- Embrace who you are and bring that to the business development table, because that is your strongest tool. Your authentic self is the foundation for all the other business development skills.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Mo asks Maria Kelly: If you could record a video around business development and give it to your younger self, what would it say?
- The short answer would be to record Mo’s training. The longer answer is to start thinking about business development much earlier. Do not be afraid to reach out and ask for advice.
- Over the last 12 months, Maria has read so many books that would have helped her tremendously when she was younger.
- Highly skilled specialists often struggle with asking for advice, but it’s one of the most powerful things you can do to create bonds with people.
- The more you communicate, the more things come your way. Asking people for advice makes people feel good, and other things can come up during the conversation that can change the way you think.
- One of the ways that Maria had built relationships with clients was by asking them their advice on who she should hire and they loved the idea of having input. The worst that can happen is that the other person will thank you for thinking of them but they’re too busy to help.
- Start with something small that doesn’t require too much of the other person, or by asking someone you are fairly confident will say yes no matter what. When you’re trying a new skill, start small and start safe.
- If you have a business strategy that you aren’t sure of, reach out to your clients and run it by them first. It shows that you value them as a client and their opinion on what you do.
- There are a lot more opportunities than you think that don’t fit into the traditional client opportunity conversation box. Just being human is a simple thing anyone can do. Unstructured moments used to happen naturally in the past, but it’s okay to go out of your way to try and create more of those moments.
- Business development is a learnable skill, and the sooner you embrace it the more it will impact your career.
- Embrace who you are and bring that to the business development table, because that is your strongest tool. Your authentic self is the foundation for all the other business development skills.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Mo asks Maria Kelly: Tell us of a business development moment that you are really proud of.
- One of Maria’s first clients, when she ventured out on her own, was someone she had worked with in the past. This client reached out to her specifically to work with her one on one just as Maria was taking some time off.
- For years, Maria had been telling her team and her clients that they need to charge what they’re worth so when it came to pricing her services she knew she had to follow her own advice.
- What’s the worst that can happen when you ask for what you’re worth? In the worst-case scenario, they say it’s too expensive and there’s room to negotiate. If Maria hadn’t risked asking for what she was worth, she could have been stuck with the negative emotions associated with being undervalued and the fee scale of her first client.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Mo asks Maria Kelly: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- One of the most useful things Maria learned from the GrowBIG training was the seven pricing principles. Living in Switzerland, she grew up in a culture that didn’t talk about money and she learned early on in her career that if she didn’t talk about money, she didn’t get the money.
- Many business owners and professionals struggle with asking for what they are worth. When clients push back on the fees, those people don’t know how to respond because they don’t know how to articulate their value and justify their price.
- There are seven common heuristic programs that people use when thinking about money. One of the most common is that your price is directly linked to the quality of your service. In other words, expensive equals good, and cheap equals bad.
- If you’re upfront with the value you are bringing to the table and anchoring to that, no one is going to second guess what you charge.
- With the idea of anchoring on value, you can talk about the result and the magnitude of the value of it and use that as a frame for whatever your fees are. Introduce early on what value you are bringing to the relationship, and your fees will seem small in comparison.
- Most people expect to pay for a service, but when it comes to ourselves we often make assumptions about what other people will think about our own services to others. If someone is hiring you, they want the best. You have to lean into and be confident with your fees.
- At the point you talk about the fees, if you have built up enough value and trust with the person, you will be more confident in your delivery. It’s not about sticking with the number no matter what, it’s about working together to find a solution and a price that fits all parties. Even if you can’t find an alternative, do your best to part on good terms.
- If you can talk about the money with the same excitement and tone that you discuss the team, the scope of the project, and the details, you will feel consistent and confident and get better results.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Mo asks Maria Kelly: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Business development is about creating opportunities and value for other people. Doing that together is what makes business development fun.
- Often, people don’t see their own value and this is reflected in the general disdain for sales. You need to understand what value you bring to the table as a specialist and use that confidence in your skill to bring value to the other person.
- A lot comes to your presentation and how you approach the client. When you are genuine in your intent to help and you believe in your offering, it comes through in how you communicate.
- Email can be easily misconstrued and is a good example of how something can be taken differently depending on your language and other factors. Your client is a human being as well, and showing your human side builds connection.
- Listen to your client before talking. Empathy is important in understanding where they are coming from and how they want to communicate with you.
- To be able to communicate in all four ways of thinking, you first need to be aware of what your primary style is. From there you can be cognizant of how you communicate and be thoughtful of the other styles so you’re always speaking the client’s language.
- Maria works with already successful CEOs and helps them grow further, and how that happens is deeply connected to each individual and the obstacles they face. Maria spends a lot of time getting to know the entire business as a whole so that she can help take the blinders off of the client.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Mo asks Maria Kelly: When did you realize that you really had to focus on business development and client relationships?
- Maria’s career didn’t begin in client-facing roles but they were usually oriented around being helping and finding solutions for people. When she moved into more managerial roles, she was overseeing people who faced the client. It wasn’t until Maria went through the GrowBIG training where she realized that business development had been a part of her life the whole time, and her clients were her colleagues and the people she worked with.
- Everyone who went through the GrowBIG training had the lightbulb moment where they realized that they could be doing business development differently. The ones that embraced the Snowball System started seeing results almost immediately and people took notice.
- Maria started doing bi-weekly meetings specifically focused on business development and the various strategies of the Snowball System. The Give to Get was a particular favorite of the team.
- One of the keys to Maria’s success with her team was in shifting them from retrospectives to thinking and planning for the future. Being proactive and changing the approach to being helpful allowed them to focus on the long-term view of their business.
- For small businesses, they often struggle with many of the same issues that many professional service firms do. Entrepreneurs have to be able to step back from the execution and take some time to focus on the future and growth of the business they are working in.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
askmariakelly.com
Maria Kelly on LinkedIn
Scott Winter, CRM Evangelist, shares his thoughts and hard-won experiences on business development and how his perspective changed over the years from “selling is bad” to “business development is one of the most important things you can do. Learn about Scott’s three favorite GrowBIG strategies that he uses all the time to help land new clients, the mindset that allows him to sell with confidence and genuine empathy, and how business development is the key to changing the world at large.
Mo asks Scott Winter: When was the moment that you realized that business development was great?
- Scott started his career off in sales with LexisNexis and that developed into a role in consulting. Eventually he made the switch to a product management position with Interaction where he focused on CRM and client relationships.
- Interaction is the world’s largest CRM system for law firms and by coming up in that environment, Scott learned a lot about the technical aspects of the software which helped him better serve his clients.
- Scott had the typical mindset about sales in college that most people have, but he reframed his perspective after getting some actual experience in sales positions.
- The one key moment when Scott realized that business development was a powerful tool for growth was after having a simple conversation with someone on a plan. Just listening carefully and remembering what he learned blew that person away when they met again many months later.
- Scott has a knack for having a conversation on any subject and being able to find a point of connection. He also tends to add notes in his phone of a particularly interesting detail (powerlifting, ironman training, etc.) and makes use of his CRM to keep track of everything.
- Remembering details about someone is an art and a science, but there are tools you can use to make it easier.
Mo asks Scott Winter: What is your personal definition of business development?
- The first component is being genuine. If you’re not, people will see right through what you’re doing.
- Scott has been fortunate to work with companies that he authentically believes in, and that confidence in the product makes being genuine possible.
- Drinking your own champagne helps. Scott is an avid consumer of the products he sells, and that makes the conversations easy and learning more about what the prospect needs simpler.
- Be genuine, love what you do, and treat it as a learning exercise.
- When you love what you do, it will come through in your enthusiasm for the client and the results you can get them. Think of it as a partnership where their victory is your victory and you will convey your pride and energy for what you do.
- Think with empathy, get excited about the future and help the prospect create that future.
- Business development has to be flexible because this is not a one-size-fits-all world. You have to be able to take your service offering or product, listen to what the other person’s needs are, and show them how it can help solve their problem.
Mo asks Scott Winter: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Whole brain thinking is a concept that Scott always gravitates towards when he’s putting together a pitch or presentation. It helps shape his storytelling and the way his message connects with the people he’s talking to.
- The Give to Get is another tool that Scott uses all the time. It’s highly valuable to the prospect, builds the relationship, and helps them out, and for a trusted advisor, that’s very important.
- Building it Together is the third favorite technique that Scott uses all the time. Working with Index naturally lends itself to customized problem solving for clients so it makes this kind of collaboration easy. If you can find a way to do that for your prospect, it can be incredibly powerful in developing the business relationship.
- In terms of Give to Gets, sometimes that takes the form of simple advice but it can also take the form of creating a solution to a prospect’s particular problem, which can then be leveraged later on at scale.
- In the course of business development, you are constantly building a repository of knowledge and the more you do, the more tools and knowledge you have to help people.
- Scalability comes from a project management mindset. You can build something that can be leveraged by multiple people, it just takes a little foresight during the initial build. If you love what you do, you are constantly thinking about how you can help people which makes having the A-Ha moment much easier.
Mo asks Scott Winter: Tell us of a time when you were doing something with business development that you are really proud of.
- Scott was working with another firm years ago that used Interaction, and there was a big push to bring them on board as an expanded partner. It took many months and using a lot of the GrowBIG strategies to provide enough value and develop the relationship to the point where they said yes, and that client became one of Scott’s favorites to work with.
- There was a tremendous growth in confidence for Scott, since he was not a natural salesperson, and that partnership revealed how important business development really is and how good he could be at creating valuable relationships.
- There are four big incremental yes’s you need in order to build something together. You have to get agreement that the strategic fit is there, determine the practicality of what you’re going to do, get the team and all the stakeholders on board, and then get the “yes” on the financial aspects.
- Accountability is a major component of Scott’s approach to business development. When he works with a client, he makes himself available to them and gets invested in their success instead of just moving on to the next sale.
- Scott focuses on building trust and giving the client a personal commitment to see the project through.
- Everything about the GrowBIG Training and Snowball System is about building long-term relationships.
- Scott trusts in his team and his product, and that trust allows him to support his clients in their success. If you don’t stand behind your client and service, you’re never going to be able to sell to them again. It all comes down to trust.
Mo asks Scott Winter: If you could send a video back in time specifically on business development, what would it say?
- The first thing Scott would say to his younger self would be to buy as much Bitcoin as possible. Seriously though, he would try to help his younger self get past the limiting belief that sales is a bad thing.
- No matter who you are, you have to sell. Do what you have to do to learn that skill sooner in a way that brings you enjoyment, because it’s going to serve you for the rest of your life.
- Do something you’re passionate about, and embrace the idea of business development.
- If you only have deep expertise, no one will know you exist and nothing will get done. If you only know sales, you will never do anything really meaningful. When you have both you can change the world.
- Deep expertise gives you the foundation for building trust and confidence with a prospect that you can actually help solve their problem, and you can use that to inform your ability to communicate that well.
- Even now, Scott struggles with how to structure emails perfectly and doing the right amount of outreach. You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to put in the work consistently and genuinely care about the prospect or client’s outcome.
- Just like sports or any skill that you want to improve, business development takes practice.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Mo asks Scott Winter: If you could send a video back in time specifically on business development, what would it say?
- The first thing Scott would say to his younger self would be to buy as much Bitcoin as possible. Seriously though, he would try to help his younger self get past the limiting belief that sales is a bad thing.
- No matter who you are, you have to sell. Do what you have to do to learn that skill sooner in a way that brings you enjoyment, because it’s going to serve you for the rest of your life.
- Do something you’re passionate about, and embrace the idea of business development.
- If you only have deep expertise, no one will know you exist and nothing will get done. If you only know sales, you will never do anything really meaningful. When you have both you can change the world.
- Deep expertise gives you the foundation for building trust and confidence with a prospect that you can actually help solve their problem, and you can use that to inform your ability to communicate that well.
- Even now, Scott struggles with how to structure emails perfectly and doing the right amount of outreach. You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to put in the work consistently and genuinely care about the prospect or client’s outcome.
- Just like sports or any skill that you want to improve, business development takes practice.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Mo asks Scott Winter: Tell us of a time when you were doing something with business development that you are really proud of.
- Scott was working with another firm years ago that used Interaction, and there was a big push to bring them on board as an expanded partner. It took many months and using a lot of the GrowBIG strategies to provide enough value and develop the relationship to the point where they said yes, and that client became one of Scott’s favorites to work with.
- There was a tremendous growth in confidence for Scott, since he was not a natural salesperson, and that partnership revealed how important business development really is and how good he could be at creating valuable relationships.
- There are four big incremental yes’s you need in order to build something together. You have to get agreement that the strategic fit is there, determine the practicality of what you’re going to do, get the team and all the stakeholders on board, and then get the “yes” on the financial aspects.
- Accountability is a major component of Scott’s approach to business development. When he works with a client, he makes himself available to them and gets invested in their success instead of just moving on to the next sale.
- Scott focuses on building trust and giving the client a personal commitment to see the project through.
- Everything about the GrowBIG Training and Snowball System is about building long-term relationships.
- Scott trusts in his team and his product, and that trust allows him to support his clients in their success. If you don’t stand behind your client and service, you’re never going to be able to sell to them again. It all comes down to trust.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Mo asks Scott Winter: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?
- Whole brain thinking is a concept that Scott always gravitates towards when he’s putting together a pitch or presentation. It helps shape his storytelling and the way his message connects with the people he’s talking to.
- The Give to Get is another tool that Scott uses all the time. It’s highly valuable to the prospect, builds the relationship, and helps them out, and for a trusted advisor, that’s very important.
- Building it Together is the third favorite technique that Scott uses all the time. Working with Index naturally lends itself to customized problem solving for clients so it makes this kind of collaboration easy. If you can find a way to do that for your prospect, it can be incredibly powerful in developing the business relationship.
- In terms of Give to Gets, sometimes that takes the form of simple advice but it can also take the form of creating a solution to a prospect’s particular problem, which can then be leveraged later on at scale.
- In the course of business development, you are constantly building a repository of knowledge and the more you do, the more tools and knowledge you have to help people.
- Scalability comes from a project management mindset. You can build something that can be leveraged by multiple people, it just takes a little foresight during the initial build. If you love what you do, you are constantly thinking about how you can help people which makes having the A-Ha moment much easier.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Mo asks Scott Winter: What is your personal definition of business development?
- The first component is being genuine. If you’re not, people will see right through what you’re doing.
- Scott has been fortunate to work with companies that he authentically believes in, and that confidence in the product makes being genuine possible.
- Drinking your own champagne helps. Scott is an avid consumer of the products he sells, and that makes the conversations easy and learning more about what the prospect needs simpler.
- Be genuine, love what you do, and treat it as a learning exercise.
- When you love what you do, it will come through in your enthusiasm for the client and the results you can get them. Think of it as a partnership where their victory is your victory and you will convey your pride and energy for what you do.
- Think with empathy, get excited about the future and help the prospect create that future.
- Business development has to be flexible because this is not a one-size-fits-all world. You have to be able to take your service offering or product, listen to what the other person’s needs are, and show them how it can help solve their problem.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Mo asks Scott Winter: When was the moment that you realized that business development was great?
- Scott started his career off in sales with LexisNexis and that developed into a role in consulting. Eventually he made the switch to a product management position with Interaction where he focused on CRM and client relationships.
- Interaction is the world’s largest CRM system for law firms and by coming up in that environment, Scott learned a lot about the technical aspects of the software which helped him better serve his clients.
- Scott had the typical mindset about sales in college that most people have, but he reframed his perspective after getting some actual experience in sales positions.
- The one key moment when Scott realized that business development was a powerful tool for growth was after having a simple conversation with someone on a plan. Just listening carefully and remembering what he learned blew that person away when they met again many months later.
- Scott has a knack for having a conversation on any subject and being able to find a point of connection. He also tends to add notes in his phone of a particularly interesting detail (powerlifting, ironman training, etc.) and makes use of his CRM to keep track of everything.
- Remembering details about someone is an art and a science, but there are tools you can use to make it easier.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scott@index.io
Scott Winter on LinkedIn
Brent Atkins, Senior Vice President Business Development at Progyny, shares the business development lessons he’s learned over the years that have defined his career. Learn about the one GrowBIG training that changed how Brent thought about how he communicates and builds relationships with clients, the skill that all serious business development professionals have to master to be effective, and why you can’t win at business by simply copying what works for other people.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: Tell me about the time you realized that business development was awesome.
- Brent learned early on the need for business development because he has done sales throughout his career. The one thing he realized from all his different work experiences was that he loved interacting with people and connecting with them. He understood that there was far more depth to sales than just telling someone your story.
- He had a desire to learn more and be more successful in his relationships in business and very quickly realized that there is a huge difference between talking to someone and listening to someone.
- Through the course of interacting with one of Brent’s early bosses, he learned he needed to be prepared for the questions he was going to ask Brent, but also that he needed answers to the questions from their perspective in order to serve them better. He needed to have a dialogue with the customer because all his knowledge about what he was selling was only one small piece of the overall business development process.
- The transition from talking to listening is a key mindset shift that all business development professionals need to learn.
- Brent now leads a team of many younger salespeople and helps them better understand the business development process. The first step is to help them want to learn more about business development, because without that desire, nothing else sticks.
- When setting meetings, Brent teaches people to set an objective for the meeting that you want the prospect to take away.
- If you have a lot of slides in your initial presentation, you’re making a mistake. Brent likes to start with a very light slidedeck in the beginning because his goal is to understand the reason for the meeting in the first place as well as the roles of the people he’s talking to.
- Brent is a big proponent of the pregnant pause. When you get a response, follow it up with another thoughtful question. Follow ups are where you get traction in a relationship.
- When it comes to the fertility space, Brent starts out with curiosity. Asking them about their familiarity with the space and exploring their experience is the foundation for a more fruitful conversation and almost always leads to how his solution solves their issue. It sets the tone for the conversation and allows him and his team to come back with a robust solution for their problem.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: What is your personal definition of business development?
- When training his team, he tells them to “build your brand.” The way they go about building relationships and adding value will be different from Brent’s, and they need to lean into that.
- When Brent worked on the carrier side of the business, his first goal when developing new business relationships was becoming a trusted individual in that person’s network. Brent always strived to have the credibility to say when he wasn’t a good fit for someone, and by being willing to do that, when his solution was the right fit, he had that person’s attention and trust.
- Progyny has a great solution, but it’s not the right fit for every organization right away. When that is the case, Brent digs into other areas of the business they want to improve on and offers material on how they impact those areas to see if that makes sense. Once they do those steps, the prospect often comes back with Brent in the #1 position in their mind.
- We’ve all experienced a situation where we felt like we had a great connection but it resulted in silence. Brent tells the story of when that happened to him and how by letting them know that he didn’t have their attention right now, but he would like to reconnect in the future when they're ready, and how that got him an immediate response.
- To child trust, connect with the prospect at their level. Ask them questions and give them the space to answer. When you are dealing with someone on an individual basis, they might tell you something real about themselves, and if you can remember that it shows that you think they’re important and want to connect in a thoughtful way.
- The people that develop the deepest relationships are the ones that are interested in the other person. Finding things in common is one of the highest correlations to likeability.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- Brent’s first favorite teaching is the walk around the brain. The science of how different people think is unbelievably valuable and creating a presentation that touches on all four quadrants is very effective.
- For Progyny, that looks like recognizing that the appeal of their program changes from Red/Yellow to Green/Blue as they move up the continuum of decision makers has been game changing.
- The four quadrants being strategic, practical, analytical, and relational.
- For Progyny, Strategic looks like finding ways to improve an organization’s benefit spend that adds value and speaks to diversity and inclusion initiatives. It’s about listening to the organization's priorities and tailoring the offer to that.
- For Practical, Progyny has been in business for seven years now and has a retention of 99%, so they have been changing their story from the cutting edge solution to the safe choice for organizations.
- People don’t buy Progyny for the dollar benefits, although that is important. They buy for the experience of helping people create families.
- Progyny focuses on creating the story for an organization that gets them to mentally buy in before dealing with the analytical aspects.
- You do not have to be a commodity. So many professionals get into a race to the bottom about pricing because they don’t talk about it properly.
- Managing the metrics associated with the business development process is critically important to the success of the organization.
- You have to create the curiosity to create the need. Once you create the need you create the story. Once you create the story and ask for a couple pieces of information, you build your model. When you follow that process, you will have a much higher closing rate.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Brent tells the story of his days before Progyny as a middle market sales person for a national carrier. He had a competitive product and was finding a lot of success at the time, but there was one broker relationship that he couldn’t crack.
- He had to change the paradigm of his relationship by turning down a request for proposal from them, and in the ensuing conversation, he found out why he wasn’t getting the traction from them before.
- After sitting down with the client for two and a half hours, he became one of Brent’s close friends, and Brent won three out of five of the next opportunities that he sent in.
- The approach of wanting to learn what was lacking in Brent's approach was the key to opening up the relationship. Asking for help or advice is one of the biggest bonding things you can do to create trust and build an authentic relationship.
- They spent roughly half that time talking about business and getting into the details, and the rest, connecting with him on a personal level. Winning the business is great, but Brent considers turning that person into a friend the biggest win of all.
- Being vulnerable was key in that interaction. Vulnerability is something that he teaches his team to embrace, and to be willing to learn why they didn’t win when it happens. It’s about using the loss to set up a future win.
- Brent hears the response “no for now” quite frequently. If that’s the case, he encourages his team to figure out what the hurdle was and develop a strategy to keep the relationship alive with adding value, Give to Gets, and providing intellectual capital that makes you the easy choice in the future.
Mo asks Brent Atkins: If you could record a video on business development and send it to your younger self, what would you say?
- In the early days of Brent’s business development career, he did things very differently. The first thing he would say is to listen. Brent hears more things now during the course of a conversation with active listening, which is the opposite from how his younger self operated.
- There is an impulse when you’re young and fresh to tell everyone what you know, but listening and asking questions are how you really learn how to sell.
- Every product or service has multiple ways you can position it to win. If you listen, you can be much more effective in that effort.
- Brent is a student of business development even now. The first 21 days of a relationship are extremely important to solidify a bond. Reaching out to continue the conversation and creating that bond allows you to come back months or years later and pick up that conversation in the same way you would with an old friend.
- The final tip would be to build your brand. People are taught sales skills and usually want to apply them the exact way they are taught. Take what you’re doing and make it yours.
- Whatever sales skills you are working on, you need to make them authentically yours for them to be effective.
- The great business development rainmakers never stop learning. Brent is always looking to improve and work on his skills, especially in leverage tools like MIT’s and the Protemoi list.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Mo asks Brent Atkins: If you could record a video on business development and send it to your younger self, what would you say?
- In the early days of Brent’s business development career, he did things very differently. The first thing he would say is to listen. Brent hears more things now during the course of a conversation with active listening, which is the opposite from how his younger self operated.
- There is an impulse when you’re young and fresh to tell everyone what you know, but listening and asking questions are how you really learn how to sell.
- Every product or service has multiple ways you can position it to win. If you listen, you can be much more effective in that effort.
- Brent is a student of business development even now. The first 21 days of a relationship are extremely important to solidify a bond. Reaching out to continue the conversation and creating that bond allows you to come back months or years later and pick up that conversation in the same way you would with an old friend.
- The final tip would be to build your brand. People are taught sales skills and usually want to apply them the exact way they are taught. Take what you’re doing and make it yours.
- Whatever sales skills you are working on, you need to make them authentically yours for them to be effective.
- The great business development rainmakers never stop learning. Brent is always looking to improve and work on his skills, especially in leverage tools like MIT’s and the Protemoi list.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Mo asks Brent Atkins: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of.
- Brent tells the story of his days before Progyny as a middle market sales person for a national carrier. He had a competitive product and was finding a lot of success at the time, but there was one broker relationship that he couldn’t crack.
- He had to change the paradigm of his relationship by turning down a request for proposal from them, and in the ensuing conversation, he found out why he wasn’t getting the traction from them before.
- After sitting down with the client for two and a half hours, he became one of Brent’s close friends, and Brent won three out of five of the next opportunities that he sent in.
- The approach of wanting to learn what was lacking in Brent's approach was the key to opening up the relationship. Asking for help or advice is one of the biggest bonding things you can do to create trust and build an authentic relationship.
- They spent roughly half that time talking about business and getting into the details, and the rest, connecting with him on a personal level. Winning the business is great, but Brent considers turning that person into a friend the biggest win of all.
- Being vulnerable was key in that interaction. Vulnerability is something that he teaches his team to embrace, and to be willing to learn why they didn’t win when it happens. It’s about using the loss to set up a future win.
- Brent hears the response “no for now” quite frequently. If that’s the case, he encourages his team to figure out what the hurdle was and develop a strategy to keep the relationship alive with adding value, Give to Gets, and providing intellectual capital that makes you the easy choice in the future.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Mo asks Brent Atkins: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG training or Snowball System?
- Brent’s first favorite teaching is the walk around the brain. The science of how different people think is unbelievably valuable and creating a presentation that touches on all four quadrants is very effective.
- For Progyny, that looks like recognizing that the appeal of their program changes from Red/Yellow to Green/Blue as they move up the continuum of decision makers has been game changing.
- The four quadrants being strategic, practical, analytical, and relational.
- For Progyny, Strategic looks like finding ways to improve an organization’s benefit spend that adds value and speaks to diversity and inclusion initiatives. It’s about listening to the organization's priorities and tailoring the offer to that.
- For Practical, Progyny has been in business for seven years now and has a retention of 99%, so they have been changing their story from the cutting edge solution to the safe choice for organizations.
- People don’t buy Progyny for the dollar benefits, although that is important. They buy for the experience of helping people create families.
- Progyny focuses on creating the story for an organization that gets them to mentally buy in before dealing with the analytical aspects.
- You do not have to be a commodity. So many professionals get into a race to the bottom about pricing because they don’t talk about it properly.
- Managing the metrics associated with the business development process is critically important to the success of the organization.
- You have to create the curiosity to create the need. Once you create the need you create the story. Once you create the story and ask for a couple pieces of information, you build your model. When you follow that process, you will have a much higher closing rate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Mo asks Brent Atkins: What is your personal definition of business development?
- When training his team, he tells them to “build your brand.” The way they go about building relationships and adding value will be different from Brent’s, and they need to lean into that.
- When Brent worked on the carrier side of the business, his first goal when developing new business relationships was becoming a trusted individual in that person’s network. Brent always strived to have the credibility to say when he wasn’t a good fit for someone, and by being willing to do that, when his solution was the right fit, he had that person’s attention and trust.
- Progyny has a great solution, but it’s not the right fit for every organization right away. When that is the case, Brent digs into other areas of the business they want to improve on and offers material on how they impact those areas to see if that makes sense. Once they do those steps, the prospect often comes back with Brent in the #1 position in their mind.
- We’ve all experienced a situation where we felt like we had a great connection but it resulted in silence. Brent tells the story of when that happened to him and how by letting them know that he didn’t have their attention right now, but he would like to reconnect in the future when they're ready, and how that got him an immediate response.
- To child trust, connect with the prospect at their level. Ask them questions and give them the space to answer. When you are dealing with someone on an individual basis, they might tell you something real about themselves, and if you can remember that it shows that you think they’re important and want to connect in a thoughtful way.
- The people that develop the deepest relationships are the ones that are interested in the other person. Finding things in common is one of the highest correlations to likeability.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Mo asks Brent Atkins: Tell me about the time you realized that business development was awesome.
- Brent learned early on the need for business development because he has done sales throughout his career. The one thing he realized from all his different work experiences was that he loved interacting with people and connecting with them. He understood that there was far more depth to sales than just telling someone your story.
- He had a desire to learn more and be more successful in his relationships in business and very quickly realized that there is a huge difference between talking to someone and listening to someone.
- Through the course of interacting with one of Brent’s early bosses, he learned he needed to be prepared for the questions he was going to ask Brent, but also that he needed answers to the questions from their perspective in order to serve them better. He needed to have a dialogue with the customer because all his knowledge about what he was selling was only one small piece of the overall business development process.
- The transition from talking to listening is a key mindset shift that all business development professionals need to learn.
- Brent now leads a team of many younger salespeople and helps them better understand the business development process. The first step is to help them want to learn more about business development, because without that desire, nothing else sticks.
- When setting meetings, Brent teaches people to set an objective for the meeting that you want the prospect to take away.
- If you have a lot of slides in your initial presentation, you’re making a mistake. Brent likes to start with a very light slidedeck in the beginning because his goal is to understand the reason for the meeting in the first place as well as the roles of the people he’s talking to.
- Brent is a big proponent of the pregnant pause. When you get a response, follow it up with another thoughtful question. Follow ups are where you get traction in a relationship.
- When it comes to the fertility space, Brent starts out with curiosity. Asking them about their familiarity with the space and exploring their experience is the foundation for a more fruitful conversation and almost always leads to how his solution solves their issue. It sets the tone for the conversation and allows him and his team to come back with a robust solution for their problem.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
brent.atkins@progyny.com
Brent Atkins on LinkedIn
Cannon Carr shares the insights he’s learned over the years about why he’s not a sales guy, but loves business development. Learn about the key mindset shift that unlocks the power of business development and makes it something fun, easy, and repeatable, and how to instill simple habits that deepen relationships by being proactively helpful every single week.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: When did you realize that business development was great?
- There was not one moment, but a story stands out in particular for Cannon. When his father was retiring from the firm he was working at, he told him that he was a great analyst but not a great salesperson, and if he wanted to succeed, he would need to figure that out.
- When a professional services firm reaches a certain revenue threshold, the same things that got them to that point won’t help grow past it. Simply hiring a rainmaker won’t necessarily solve the problem.
- You need a broader team working towards business development to tap a broader network to grow a firm.
- The real mindset shift that unlocks the power of business development is “Are you selling, or are you helping to solve problems?”
- Take the sales hat off and integrate yourself into your client’s lives. Understand what their problems are, and if you can be alongside them during the inevitable transitions in their life, you can deepen the relationship. It’s about relevancy and solving problems. The sales and referrals will come naturally out of that.
- Life has transitions that create challenges along the way. Cannon helps his clients with a wealth plan that keeps their legacy and lifestyle intact.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your personal definition of business development?
- If you have a craft that you know and love and want to grow, you are naturally going to step into business development so you might as well do it right.
- For Cannon, business development is about connecting people and ideas. He thinks of it as purposeful engagement that connects those two things.
- Connecting people with ideas often becomes deeply personal. During the pandemic, Cannon noticed a number of clients struggling with aging parents so they put a lot of effort into coming up with and connecting clients with ideas to help manage the issue.
- Taxes and the rapidly changing legislative landscape has been another area where Cannon and his team have been working with clients to stay ahead of the curve.
- The foundation is always being helpful rather than looking directly for business. It’s not about the revenue, it’s about enriching lives.
- Sometimes the solution falls outside of the firm’s specialty and that’s okay as long as the end result is helping a person out.
- You have to think of your relationships as a portfolio with investements in people all the time. Being proactive and helpful will eventually pay off.
- Not everything will connect. You have to look for additional opportunities to be helpful and keep reaching out.
- Think about business development as solving problems through connecting people and ideas together. If you are doing a good job, you will naturally get your share of the business. Proactive engagement is vital for service businesses.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your favorite science, step, or tool from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- The most interesting science for Cannon is around habits and the metaphor of the rider and the elephant for the conscious and subconscious mind.
- The elephant is a lot more powerful, and if you can’t control it, you are not going to get where you want to go. This is where the habits and routines come in to provide alignment with your elephant.
- Our emotions and our habits determine most of what we do. With the right mindset around business development and our emotions and habits, we can be more successful.
- Cannon sees this play out in client’s lives when wealth transfers to another generation. His team spends a fair bit of time helping their clients manage their own emotions.
- You have patterns. They are either the right patterns or the wrong patterns. Putting in deliberate time and getting out of your comfort zone is how to take away the wrong ones and instill the right ones.
- The key is to simply start and commit to 15 minutes of planning time each week. Combine purpose with a better pattern, and let it grow over time.
- The Protemoi List is a great tool you can use to create the habit of investing into the relationships that matter the most to your business development efforts.
- Every Friday, Cannon looks at an Excel sheet that he uses to track his business development work and make sure he is doing something every week to make progress on his most important relationships.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is the business development story you are most proud of?
- Cannon’s business is about long-term relationships, sometimes multiple generations, so being able to separate out personal risk and business risk is very important.
- Cannon’s favorite business development story involves helping personal friends navigate their challenges. He and his team found ways and resources to help them in a time of need and often anonymously
- It’s amazing what you can get done when no one takes the credit.
- Cannon’s role was in uncovering the need. The client mentioned something that triggered Cannon to listen more closely and look for ways to help. He tapped into his team to go deeper and be even more helpful for this person.
- Listen, notice, act. Cannon picked up on some fatigue in the person’s voice and some comments that led him to believe there was something more going on. Some good follow up questions helped too.
- There is no stock follow up question that works every time, but there are common themes that everyone shares. The goal is to listen closely and the follow up question will reveal itself. You should be able to summarize what they are saying accurately and paraphrase it back.
Mo asks Cannon Carr: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Cannon would record a few simple vignettes, mainly focused on the why of business development as well as the storytelling, patterns and habits involved.
- The first one would basically be a quote from Maya Angelou. “I learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- Following videos would involve some inspiring Rocky music, Steve Jobs’ iPhone keynote speech, and an interview with Jimmy Fallon and a guest creating something fun together.
- So many people struggle with business development because they believe that they didn’t get into their profession to sell.
- Playful exploration and spontaneity can make things fun, but there has to be purpose involved. Sales have none of those elements. If you can build that kind of fun energy into what you do, you can deepen the relationship, provide value, and grow your business at the same time.
- Don’t be afraid to have fun and be vulnerable. Making your Most Important Things into a game can add another level of motivation and enjoyment to building business development habits that lead to growth.
- It’s about creating the right behaviors. You can’t control the outcome, only what you put into it.
- Cannon’s firm has an internal coach to help keep everyone on track and doing proactively helpful things for the marketplace, knowing that the revenue will follow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Cannon would record a few simple vignettes, mainly focused on the why of business development as well as the storytelling, patterns and habits involved.
- The first one would basically be a quote from Maya Angelou. “I learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- Following videos would involve some inspiring Rocky music, Steve Jobs’ iPhone keynote speech, and an interview with Jimmy Fallon and a guest creating something fun together.
- So many people struggle with business development because they believe that they didn’t get into their profession to sell.
- Playful exploration and spontaneity can make things fun, but there has to be purpose involved. Sales have none of those elements. If you can build that kind of fun energy into what you do, you can deepen the relationship, provide value, and grow your business at the same time.
- Don’t be afraid to have fun and be vulnerable. Making your Most Important Things into a game can add another level of motivation and enjoyment to building business development habits that lead to growth.
- It’s about creating the right behaviors. You can’t control the outcome, only what you put into it.
- Cannon’s firm has an internal coach to help keep everyone on track and doing proactively helpful things for the marketplace, knowing that the revenue will follow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is the business development story you are most proud of?
- Cannon’s business is about long-term relationships, sometimes multiple generations, so being able to separate out personal risk and business risk is very important.
- Cannon’s favorite business development story involves helping personal friends navigate their challenges. He and his team found ways and resources to help them in a time of need and often anonymously
- It’s amazing what you can get done when no one takes the credit.
- Cannon’s role was in uncovering the need. The client mentioned something that triggered Cannon to listen more closely and look for ways to help. He tapped into his team to go deeper and be even more helpful for this person.
- Listen, notice, act. Cannon picked up on some fatigue in the person’s voice and some comments that led him to believe there was something more going on. Some good follow up questions helped too.
- There is no stock follow up question that works every time, but there are common themes that everyone shares. The goal is to listen closely and the follow up question will reveal itself. You should be able to summarize what they are saying accurately and paraphrase it back.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your favorite science, step, or tool from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- The most interesting science for Cannon is around habits and the metaphor of the rider and the elephant for the conscious and subconscious mind.
- The elephant is a lot more powerful, and if you can’t control it, you are not going to get where you want to go. This is where the habits and routines come in to provide alignment with your elephant.
- Our emotions and our habits determine most of what we do. With the right mindset around business development and our emotions and habits, we can be more successful.
- Cannon sees this play out in client’s lives when wealth transfers to another generation. His team spends a fair bit of time helping their clients manage their own emotions.
- You have patterns. They are either the right patterns or the wrong patterns. Putting in deliberate time and getting out of your comfort zone is how to take away the wrong ones and instill the right ones.
- The key is to simply start and commit to 15 minutes of planning time each week. Combine purpose with a better pattern, and let it grow over time.
- The Protemoi List is a great tool you can use to create the habit of investing into the relationships that matter the most to your business development efforts.
- Every Friday, Cannon looks at an Excel sheet that he uses to track his business development work and make sure he is doing something every week to make progress on his most important relationships.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your personal definition of business development?
- If you have a craft that you know and love and want to grow, you are naturally going to step into business development so you might as well do it right.
- For Cannon, business development is about connecting people and ideas. He thinks of it as purposeful engagement that connects those two things.
- Connecting people with ideas often becomes deeply personal. During the pandemic, Cannon noticed a number of clients struggling with aging parents so they put a lot of effort into coming up with and connecting clients with ideas to help manage the issue.
- Taxes and the rapidly changing legislative landscape has been another area where Cannon and his team have been working with clients to stay ahead of the curve.
- The foundation is always being helpful rather than looking directly for business. It’s not about the revenue, it’s about enriching lives.
- Sometimes the solution falls outside of the firm’s specialty and that’s okay as long as the end result is helping a person out.
- You have to think of your relationships as a portfolio with investements in people all the time. Being proactive and helpful will eventually pay off.
- Not everything will connect. You have to look for additional opportunities to be helpful and keep reaching out.
- Think about business development as solving problems through connecting people and ideas together. If you are doing a good job, you will naturally get your share of the business. Proactive engagement is vital for service businesses.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Mo asks Cannon Carr: When did you realize that business development was great?
- There was not one moment, but a story stands out in particular for Cannon. When his father was retiring from the firm he was working at, he told him that he was a great analyst but not a great salesperson, and if he wanted to succeed, he would need to figure that out.
- When a professional services firm reaches a certain revenue threshold, the same things that got them to that point won’t help grow past it. Simply hiring a rainmaker won’t necessarily solve the problem.
- You need a broader team working towards business development to tap a broader network to grow a firm.
- The real mindset shift that unlocks the power of business development is “Are you selling, or are you helping to solve problems?”
- Take the sales hat off and integrate yourself into your client’s lives. Understand what their problems are, and if you can be alongside them during the inevitable transitions in their life, you can deepen the relationship. It’s about relevancy and solving problems. The sales and referrals will come naturally out of that.
- Life has transitions that create challenges along the way. Cannon helps his clients with a wealth plan that keeps their legacy and lifestyle intact.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ccarr@cornercap.com
cornercap.com
Katrina Johnson shares her business development insights pulled from years of experience and her background in social and neuroscience. Learn what it takes to convince a skeptic, why creating a habit around communication is the key to business development success, and a simple framework for training your mind to be less reactive and more focused on just doing the right thing instead of worrying about the outcome.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: Tell us the moment when you realized that business development was good and worth doing?
- Katrina’s big aha moment was when she realized that the skill of business development can be learned. She started in academia and fell into consulting almost by accident, and she enjoyed her consulting work but she felt like her hands were tied. As a subcontractor, Katrina wasn’t able to deliver the work in the way that she thought would be the most powerful for her clients.
- It wasn’t until Katrina met Mo and learned about the GrowBIG system did she realize what was missing from her work.
- With a background in neural science, Katrina knew that the research and material were pointing her in the right direction, but in some ways digging into the research was also a curse. Katrina sometimes falls into the habit of using research as a way to hide and avoid putting it into practice.
- This is where her second big realization came into play, and that she had some underlying issue that was preventing her from executing. She decided to start off small and refine the process from a place of action.
- She began by going to networking events and trying to follow up with people, most of those efforts didn’t pan out though. She landed a few speaking engagements with small groups of people and used that as a basis to create a relationship with people.
- She embraced deeper relationships rather than looser connections and in doing so stretched herself outside of her comfort zone.
- She doesn’t set out to get meetings with important decision makers, but that often flows from naturally deepening relationships with people and being helpful.
- Katrina learned a lot about the value of targeting over the last year. She realized that when she can work with the management of an organization in some combination of assessment and coaching she’s at her best.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Katrina likes helping people. For her, business development is about cultivating opportunities to help people.
- Business development doesn’t always have a great reinforcement mechanism, but having a process established makes it much more consistent.
- Creating a habit around communication that makes it simpler, more meaningful, and consistent is what has helped Katrina stay the course.
- Using the tools and communication methods that your client uses is crucial. Katrina tries to make her communications quick and useful when touching base with someone and on whatever platform works for them. Lots of little touches can be extremely powerful relationship builders.
- Katrina carves out time on Mondays to reach out to people, but she also has notes on her calendar and a Protemoi list that help her keep track of communications. Just having a list of names of the most important people to you can be enough to encourage you to take action.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your favorite business development strategy from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Instead of a favorite, Katrina wants to emphasize one strategy that often goes unrecognized for how important it is, which is targeting.
- Targeting is critical to business development and as a student of minimalism, Katrina is always thinking about trade-offs. Minimalists understand trade-offs as an inherent part of life, but instead of thinking about what needs to be sacrificed, it’s more about what to double down on.
- The subconscious emotional layer is what makes targeting tricky. We are evolutionarily primed to avoid loss and are naturally averse to subtraction.
- We only have so much time in our life. We can’t just take on more, we have to target and figure out what are the things to go big on and what to let go of.
- Mo had a similar experience with the training GrowBIG. Every time he refined his method and message and who he wanted to serve by letting go of certain markets, it was a terrifying change but resulted in incredible growth over time.
- Working with a small niche can be scary, but it often leads to greater success as your effort is more refined and focused within your skillsett.
- When Katrina is doing her job well, she’s often not operating at the forefront. In an ideal world, her clients are getting better and she eventually works herself out of a job.
- When someone comes to Katrina with a referral that isn’t within her core focus, she always sets up a call with the person and leverages her own referral network to help that person. She always circles back to the person that refers them to let them know they’ve been taken care of.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is a business development story that you are particularly proud of?
- Katrina’s story occurred five years ago when she went on a trip to meet a candidate for a President role at a textile manufacturer. Katrina knew she was skeptical, but didn’t realize how skeptical.
- After the candidate was hired, Katrina ended up working with her for the first six months and through her unique knowledge of how that particular organization functioned was able to help considerably.
- Her relationship with this one skeptical person led to additional relationships and business.
- To win her over Katrina did three things. She didn’t make it about her and take the skepticism personally, she got curious about why she was skeptical and what it could teach her, and she waited for holes to open for her to go deeper.
- It’s easy to take offense from skepticism, but Katrina had to learn early on as a physician that you have to earn respect.
- You can’t look at things from a scientific perspective when you’re stuck in your own head. Being curious about the root of the person’s skepticism makes it objective and less about you.
- Being candid with the client and honest about her perspectives was key to building trust and winning the skeptic over.
- Divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on doing the right thing.
- Quieting the anxious and emotional part of us can lead to more creativity and effectiveness. Focusing on process instead of outcomes is how you can control that.
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: If you could tape a message to your younger self about business development, what would it say?
- It would simply be one thing: Learn to walk the dog.
- When someone walks a dog, we assume that the person is in control, but that’s not always the case. Our brains work in a similar way.
- The dogwalker is the prefrontal cortex, and the dog is the limbic system that responds and detects threats. The big question is who is in control?
- The truth is that the dog is in control most of the time. Everytime we stick to known associates instead of unknown prospects, or when we expect every email to get a response, the dog is in control.
- The sooner you can learn to walk the dog, the sooner you get to do the work you care about on your own terms.
- Even with the best tools and strategies at our disposal, most of the time we are only half as effective as we could be because we are being dragged around by our limbic system.
- It’s not an issue of ego, as much as it is the part of your brain that has evolved to perceive threats. Threats aren’t always tigers, they can also be getting rejected, feeling embarrassed, or losing status. The first job is to get out of your own way so the tools and strategies can do the work.
- Katrina focuses on awareness first about her emotions and experiences. A quick, simple label can be very effective in reducing the limbic system’s response. Reframing it and considering other reasons something may or may not have happened makes it less emotional.
- Give your emotions context, label them, and reframe them. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. This is a foundational skill in business development.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: If you could tape a message to your younger self about business development, what would it say?
- It would simply be one thing: Learn to walk the dog.
- When someone walks a dog, we assume that the person is in control, but that’s not always the case. Our brains work in a similar way.
- The dogwalker is the prefrontal cortex, and the dog is the limbic system that responds and detects threats. The big question is who is in control?
- The truth is that the dog is in control most of the time. Everytime we stick to known associates instead of unknown prospects, or when we expect every email to get a response, the dog is in control.
- The sooner you can learn to walk the dog, the sooner you get to do the work you care about on your own terms.
- Even with the best tools and strategies at our disposal, most of the time we are only half as effective as we could be because we are being dragged around by our limbic system.
- It’s not an issue of ego, as much as it is the part of your brain that has evolved to perceive threats. Threats aren’t always tigers, they can also be getting rejected, feeling embarrassed, or losing status. The first job is to get out of your own way so the tools and strategies can do the work.
- Katrina focuses on awareness first about her emotions and experiences. A quick, simple label can be very effective in reducing the limbic system’s response. Reframing it and considering other reasons something may or may not have happened makes it less emotional.
- Give your emotions context, label them, and reframe them. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. This is a foundational skill in business development.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is a business development story that you are particularly proud of?
- Katrina’s story occurred five years ago when she went on a trip to meet a candidate for a President role at a textile manufacturer. Katrina knew she was skeptical, but didn’t realize how skeptical.
- After the candidate was hired, Katrina ended up working with her for the first six months and through her unique knowledge of how that particular organization functioned was able to help considerably.
- Her relationship with this one skeptical person led to additional relationships and business.
- To win her over Katrina did three things. She didn’t make it about her and take the skepticism personally, she got curious about why she was skeptical and what it could teach her, and she waited for holes to open for her to go deeper.
- It’s easy to take offense from skepticism, but Katrina had to learn early on as a physician that you have to earn respect.
- You can’t look at things from a scientific perspective when you’re stuck in your own head. Being curious about the root of the person’s skepticism makes it objective and less about you.
- Being candid with the client and honest about her perspectives was key to building trust and winning the skeptic over.
- Divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on doing the right thing.
- Quieting the anxious and emotional part of us can lead to more creativity and effectiveness. Focusing on process instead of outcomes is how you can control that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your favorite business development strategy from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training?
- Instead of a favorite, Katrina wants to emphasize one strategy that often goes unrecognized for how important it is, which is targeting.
- Targeting is critical to business development and as a student of minimalism, Katrina is always thinking about trade-offs. Minimalists understand trade-offs as an inherent part of life, but instead of thinking about what needs to be sacrificed, it’s more about what to double down on.
- The subconscious emotional layer is what makes targeting tricky. We are evolutionarily primed to avoid loss and are naturally averse to subtraction.
- We only have so much time in our life. We can’t just take on more, we have to target and figure out what are the things to go big on and what to let go of.
- Mo had a similar experience with the training GrowBIG. Every time he refined his method and message and who he wanted to serve by letting go of certain markets, it was a terrifying change but resulted in incredible growth over time.
- Working with a small niche can be scary, but it often leads to greater success as your effort is more refined and focused within your skillsett.
- When Katrina is doing her job well, she’s often not operating at the forefront. In an ideal world, her clients are getting better and she eventually works herself out of a job.
- When someone comes to Katrina with a referral that isn’t within her core focus, she always sets up a call with the person and leverages her own referral network to help that person. She always circles back to the person that refers them to let them know they’ve been taken care of.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Katrina likes helping people. For her, business development is about cultivating opportunities to help people.
- Business development doesn’t always have a great reinforcement mechanism, but having a process established makes it much more consistent.
- Creating a habit around communication that makes it simpler, more meaningful, and consistent is what has helped Katrina stay the course.
- Using the tools and communication methods that your client uses is crucial. Katrina tries to make her communications quick and useful when touching base with someone and on whatever platform works for them. Lots of little touches can be extremely powerful relationship builders.
- Katrina carves out time on Mondays to reach out to people, but she also has notes on her calendar and a Protemoi list that help her keep track of communications. Just having a list of names of the most important people to you can be enough to encourage you to take action.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mo asks Katrina Johnson: Tell us the moment when you realized that business development was good and worth doing?
- Katrina’s big aha moment was when she realized that the skill of business development can be learned. She started in academia and fell into consulting almost by accident, and she enjoyed her consulting work but she felt like her hands were tied. As a subcontractor, Katrina wasn’t able to deliver the work in the way that she thought would be the most powerful for her clients.
- It wasn’t until Katrina met Mo and learned about the GrowBIG system did she realize what was missing from her work.
- With a background in neural science, Katrina knew that the research and material were pointing her in the right direction, but in some ways digging into the research was also a curse. Katrina sometimes falls into the habit of using research as a way to hide and avoid putting it into practice.
- This is where her second big realization came into play, and that she had some underlying issue that was preventing her from executing. She decided to start off small and refine the process from a place of action.
- She began by going to networking events and trying to follow up with people, most of those efforts didn’t pan out though. She landed a few speaking engagements with small groups of people and used that as a basis to create a relationship with people.
- She embraced deeper relationships rather than looser connections and in doing so stretched herself outside of her comfort zone.
- She doesn’t set out to get meetings with important decision makers, but that often flows from naturally deepening relationships with people and being helpful.
- Katrina learned a lot about the value of targeting over the last year. She realized that when she can work with the management of an organization in some combination of assessment and coaching she’s at her best.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
katrina@kcjconsult.com
Mike Duffy shares his insights into business development and creating relationships that move the world forward. Find out how Mike transformed his career in sales with one fateful and shocking conversation with his sales manager, why Mike’s philosophy on asking questions is what allows him to always add value to his relationships, and why treating your profession the same way that a doctor does theirs is the key to sustained success.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: When was the moment that you decided that business development was important and you needed to get great at it?
- Mike’s dad started in sales so he had a front row seat on making sales from the very beginning. He started his sales career by selling ad space in a travel magazine, and once he got out of college, Mike started selling ladies clothes in California.
- He took a $500,000 territory and in 18 months turned it into $2.5 million. He won salesman of the year at the age of 24 and ended up having a beer with his sales manager which led to a conversation that changed everything for him.
- Mike took a deep dive into discovering what really makes a good sales program and he became a student of sales for the rest of his career.
- Mike teaches lawyers business development now under the assumption that he has to sell the idea to his students. The goal is to help them understand that adding value to a relationship or closing a deal is sales by another name.
- If we want to live the life we want, we have to get great at growth.
- Start with the people you are going to call and how you can have a conversation that creates curiosity. That allows you to learn about what they need. Business development is about helping people.
- Business development habits set you apart when it comes to employment as well. It’s hard to ascertain someone’s technical expertise in a 30-minute interview, but it’s obvious when you care, listen intently, and make the conversation about the other person.
- You always have to be thinking about the long game. Some prospects may not turn into clients for years, so you need to focus on just moving the ball a little bit further each day.
- Be transparent, have humility, and be honest. Tell people when they are your #1 target and allow them to shape the relationship in a way that’s valuable for them.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, business development is helping others, connecting dots, and developing healthy and long lasting relationships.
- When you understand who your client is, whoever that happens to be in the moment, and add value for them, that's how you get stuff done.
- Where is the value chain and how are you adding value? It doesn’t end with the person you are talking to right now.
- Servant leadership is the foundation for Mike’s relationship philosophy. He’s always asking himself internally about how he can be helpful to not only his client, but also his client’s clients.
- When you ask the right questions, you get some interesting answers. Questions allow you to understand what motivates and drives someone, what concerns them, and what brings them joy. When you’re in a dot-connecting mode, all of that info helps you know who to link up.
- Helping people when there is no chance of commercial gain is your moment of truth. Connecting dots for people is how you leave a legacy.
- It’s worth the fight. Choose your attitude every day and build your resilience over time so you can keep pushing forward.
- If your definition of business development is helping people, getting a no every once in a while is not an issue.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Mike has a top 4: “Walk Around the Brain”, “Build It Together”, “MITs”, and “Give to Gets”.
- Mike has writing pads all over his office to help him write down questions that cover all four quadrants of the brain and to make sure he’s prepared for every meeting. When he’s in the meeting Mike always makes sure that the client has their fingerprints on the plan.
- MITs help Mike move the ball forward every week and Give to Gets allow prospects to get a sample of what it’s like to work with him.
- The four quadrants of the brain consist of the why, the what, the how, and the who. When Mike is getting ready for a meeting, he develops two or three questions for each quadrant and then he pays direct attention to the language the client uses so he could build those words into the plan.
- He’s always looking for questions that someone else hasn’t asked so he doesn’t sound like everyone else and can differentiate his firm.
- You can have a great idea or product, but if you don’t engage the client, there is no guarantee they will want to take you up on your offer. A client’s engagement during a meeting is a good measure of how good a job you are doing.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: Tell me about a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- One of Mike's top business development efforts happened after a major company went under and all the audits they were doing went out for RFP. Instead of going into a presentation around pitching for the audit, Mike and his team just acted like they were starting the audit right then.
- The preparation was in understanding their business inside and out, interviewing their people and learning what it’s important in their world, and building the audit in front of the client. This approach led to winning 87% of their pitches.
- That story stands out for Mike because it showed him exactly what his team was made of and how they could excel together. He was also able to look back and analyze the reasons for his success, and those bold moves became the basis for much of Mike’s foundation for growth later on.
- Covid was a godsend to sales people and professional services. This was the perfect opportunity to figure out how to be creative and add value to people. You could outsell your competition by not being the same and providing a bit more.
- Mike was once asked how he has survived in professional services for so long, and his answer was, “Giving away all the credit and taking all the blame.” That’s Mike’s philosophy in a nutshell.
- If Mike was forced to admit one of his qualities, it would be being willing to be blunt and honest when the project is going down the wrong path and pulling people back on track.
Mo asks Mike Duffy: If you could record a message to your younger self about how they should think about business development, what would it be?
- Mike’s message would be to essentially to cold call for a couple months right at the beginning to get used to hearing no.
- He would also tell himself to feed his brain. Read books and consume information that keeps you moving.
- Treat your profession like a profession. If you treat your profession the same way that a doctor does and invest in continuing education every year to be a better leader and sales person, you will be successful.
- Mike invests in programs that he’s heard about on podcasts and consumes books referenced in other books that have made an impact on him. You have to invest in yourself if you want to get better.
- Mike also builds relationships with people that are learning themselves and is curious enough to find out more about them. He’s always thinking about how he can add value to a conversation or relationship, and thinking about the questions that allow him to dig deeper.
- When you ask questions, you learn. When you learn, you connect dots, and when you do that, everyone gets better and the effect can snowball. Asking the right questions is instrumental to Mike’s ability to grow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Mo asks Mike Duffy: If you could record a message to your younger self about how they should think about business development, what would it be?
- Mike’s message would be to essentially to cold call for a couple months right at the beginning to get used to hearing no.
- He would also tell himself to feed his brain. Read books and consume information that keeps you moving.
- Treat your profession like a profession. If you treat your profession the same way that a doctor does and invest in continuing education every year to be a better leader and sales person, you will be successful.
- Mike invests in programs that he’s heard about on podcasts and consumes books referenced in other books that have made an impact on him. You have to invest in yourself if you want to get better.
- Mike also builds relationships with people that are learning themselves and is curious enough to find out more about them. He’s always thinking about how he can add value to a conversation or relationship, and thinking about the questions that allow him to dig deeper.
- When you ask questions, you learn. When you learn, you connect dots, and when you do that, everyone gets better and the effect can snowball. Asking the right questions is instrumental to Mike’s ability to grow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Mo asks Mike Duffy: Tell me about a business development story that you are particularly proud of.
- One of Mike's top business development efforts happened after a major company went under and all the audits they were doing went out for RFP. Instead of going into a presentation around pitching for the audit, Mike and his team just acted like they were starting the audit right then.
- The preparation was in understanding their business inside and out, interviewing their people and learning what it’s important in their world, and building the audit in front of the client. This approach led to winning 87% of their pitches.
- That story stands out for Mike because it showed him exactly what his team was made of and how they could excel together. He was also able to look back and analyze the reasons for his success, and those bold moves became the basis for much of Mike’s foundation for growth later on.
- Covid was a godsend to sales people and professional services. This was the perfect opportunity to figure out how to be creative and add value to people. You could outsell your competition by not being the same and providing a bit more.
- Mike was once asked how he has survived in professional services for so long, and his answer was, “Giving away all the credit and taking all the blame.” That’s Mike’s philosophy in a nutshell.
- If Mike was forced to admit one of his qualities, it would be being willing to be blunt and honest when the project is going down the wrong path and pulling people back on track.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Mike has a top 4: “Walk Around the Brain”, “Build It Together”, “MITs”, and “Give to Gets”.
- Mike has writing pads all over his office to help him write down questions that cover all four quadrants of the brain and to make sure he’s prepared for every meeting. When he’s in the meeting Mike always makes sure that the client has their fingerprints on the plan.
- MITs help Mike move the ball forward every week and Give to Gets allow prospects to get a sample of what it’s like to work with him.
- The four quadrants of the brain consist of the why, the what, the how, and the who. When Mike is getting ready for a meeting, he develops two or three questions for each quadrant and then he pays direct attention to the language the client uses so he could build those words into the plan.
- He’s always looking for questions that someone else hasn’t asked so he doesn’t sound like everyone else and can differentiate his firm.
- You can have a great idea or product, but if you don’t engage the client, there is no guarantee they will want to take you up on your offer. A client’s engagement during a meeting is a good measure of how good a job you are doing.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Simply put, business development is helping others, connecting dots, and developing healthy and long lasting relationships.
- When you understand who your client is, whoever that happens to be in the moment, and add value for them, that's how you get stuff done.
- Where is the value chain and how are you adding value? It doesn’t end with the person you are talking to right now.
- Servant leadership is the foundation for Mike’s relationship philosophy. He’s always asking himself internally about how he can be helpful to not only his client, but also his client’s clients.
- When you ask the right questions, you get some interesting answers. Questions allow you to understand what motivates and drives someone, what concerns them, and what brings them joy. When you’re in a dot-connecting mode, all of that info helps you know who to link up.
- Helping people when there is no chance of commercial gain is your moment of truth. Connecting dots for people is how you leave a legacy.
- It’s worth the fight. Choose your attitude every day and build your resilience over time so you can keep pushing forward.
- If your definition of business development is helping people, getting a no every once in a while is not an issue.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Mo asks Mike Duffy: When was the moment that you decided that business development was important and you needed to get great at it?
- Mike’s dad started in sales so he had a front row seat on making sales from the very beginning. He started his sales career by selling ad space in a travel magazine, and once he got out of college, Mike started selling ladies clothes in California.
- He took a $500,000 territory and in 18 months turned it into $2.5 million. He won salesman of the year at the age of 24 and ended up having a beer with his sales manager which led to a conversation that changed everything for him.
- Mike took a deep dive into discovering what really makes a good sales program and he became a student of sales for the rest of his career.
- Mike teaches lawyers business development now under the assumption that he has to sell the idea to his students. The goal is to help them understand that adding value to a relationship or closing a deal is sales by another name.
- If we want to live the life we want, we have to get great at growth.
- Start with the people you are going to call and how you can have a conversation that creates curiosity. That allows you to learn about what they need. Business development is about helping people.
- Business development habits set you apart when it comes to employment as well. It’s hard to ascertain someone’s technical expertise in a 30-minute interview, but it’s obvious when you care, listen intently, and make the conversation about the other person.
- You always have to be thinking about the long game. Some prospects may not turn into clients for years, so you need to focus on just moving the ball a little bit further each day.
- Be transparent, have humility, and be honest. Tell people when they are your #1 target and allow them to shape the relationship in a way that’s valuable for them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Mike Duffy on LinkedIn
Angela Meyer shares her thoughts and wisdom on business development based on years in the field as a consultant and executive for various companies. Learn why being deliberate about honing your communication skills is one of the most important things you can do to improve your business relationships, why being willing to fail is the key to long-term success, and why the Give to Get is your most valuable business development tool in your toolbelt.
Mo asks Angela Meyer: When was the time that you realized that business development was worth focusing on?
- Angela’s background is in mechanical engineering and it was during her graduate education while working with her professor where she learned the communication skills to be a great consultant. After beginning her career, Angela got a lot of hands-on experience in the business side of things while working with the CEO of a forensic engineering company. That’s where she learned that in order to be a great consultant, she couldn’t just be running calculations, she had to become good at developing relationships.
- Angela always thought that she was a good speaker and communicator, but after giving a presentation on a case study that she had worked on and not being able to answer the questions from the audience, she knew she had some room to improve.
- After seeing a recording of herself during a presentation, Angela knew that if she was going to be good at business development, she was going to have to improve her communication skills.
- Soft skills turn into hard results.
- Angela improves incrementally by watching people do great work and trying to learn from them. The other aspect is putting it into practice. You have to try and fail.
- If you don’t try, you don’t learn. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
- From Angela’s perspective, she has multiple failures, but she uses those failures to learn and get better.
- You can’t rely on your company to train you to become a better, more well-rounded consultant. The presentation training class that Angela attended was the best $150 she spent.
- If you’re not willing to put yourself out there and try to build a relationship, you might as well stay in the back office.
- Start with your network that you know or see everyday. Create a list of all the people you’ve worked with over the past six months and see when the last time you connected with them without talking about the project. It’s about getting the next small win and developing the relationship and building your network.
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Angela doesn’t use the term business development. In her previous position she was the Vice President of Client Services. She wanted to avoid the term business development because she’s in the relationship business and not selling to people.
- Unless you’re selling a commodity, no matter how smart you are, without building a relationship and providing value for a client and gaining their trust, you’ll never get the business.
- Angela got her first job at the age of 13 working at an amusement park. She believes that everyone should work in service when they are younger because it teaches you essential relationship skills. You need a complete skill set and not just technical chops.
- If you want to improve you have to continue to expand past your current role.
- Angela loves the business development process because it’s an opportunity to grow herself, the brand reputation of the firm she’s working with, and her knowledge of how she can help clients.
- It’s okay to not like it or to be afraid because it comes with the territory. If you grow your relationships one client at a time, those people will help you grow your career. Your raving fans will open doors for you to walk through.
- The way that Angela likes to learn about new areas she needs to be able to sell is setting up a Google alert for it. When Angela has a client that would be interested in a topic she’s reading about, she’ll forward the article to them.
- As she’s gotten older, Angela makes use of a CRM to remind her of information and things she needs to do. Combining those two methods together works very well.
- When you’re a highly skilled technician, it can be challenging to see things outside your focus. Don’t feel like you have to do everything alone. You can pair up with other people in your organization and share skills and ideas.
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Angela’s favorite strategy is the Give to Get. Giving somebody value or knowledge they didn’t have before is a great way to start off a relationship.
- If you continue to show interest in someone personally, and not just professionally, and provide them value that can help them grow their career, they are going to care about you.
- You have to break someone out of the rut of working with someone else if it’s not you. Building trust and deepening the relationship in the beginning is crucial to starting things out.
- Angela has seen a number of her former colleagues help clients and prospects by summarizing the science on particular issues like climate change, sustainability, and environmental compliance.
- There is a big difference between forwarding an article to a client and talking the person through the content.
- The hardest thing is asking for the business, which is why you should simply ask for the next step. No is just another answer.
- You have to be able to explain more and give more so that eventually the answer is going to be yes. You can’t assume your client is going to read and consume the content you send them. You have to ask them for the opportunity to explain how it’s helpful and why you sent it to them.
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is a business development moment that you’re particularly proud of?
- You have to build the relationship and understand that the work may not come in the first meeting.
- Angela tells the story of a client that was in-house counsel for a major company that Angela’s firm had done a lot of work for. He set a dinner meeting with this attorney and during the conversation discovered that he felt completely unappreciated by Angela’s firm.
- You have to be willing to ask questions and get feedback from your clients on how they like working with your firm.
- Angela turned that relationship around by helping the attorney with a few of his presentations he was giving. By providing value and showing that she cared, he became a valuable client for years.
- It takes a lot of good experiences to outweigh the effect of one bad experience. Sometimes the negative experience can be something as simple as not picking up the check.
- In the initial consultation, it’s important to establish the lines and modes of communication. It’s also important to set the expectation around the first bill. Most professional service firms fail around client management.
- At the end of the engagement always ask for feedback. That time is the perfect opportunity to land more work or a referral to someone else.
Mo asks Angela Meyer: If you could send a message to your prior self, what would you say?
- No matter what business you’re in, it’s important to not be afraid to try and not be afraid to fail. You need to fail before you can succeed.
- You’re always selling yourself or your product, so you have to be willing to extend yourself and grow.
- Hone your communication skills and learn how to bring the energy to a conversation that creates connection with someone.
- The third thing would be to build your network. Stay in touch with people and keep networking because you never know where your next job is going to come from.
- Be excited about what you’re doing and what you’re working on. It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure. For Angela, the energy she brings to her relationships is what makes her memorable.
- Everybody has some level of impostor syndrome. You don’t need to be cocky to believe in yourself. Humility to admit you don’t know everything is a good place to approach things. The big lesson is to be confident in your ability to try your best, to keep learning, and to get better over time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Mo asks Angela Meyer: If you could send a message to your prior self, what would you say?
- No matter what business you’re in, it’s important to not be afraid to try and not be afraid to fail. You need to fail before you can succeed.
- You’re always selling yourself or your product, so you have to be willing to extend yourself and grow.
- Hone your communication skills and learn how to bring the energy to a conversation that creates connection with someone.
- The third thing would be to build your network. Stay in touch with people and keep networking because you never know where your next job is going to come from.
- Be excited about what you’re doing and what you’re working on. It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure. For Angela, the energy she brings to her relationships is what makes her memorable.
- Everybody has some level of impostor syndrome. You don’t need to be cocky to believe in yourself. Humility to admit you don’t know everything is a good place to approach things. The big lesson is to be confident in your ability to try your best, to keep learning, and to get better over time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is a business development moment that you’re particularly proud of?
- You have to build the relationship and understand that the work may not come in the first meeting.
- Angela tells the story of a client that was in-house counsel for a major company that Angela’s firm had done a lot of work for. He set a dinner meeting with this attorney and during the conversation discovered that he felt completely unappreciated by Angela’s firm.
- You have to be willing to ask questions and get feedback from your clients on how they like working with your firm.
- Angela turned that relationship around by helping the attorney with a few of his presentations he was giving. By providing value and showing that she cared, he became a valuable client for years.
- It takes a lot of good experiences to outweigh the effect of one bad experience. Sometimes the negative experience can be something as simple as not picking up the check.
- In the initial consultation, it’s important to establish the lines and modes of communication. It’s also important to set the expectation around the first bill. Most professional service firms fail around client management.
- At the end of the engagement always ask for feedback. That time is the perfect opportunity to land more work or a referral to someone else.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Angela’s favorite strategy is the Give to Get. Giving somebody value or knowledge they didn’t have before is a great way to start off a relationship.
- If you continue to show interest in someone personally, and not just professionally, and provide them value that can help them grow their career, they are going to care about you.
- You have to break someone out of the rut of working with someone else if it’s not you. Building trust and deepening the relationship in the beginning is crucial to starting things out.
- Angela has seen a number of her former colleagues help clients and prospects by summarizing the science on particular issues like climate change, sustainability, and environmental compliance.
- There is a big difference between forwarding an article to a client and talking the person through the content.
- The hardest thing is asking for the business, which is why you should simply ask for the next step. No is just another answer.
- You have to be able to explain more and give more so that eventually the answer is going to be yes. You can’t assume your client is going to read and consume the content you send them. You have to ask them for the opportunity to explain how it’s helpful and why you sent it to them.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Mo asks Angela Meyer: What is your personal definition of business development?
- Angela doesn’t use the term business development. In her previous position she was the Vice President of Client Services. She wanted to avoid the term business development because she’s in the relationship business and not selling to people.
- Unless you’re selling a commodity, no matter how smart you are, without building a relationship and providing value for a client and gaining their trust, you’ll never get the business.
- Angela got her first job at the age of 13 working at an amusement park. She believes that everyone should work in service when they are younger because it teaches you essential relationship skills. You need a complete skill set and not just technical chops.
- If you want to improve you have to continue to expand past your current role.
- Angela loves the business development process because it’s an opportunity to grow herself, the brand reputation of the firm she’s working with, and her knowledge of how she can help clients.
- It’s okay to not like it or to be afraid because it comes with the territory. If you grow your relationships one client at a time, those people will help you grow your career. Your raving fans will open doors for you to walk through.
- The way that Angela likes to learn about new areas she needs to be able to sell is setting up a Google alert for it. When Angela has a client that would be interested in a topic she’s reading about, she’ll forward the article to them.
- As she’s gotten older, Angela makes use of a CRM to remind her of information and things she needs to do. Combining those two methods together works very well.
- When you’re a highly skilled technician, it can be challenging to see things outside your focus. Don’t feel like you have to do everything alone. You can pair up with other people in your organization and share skills and ideas.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Mo asks Angela Meyer: When was the time that you realized that business development was worth focusing on?
- Angela’s background is in mechanical engineering and it was during her graduate education while working with her professor where she learned the communication skills to be a great consultant. After beginning her career, Angela got a lot of hands-on experience in the business side of things while working with the CEO of a forensic engineering company. That’s where she learned that in order to be a great consultant, she couldn’t just be running calculations, she had to become good at developing relationships.
- Angela always thought that she was a good speaker and communicator, but after giving a presentation on a case study that she had worked on and not being able to answer the questions from the audience, she knew she had some room to improve.
- After seeing a recording of herself during a presentation, Angela knew that if she was going to be good at business development, she was going to have to improve her communication skills.
- Soft skills turn into hard results.
- Angela improves incrementally by watching people do great work and trying to learn from them. The other aspect is putting it into practice. You have to try and fail.
- If you don’t try, you don’t learn. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
- From Angela’s perspective, she has multiple failures, but she uses those failures to learn and get better.
- You can’t rely on your company to train you to become a better, more well-rounded consultant. The presentation training class that Angela attended was the best $150 she spent.
- If you’re not willing to put yourself out there and try to build a relationship, you might as well stay in the back office.
- Start with your network that you know or see everyday. Create a list of all the people you’ve worked with over the past six months and see when the last time you connected with them without talking about the project. It’s about getting the next small win and developing the relationship and building your network.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
MeyerVorst.com
Angela Meyer, PhD, PE on LinkedIn
Craig Budner talks about the key lessons he’s learned as the Global Strategic Growth Partner at K&L Gates. Find out about how Craig secured a multi-billion dollar company’s key litigation case way before the opportunity to pitch came up, the innovative way Craig generates leads that creates incredible value for the prospect at the same time, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to fail.
Mo asks Craig Budner: When did you realize that business development is good?
- Craig’s brother was a litigator and from an early age had his own firm. This taught Craig the necessity of creating a brand and cultivating referral sources in order to grow the firm.
- Craig took a slightly different path from his brother in that he joined one of the firms in Texas. It was there that he created the relationships and connections that made him realize the value of being an advisor to someone and not just on legal issues.
- After creating a relationship with one of the firm’s important executive clients, a partner encouraged Craig to run with what he was doing. During his associate days, Craig learned the value of doing a great job for clients and nurturing relationships.
- When he understood that clients were actual multiple sources of revenue, and that if he could cultivate relationships with people directly in his path of work delivery, he started to get the first call. He was being trusted by the people in charge of important projects, and that gave him the opportunity to do more fun kinds of work.
- How do you advise others to think about business development?
- Demystifying business development is the first step. The characteristics of good parents, friends, and listeners are the characteristics that make a good business developer. It’s not about the money at the end of the line, it’s about growth and learning, and getting better at putting yourself in the shoes of someone else.
- What do you think about mutually beneficial relationships?
- You have to be a better listener than a talker to develop deep relationships. If you’re always thinking about what you’re going to say, you’re not going to get enough information out of that relationship to make it mutually beneficial.
- Think about how you can be helpful to that person. You can leave a positive impression on that person by reflecting back that you have heard them and you’re going to try to advance their issue.
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is your personal “why” when it comes to growth?
- Craig’s father always had a history book in his lap and Craig was brought up in a culture of learning, so learning is at the core of why he does what he does.
- At a global law firm like K&L Gates, if you’re not sensitive to the fact that people grow up in different cultures and with different languages it’s not as much fun. The more perspective that Craig can have with what people are going through makes him better in his leadership role.
- How do you motivate yourself when things get tough?
- People are busy. Don’t assume a lack of response is about you. Craig burns off steam in a productive way most of the time, either by reading, meditating, or exercise.
- People, when they need you, are going to be responsive.
- What are your favorite ways to stay in touch?
- Craig is a fan of interacting over the phone. There are a number of social cues that you can miss via email. If it’s a warm relationship, a phone call to check in when there is some down time is ideal.
- The closer the relationship, the more likely a phone call will help you achieve that raving fan/trusted advisor status.
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Craig’s favorite module was on lead execution. That section of the program led to the idea of creating round table conversations instead of the usual webinars.
- The ability for clients to listen to their peers is incredibly valuable. It doesn’t matter what industry they are in, there are always parallel problems they are trying to solve.
- When Covid hit, they shifted the round table conversations online.
- The way that GrowBIG framed lead generation led to the idea of the Client Connect program that advances clients when they want to get more granular after a round table. It became a natural progression for a lead to move further down the line.
- Lead generation isn’t mysterious. It should be predictable and there should be a number of things you do every day or week to result in X number of conversations.
- What are your best tips to make those kinds of round table events successful?
- The big tip is to make the guest feel comfortable. Without that there are going to be a lot of introductions and not a lot of substance. Craig does a lot of homework on the participants so the conversation goes beyond the basics. It’s also confidential.
- Getting repeat participants helps new people by showing them they can learn more by jumping into the conversation. Craig also makes sure that the focus is on the clients who are driving the conversation.
- There are almost always issues that the participants haven't had time to address that you can provide value for and that makes them very receptive to a follow up.
- How do you make the offer to have a one-on-one conversation?
- Usually there is some indication on a topic a participant wants to talk more about. Craig usually follows up with an email within a day or two.
- One key element is asking participants how the roundtables could be better afterward.
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is a business development moment that you’re particularly proud of?
- Craig’s story involves one of the biggest matters of litigation that he’s handled. As a relatively young lawyer, Craig had to convince the client that they could trust Craig and his team with a multi-billion dollar company’s litigation against one of the top litigation companies in the world.
- It was about convincing him that Craig and the company worked the way he needed a firm to work along the way on other cases. The client had to evaluate the team’s behavior over time in prior cases.
- It’s often the things you do when it’s not showtime that matters. It’s how you treat the relationship with care, giving more than you’re taking, and how you reflect listening skills.
- The client saw that Craig’s team worked very well together as a cohesive team when the stakes were high.
- The bigger deals are won before the opportunity arises.
- Learning about the pressures the client was under and the goals of his position was key to developing the relationship that ultimately led to the opportunity to represent him.
- Treating everyone on the client’s team with respect and making sure that he saw other members of Craig’s team perform at a high level was key.
- Creating opportunities for interaction with the client’s team definitely added value. Craig’s team offered him a Hot 5, a weekly summary of the legal brushfires the client was facing, whether or not Craig’s team was handling them.
- Being in the trenches with the client and over delivering for them gave Craig the edge when the big litigation revealed itself.
Mo asks Craig Budner: If you could record a video about business development and growth and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Craig would tell his younger self to not be afraid to fail.
- Have conversations with people that you may not be ready to start. Be willing to interface with people to learn their stories.
- It’s when you’re worried that you may not look good by asking people about their lives, that’s when you are missing an opportunity to grow and get better.
- Divorce yourself from the outcome.
- Business development is what occurs before the pitch.
- It’s better to be curious than it is to think of the things to say. When you’re curious you figure out how to further your journey.
- You control whether you make the ask, and whether you listen carefully and grow from what you hear. You don’t control whether someone is interested.
- Go to the conversation to grow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Mo asks Craig Budner: If you could record a video about business development and growth and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?
- Craig would tell his younger self to not be afraid to fail.
- Have conversations with people that you may not be ready to start. Be willing to interface with people to learn their stories.
- It’s when you’re worried that you may not look good by asking people about their lives, that’s when you are missing an opportunity to grow and get better.
- Divorce yourself from the outcome.
- Business development is what occurs before the pitch.
- It’s better to be curious than it is to think of the things to say. When you’re curious you figure out how to further your journey.
- You control whether you make the ask, and whether you listen carefully and grow from what you hear. You don’t control whether someone is interested.
- Go to the conversation to grow.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is a business development moment that you’re particularly proud of?
- Craig’s story involves one of the biggest matters of litigation that he’s handled. As a relatively young lawyer, Craig had to convince the client that they could trust Craig and his team with a multi-billion dollar company’s litigation against one of the top litigation companies in the world.
- It was about convincing him that Craig and the company worked the way he needed a firm to work along the way on other cases. The client had to evaluate the team’s behavior over time in prior cases.
- It’s often the things you do when it’s not showtime that matters. It’s how you treat the relationship with care, giving more than you’re taking, and how you reflect listening skills.
- The client saw that Craig’s team worked very well together as a cohesive team when the stakes were high.
- The bigger deals are won before the opportunity arises.
- Learning about the pressures the client was under and the goals of his position was key to developing the relationship that ultimately led to the opportunity to represent him.
- Treating everyone on the client’s team with respect and making sure that he saw other members of Craig’s team perform at a high level was key.
- Creating opportunities for interaction with the client’s team definitely added value. Craig’s team offered him a Hot 5, a weekly summary of the legal brushfires the client was facing, whether or not Craig’s team was handling them.
- Being in the trenches with the client and over delivering for them gave Craig the edge when the big litigation revealed itself.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System?
- Craig’s favorite module was on lead execution. That section of the program led to the idea of creating round table conversations instead of the usual webinars.
- The ability for clients to listen to their peers is incredibly valuable. It doesn’t matter what industry they are in, there are always parallel problems they are trying to solve.
- When Covid hit, they shifted the round table conversations online.
- The way that GrowBIG framed lead generation led to the idea of the Client Connect program that advances clients when they want to get more granular after a round table. It became a natural progression for a lead to move further down the line.
- Lead generation isn’t mysterious. It should be predictable and there should be a number of things you do every day or week to result in X number of conversations.
- What are your best tips to make those kinds of round table events successful?
- The big tip is to make the guest feel comfortable. Without that there are going to be a lot of introductions and not a lot of substance. Craig does a lot of homework on the participants so the conversation goes beyond the basics. It’s also confidential.
- Getting repeat participants helps new people by showing them they can learn more by jumping into the conversation. Craig also makes sure that the focus is on the clients who are driving the conversation.
- There are almost always issues that the participants haven't had time to address that you can provide value for and that makes them very receptive to a follow up.
- How do you make the offer to have a one-on-one conversation?
- Usually there is some indication on a topic a participant wants to talk more about. Craig usually follows up with an email within a day or two.
- One key element is asking participants how the roundtables could be better afterward.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Mo asks Craig Budner: What is your personal “why” when it comes to growth?
- Craig’s father always had a history book in his lap and Craig was brought up in a culture of learning, so learning is at the core of why he does what he does.
- At a global law firm like K&L Gates, if you’re not sensitive to the fact that people grow up in different cultures and with different languages it’s not as much fun. The more perspective that Craig can have with what people are going through makes him better in his leadership role.
- How do you motivate yourself when things get tough?
- People are busy. Don’t assume a lack of response is about you. Craig burns off steam in a productive way most of the time, either by reading, meditating, or exercise.
- People, when they need you, are going to be responsive.
- What are your favorite ways to stay in touch?
- Craig is a fan of interacting over the phone. There are a number of social cues that you can miss via email. If it’s a warm relationship, a phone call to check in when there is some down time is ideal.
- The closer the relationship, the more likely a phone call will help you achieve that raving fan/trusted advisor status.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Mo asks Craig Budner: When did you realize that business development is good?
- Craig’s brother was a litigator and from an early age had his own firm. This taught Craig the necessity of creating a brand and cultivating referral sources in order to grow the firm.
- Craig took a slightly different path from his brother in that he joined one of the firms in Texas. It was there that he created the relationships and connections that made him realize the value of being an advisor to someone and not just on legal issues.
- After creating a relationship with one of the firm’s important executive clients, a partner encouraged Craig to run with what he was doing. During his associate days, Craig learned the value of doing a great job for clients and nurturing relationships.
- When he understood that clients were actual multiple sources of revenue, and that if he could cultivate relationships with people directly in his path of work delivery, he started to get the first call. He was being trusted by the people in charge of important projects, and that gave him the opportunity to do more fun kinds of work.
- How do you advise others to think about business development?
- Demystifying business development is the first step. The characteristics of good parents, friends, and listeners are the characteristics that make a good business developer. It’s not about the money at the end of the line, it’s about growth and learning, and getting better at putting yourself in the shoes of someone else.
- What do you think about mutually beneficial relationships?
- You have to be a better listener than a talker to develop deep relationships. If you’re always thinking about what you’re going to say, you’re not going to get enough information out of that relationship to make it mutually beneficial.
- Think about how you can be helpful to that person. You can leave a positive impression on that person by reflecting back that you have heard them and you’re going to try to advance their issue.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
craig.budner@klgates.com
K&L Gates Client Conversations Podcast
Hacking our own habits to accomplish more was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Dorie Clark, Todd Henry and Ron Tite in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Focus on Growth Activities, Even When We’re Busy, with Dorie Clark - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e4
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Todd Henry - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e118
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Ron Tite - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e136
Deepening your business relationships genuinely was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Nathan Barry, Kara Goldin and Jay Baer in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Use ConvertKit to Deepen Relationships, with Nathan Barry - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e45
How to Use Undaunted to Deepen Relationships, with Kara Goldin - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e75
How to Use Customer Experience and Marketing to Deepen Relationships, with Jay Baer - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e123
Creating and closing the best opportunities was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Ozan Varol, Luke Burgis and Alisa Cohn in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Use The Contrarian Mindset to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Ozan Varol - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e26
How to Use Mimetic Desire to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Luke Burgis - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e38
How to Use an Entrepreneurial Growth Mindset to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Alisa Cohn - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e146
Big Ideas that you need for success was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Karim Nehdi, Josh Kaufman and L. David Marquet in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
Karim Nehdi on Whole Brain Business Development – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e127
Josh Kaufman and The Personal MBA – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e7
L. David Marquet and Leadership Is Language – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e13
Hacking our own habits to accomplish more was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Marissa King, Ivan Misner and Molly Fletcher in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Marissa King - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e82
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Dr. Ivan Misner - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e22
How to Hack Our Own Habits to Accomplish More, with Molly Fletcher - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e106
Deepening your business relationships genuinely was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Josh Linkner, Vanessa Van Edwards and Mike Michalowicz in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Use Big Little Breakthroughs to Deepen Relationships, with Josh Linkner - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e51
How to Use Captivate to Deepen Relationships, with Vanessa Van Edwards - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e93
How to Use Fix This Next to Deepen Relationships, with Mike Michalowicz - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e57
Creating and closing the best opportunities was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Jay Baer, Ron Friedman and Nancy Duarte in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
How to Use Customer Experience and Marketing to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Jay Baer - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e122
How to Use Decoding Greatness to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Ron Friedman - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e98
How to Use Resonate to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Nancy Duarte - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e152
Big Ideas that you need for success was a theme throughout season 2 and we are highlighting some thoughts from Dorie Clark, Luke Burgis and Shawn Blanc in this recap episode.
Be sure to check out their full episodes:
Dorie Clark and The Long Game – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e1
Luke Burgis on Wanting & Mimetic Desire – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e37
Shawn Blanc on The Focus Course – What You Need To Succeed - video.realrelationshipsrealrevenue.com/s2e31
Nancy Duarte shares a simple three-step framework for telling a story in a way that creates empathy between you and the audience, as well as the one mistake that most business development experts make right off the bat that sinks their chances of making a connection with someone. Learn why empathy is the key to business development, what kinds of stories you need in your back pocket to create an instant connection with a client, and how working with your ideal clients can actually make business development easier.
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your big idea for people to grow their business that feels great?
- LinkedIn does a study every year and each year the biggest skills gap is oral communication skills and the spoken word across all industries. How you show up, the presence you have, and how you deliver is how you separate yourself from your competitors
- Communication excellence takes practice and the ability to understand frameworks and models. We need to be adaptive to the situation and what we hear, and we also need to be intentional about what words we use when communicating.
- The first step is always research. You can’t come prepared with good questions without research. The first thing a salesperson should do is understand the strategic initiatives and how things are going to be measured.
- Empathy is a theme that runs through everything that happens in Nancy’s organization.
- You can find a plethora of information about a potential customer in their newsfeeds. This can give you an idea of the kinds of pressure they are under.
- Sometimes an external person can be a better student than someone within the organization. When approaching a prospect, you should take some time to try to understand their perspective as deeply as possible including the culture, the biases, and the budgets.
- Nancy has a platform that enables her to invite people to part of it, which is a great way to initiate meetings.
- One of the values of Nancy’s organization is generous experts. Nancy dropped over 100 customers during Covid to focus on 35 of her best, and subsequently, the organization grew over the last year.
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice on creating and closing the meaty business we all want?
- Anytime you’re speaking to an audience, no matter where that is, the first thing you need to do is think about your audience journey. You need to think about who they are when they walk in the room and who you want them to be when they walk out. Your role in that journey is the mentor.
- It starts with a big idea: Your point of view on an industry and what’s at stake if the audience doesn’t adopt your point of view.
- One of the most important things about the hero’s journey is that they start in the normal world and then something happens that moves them into the special world. You need to look at every communication as an opportunity to enrapture the audience, bring them into your special world, and then have them go back to their normal world with new tools and gifts or special powers.
- As presenters, we often think that we are the central figure, but the truth is that each person in the audience is the hero of their own story. As the speaker, you’re Yoda, not Luke Skywalker.
- If you deliver your material in a way that makes the audience walk out the door with your idea in their head and their heart, you win.
- Even if the audience isn’t physically leaving when you’re not giving value, they are mentally checking out.
- Authenticity is crucial and the best way to be authentic is to use the story structure to convey your perspective. Being able to show vulnerability is what makes you more likeable and connects people to you.
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice to people for deepening relationships in an authentic way?
- The simple answer is storytelling. Studies have shown that different areas of the brain light up during a story, and it allows people to feel your content, not just listen to it.
- Storytelling is a powerful way to feel a sense of connection between two people. If the goal is to create a bond, the best way to do that is through story.
- If you don’t have a great origin story, you should have a calling story. You should also have a collection of stories in your repertoire that shows how your product or service gets your customers unstuck.
- Origin stories are reasons to believe, but there are also stories just meant to bond or influence. They can come in the form of I, We, or They, and the more distant the story is from your own experience, the more you have to build in performance and empathy.
- The more you practice telling stories, the more you are able to inject your own genuineness and authenticity.
- Even Nancy hires a coach to help her craft her story. In one of her more recent internal presentations, Nancy took her slide deck and noted what emotions she wanted her audience to feel and when, and then recrafted the message to facilitate that.
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: How can we stay focused and continue on the growth path while we’re busy with delivery?
- It’s definitely a challenge. You have to deliver your highest and best work in order to get repeat business, but you also have to spend a lot of energy on growth activities that are very different from delivery.
- One of the things that Nancy noticed by eliminating all the clients that weren’t ideal for her organization was that it brought those two things closer together. Calendaring and blocking out specific time is also a good way to ensure those activities get done.
- To identify their ideal clients, the first step was to create a profile. It involved coming up with the right rubrics to understand which companies had the highest sales potential and biggest opportunity for growth.
- One of the most challenging roles is to be doing both delivery and sales at the same time. Care and honest communication is what will bring your clients back to you each year.
- Asking questions like “How can we help our clients achieve even more than they think they could?” is important to identifying those opportunities. Nancy also looked at how deep the penetration was into each organization and synergy with other services that Nancy’s organization had to offer.
- Looking at each client from a utopian/dystopian point of view was a helpful exercise as well.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nancy Duarte.
- Empathy was the common thread found through all the content of Nancy’s interview. When it comes to a first meeting, whether that’s meeting someone for the first time or with a new offering, most people start off with the intent of talking about themselves, and one of the biggest transformations Mo sees with his clients is to turn that around.
- If we are truly thinking with empathy, our mind is not thinking about closing the deal. We’re trying to be helpful and get the client excited about getting our help.
- Follow-ups like a give-to-get, video training, or books are great investments in the potential client’s success.
- Follow-ups come in four main forms; technical, procedural, relational, and big ideas. Those four touch on the four ways that people think, and good follow-ups generally span all four and are framed in a way that gets the client excited.
- Great relationships turn to commercial success over time. The problem comes in when you are going into a meeting trying to sell, because then you are less likely to be listening with empathy and securing the follow ups you want.
- Story is the most memorable way of communication. When people are listening to a story, research shows that the areas of the brain light up in a way that mirrors the story.
- If you tell your stories in the right way, you’re connecting with your audience in an empathic way where you are both feeling the same things at the same moment.
- Get great at your origin story, a product story, and a client story. Deliberately practice them and hone your story telling skill. Build a list of the kinds of stories that you would like to use to connect with clients.
- We communicate best with stories that involve you and another party. Your ‘We’ story allows you to harness empathy and allows the audience to come along the ride with you in a way they can identify with.
- Empathy is the key to successful business development. It’s essentially about always serving other people, being proactive, and helping your clients succeed.
- The more you help others achieve their goals, the more of your goals you can achieve.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nancy Duarte.
- Empathy was the common thread found through all the content of Nancy’s interview. When it comes to a first meeting, whether that’s meeting someone for the first time or with a new offering, most people start off with the intent of talking about themselves, and one of the biggest transformations Mo sees with his clients is to turn that around.
- If we are truly thinking with empathy, our mind is not thinking about closing the deal. We’re trying to be helpful and get the client excited about getting our help.
- Follow-ups like a give-to-get, video training, or books are great investments in the potential client’s success.
- Follow-ups come in four main forms; technical, procedural, relational, and big ideas. Those four touch on the four ways that people think, and good follow-ups generally span all four and are framed in a way that gets the client excited.
- Great relationships turn to commercial success over time. The problem comes in when you are going into a meeting trying to sell, because then you are less likely to be listening with empathy and securing the follow ups you want.
- Story is the most memorable way of communication. When people are listening to a story, research shows that the areas of the brain light up in a way that mirrors the story.
- If you tell your stories in the right way, you’re connecting with your audience in an empathic way where you are both feeling the same things at the same moment.
- Get great at your origin story, a product story, and a client story. Deliberately practice them and hone your story telling skill. Build a list of the kinds of stories that you would like to use to connect with clients.
- We communicate best with stories that involve you and another party. Your ‘We’ story allows you to harness empathy and allows the audience to come along the ride with you in a way they can identify with.
- Empathy is the key to successful business development. It’s essentially about always serving other people, being proactive, and helping your clients succeed.
- The more you help others achieve their goals, the more of your goals you can achieve.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: How can we stay focused and continue on the growth path while we’re busy with delivery?
- It’s definitely a challenge. You have to deliver your highest and best work in order to get repeat business, but you also have to spend a lot of energy on growth activities that are very different from delivery.
- One of the things that Nancy noticed by eliminating all the clients that weren’t ideal for her organization was that it brought those two things closer together. Calendaring and blocking out specific time is also a good way to ensure those activities get done.
- To identify their ideal clients, the first step was to create a profile. It involved coming up with the right rubrics to understand which companies had the highest sales potential and biggest opportunity for growth.
- One of the most challenging roles is to be doing both delivery and sales at the same time. Care and honest communication is what will bring your clients back to you each year.
- Asking questions like “How can we help our clients achieve even more than they think they could?” is important to identifying those opportunities. Nancy also looked at how deep the penetration was into each organization and synergy with other services that Nancy’s organization had to offer.
- Looking at each client from a utopian/dystopian point of view was a helpful exercise as well.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice to people for deepening relationships in an authentic way?
- The simple answer is storytelling. Studies have shown that different areas of the brain light up during a story, and it allows people to feel your content, not just listen to it.
- Storytelling is a powerful way to feel a sense of connection between two people. If the goal is to create a bond, the best way to do that is through story.
- If you don’t have a great origin story, you should have a calling story. You should also have a collection of stories in your repertoire that shows how your product or service gets your customers unstuck.
- Origin stories are reasons to believe, but there are also stories just meant to bond or influence. They can come in the form of I, We, or They, and the more distant the story is from your own experience, the more you have to build in performance and empathy.
- The more you practice telling stories, the more you are able to inject your own genuineness and authenticity.
- Even Nancy hires a coach to help her craft her story. In one of her more recent internal presentations, Nancy took her slide deck and noted what emotions she wanted her audience to feel and when, and then recrafted the message to facilitate that.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice on creating and closing the meaty business we all want?
- Anytime you’re speaking to an audience, no matter where that is, the first thing you need to do is think about your audience journey. You need to think about who they are when they walk in the room and who you want them to be when they walk out. Your role in that journey is the mentor.
- It starts with a big idea: Your point of view on an industry and what’s at stake if the audience doesn’t adopt your point of view.
- One of the most important things about the hero’s journey is that they start in the normal world and then something happens that moves them into the special world. You need to look at every communication as an opportunity to enrapture the audience, bring them into your special world, and then have them go back to their normal world with new tools and gifts or special powers.
- As presenters, we often think that we are the central figure, but the truth is that each person in the audience is the hero of their own story. As the speaker, you’re Yoda, not Luke Skywalker.
- If you deliver your material in a way that makes the audience walk out the door with your idea in their head and their heart, you win.
- Even if the audience isn’t physically leaving when you’re not giving value, they are mentally checking out.
- Authenticity is crucial and the best way to be authentic is to use the story structure to convey your perspective. Being able to show vulnerability is what makes you more likeable and connects people to you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your big idea for people to grow their business that feels great?
- LinkedIn does a study every year and each year the biggest skills gap is oral communication skills and the spoken word across all industries. How you show up, the presence you have, and how you deliver is how you separate yourself from your competitors
- Communication excellence takes practice and the ability to understand frameworks and models. We need to be adaptive to the situation and what we hear, and we also need to be intentional about what words we use when communicating.
- The first step is always research. You can’t come prepared with good questions without research. The first thing a salesperson should do is understand the strategic initiatives and how things are going to be measured.
- Empathy is a theme that runs through everything that happens in Nancy’s organization.
- You can find a plethora of information about a potential customer in their newsfeeds. This can give you an idea of the kinds of pressure they are under.
- Sometimes an external person can be a better student than someone within the organization. When approaching a prospect, you should take some time to try to understand their perspective as deeply as possible including the culture, the biases, and the budgets.
- Nancy has a platform that enables her to invite people to part of it, which is a great way to initiate meetings.
- One of the values of Nancy’s organization is generous experts. Nancy dropped over 100 customers during Covid to focus on 35 of her best, and subsequently, the organization grew over the last year.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
duarte.com
duarte.com/nancy
Alisa Cohn, the number one startup coach in the world, shares why the entrepreneurial growth mindset is the foundation for business success. Learn how to think about your business holistically, how to create a flywheel of great habits that makes doing the hard things easy, and why the ability to change your state when you need to is an incredible superpower in your quest for business development success.
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: Why is it important to think about running a business holistically?
- Everybody has to think of themselves as their own CEO. Think with the entrepreneurial mindset on how you are going to manage yourself, so that you can manage others and the business around you.
- The trouble is that people miss the entrepreneurial mindset and instead focus on the delivery aspect of the work. You need to be building business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. You need to do the activities that will eventually take yourself out of the business so that you can work on the business.
- When you are managing yourself, the most important thing is your mindset. You must carve out time to focus on things that build your business and not just the day-to-day grind. Structure your calendar so that it has those activities built in.
- A powerful activity you can do is to journal on what your future self and business look like. Project out what you want your future to look like, and then think about what has to happen in the intervening years to make that a reality. Those are the activities that need to be done today and everyday from now on.
- Distractions will always be ready to derail you. Practice not being distracted during the time you schedule for your most important things. Don’t check your email, put your phone on silent and focus.
- You should look back at your week and see what you accomplished. You develop a flywheel of great habits by merchandising your success.
- Make celebrating your success a weekly ritual in whatever way makes you feel good. This can be done solo or in a group. Celebrating the things that move your business forward is extremely powerful.
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice for creating and closing more of the meaty business we all want?
- Alisa’s top tip is to think about your process of how you build relationships that eventually turn into business. Chances are you are great at one area of your process and other areas need work.
- Think about five different ways you can experiment and try something new for the piece of your process where you feel stuck.
- The first step is to identify the weak link by creating an environment of psychological safety. People are not going to share their weaknesses or mistakes unless they feel safe to do so. Once you know what to work on, it’s about trying new things and learning from the process. The more you try, the more tools and repertoire you have and knowledge about what does and doesn’t work.
- Many professionals work in an organization where it’s very difficult to admit fault. You can help create the right environment through a number of ways. This includes open body language and leaders disclosing their vulnerabilities first. The leader should model the openness and warmth that they want to see from their team.
- Share stories of failure and what you learned. By doing so you are showing that a skill like business development is a skill that can be learned.
- Leadership is an unnatural act. All of us have to learn how to do things, which at times feel counterintuitive to us, to be successful in the professional world.
- Ask questions that generate an honest conversation. For clients, ask for suggestions about what you can do better or mention an area where you’ve heard from others that you’re weak in and ask them for help on how you can improve. Asking good questions is a skill that permeates every aspect of being a high-end professional and senior leader.
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice around how we can deepen relationships with clients and our internal team?
- First of all, recognize that what you want to and need to do is deepen relationships. It starts with the mindset. We don’t make anything important until we make it important.
- Build relationships with the people you work with one by one. Start with listening to how they approach the world and tailor your style to that.
- People prefer real talk, not stilted conversation. Good questions can be the spark you need to ignite deeper conversations.
- When you stay present in a conversation and listen deeply, they can feel the energy and you become more attractive to them. Follow up questions are very effective at taking a relationship to a deeper level.
- A great place to start is to ask “What are you most excited about today?” People love to talk about that kind of thing and almost no one ever asks it. For Alisa, she’s most excited about the imminent publishing of her new book, From Start-up to Grown-up.
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the growth activities when the world is trying to pull us away?
- Recognize that your job is to put the first things first. You have to separate out what is critically important and what is just the “urgent of the now”. Schedule time for yourself every day of every week to distinguish what the important things are and then put them on the calendar.
- If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t feel like doing. Do whatever you need to do to create the right environment and get you motivated to do the things that will set up your long term success.
- Your calendar shows your priorities more than your to-do list does.
- Alisa encourages her clients to get up and get physical to change their state to start off with. Use podcasts or audiobooks to put the words in your ears that motivate. Music or coffee may be what you need to start the engine, you just need to find the way that works for you.
- Catalyzing a state change is your superpower.
- If you need something a little bit bigger, you might need to take a bigger break. Taking a digital sabbatical once a week is a great way to reset.
- If you’re feeling burned out, it may be from the critical voices in your head. Demonstrate self-compassion and surround yourself with people that make you feel great because that is one of the best cures for burnout.
- Find your purpose and then collect the things that keep you connected to your purpose.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Alisa Cohn.
- One of the most important things you can do is have an entrepreneurial growth mindset.
- Stay on track with your energy. If you feel out of balance or like your energy is being drained, do what you need to do to refuel and motivate yourself. Get up and exercise, read a book, listen to music, take a coffee break.
- Whenever Mo gets a complimentary message from a listener or client, he puts the message into an inspiration folder so that when he’s feeling low he can go back and remind himself why he does what he does.
- Leading others is based on the relationship you have from them. You develop that relationship by asking good questions and connecting with them at a personal level.
- Document what the people you know care about and what they are trying to achieve. This will remind you of their purpose and how you can support them in their goals.
- Creating an environment of psychological safety within your business is an important way to lead the business forward because that is how progress happens. Psychological safety drives growth, because if people can’t share what they are worried about, the problems will never be solved.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Alisa Cohn.
- One of the most important things you can do is have an entrepreneurial growth mindset.
- Stay on track with your energy. If you feel out of balance or like your energy is being drained, do what you need to do to refuel and motivate yourself. Get up and exercise, read a book, listen to music, take a coffee break.
- Whenever Mo gets a complimentary message from a listener or client, he puts the message into an inspiration folder so that when he’s feeling low he can go back and remind himself why he does what he does.
- Leading others is based on the relationship you have from them. You develop that relationship by asking good questions and connecting with them at a personal level.
- Document what the people you know care about and what they are trying to achieve. This will remind you of their purpose and how you can support them in their goals.
- Creating an environment of psychological safety within your business is an important way to lead the business forward because that is how progress happens. Psychological safety drives growth, because if people can’t share what they are worried about, the problems will never be solved.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the growth activities when the world is trying to pull us away?
- Recognize that your job is to put the first things first. You have to separate out what is critically important and what is just the “urgent of the now”. Schedule time for yourself every day of every week to distinguish what the important things are and then put them on the calendar.
- If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t feel like doing. Do whatever you need to do to create the right environment and get you motivated to do the things that will set up your long term success.
- Your calendar shows your priorities more than your to-do list does.
- Alisa encourages her clients to get up and get physical to change their state to start off with. Use podcasts or audiobooks to put the words in your ears that motivate. Music or coffee may be what you need to start the engine, you just need to find the way that works for you.
- Catalyzing a state change is your superpower.
- If you need something a little bit bigger, you might need to take a bigger break. Taking a digital sabbatical once a week is a great way to reset.
- If you’re feeling burned out, it may be from the critical voices in your head. Demonstrate self-compassion and surround yourself with people that make you feel great because that is one of the best cures for burnout.
- Find your purpose and then collect the things that keep you connected to your purpose.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice around how we can deepen relationships with clients and our internal team?
- First of all, recognize that what you want to and need to do is deepen relationships. It starts with the mindset. We don’t make anything important until we make it important.
- Build relationships with the people you work with one by one. Start with listening to how they approach the world and tailor your style to that.
- People prefer real talk, not stilted conversation. Good questions can be the spark you need to ignite deeper conversations.
- When you stay present in a conversation and listen deeply, they can feel the energy and you become more attractive to them. Follow up questions are very effective at taking a relationship to a deeper level.
- A great place to start is to ask “What are you most excited about today?” People love to talk about that kind of thing and almost no one ever asks it. For Alisa, she’s most excited about the imminent publishing of her new book, From Start-up to Grown-up.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice for creating and closing more of the meaty business we all want?
- Alisa’s top tip is to think about your process of how you build relationships that eventually turn into business. Chances are you are great at one area of your process and other areas need work.
- Think about five different ways you can experiment and try something new for the piece of your process where you feel stuck.
- The first step is to identify the weak link by creating an environment of psychological safety. People are not going to share their weaknesses or mistakes unless they feel safe to do so. Once you know what to work on, it’s about trying new things and learning from the process. The more you try, the more tools and repertoire you have and knowledge about what does and doesn’t work.
- Many professionals work in an organization where it’s very difficult to admit fault. You can help create the right environment through a number of ways. This includes open body language and leaders disclosing their vulnerabilities first. The leader should model the openness and warmth that they want to see from their team.
- Share stories of failure and what you learned. By doing so you are showing that a skill like business development is a skill that can be learned.
- Leadership is an unnatural act. All of us have to learn how to do things, which at times feel counterintuitive to us, to be successful in the professional world.
- Ask questions that generate an honest conversation. For clients, ask for suggestions about what you can do better or mention an area where you’ve heard from others that you’re weak in and ask them for help on how you can improve. Asking good questions is a skill that permeates every aspect of being a high-end professional and senior leader.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mo asks Alisa Cohn: Why is it important to think about running a business holistically?
- Everybody has to think of themselves as their own CEO. Think with the entrepreneurial mindset on how you are going to manage yourself, so that you can manage others and the business around you.
- The trouble is that people miss the entrepreneurial mindset and instead focus on the delivery aspect of the work. You need to be building business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. You need to do the activities that will eventually take yourself out of the business so that you can work on the business.
- When you are managing yourself, the most important thing is your mindset. You must carve out time to focus on things that build your business and not just the day-to-day grind. Structure your calendar so that it has those activities built in.
- A powerful activity you can do is to journal on what your future self and business look like. Project out what you want your future to look like, and then think about what has to happen in the intervening years to make that a reality. Those are the activities that need to be done today and everyday from now on.
- Distractions will always be ready to derail you. Practice not being distracted during the time you schedule for your most important things. Don’t check your email, put your phone on silent and focus.
- You should look back at your week and see what you accomplished. You develop a flywheel of great habits by merchandising your success.
- Make celebrating your success a weekly ritual in whatever way makes you feel good. This can be done solo or in a group. Celebrating the things that move your business forward is extremely powerful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
alisacohn.com
Mitch Joel shares the power of creating digital assets and how his simple framework for creating digital content can start off as just a drip and end up creating waves within your professional ecosphere. Learn how to pick the right communication format for you, how to create content in a way that’s unique to you and can’t be replicated by someone else, and how to build an audience that wants to hear from you each week by publishing consistently.
Mo asks Mitch Joel: What is your big idea for getting better at retention and growth?
- Whether it’s digital or not, it’s all about relationships and relationships are built on the stories you tell and how you deliver on them.
- Most people tend to market themselves with promises instead of with their overall story. The ethos of the Madmen era of advertising still permeates the way many professionals think.
- You don’t have to be personal, you just have to be personable. That’s the story that is going to connect with the right kinds of customers, which is something that you need to be focused on.
- As professionals, we all have to figure out what kind of content we are going to create. It can come in whatever form you like, whether that’s audio, video, or written. The content you create should have a bullseye that you’re aiming for within the Triangle of Attention.
- Even if your approach or niche isn’t unique, you can still bring your unique voice to the table to make your brand stand out.
- Human beings prefer regularity. Content you create should follow an editorial calendar instead of being posted whenever you happen to feel like it. Content should be scheduled regularly and you need to stick with the schedule.
- Seth Godin refers to this as the “Drip Strategy.” Content is a drip and if you create enough drips they become a ripple, the ripple creates waves, and the waves fill the ocean.
- The vast majority of the content you create will garner virtual crickets but cumulatively over time it creates a sense of presence, social proof, and credibility.
Mo asks Mitch Joel: How would you advise high end professionals to create and close more deals?
- Go and follow Jeffrey Gettemer and subscribe to his newsletter. Anything Mitch has learned about sales was picked up from Jeffrey.
- Essentially, a lot of sales is about relationship building, storytelling, not being boring, and not being caught up in our own world. Instead it is about focusing on what the prospect wants.
- One of the biggest mistakes in sales is thinking exclusively about your own goals and quotas, when having the vision of what the person across the table needs is where the opportunity is.
- Jeffrey once told the story of how his father always came home after work and voraciously wrote notes about companies and individuals and ideas so that he could better sell to them. The people who are outworking you or outselling you are just out-homeworking you.
- Even though Mitch is no longer in the agency business, he still collects any articles or content he finds that would be relevant to someone and sends it to them. This isn’t done to derive immediate value but it works well as a connection point and relationship builder.
- Don’t link-spam people. This approach is a strategy of gifting and is a customized, one-to-one touchpoint.
- There is a lot of power derived when you do things like this authentically and from the heart.
Mo asks Mitch Joel: What’s your best advice for professionals to deepen long-term relationships?
- People will not leave a relationship, even if they are paying you more than someone else, if they like you. Get people to like you in a way that’s authentic and genuine and clearly has their best interests at heart.
- Don’t identify as a dinosaur. Excuses like “I can’t understand this” or “I don’t do social” are holding you back. We are all dealing with fatigue and overwork, but having the dinosaur mindset is a choice.
- Technology has made content and communication very easy to accomplish and inexpensive to implement. There are no excuses.
- Take an hour and learn how a piece of technology or app works so that you can do it yourself. Mitch may get old and grey, but he will never become a dinosaur.
- Networking is great for creating and deepening relationships. Proactively fill your calendar with ways to connect with new people. As an example, Mitch takes his morning walks on Instagram and invites people to “walk” with him.
- Networking has to be something that you’re doing all the time.
Mo asks Mitch Joel: How do we hack our own proactive habits to succeed?
- We all make time for the things that are important to us. As we’ve seen from the pandemic, we can fill our schedules with anything and feel really busy. The only way to do anything really well is to make time for it.
- Your priorities won’t show up in your to-do list, they show up in your calendar.
- Scheduling is not Mitch’s main way to track his time because he prefers not being stressed out by a strict or full calendar. An alternative to scheduling the most important things is the Jerry Seinfeld approach of putting an X on the calendar when you’ve accomplished the one thing you wanted to get done that day, and then try not to break the chain.
- Start light and start easy. Mitch found himself struggling to get into books during the pandemic so he committed to reading just five pages a day. Little incremental wins make it more likely you’ll do more and can lead to even bigger wins throughout the day.
- When it comes to growing a book of business, Mitch’s advice is to focus on your zone of genius and say no to things that don’t fit within that, then be the best you can be. Be clear on who you serve and what you do, and say no to everything else.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mitch Joel.
- Most professionals don’t yet understand the power of digital communication and thought starters.
- By creating those digital assets you start to become attractive. People start sharing and want more of your content, and those people become predisposed to working with you.
- It doesn’t matter who you are or what your expertise is, you have a brand and you have things you want people to know about you.
- Pick a medium of communication that works for you, then identify your Triangle of Attention. What are three things that are unique to you that you can share information about?
- Pick a publishing schedule that’s consistent and stick with it. Our brains love patterns and consistency is the key.
- The format and style depends on you and what you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to create long form podcasts if that doesn’t fit your style. If you’re not sure what your style might be, ask yourself whether you would be excited to create something like that.
- Look at news and current events through the lens of your Triangle of Attention. This becomes the basis for your unique voice.
- Once you have those first two things established, pick a publishing cadence and stick to it. Deadlines can have the additional benefit of forcing you to act and become better over time.
- This digital marketing strategy is a great way to build your book of business because digital assets keep paying off over time and most professionals are not doing enough in this arena right now.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mitch Joel.
- Most professionals don’t yet understand the power of digital communication and thought starters.
- By creating those digital assets you start to become attractive. People start sharing and want more of your content, and those people become predisposed to working with you.
- It doesn’t matter who you are or what your expertise is, you have a brand and you have things you want people to know about you.
- Pick a medium of communication that works for you, then identify your Triangle of Attention. What are three things that are unique to you that you can share information about?
- Pick a publishing schedule that’s consistent and stick with it. Our brains love patterns and consistency is the key.
- The format and style depends on you and what you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to create long form podcasts if that doesn’t fit your style. If you’re not sure what your style might be, ask yourself whether you would be excited to create something like that.
- Look at news and current events through the lens of your Triangle of Attention. This becomes the basis for your unique voice.
- Once you have those first two things established, pick a publishing cadence and stick to it. Deadlines can have the additional benefit of forcing you to act and become better over time.
- This digital marketing strategy is a great way to build your book of business because digital assets keep paying off over time and most professionals are not doing enough in this arena right now.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Mo asks Mitch Joel: How do we hack our own proactive habits to succeed?
- We all make time for the things that are important to us. As we’ve seen from the pandemic, we can fill our schedules with anything and feel really busy. The only way to do anything really well is to make time for it.
- Your priorities won’t show up in your to-do list, they show up in your calendar.
- Scheduling is not Mitch’s main way to track his time because he prefers not being stressed out by a strict or full calendar. An alternative to scheduling the most important things is the Jerry Seinfeld approach of putting an X on the calendar when you’ve accomplished the one thing you wanted to get done that day, and then try not to break the chain.
- Start light and start easy. Mitch found himself struggling to get into books during the pandemic so he committed to reading just five pages a day. Little incremental wins make it more likely you’ll do more and can lead to even bigger wins throughout the day.
- When it comes to growing a book of business, Mitch’s advice is to focus on your zone of genius and say no to things that don’t fit within that, then be the best you can be. Be clear on who you serve and what you do, and say no to everything else.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Mo asks Mitch Joel: What’s your best advice for professionals to deepen long-term relationships?
- People will not leave a relationship, even if they are paying you more than someone else, if they like you. Get people to like you in a way that’s authentic and genuine and clearly has their best interests at heart.
- Don’t identify as a dinosaur. Excuses like “I can’t understand this” or “I don’t do social” are holding you back. We are all dealing with fatigue and overwork, but having the dinosaur mindset is a choice.
- Technology has made content and communication very easy to accomplish and inexpensive to implement. There are no excuses.
- Take an hour and learn how a piece of technology or app works so that you can do it yourself. Mitch may get old and grey, but he will never become a dinosaur.
- Networking is great for creating and deepening relationships. Proactively fill your calendar with ways to connect with new people. As an example, Mitch takes his morning walks on Instagram and invites people to “walk” with him.
- Networking has to be something that you’re doing all the time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Mo asks Mitch Joel: How would you advise high end professionals to create and close more deals?
- Go and follow Jeffrey Gettemer and subscribe to his newsletter. Anything Mitch has learned about sales was picked up from Jeffrey.
- Essentially, a lot of sales is about relationship building, storytelling, not being boring, and not being caught up in our own world. Instead it is about focusing on what the prospect wants.
- One of the biggest mistakes in sales is thinking exclusively about your own goals and quotas, when having the vision of what the person across the table needs is where the opportunity is.
- Jeffrey once told the story of how his father always came home after work and voraciously wrote notes about companies and individuals and ideas so that he could better sell to them. The people who are outworking you or outselling you are just out-homeworking you.
- Even though Mitch is no longer in the agency business, he still collects any articles or content he finds that would be relevant to someone and sends it to them. This isn’t done to derive immediate value but it works well as a connection point and relationship builder.
- Don’t link-spam people. This approach is a strategy of gifting and is a customized, one-to-one touchpoint.
- There is a lot of power derived when you do things like this authentically and from the heart.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Mo asks Mitch Joel: What is your big idea for getting better at retention and growth?
- Whether it’s digital or not, it’s all about relationships and relationships are built on the stories you tell and how you deliver on them.
- Most people tend to market themselves with promises instead of with their overall story. The ethos of the Madmen era of advertising still permeates the way many professionals think.
- You don’t have to be personal, you just have to be personable. That’s the story that is going to connect with the right kinds of customers, which is something that you need to be focused on.
- As professionals, we all have to figure out what kind of content we are going to create. It can come in whatever form you like, whether that’s audio, video, or written. The content you create should have a bullseye that you’re aiming for within the Triangle of Attention.
- Even if your approach or niche isn’t unique, you can still bring your unique voice to the table to make your brand stand out.
- Human beings prefer regularity. Content you create should follow an editorial calendar instead of being posted whenever you happen to feel like it. Content should be scheduled regularly and you need to stick with the schedule.
- Seth Godin refers to this as the “Drip Strategy.” Content is a drip and if you create enough drips they become a ripple, the ripple creates waves, and the waves fill the ocean.
- The vast majority of the content you create will garner virtual crickets but cumulatively over time it creates a sense of presence, social proof, and credibility.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
sixpixels.com
Ron Tite shares the insights behind the Think. Do. Say. framework and how you can use it to create an effective personal brand, do more of the work you truly care about and be more authentic. Learn the four C’s that make communicating your brand belief easy, the five questions that get a prospect’s head nodding during a pitch, and how to innovate consistently while still delivering your best work.
Mo asks Ron Tite: What’s your big idea on how the audience can grow their book of business, grow their career, and grow their relationships?
- The first thing is to stop gaming the system and stop looking for shortcuts to business development.
- You need two things: a consistent brand narrative to sell the things you have and to be entrepreneurial so you can create the resources that people need.
- Business development is bound by purpose, defined by actions, and adopted by other people by how you communicate it.
- Your purpose has to go beyond the thing that you sell that speaks to your brand belief. If you can’t articulate that, that’s where you need to start.
- You will be defined by the actions you take to fulfill and live up to your purpose, it’s not by the things you say.
- Those first two are not enough though. You can be living in your purpose authentically, but you still need other people to adopt your purpose as well if you want something to grow.
- Even in a retail setting, you can still act in an advisory or consultative role. REI is a good example of a company that embodies that principle as they have a purpose that is strategically aligned to where they make their money. They inspire, inform, and equip people with the proper tools to have a greater enjoyment of the outdoors. Your purpose should align with what you sell.
- REI also communicates its purpose in a way that conveys trust and authority, without sounding too corporate and separated from what the customers really care about.
- Your brand narrative flows consistently out of those three foundational ideas and is composed of these five things: What’s going on in the world through your lens? What problem does that create? What do you believe about that problem? How do you solve that problem? Why should someone believe you?
- This set of questions establishes your brand narrative and gets people’s heads nodding. It’s not about selling, it’s about framing the conversation around where you add the most value.
Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we get better at creating and closing the meaty work that we want to do?
- The first step is identifying the meaty work where you can add your best value. Ron recently had someone resign from his agency after they had a conversation about what she really wanted to do. It wasn’t until she asked herself that question did she realize that she wasn’t happy because she wasn’t doing what she really wanted to do.
- You need to put yourself in a position to close after building an organization that people want to work with.
- Who are the specific people that can best use your service and how can you put yourself into a position to win their business?
- In terms of communicating your brand belief to the right customers, there are four C’s: Consumption, Curation, Creation, Connection.
- Once you have your brand belief, you need to operationalize the strategic consumption of media that supports that. You need to consume media that makes you smarter and better.
- Curation is about taking the media that you find compelling or valuable and sharing it with your community. Editorialize it with your own opinion and put your own spin on it. Ron also categorizes content and insights that he finds and adds them to categories for use in his future speeches and books.
- At some point you have to create your own stuff and get that out into the world.
- The connection part is about the conversation that happens when someone challenges your thinking or adds to it. That’s where your personality shows through: it’s not in the post, it’s in the comments.
Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we deepen relationships and win the relationship advantage?
- If you have great relationships, know that some of them will convert, but that’s not why you invest in relationships.
- When Ron started his agency, his first client was a woman that he knew and had a work relationship with 15 years prior. She didn’t have a need for his agency, but she created a project for him and launched his agency.
- Far too many think they need to create relationships to grow their business but if that’s your primary motivation it’s not going to work. To properly build relationships you need to have a genuine desire to get to know someone as a human being.
- Authenticity means to be comfortable with your imperfections. Don’t show up as the stock photo version of a lawyer, consultant, marketer, or business development professional. Your imperfections are not bugs, their features and that’s what people buy.
- People don’t know where to look or who to trust, and if their gut reaction is that you are hiding the real you from them, it’s not a good way to start a business relationship.
- Ron’s background is in stand-up comedy and there is a line in comedy that comedians use; “never ignore the reality of the room”. Call out your mistakes and the reality of the situation. If you get the sense that they aren’t interested, acknowledge that. Even a catastrophe can be used as a way to stand out and be completely human.
- The beginnings of meetings and the ending of meetings are very important. Just like comedy, you should start with an insight and tie the ending of the meeting back to that same insight.
Mo asks Ron Tite: How do we stay on top of retention and growth activities when everything is yanking us away?
- In car manufacturing, there are two sides that are critical to the business. The money is made on the assembly line because that is repeatable behaviour that strips out inefficiencies over time. But if they only did assembly line work they would go out of business.
- The other side involves concept cars and experimentation. They have no expectation that concept cars will go into production, but it allows the assembly line to consistently innovate over time.
- You need to look at your day the same way. Is it a particular task assembly line work or concept car work? It’s important to innovate but you need to focus on the assembly line work without changing too much, too fast.
- You need to carve out time for concept car work because, like exercise, there is always something more important to do. You also have to establish metrics to evaluate the success of the experiment.
- Put all your effort into the concept car activity so you don’t give yourself excuses later on.
- Limit your concept car activities to just one at a time. This forces you to prioritize it because delivery is going to take up the rest of your day.
- When the business dynamic changes like it has over the past year it creates new problems. Start with thinking about what problem exists right now that no one is solving right now.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Tite.
- Think: What’s the thing you believe in so much that you would be happy to work on it for the rest of your working life?
- Do: How do you exemplify that? People don’t judge you by the things you say, they judge you by what you do. Actions are what signals what you believe deep down.
- Say: How do you communicate what you believe? Too many people jump to this part before figuring out everything else.
- Be comfortable with your imperfections. Authenticity means being okay with who you are, even when you make mistakes or ask dumb questions. Share your journey because we are all always learning.
- When people are focused more on progress than a result, they are more comfortable with sharing that they are not perfect and those are the kinds of people that others want to be around.
- Add some humour to your communication. Ron’s background in stand up comedy gives him a good foundation for making a conversation enjoyable.
- Be a good entertainer and great host. Don’t be so focused on the content you’re teaching or discussing that you become boring.
- Studies showed that if you tell a joke at the beginning of a negotiation it reaches a better result and people rate the negotiation higher. Even an attempt at humour that doesn’t hit the mark is better than being boring and dry.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Tite.
- Think: What’s the thing you believe in so much that you would be happy to work on it for the rest of your working life?
- Do: How do you exemplify that? People don’t judge you by the things you say, they judge you by what you do. Actions are what signals what you believe deep down.
- Say: How do you communicate what you believe? Too many people jump to this part before figuring out everything else.
- Be comfortable with your imperfections. Authenticity means being okay with who you are, even when you make mistakes or ask dumb questions. Share your journey because we are all always learning.
- When people are focused more on progress than a result, they are more comfortable with sharing that they are not perfect and those are the kinds of people that others want to be around.
- Add some humour to your communication. Ron’s background in stand up comedy gives him a good foundation for making a conversation enjoyable.
- Be a good entertainer and great host. Don’t be so focused on the content you’re teaching or discussing that you become boring.
- Studies showed that if you tell a joke at the beginning of a negotiation it reaches a better result and people rate the negotiation higher. Even an attempt at humour that doesn’t hit the mark is better than being boring and dry.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Mo asks Ron Tite: How do we stay on top of retention and growth activities when everything is yanking us away?
- In car manufacturing, there are two sides that are critical to the business. The money is made on the assembly line because that is repeatable behaviour that strips out inefficiencies over time. But if they only did assembly line work they would go out of business.
- The other side involves concept cars and experimentation. They have no expectation that concept cars will go into production, but it allows the assembly line to consistently innovate over time.
- You need to look at your day the same way. Is it a particular task assembly line work or concept car work? It’s important to innovate but you need to focus on the assembly line work without changing too much, too fast.
- You need to carve out time for concept car work because, like exercise, there is always something more important to do. You also have to establish metrics to evaluate the success of the experiment.
- Put all your effort into the concept car activity so you don’t give yourself excuses later on.
- Limit your concept car activities to just one at a time. This forces you to prioritize it because delivery is going to take up the rest of your day.
- When the business dynamic changes like it has over the past year it creates new problems. Start with thinking about what problem exists right now that no one is solving right now.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we deepen relationships and win the relationship advantage?
- If you have great relationships, know that some of them will convert, but that’s not why you invest in relationships.
- When Ron started his agency, his first client was a woman that he knew and had a work relationship with 15 years prior. She didn’t have a need for his agency, but she created a project for him and launched his agency.
- Far too many think they need to create relationships to grow their business but if that’s your primary motivation it’s not going to work. To properly build relationships you need to have a genuine desire to get to know someone as a human being.
- Authenticity means to be comfortable with your imperfections. Don’t show up as the stock photo version of a lawyer, consultant, marketer, or business development professional. Your imperfections are not bugs, their features and that’s what people buy.
- People don’t know where to look or who to trust, and if their gut reaction is that you are hiding the real you from them, it’s not a good way to start a business relationship.
- Ron’s background is in stand-up comedy and there is a line in comedy that comedians use; “never ignore the reality of the room”. Call out your mistakes and the reality of the situation. If you get the sense that they aren’t interested, acknowledge that. Even a catastrophe can be used as a way to stand out and be completely human.
- The beginnings of meetings and the ending of meetings are very important. Just like comedy, you should start with an insight and tie the ending of the meeting back to that same insight.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we get better at creating and closing the meaty work that we want to do?
- The first step is identifying the meaty work where you can add your best value. Ron recently had someone resign from his agency after they had a conversation about what she really wanted to do. It wasn’t until she asked herself that question did she realize that she wasn’t happy because she wasn’t doing what she really wanted to do.
- You need to put yourself in a position to close after building an organization that people want to work with.
- Who are the specific people that can best use your service and how can you put yourself into a position to win their business?
- In terms of communicating your brand belief to the right customers, there are four C’s: Consumption, Curation, Creation, Connection.
- Once you have your brand belief, you need to operationalize the strategic consumption of media that supports that. You need to consume media that makes you smarter and better.
- Curation is about taking the media that you find compelling or valuable and sharing it with your community. Editorialize it with your own opinion and put your own spin on it. Ron also categorizes content and insights that he finds and adds them to categories for use in his future speeches and books.
- At some point you have to create your own stuff and get that out into the world.
- The connection part is about the conversation that happens when someone challenges your thinking or adds to it. That’s where your personality shows through: it’s not in the post, it’s in the comments.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Mo asks Ron Tite: What’s your big idea on how the audience can grow their book of business, grow their career, and grow their relationships?
- The first thing is to stop gaming the system and stop looking for shortcuts to business development.
- You need two things: a consistent brand narrative to sell the things you have and to be entrepreneurial so you can create the resources that people need.
- Business development is bound by purpose, defined by actions, and adopted by other people by how you communicate it.
- Your purpose has to go beyond the thing that you sell that speaks to your brand belief. If you can’t articulate that, that’s where you need to start.
- You will be defined by the actions you take to fulfill and live up to your purpose, it’s not by the things you say.
- Those first two are not enough though. You can be living in your purpose authentically, but you still need other people to adopt your purpose as well if you want something to grow.
- Even in a retail setting, you can still act in an advisory or consultative role. REI is a good example of a company that embodies that principle as they have a purpose that is strategically aligned to where they make their money. They inspire, inform, and equip people with the proper tools to have a greater enjoyment of the outdoors. Your purpose should align with what you sell.
- REI also communicates its purpose in a way that conveys trust and authority, without sounding too corporate and separated from what the customers really care about.
- Your brand narrative flows consistently out of those three foundational ideas and is composed of these five things: What’s going on in the world through your lens? What problem does that create? What do you believe about that problem? How do you solve that problem? Why should someone believe you?
- This set of questions establishes your brand narrative and gets people’s heads nodding. It’s not about selling, it’s about framing the conversation around where you add the most value.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
rontite.com
churchstate.com
Karim Nehdi shows you how to read your prospect’s mind so you can tailor your service offer to exactly what they want. Learn how the Herrmann Brain Dominance model works in business development and how you can use the concept to better understand how a prospect thinks, what they care about most in terms of communication, and how you can use that to close more deals.
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: What is your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, relationships, and career?
- Different people think differently, but most people don’t realize what that really means. The most effective leaders and business developers are able to harness the differences in thought and cognitive diversity for maximum effect.
- We all have neural pathways that shift over time. We innately default to seeking out people that think like us, but the best teams break out of that pattern and tap into the differences in the way that people think.
- Karim is the CEO of Herrmann International and has been working with Mo for a long time in many of the programs he’s developed.
- We are just scratching the potential of what the brain is capable of. We’ve learned over the past few decades that there are cognitive modes that dictate the way that we think, and the four different modes come together in different measures within each person.
- The first system is analytical thought. The second is structural thought. The third is relational thought. The fourth is experimental thought. We have all four pathways in our brains, but over time we come to default to one or two primarily, and that’s where the trouble comes in.
- People think they connect on preferences and areas they align. When you feel a match with someone the ideas tend to flow fairly easily, but when there’s a mismatch, the interaction can be awkward or difficult.
- A good example would be the IT team and the customer facing team. They both think in nearly opposite ways, and this can create tension in an organizational setting.
- In a business development context, understanding the differences can be very powerful. If you sense the prospect is risk averse, you should probably minimize the experimental and transformational elements of the pitch and focus on the process and how it all works.
- The most important component of good management, good leadership, and good stewardship is making sure that you have diversity of mind. Leaders that can bring a unique viewpoint and harness that within their organization can have a big impact.
- 3% of people are balanced across all four quadrants. Everyone can tap into the four different thinking systems. You just have to be willing to stretch and flex those cognitive muscles.
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use our cognitive diversity to create and close more deals?
- What if you could read the minds of your customers and predict their response in advance? That would be an incredibly powerful business development skill.
- The first step is understanding yourself and where your preferences lie. For Mo, he fell into the experimental/analytical spectrum and knowing that helped him understand what was really on his mind and how he approached life.
- Your unique thinking style comes with strengths but also potential blindspots. Your default thinking may be leading you in the wrong direction for a deal, and if you never look back or get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, you will keep making the same mistakes.
- Once you know what your thought process is like, you can use that as a model to consider how a prospect might be thinking. Think about one of your most important customers and take a guess about what they might be thinking about in terms of what you are offering.
- If they are a big picture experimental thinker, maybe they are looking for something more innovative. If they are more relational thinkers, maybe they want to know they are going to be taken care of and are really concerned about what everyone else thinks. If they are structural thinkers, they are probably hyper-focused on the details and whether the offer will deliver exactly what they need. If they are analytical thinkers, they can be very price sensitive and looking for the greatest measurable ROI for them.
- Understanding the different types of buyers can allow you to position your product or service around what their needs might be.
- Don’t assume that people are on the same wavelength as you and ask the question about what they need.
- There are certain ways of thinking that tend to manifest more often in certain industries. Analytical thinkers like actuaries are probably all about the bottom line and being efficient in their communication. Structural thinkers are probably all about the details. Relational thinkers may ask you about your personal life and will probably engage with you beyond verbal communication. Experimental thinkers will ask a lot of questions to try to connect the dots, and you might see them work out their thought process in the conversation.
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How do we use cognitive diversity and adapt to each of these four different ways of thinking?
- The baseline is to understand where you are likely to default and what your blindspots are going to be. Think about your pitch through the lens of what the stakeholder wants to hear and needs to understand in order to feel comfortable to move forward.
- This can mean adding in additional details for the structural buyer, including some ROI calculations for the analytic buyer, bringing in other clients to speak on your behalf for the relational buyer, or coming up with some novel ideas for the experimental buyer.
- Prepare your thinking in advance and try to start the conversation with where their preferences are instead of starting with where you are at.
- We often think about relationships on a one-on-one basis, but there are lots of people involved in the business development process. Business development is all about making your team work seamlessly with your customer’s team which is where cognitive diversity comes in. You need to make sure that the people on your team that think a certain way are being paired up with people that need to think that way.
- You need everybody to be on the same page and moving in the same direction to take advantage of an opportunity, and understanding how each person on the team thinks and facilitates that knowledge transfer.
- In just 10 minutes you can get a basic understanding of the mindsets on your team and identify some of the things you need to do to bridge the gap. Taking the time to think about your thinking has a massive ROI in business outcomes.
- Understanding the thought processes of the individuals at play builds trust and allows people to communicate and solve problems more effectively.
- Challenge everyone that is involved in the conversation to think about their thinking and how it’s going to play out in the success of the stakeholder.
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use cognitive diversity to hack our own habits and be more successful, even when we’re busy?
- Business development is a team sport. There is a role for the individual relationship, but there is also an important role for the team that supports that relationship.
- Research shows that cognitively diverse teams who know how to harness cognitive diversity are 60-70% more effective than teams that don’t. Cognitive diversity accounts for about 20% of the variance in overall team performance and up to 34% in specific activities like strategic thinking and problem solving.
- The first hack is around making sure your team is built in a diversity by design way. If you all share the biases and blindspots, they will be magnified in a deal context. On the other extreme, if you have too much cognitive diversity without the tools to manage it, it can create emergent conflict.
- When you’re building a team, an easy way to stay balanced is to ensure you have at least one person who can represent the mindset of someone from each quadrant. Have an experimental thinker that can connect the dots, a analytical thinker who is going to be ready with an ROI calculation when you need it, a relational thinker who is able to build the personal connection, and a structural thinker that is going to make sure the customer has everything they need to feel comfortable.
- The best teams have a steward for each way of thinking. The lone experimental thinker may be an outlier, but they are also probably the most necessary mindset.
- Karim tells a story of a CEO that he worked with that had a specific set of questions answered at every meeting. Why, What, Who, How? Coincidentally, those four questions map to the four quadrants of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument.
- One way to take notes in a meeting is to create the four quadrants and write down notes in the corresponding mindset/question. If you notice that an area is missing, you can bring the focus there before the meeting wraps up.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Karim Nehdi.
- There are four major ways we think: analytically, structurally, relationally, and experimentally, and each way of thinking gives clues.
- With an analytical thinker, they are going to be quick and cut to the chase. They want to jump right into the meeting and get things done.
- With the structural thinker, they will want to know the details and what the process looks like. They want to know the steps to start something and how to keep it going.
- With a relational thinker, you will see clues that they care with more emotion in their voice. They probably think from the perspective of other people and ask more questions to dial up the engagement.
- With an experimental thinker, they may zig zag in the conversation and want to do things that haven’t been done before. Experimental thinkers want to connect the dots.
- Analytical thinkers want to dial in the ROI, structural thinkers desire safety, relational thinkers want more connection to you and your team, and experimental thinkers want a strategic fit with where they are heading.
- To adapt to a person’s thought style, make it easy to talk about what matters to them, whether that is money and ROI, that you’re a safe choice, that your team is ready to engage, or what you stand for and how it aligns with their goals.
- Big deals are sold by teams, to teams. You can really knock a deal out of the park by covering all four ways of thinking.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Karim Nehdi.
- There are four major ways we think: analytically, structurally, relationally, and experimentally, and each way of thinking gives clues.
- With an analytical thinker, they are going to be quick and cut to the chase. They want to jump right into the meeting and get things done.
- With the structural thinker, they will want to know the details and what the process looks like. They want to know the steps to start something and how to keep it going.
- With a relational thinker, you will see clues that they care with more emotion in their voice. They probably think from the perspective of other people and ask more questions to dial up the engagement.
- With an experimental thinker, they may zig zag in the conversation and want to do things that haven’t been done before. Experimental thinkers want to connect the dots.
- Analytical thinkers want to dial in the ROI, structural thinkers desire safety, relational thinkers want more connection to you and your team, and experimental thinkers want a strategic fit with where they are heading.
- To adapt to a person’s thought style, make it easy to talk about what matters to them, whether that is money and ROI, that you’re a safe choice, that your team is ready to engage, or what you stand for and how it aligns with their goals.
- Big deals are sold by teams, to teams. You can really knock a deal out of the park by covering all four ways of thinking.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use cognitive diversity to hack our own habits and be more successful, even when we’re busy?
- Business development is a team sport. There is a role for the individual relationship, but there is also an important role for the team that supports that relationship.
- Research shows that cognitively diverse teams who know how to harness cognitive diversity are 60-70% more effective than teams that don’t. Cognitive diversity accounts for about 20% of the variance in overall team performance and up to 34% in specific activities like strategic thinking and problem solving.
- The first hack is around making sure your team is built in a diversity by design way. If you all share the biases and blindspots, they will be magnified in a deal context. On the other extreme, if you have too much cognitive diversity without the tools to manage it, it can create emergent conflict.
- When you’re building a team, an easy way to stay balanced is to ensure you have at least one person who can represent the mindset of someone from each quadrant. Have an experimental thinker that can connect the dots, a analytical thinker who is going to be ready with an ROI calculation when you need it, a relational thinker who is able to build the personal connection, and a structural thinker that is going to make sure the customer has everything they need to feel comfortable.
- The best teams have a steward for each way of thinking. The lone experimental thinker may be an outlier, but they are also probably the most necessary mindset.
- Karim tells a story of a CEO that he worked with that had a specific set of questions answered at every meeting. Why, What, Who, How? Coincidentally, those four questions map to the four quadrants of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument.
- One way to take notes in a meeting is to create the four quadrants and write down notes in the corresponding mindset/question. If you notice that an area is missing, you can bring the focus there before the meeting wraps up.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How do we use cognitive diversity and adapt to each of these four different ways of thinking?
- The baseline is to understand where you are likely to default and what your blindspots are going to be. Think about your pitch through the lens of what the stakeholder wants to hear and needs to understand in order to feel comfortable to move forward.
- This can mean adding in additional details for the structural buyer, including some ROI calculations for the analytic buyer, bringing in other clients to speak on your behalf for the relational buyer, or coming up with some novel ideas for the experimental buyer.
- Prepare your thinking in advance and try to start the conversation with where their preferences are instead of starting with where you are at.
- We often think about relationships on a one-on-one basis, but there are lots of people involved in the business development process. Business development is all about making your team work seamlessly with your customer’s team which is where cognitive diversity comes in. You need to make sure that the people on your team that think a certain way are being paired up with people that need to think that way.
- You need everybody to be on the same page and moving in the same direction to take advantage of an opportunity, and understanding how each person on the team thinks and facilitates that knowledge transfer.
- In just 10 minutes you can get a basic understanding of the mindsets on your team and identify some of the things you need to do to bridge the gap. Taking the time to think about your thinking has a massive ROI in business outcomes.
- Understanding the thought processes of the individuals at play builds trust and allows people to communicate and solve problems more effectively.
- Challenge everyone that is involved in the conversation to think about their thinking and how it’s going to play out in the success of the stakeholder.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use our cognitive diversity to create and close more deals?
- What if you could read the minds of your customers and predict their response in advance? That would be an incredibly powerful business development skill.
- The first step is understanding yourself and where your preferences lie. For Mo, he fell into the experimental/analytical spectrum and knowing that helped him understand what was really on his mind and how he approached life.
- Your unique thinking style comes with strengths but also potential blindspots. Your default thinking may be leading you in the wrong direction for a deal, and if you never look back or get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, you will keep making the same mistakes.
- Once you know what your thought process is like, you can use that as a model to consider how a prospect might be thinking. Think about one of your most important customers and take a guess about what they might be thinking about in terms of what you are offering.
- If they are a big picture experimental thinker, maybe they are looking for something more innovative. If they are more relational thinkers, maybe they want to know they are going to be taken care of and are really concerned about what everyone else thinks. If they are structural thinkers, they are probably hyper-focused on the details and whether the offer will deliver exactly what they need. If they are analytical thinkers, they can be very price sensitive and looking for the greatest measurable ROI for them.
- Understanding the different types of buyers can allow you to position your product or service around what their needs might be.
- Don’t assume that people are on the same wavelength as you and ask the question about what they need.
- There are certain ways of thinking that tend to manifest more often in certain industries. Analytical thinkers like actuaries are probably all about the bottom line and being efficient in their communication. Structural thinkers are probably all about the details. Relational thinkers may ask you about your personal life and will probably engage with you beyond verbal communication. Experimental thinkers will ask a lot of questions to try to connect the dots, and you might see them work out their thought process in the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Mo asks Karim Nehdi: What is your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, relationships, and career?
- Different people think differently, but most people don’t realize what that really means. The most effective leaders and business developers are able to harness the differences in thought and cognitive diversity for maximum effect.
- We all have neural pathways that shift over time. We innately default to seeking out people that think like us, but the best teams break out of that pattern and tap into the differences in the way that people think.
- Karim is the CEO of Herrmann International and has been working with Mo for a long time in many of the programs he’s developed.
- We are just scratching the potential of what the brain is capable of. We’ve learned over the past few decades that there are cognitive modes that dictate the way that we think, and the four different modes come together in different measures within each person.
- The first system is analytical thought. The second is structural thought. The third is relational thought. The fourth is experimental thought. We have all four pathways in our brains, but over time we come to default to one or two primarily, and that’s where the trouble comes in.
- People think they connect on preferences and areas they align. When you feel a match with someone the ideas tend to flow fairly easily, but when there’s a mismatch, the interaction can be awkward or difficult.
- A good example would be the IT team and the customer facing team. They both think in nearly opposite ways, and this can create tension in an organizational setting.
- In a business development context, understanding the differences can be very powerful. If you sense the prospect is risk averse, you should probably minimize the experimental and transformational elements of the pitch and focus on the process and how it all works.
- The most important component of good management, good leadership, and good stewardship is making sure that you have diversity of mind. Leaders that can bring a unique viewpoint and harness that within their organization can have a big impact.
- 3% of people are balanced across all four quadrants. Everyone can tap into the four different thinking systems. You just have to be willing to stretch and flex those cognitive muscles.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thinkherrmann.com/mo
Jay Baer shares insights into marketing that will transform the way you think about business development and will allow you to spend half the time creating content while generating 10x the results. Learn how to inspire your customers to market for you, why marketing your content is more important than your actual content, and a simple strategy for creating extraordinary and memorable client relationships.
Mo asks Jay Baer: How can people become great at business development?
- The challenge with business development is that technology has made it so easy to create contacts. It used to be that you could stand out just by having a better toolkit, but now the volume of business development messaging is out of control.
- Competency does not create conversation. The best way to grow any business is for your customers to grow it for you.
- There is a time and place for advertising, but in many cases the most successful brands advertise the least because their customers and clients spread the word for them.
- Even though word of mouth is the #1 way of generating business, fewer than 1% of companies have a word-of-mouth strategy.
- If you want your customers to be a proactive word of mouth engine, you have to give them a story to tell, which means you have to do something different in your organization.
- What if, instead of sending your proposal as a pdf attachment in an email, you send your proposal in a completely unique and unusual way.
- Doing the normal thing is often more risky than doing something that’s a little bit different. Just because you're in professional services doesn’t mean that you took a vow of boredom.
- Every single person and organization can have a talk trigger, but we’re are often afraid to stand out.
- Start with a pilot program and roll out your talk trigger to a certain subsection of your customer base and see how things go. Once you see the results, you can roll it out to the rest of the organization.
Mo asks Jay Baer: How do we create and close more opportunities?
- You have to focus on the problems you solve, not on the services you offer. People don’t want services, they want a fix to the problem they have.
- You also have to really understand who you are selling to. This can become more challenging as time goes on as the number of people you are selling to grows, but it’s vital to growth.
- Figure out a way to rank your potential clients against one another and create an asset around that and they will beat a path to your door. It’s important to provide value instead of selling to them. If you provide enough value, the client will sell themselves.
- Figure out the marketing plan for the asset before you build it. When you do that, you will build a better marketing asset.
- You have to atomize your content. The individual asset (report, whitepaper, survey, etc.) can be broken down into additional bite size chunks. Everyone is besieged with opportunities and information, so you have to give them a short, easy intro to lead them in.
- Increase your conversion rate by merchandising the findings of your report in smaller pieces of content. It’s the little things surrounding the asset that drive people to the landing page.
- Every single slide of your webinar is a potential social media graphic, blog post, video, or infographic.
Mo asks Jay Baer: What is your best advice on deepening relationships?
- The more transactional you think the relationship is, the more transactional it’s going to feel. If your motive is based on getting paid, you’re not going to develop deep and rich relationships.
- The best way to go about building relationships that matter is to build relationships that you want to have on their own. If you get paid, that’s great. If not, that’s okay, too.
- Be there before the sale. Build the right relationships now, even if you have nothing to sell or are not the right answer for them. Someday you might be.
- Most people suck at business development because they are not patient. Have conversations with people that are not about business and eventually they may lead to a commercial deal down the road.
- If you’re trying to figure out what relationships to build today, it should be the relationships that you might try to monetize in 2022.
- If you want to build deeper, more valuable relationships that will eventually yield victories, it is your responsibility to add all the value to the relationships.
- Business development is like practicing your serve, you should just keep sending value and adding to the relationship.
- Who you are is infinitely more interesting than what you do. You have to add your personality into your interactions with people if you want them to remember you. It’s okay to treat people like people.
- How can you add value to someone if you don’t know what that person cares about outside of business? Do the work to get to know the person.
- It’s very hard to tell if a professional is 20% smarter or better, but it’s really easy to tell if they genuinely care.
Mo asks Jay Baer: How can we hack our own habits and be working efficiently at business development even when we are yanked away by other demands?
- The first step is you have to enjoy the process at some level in order to put real time into it.
- If you hate social media, you will suck at social media. You have to find the relationship nurturing schema that you actually enjoy so that you can stick to it. If you don’t derive satisfaction or pleasure around it, you are going to invent a bunch of excuses for not doing it.
- You also have to batch your relationships. Write down and organize your relationships into tiers and figure out what your idealized communication cadence for each tier.
- You have to schedule relationship time, just like everything else that is important in your life. Once you’ve organized your relationships, add them to your calendar.
- If you wait until you have absolutely nothing else to do and nothing better to invest in your relationships, it’s never going to happen.
- Everybody has time, the question is “How are you prioritizing your time?” If you don’t spend time investing in your relationships each week, it probably goes back to either not liking the process or you don’t believe it’s worth it.
- The best way to stay top of mind is to add value. The best way is to study what they are doing and then comment, amplify, or add value to what they are doing. People tend to underestimate the value of amplification for other people. If you’re not sure what to say, share what your tier 1 relationship is saying and act as their cheerleader.
- Sometimes all you have to do is schedule time each day to tell other people how great they are.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Jay Baer.
- Market your marketing. Most experts put in the time to create some content, but they would be much better served by taking half that time, creating less content overall, and spending the other half marketing that content. Doing this allows you to spend half the time and generate 10x the results.
- There are three components to marketing your marketing: the plan, the lead up before the launch, and what you do after the launch.
- Whatever you are creating, you should spend quite a bit of time upfront developing the outline of the content, who the audience is, and think about the marketing of that content.
- Start with what your audience needs to know and how you can create something that they would die to have. Jay’s example of creating a report on the top 50 university’s websites is perfect.
- If you’re the person that has the data, information, or algorithm, it makes you more magnetic to your prospects.
- Narrow down your audience to specific people. That will help you tailor the content directly to what they care about.
- The goal of your pre-launch is to break down your big piece of content into smaller, bite-size pieces as you can. Get as many people as you can to help promote them and get the word out for the official launch.
- The post launch step is the most important. Your big piece of content is not the finishing line, it’s the start. Post launch you should organize an effort with your strategic partners to funnel people into a meeting with you on how the content impacts them.
- Seize the momentum of your launch to get the meetings where you can actually get hired.
- Most people only do one or two parts of the three steps of the marketing your marketing process. Put all three into practice and watch your results explode.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
talktriggers.com
convinceandconvert.com
jaybaer.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Jay Baer.
- Market your marketing. Most experts put in the time to create some content, but they would be much better served by taking half that time, creating less content overall, and spending the other half marketing that content. Doing this allows you to spend half the time and generate 10x the results.
- There are three components to marketing your marketing: the plan, the lead up before the launch, and what you do after the launch.
- Whatever you are creating, you should spend quite a bit of time upfront developing the outline of the content, who the audience is, and think about the marketing of that content.
- Start with what your audience needs to know and how you can create something that they would die to have. Jay’s example of creating a report on the top 50 university’s websites is perfect.
- If you’re the person that has the data, information, or algorithm, it makes you more magnetic to your prospects.
- Narrow down your audience to specific people. That will help you tailor the content directly to what they care about.
- The goal of your pre-launch is to break down your big piece of content into smaller, bite-size pieces as you can. Get as many people as you can to help promote them and get the word out for the official launch.
- The post launch step is the most important. Your big piece of content is not the finishing line, it’s the start. Post launch you should organize an effort with your strategic partners to funnel people into a meeting with you on how the content impacts them.
- Seize the momentum of your launch to get the meetings where you can actually get hired.
- Most people only do one or two parts of the three steps of the marketing your marketing process. Put all three into practice and watch your results explode.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
talktriggers.com
convinceandconvert.com
jaybaer.com
Mo asks Jay Baer: How can we hack our own habits and be working efficiently at business development even when we are yanked away by other demands?
- The first step is you have to enjoy the process at some level in order to put real time into it.
- If you hate social media, you will suck at social media. You have to find the relationship nurturing schema that you actually enjoy so that you can stick to it. If you don’t derive satisfaction or pleasure around it, you are going to invent a bunch of excuses for not doing it.
- You also have to batch your relationships. Write down and organize your relationships into tiers and figure out what your idealized communication cadence for each tier.
- You have to schedule relationship time, just like everything else that is important in your life. Once you’ve organized your relationships, add them to your calendar.
- If you wait until you have absolutely nothing else to do and nothing better to invest in your relationships, it’s never going to happen.
- Everybody has time, the question is “How are you prioritizing your time?” If you don’t spend time investing in your relationships each week, it probably goes back to either not liking the process or you don’t believe it’s worth it.
- The best way to stay top of mind is to add value. The best way is to study what they are doing and then comment, amplify, or add value to what they are doing. People tend to underestimate the value of amplification for other people. If you’re not sure what to say, share what your tier 1 relationship is saying and act as their cheerleader.
- Sometimes all you have to do is schedule time each day to tell other people how great they are.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
convinceandconvert.com
jaybaer.com
Mo asks Jay Baer: What is your best advice on deepening relationships?
- The more transactional you think the relationship is, the more transactional it’s going to feel. If your motive is based on getting paid, you’re not going to develop deep and rich relationships.
- The best way to go about building relationships that matter is to build relationships that you want to have on their own. If you get paid, that’s great. If not, that’s okay, too.
- Be there before the sale. Build the right relationships now, even if you have nothing to sell or are not the right answer for them. Someday you might be.
- Most people suck at business development because they are not patient. Have conversations with people that are not about business and eventually they may lead to a commercial deal down the road.
- If you’re trying to figure out what relationships to build today, it should be the relationships that you might try to monetize in 2022.
- If you want to build deeper, more valuable relationships that will eventually yield victories, it is your responsibility to add all the value to the relationships.
- Business development is like practicing your serve, you should just keep sending value and adding to the relationship.
- Who you are is infinitely more interesting than what you do. You have to add your personality into your interactions with people if you want them to remember you. It’s okay to treat people like people.
- How can you add value to someone if you don’t know what that person cares about outside of business? Do the work to get to know the person.
- It’s very hard to tell if a professional is 20% smarter or better, but it’s really easy to tell if they genuinely care.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
convinceandconvert.com
Mo asks Jay Baer: How do we create and close more opportunities?
- You have to focus on the problems you solve, not on the services you offer. People don’t want services, they want a fix to the problem they have.
- You also have to really understand who you are selling to. This can become more challenging as time goes on as the number of people you are selling to grows, but it’s vital to growth.
- Figure out a way to rank your potential clients against one another and create an asset around that and they will beat a path to your door. It’s important to provide value instead of selling to them. If you provide enough value, the client will sell themselves.
- Figure out the marketing plan for the asset before you build it. When you do that, you will build a better marketing asset.
- You have to atomize your content. The individual asset (report, whitepaper, survey, etc.) can be broken down into additional bite size chunks. Everyone is besieged with opportunities and information, so you have to give them a short, easy intro to lead them in.
- Increase your conversion rate by merchandising the findings of your report in smaller pieces of content. It’s the little things surrounding the asset that drive people to the landing page.
- Every single slide of your webinar is a potential social media graphic, blog post, video, or infographic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
talktriggers.com
convinceandconvert.com
Mo asks Jay Baer: How can people become great at business development?
- The challenge with business development is that technology has made it so easy to create contacts. It used to be that you could stand out just by having a better toolkit, but now the volume of business development messaging is out of control.
- Competency does not create conversation. The best way to grow any business is for your customers to grow it for you.
- There is a time and place for advertising, but in many cases the most successful brands advertise the least because their customers and clients spread the word for them.
- Even though word of mouth is the #1 way of generating business, fewer than 1% of companies have a word-of-mouth strategy.
- If you want your customers to be a proactive word of mouth engine, you have to give them a story to tell, which means you have to do something different in your organization.
- What if, instead of sending your proposal as a pdf attachment in an email, you send your proposal in a completely unique and unusual way.
- Doing the normal thing is often more risky than doing something that’s a little bit different. Just because you're in professional services doesn’t mean that you took a vow of boredom.
- Every single person and organization can have a talk trigger, but we’re are often afraid to stand out.
- Start with a pilot program and roll out your talk trigger to a certain subsection of your customer base and see how things go. Once you see the results, you can roll it out to the rest of the organization.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
talktriggers.com
convinceandconvert.com
Todd Henry shares why creativity is crucial to business development success and a new mindset for identifying client problems in a way that will make them think you’re reading their mind. Learn a practice that allows you to connect the dots and deliver brilliant insights when you need them most and a method for getting to the root of a client’s problem without being pushy or relying on a PowerPoint slide deck.
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your big idea for folks to stand out, to be creative, do their best work, and get their prospects’ attention?
- A lot of people believe that they are not creative because they don’t make art, but creativity is problem solving. Any line of work that involves problem solving requires you to be creative on a daily basis.
- Most successful creative professionals have disciplines in their life that prepare them for moments where they have to be brilliant. They build study time into their schedule to fill their mind with valuable stimuli.
- If you want to be brilliant on a moment’s notice, you have to begin far upstream from the moment and that begins with building practices into life so you can deliver great results when you need to.
- One of the interesting challenges of working from home over the past year has been that meetings have become frictionless. That means that everyone needs to identify time on the calendar to commit to engaging in those disciplines.
- Block out time in your schedule to read, to think, and sit and think about your priorities. Get ready to feel unproductive for a couple of hours because creativity is not about efficiency; it’s about effectiveness.
- If something is important to you, you will find time for it. Those that are willing to take the uncomfortable step to carve out strategic time on the calendar are the ones that are going to see results on the other side.
- We have to manage our energy in the same way we manage our time. We need to think about our time in terms of investing, and when you invest, you are expecting long-term gains. Part of your time portfolio should be investment focused on efforts that may not pay off now but can lead to bigger results later on.
- Treat this time like a meeting with yourself. If someone calls you and requests that time, treat it like you were meeting with a client or important prospect. It’s also important to create feedback loops with your team so they can see the results of your efforts.
- We have to say no to things that aren’t using our time in the way that we want to use it in order to use our time effectively.
- One of the problems with meetings is that people will often set them for 60 minutes by default. One tactic you can use to restrict meetings to accomplish what they need to without wasting time is scheduling them at specific times (9:22) and a specific place (potted plant on the 2nd floor).
- You can also define how long you want to commit to when asking people to pick a time on your calendar.
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your best advice on how people can create demand using creativity?
- If we want to be effective creative professionals, we need to become effective at defining problems.
- If you can define the problem your client is trying to solve better than they can, and also propose some solutions, they are much more likely to come to you for the work.
- The creative process begins by defining problems effectively. Those who ask the best questions win because they get closest to the middle.
- When the client feels like you are inside their head and you deeply understand the issues they are facing, you become the go-to expert.
- Every organization thinks they’re unique but they often can’t see the problem they are facing because they are too close to the work to have a proper perspective. You can bring an outside perspective and if you can identify the problem differently and give them the language that helps them simplify the problem, you’re halfway to closing the deal.
- Start with very broad questions and work your way down. Broad questions give you opportunities to ask more pointed questions that can guide you towards the deep problem the prospect is dealing with.
- The issue with experts is that we start to become comfortable with what we do and start to lead with solutions instead of questions. We have to be curious and want to understand what is going on before we start offering solutions.
- Your marketing materials are tools for the prospect to justify the purchase decision, not the reason to make the purchase decision. At the end of the day, they want to know if you can solve their problem.
- Many of us artificially escalate the perceived consequences of failure and this prevents us from taking enough action to really get results. We need to rely less on the PowerPoint slides and more on the personal relationship where you are invested in them and solving their problems.
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your #1 tip to deepen relationships?
- If something is important to you, it becomes a priority. We need to start treating relationships as investments rather than obligations.
- As we become successful professionals, we start to see relationships as more transactional and we need to change that perception.
- We need people in our life to reveal patterns that we can’t see, to speak truth to us, to help us see life through new eyes, and to inspire us, and we need to be that person for other people as well. Do you have anyone in your life that you meet with routinely to help each other become better?
- Especially with leadership, you need meaningful relationships in your life where people are willing to speak truth to you and preferably before the other person needs something from you.
- Be intentional about your relationships. A head-to-head is a good tactic to deepen one relationship at a time. The next time you meet with the person, share one new thing you’ve learned since the last time you met and have the other person do the same. This simple practice expands your capacity to see the world and helps you both be better at what you do.
Mo asks Todd Henry: How do we hack our own habits to have the best chance at long term success?
- Professionals that succeed in the long term and continue to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy are the ones that have disciplines and practices in five key areas.
- The first is focus. Successful creative professionals solve problems; they don’t work on projects. Define the problem you are trying to solve and whittle it down to the most important aspects so you can allocate your finite resources effectively.
- The second is relationships. We need other people in our life to help us solve problems effectively. Creativity is a team sport. Teams that are good at connecting the collective dots are the most effective.
- The third is energy. We have to be good at managing our discretionary energy in ways that help us create more energy in the future. We have to be good at saying no and investing our energy in meaningful places.
- The fourth is stimuli. These are the dots you put into your head that you can connect later. You need a practice of inspiring yourself with stimulus that forces you to see things in new ways.
- The fifth area is hours. We often think of our time in terms of efficiency and not effectiveness. We need to invest our time in long-term future value.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Todd Henry.
- Long scale creativity is a process, just like business development. The Snowball System and the Grow Big Training are a creative synthesis of the business development practices that have been shown to work across industries and time.
- Any kind of long-term sustainable work, whether that’s growing a business or learning a language, takes a long time to get there. As soon as you realize that, you can identify the process behind it.
- Anybody who is great at something has both learned it and earned it by developing a process around it.
- “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” -Jack London
- You should walk into your first meeting with someone with a hypothesis as to what’s going on, but lead with broad questions. Ask enough questions about the prospect’s situation until you can articulate back their problem to them better than they can describe it themselves.
- By asking questions first, you get a triple win. Good questions light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind, you are going to learn their priorities in their words, and the more self-disclosing information they give you, the more they like you. You have a higher chance of getting the yes at the end by starting with great questions at the beginning.
- A simple tactic you can use to take your business development efforts to the next level is the head-to-head. Find someone who is moving in the same general direction you are and schedule a 30 minute meeting once a month to share what each of you has learned since your last meeting. Build in an element of accountability to stay committed and maintain momentum.
- As you share your three big things that you plan to accomplish, you will start to notice ways that you can be helpful to each other.
- Business development is a project that never ends. It's a process, like creativity, and if you want to grow your business, you need to focus on it and have a system to make it happen each week.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Todd Henry.
- Long scale creativity is a process, just like business development. The Snowball System and the Grow Big Training are a creative synthesis of the business development practices that have been shown to work across industries and time.
- Any kind of long-term sustainable work, whether that’s growing a business or learning a language, takes a long time to get there. As soon as you realize that, you can identify the process behind it.
- Anybody who is great at something has both learned it and earned it by developing a process around it.
- “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” -Jack London
- You should walk into your first meeting with someone with a hypothesis as to what’s going on, but lead with broad questions. Ask enough questions about the prospect’s situation until you can articulate back their problem to them better than they can describe it themselves.
- By asking questions first, you get a triple win. Good questions light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind, you are going to learn their priorities in their words, and the more self-disclosing information they give you, the more they like you. You have a higher chance of getting the yes at the end by starting with great questions at the beginning.
- A simple tactic you can use to take your business development efforts to the next level is the head-to-head. Find someone who is moving in the same general direction you are and schedule a 30 minute meeting once a month to share what each of you has learned since your last meeting. Build in an element of accountability to stay committed and maintain momentum.
- As you share your three big things that you plan to accomplish, you will start to notice ways that you can be helpful to each other.
- Business development is a project that never ends. It's a process, like creativity, and if you want to grow your business, you need to focus on it and have a system to make it happen each week.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Mo asks Todd Henry: How do we hack our own habits to have the best chance at long term success?
- Professionals that succeed in the long term and continue to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy are the ones that have disciplines and practices in five key areas.
- The first is focus. Successful creative professionals solve problems; they don’t work on projects. Define the problem you are trying to solve and whittle it down to the most important aspects so you can allocate your finite resources effectively.
- The second is relationships. We need other people in our life to help us solve problems effectively. Creativity is a team sport. Teams that are good at connecting the collective dots are the most effective.
- The third is energy. We have to be good at managing our discretionary energy in ways that help us create more energy in the future. We have to be good at saying no and investing our energy in meaningful places.
- The fourth is stimuli. These are the dots you put into your head that you can connect later. You need a practice of inspiring yourself with stimulus that forces you to see things in new ways.
- The fifth area is hours. We often think of our time in terms of efficiency and not effectiveness. We need to invest our time in long-term future value.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your #1 tip to deepen relationships?
- If something is important to you, it becomes a priority. We need to start treating relationships as investments rather than obligations.
- As we become successful professionals, we start to see relationships as more transactional and we need to change that perception.
- We need people in our life to reveal patterns that we can’t see, to speak truth to us, to help us see life through new eyes, and to inspire us, and we need to be that person for other people as well. Do you have anyone in your life that you meet with routinely to help each other become better?
- Especially with leadership, you need meaningful relationships in your life where people are willing to speak truth to you and preferably before the other person needs something from you.
- Be intentional about your relationships. A head-to-head is a good tactic to deepen one relationship at a time. The next time you meet with the person, share one new thing you’ve learned since the last time you met and have the other person do the same. This simple practice expands your capacity to see the world and helps you both be better at what you do.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your best advice on how people can create demand using creativity?
- If we want to be effective creative professionals, we need to become effective at defining problems.
- If you can define the problem your client is trying to solve better than they can, and also propose some solutions, they are much more likely to come to you for the work.
- The creative process begins by defining problems effectively. Those who ask the best questions win because they get closest to the middle.
- When the client feels like you are inside their head and you deeply understand the issues they are facing, you become the go-to expert.
- Every organization thinks they’re unique but they often can’t see the problem they are facing because they are too close to the work to have a proper perspective. You can bring an outside perspective and if you can identify the problem differently and give them the language that helps them simplify the problem, you’re halfway to closing the deal.
- Start with very broad questions and work your way down. Broad questions give you opportunities to ask more pointed questions that can guide you towards the deep problem the prospect is dealing with.
- The issue with experts is that we start to become comfortable with what we do and start to lead with solutions instead of questions. We have to be curious and want to understand what is going on before we start offering solutions.
- Your marketing materials are tools for the prospect to justify the purchase decision, not the reason to make the purchase decision. At the end of the day, they want to know if you can solve their problem.
- Many of us artificially escalate the perceived consequences of failure and this prevents us from taking enough action to really get results. We need to rely less on the PowerPoint slides and more on the personal relationship where you are invested in them and solving their problems.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your big idea for folks to stand out, to be creative, do their best work, and get their prospects’ attention?
- A lot of people believe that they are not creative because they don’t make art, but creativity is problem solving. Any line of work that involves problem solving requires you to be creative on a daily basis.
- Most successful creative professionals have disciplines in their life that prepare them for moments where they have to be brilliant. They build study time into their schedule to fill their mind with valuable stimuli.
- If you want to be brilliant on a moment’s notice, you have to begin far upstream from the moment and that begins with building practices into life so you can deliver great results when you need to.
- One of the interesting challenges of working from home over the past year has been that meetings have become frictionless. That means that everyone needs to identify time on the calendar to commit to engaging in those disciplines.
- Block out time in your schedule to read, to think, and sit and think about your priorities. Get ready to feel unproductive for a couple of hours because creativity is not about efficiency; it’s about effectiveness.
- If something is important to you, you will find time for it. Those that are willing to take the uncomfortable step to carve out strategic time on the calendar are the ones that are going to see results on the other side.
- We have to manage our energy in the same way we manage our time. We need to think about our time in terms of investing, and when you invest, you are expecting long-term gains. Part of your time portfolio should be investment focused on efforts that may not pay off now but can lead to bigger results later on.
- Treat this time like a meeting with yourself. If someone calls you and requests that time, treat it like you were meeting with a client or important prospect. It’s also important to create feedback loops with your team so they can see the results of your efforts.
- We have to say no to things that aren’t using our time in the way that we want to use it in order to use our time effectively.
- One of the problems with meetings is that people will often set them for 60 minutes by default. One tactic you can use to restrict meetings to accomplish what they need to without wasting time is scheduling them at specific times (9:22) and a specific place (potted plant on the 2nd floor).
- You can also define how long you want to commit to when asking people to pick a time on your calendar.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
toddhenry.com
Michael Port shares the power of speaking to transform an audience and get them to take action. Discover how to skillfully and authentically impress and inspire any audience with substance and style, the best way to sell your services during a speech without actually selling, and how to connect with your audience emotionally and intellectually at the same time.
Mo asks Michael Port: What’s your best advice for professional services experts to get great at growing their book of business, growing their relationships, and growing their career?
- Stop speaking, and start performing. Most people who are trying to share their ideas tend to only share information, which doesn’t generally change people’s behavior.
- First we have to change how people feel before we can change how they think, and then how they behave. If you are working on a pitch or sales conversation, you have to think about how you want your audience to feel moment to moment, how you want them to think, and then what you want them to do afterward.
- Trying to stuff four hours of information into a one hour conversation is not a good way to convince someone.
- There are five foundational elements that exist in any type of pitch or presentation. The first element is the big idea that acts as a through line for the rest of the presentation. A big idea doesn’t need to be different to make a difference, it just needs to be true, relevant, and important for the people you serve.
- The second is being able to articulate the way the world looks to the people in the room. Changing someone’s mind takes a lot of effort and if the other person believes that you don’t understand them, it gets easier for them to say no.
- The third element is to have a clear and definitive promise that is associated with that presentation.
- The fourth element is articulating the consequences of not adopting the big idea and achieving the promise.
- The last element is the emotional, physical, and even spiritual rewards of adopting the big idea.
- Most people rely on their expertise when going into a pitch or presentation. If you’re not using a process for the content work and rehearsal, you will fall back onto your preparation, which in this case is minimal. Presenting is like running a marathon; you’re not going to succeed without training and preparation.
- Communicating your own value is a vital skill to learn. Talent is overrated. The people you are seeing on the stage at the high end of your profession work on their craft. They may have some talent to start off with, but the time they spend rehearsing and practicing is the real source of their success. The ones who excel are the ones who put in the most work into the craft of speaking, not the most talented.
Mo asks Michael Port: How can the audience create and close more opportunities?
- All sales offers should be proportionate to the amount of trust we’ve earned. When Michael started as an entrepreneur who wasn’t very comfortable making big sales offers so he started thinking about what people responded well to. This led him to the idea of inviting people during a weekly teleconference call.
- He started speaking about ideas that would help people think bigger about who they were and help advance their professional goals. He found that after six months of doing those calls, they had brought in 85% of the clients he had at the time. The interesting part was that although he made no sales offers during the calls, people were raising their hands to discuss working with him as a natural extension of the process.
- Rather than trying to sell every time you meet somebody, think about what you can invite them to that would add value to their lives and that you can do on a regular basis. You will start to find that it will begin to create business development opportunities for you.
- Using speaking as a promotional tool is one of the most effective tools you can employ, because there are very few environments that immediately infer credibility. The mistake that most people make is believing that they should be selling during the presentation, so Michael focuses on helping people deliver transformational speeches.
- If the audience has a transformation in that period of time while you’re on stage, all they need to know is that they can work with you and they will ask to work with you.
- If you have a truly transformational product, you don’t need a lot of marketing or selling because the product will do it for you. When you are delivering a speech, you should be getting stage-side leads every single time and if you get those leads, you will get clients and referrals for additional speaking opportunities.
- You can mention your services but keep it a light touch. Deliver something that people want, and if they want more of it they will book you as a consultant.
- Speaking live allows you to affect the way the audience feels and that’s the most important aspect of connection.
Mo asks Michael Port: How can people use speaking to deepen relationships?
- It’s critically important to start by demonstrating that you understand how the world looks for the people in the room. Can you fill multiple pages with their thoughts and perspectives?
- There is a difference between having someone tell you “you’re right” versus “that’s right”. Too many speakers are driven toward getting the audience to admit that they are right, but the better approach is to share an idea and get the audience to say in their head “yes, that’s right!”. That’s how you create an intellectual and emotional connection.
- It helps to find an analogy that you can use to demonstrate an idea. People are much more likely to adopt a new idea if they can contextualize it and relate it to something that they already understand.
- In terms of importance to communication, the most memorable things are stories, with metaphors and analogies towards the top, then data and facts at the bottom.
- Generally, we want to ask questions of the audience so that they can come to the answer themselves rather than us telling them what the answer is. Questions like “how would you feel if…?”, or “Would it make a difference if you were able to do X?”.
- Avoid leading the audience with questions that always end up in the affirmative. Research shows that people will resist answering your big idea when they feel led, but if you frame the questions in the negative you will actually increase the odds of getting a yes on your big idea.
Mo asks Michael Port: How can we hack our habits to keep doing things in the long-term even when we’re really busy?
- Michael doesn’t see himself as particularly disciplined. He tends to choose really intense projects that require a high level of focus and then move on from them when he is One of the key habit changing strategies he’s implemented in his business is using OKRs.
- Objectives and Key Results changed the way Michael and his team worked. OKRs are all about setting objectives and key results for the future in relatively short chunks of time, which gives Michael the best of both worlds.
- One of the most important things that Michael has discovered is that sometimes enough is enough and more is not always better.
- Being process-obsessed is the thing that has driven the growth of Michael’s business the most. The only way to keep his service at the highest level possible is knowing how he does it every single time without variation, the same is true with employees burning out.
- Every single organization needs to create their own operating system. This codified system allows people to be creative artists who are focused on growth and development within the framework of the processes.
- The operating system needs to be designed with a growth destination in mind. Develop the system with help from the people you work with. Allow your team to create their own standard operating procedures so it feels more collaborative as a result.
- You also need a way of measuring key results. Michael uses OKRs and health metrics in his operating system. OKRs are the growth oriented goals and the health metrics are the bottom line numbers you need to see to ensure the business is always healthy.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Michael Port.
- Mo strongly recommends that you consider using speaking to grow your business. Like any skill in life, if you have the right formula, get on the right stage, and deliver the right message you will see results. Put in some practice and you can become great at it.
- Like driving a car, it takes time to learn but when you put in the time it becomes so ingrained that you barely even think about it.
- Speaking reaps big rewards. Of all the ways you can generate leads, speaking is one of the most effective and has the highest leverage.
- Speaking allows you to bond and connect with potentially hundreds of people all with one action. Those same stage speaking skills can now be amplified on the internet as well via webinars and online conferences.
- Speaking also comes with a number of secondary benefits. By getting great at speaking, you grow your skills in a number of other communication areas.
- Speaking is a craft, treat it like one. You need to practice and if you want to get better fast, hire someone to help you.
- The major components of a speech that you need to work on are your opening story, the three pieces of content that you want to cover, and the ending. If you nail the opening and really connect with people at the beginning, they are going to stick with you. Try not to put too much content into your speech so you don’t overwhelm the audience. For the ending, leave them with a little inspiration.
- Mo is going to create a database of the three elements of his speeches so that he can easily mix and match the pieces. When you give a great talk, write down what you said so you have a blueprint for your next great speech to work from.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Michael Port.
- Mo strongly recommends that you consider using speaking to grow your business. Like any skill in life, if you have the right formula, get on the right stage, and deliver the right message you will see results. Put in some practice and you can become great at it.
- Like driving a car, it takes time to learn but when you put in the time it becomes so ingrained that you barely even think about it.
- Speaking reaps big rewards. Of all the ways you can generate leads, speaking is one of the most effective and has the highest leverage.
- Speaking allows you to bond and connect with potentially hundreds of people all with one action. Those same stage speaking skills can now be amplified on the internet as well via webinars and online conferences.
- Speaking also comes with a number of secondary benefits. By getting great at speaking, you grow your skills in a number of other communication areas.
- Speaking is a craft, treat it like one. You need to practice and if you want to get better fast, hire someone to help you.
- The major components of a speech that you need to work on are your opening story, the three pieces of content that you want to cover, and the ending. If you nail the opening and really connect with people at the beginning, they are going to stick with you. Try not to put too much content into your speech so you don’t overwhelm the audience. For the ending, leave them with a little inspiration.
- Mo is going to create a database of the three elements of his speeches so that he can easily mix and match the pieces. When you give a great talk, write down what you said so you have a blueprint for your next great speech to work from.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Mo asks Michael Port: How can we hack our habits to keep doing things in the long-term even when we’re really busy?
- Michael doesn’t see himself as particularly disciplined. He tends to choose really intense projects that require a high level of focus and then move on from them when he is One of the key habit changing strategies he’s implemented in his business is using OKRs.
- Objectives and Key Results changed the way Michael and his team worked. OKRs are all about setting objectives and key results for the future in relatively short chunks of time, which gives Michael the best of both worlds.
- One of the most important things that Michael has discovered is that sometimes enough is enough and more is not always better.
- Being process-obsessed is the thing that has driven the growth of Michael’s business the most. The only way to keep his service at the highest level possible is knowing how he does it every single time without variation, the same is true with employees burning out.
- Every single organization needs to create their own operating system. This codified system allows people to be creative artists who are focused on growth and development within the framework of the processes.
- The operating system needs to be designed with a growth destination in mind. Develop the system with help from the people you work with. Allow your team to create their own standard operating procedures so it feels more collaborative as a result.
- You also need a way of measuring key results. Michael uses OKRs and health metrics in his operating system. OKRs are the growth oriented goals and the health metrics are the bottom line numbers you need to see to ensure the business is always healthy.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Mo asks Michael Port: How can people use speaking to deepen relationships?
- It’s critically important to start by demonstrating that you understand how the world looks for the people in the room. Can you fill multiple pages with their thoughts and perspectives?
- There is a difference between having someone tell you “you’re right” versus “that’s right”. Too many speakers are driven toward getting the audience to admit that they are right, but the better approach is to share an idea and get the audience to say in their head “yes, that’s right!”. That’s how you create an intellectual and emotional connection.
- It helps to find an analogy that you can use to demonstrate an idea. People are much more likely to adopt a new idea if they can contextualize it and relate it to something that they already understand.
- In terms of importance to communication, the most memorable things are stories, with metaphors and analogies towards the top, then data and facts at the bottom.
- Generally, we want to ask questions of the audience so that they can come to the answer themselves rather than us telling them what the answer is. Questions like “how would you feel if…?”, or “Would it make a difference if you were able to do X?”.
- Avoid leading the audience with questions that always end up in the affirmative. Research shows that people will resist answering your big idea when they feel led, but if you frame the questions in the negative you will actually increase the odds of getting a yes on your big idea.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Mo asks Michael Port: How can the audience create and close more opportunities?
- All sales offers should be proportionate to the amount of trust we’ve earned. When Michael started as an entrepreneur who wasn’t very comfortable making big sales offers so he started thinking about what people responded well to. This led him to the idea of inviting people during a weekly teleconference call.
- He started speaking about ideas that would help people think bigger about who they were and help advance their professional goals. He found that after six months of doing those calls, they had brought in 85% of the clients he had at the time. The interesting part was that although he made no sales offers during the calls, people were raising their hands to discuss working with him as a natural extension of the process.
- Rather than trying to sell every time you meet somebody, think about what you can invite them to that would add value to their lives and that you can do on a regular basis. You will start to find that it will begin to create business development opportunities for you.
- Using speaking as a promotional tool is one of the most effective tools you can employ, because there are very few environments that immediately infer credibility. The mistake that most people make is believing that they should be selling during the presentation, so Michael focuses on helping people deliver transformational speeches.
- If the audience has a transformation in that period of time while you’re on stage, all they need to know is that they can work with you and they will ask to work with you.
- If you have a truly transformational product, you don’t need a lot of marketing or selling because the product will do it for you. When you are delivering a speech, you should be getting stage-side leads every single time and if you get those leads, you will get clients and referrals for additional speaking opportunities.
- You can mention your services but keep it a light touch. Deliver something that people want, and if they want more of it they will book you as a consultant.
- Speaking live allows you to affect the way the audience feels and that’s the most important aspect of connection.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Mo asks Michael Port: What’s your best advice for professional services experts to get great at growing their book of business, growing their relationships, and growing their career?
- Stop speaking, and start performing. Most people who are trying to share their ideas tend to only share information, which doesn’t generally change people’s behavior.
- First we have to change how people feel before we can change how they think, and then how they behave. If you are working on a pitch or sales conversation, you have to think about how you want your audience to feel moment to moment, how you want them to think, and then what you want them to do afterward.
- Trying to stuff four hours of information into a one hour conversation is not a good way to convince someone.
- There are five foundational elements that exist in any type of pitch or presentation. The first element is the big idea that acts as a through line for the rest of the presentation. A big idea doesn’t need to be different to make a difference, it just needs to be true, relevant, and important for the people you serve.
- The second is being able to articulate the way the world looks to the people in the room. Changing someone’s mind takes a lot of effort and if the other person believes that you don’t understand them, it gets easier for them to say no.
- The third element is to have a clear and definitive promise that is associated with that presentation.
- The fourth element is articulating the consequences of not adopting the big idea and achieving the promise.
- The last element is the emotional, physical, and even spiritual rewards of adopting the big idea.
- Most people rely on their expertise when going into a pitch or presentation. If you’re not using a process for the content work and rehearsal, you will fall back onto your preparation, which in this case is minimal. Presenting is like running a marathon; you’re not going to succeed without training and preparation.
- Communicating your own value is a vital skill to learn. Talent is overrated. The people you are seeing on the stage at the high end of your profession work on their craft. They may have some talent to start off with, but the time they spend rehearsing and practicing is the real source of their success. The ones who excel are the ones who put in the most work into the craft of speaking, not the most talented.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
heroicpublicspeaking.com
Molly Fletcher shares her insights into business development and how she became the world’s top-performing female sports agent. Learn why every business development conversation starts with curiosity, why over-delivering in a relationship makes asking for referrals easy, and how to create a sustainable system that keeps you motivated and energized to build new relationships every day.
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to grow their book of business, their relationships, and their career?
- You have to behave in a way that sends a message to the people you want to work with and for, that the relationship matters so much to you that you behave like they are your client already.
- In all business development relationship conversations, people are asking the same basic questions. “Do I like you?”, “Can you help me?”, and “Can I trust you?”. When you act like you have the business before you already do and behave as you care about them, they can answer those questions with a yes.
- Every business development conversation starts with curiosity. When you’re curious you can discover the gaps in their world and find a way to add value to them. People like us when we help them and make their world better.
- What can you do to show up in your client’s and prospect’s world and help them feel like they matter to you? Especially one week or one month after you have that initial conversation.
- You have to believe in the process and put systems and triggers in place to create that and turn follow-up into a routine.
- The big moment is not the pitch, it’s after they leave and you have the opportunity to behave in a way that shows them that they matter to you. It’s not about making money right now, it’s the fact that if you lean in and add value and make their lives better, they can’t help but trust you and appreciate that.
- Once you have the process in place you have to be disciplined about it. Build your process around follow-up into your calendar and don’t leave it in your inbox.
- You have to schedule the things in your life that matter most. Block that time and protect it. If you want to stay top of mind with your prospects you have to stay connected, stay curious, and stay in their world.
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How can busy professionals create and close the meaty business that we all want?
- Be relational, not transactional. When we stay relational we can do powerful things. A client relationship is like a marriage, you have to show up every day and continue to add value to their world or they will go somewhere else.
- Consistently over-deliver and add tremendous value to your client’s and prospect’s lives. If you pour into the people that matter to you, it creates a platform where if you ask for a referral or a favour, they are happy to do it for you.
- Throwing in little extras around the services you provide have a disproportionate impact on your relationship.
- Getting into someone’s head and heart is how you stand out. Most people are thinking that way or doing the things that connect that way, and if you do it consistently over time and from an authentic place, your prospect can’t help but like and trust you.
- Oftentimes, the things that don’t cost money can have the most value of all.
- Don’t aim to close the deal. Instead, build a vibrant ecosystem of relationships. When you do that you naturally generate opportunities for your pipeline over time.
- You need enough in your pipeline to avoid desperation. Prospecting is like dating, you need to develop a relationship with the person before you propose to get married.
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How do we deepen our relationships, but also meet the right new people and handle the first couple of weeks?
- One of the easiest ways to meet new people is to over deliver to your current clients so that they want to help you and are happy to make introductions.
- Know the difference between referrals and introductions. Asking for a high level of specificity in the ask is crucial to getting new relationships into play. When you over deliver in a relationship, they know that it would be a clear win for the other person and they’ll feel safe vouching for you.
- When we are building new relationships, any way we can create opportunities that benefit both parties can be powerful foundations for growth.
- No matter how you go about meeting new people, the common thread is always leading with value. Molly speaks on stage 80 to 100 days out of the year, and before every engagement she does a pre-call to get into the head and the heart of the audience. Before she even steps on stage, Molly has over delivered on the front end, well before she asked for something in return.
- The people that win business listen first and have the courage to go off script. This is how you can become an authentic chameleon, take what you heard, and deliver what matters most to the other person.
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to stay consistent, focusing on the things that will help your future self stay happy, and hack their own habits to win?
- How is your no button? You need to manage your energy as much as your time. You have to be remarkably intentional about what matters most because if you don’t protect your time and your calendar, the world will decide where you put your energy.
- 40% of the reason why people don’t achieve their quarterly goals or weekly targets is a lack of visibility and intentionality. It’s a lack of alignment with the things that matter most and the behaviours that create the results that you want.
- If you protect your time and commit to business development, block off the following time period to reward yourself with something that gives you energy. If you don’t schedule it, you’ll fall back into the inbox and miss the positive feedback that keeps you wanting to do it.
- The most sustainable way to stay motivated for business development is to remember your why. Keep your purpose front and center.
- Look at your life through the lens of energy and build in times in your life to recover and re-energize. Step outside, take a walk, do an act of kindness, meditate, or say a prayer. Reward yourself and remind yourself why you do it.
- Identify the things in your life that are the most important and then put those onto your calendar first. Everything else should be added around those things.
- Molly has her purpose statement (To inspire, lead, and connect with courage and optimism) all over her house and office as a way to remind her what’s important. It’s how Molly realigns with what she is chasing after a tough day. If you don’t know what you’re chasing, that’s what you need to figure out first.
- Your purpose statement is what gives you the clarity to say no to the things that don’t align with what matters most.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Molly Fletcher.
- Consistently over delivering is key to building high value relationships. Many professionals have to renew their work and that means convincing people that you are worth continuing to work with.
- We tend to over value the fact that a gift was made versus the actual value of the gift itself. Multiple smaller touches and value adds will have a greater impact on a relationship than a single larger gesture.
- Little extras, known as positive reinforcers, give the feeling of deep appreciation for working with you and is a powerful concept to developing your relationships.
- Is there some kind of way that you can summarize your results in a way that they could share with their boss? Is there a way to get things done a little earlier or with a little extra thrown in? Can you invest in their team or add a little extra relational value? Are there things you can do that can build their business that is outside of the scope of what you were hired for like referring a new client?
- Small extra value-adds prevent you from being commoditized and gives you a goodwill buffer when things don’t go your way.
- Make referral requests very specific once you have over delivered in your existing relationship. You only do it with the people who it makes sense to ask, be clear about exactly what you want, and then assure them that you will deeply invest in the new relationship as well. Ask for referrals when it’s a win for everybody involved.
- It’s crucial to have a reward mechanism associated directly with business development activities. Many business development activities have no immediate payoff, and this can lead to feeling less motivated to put in the work, despite business development being one of the most important things you can do for the long-term success of your business.
- You have to build your own reward mechanism that rewards your effort and creates a positive feedback loop. Batch your business development tasks and then schedule a rewarding activity right afterwards. It’s during that following reward that you should reflect on the fact that you did a hard thing that your future self will appreciate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Molly Fletcher.
- Consistently over delivering is key to building high value relationships. Many professionals have to renew their work and that means convincing people that you are worth continuing to work with.
- We tend to over value the fact that a gift was made versus the actual value of the gift itself. Multiple smaller touches and value adds will have a greater impact on a relationship than a single larger gesture.
- Little extras, known as positive reinforcers, give the feeling of deep appreciation for working with you and is a powerful concept to developing your relationships.
- Is there some kind of way that you can summarize your results in a way that they could share with their boss? Is there a way to get things done a little earlier or with a little extra thrown in? Can you invest in their team or add a little extra relational value? Are there things you can do that can build their business that is outside of the scope of what you were hired for like referring a new client?
- Small extra value-adds prevent you from being commoditized and gives you a goodwill buffer when things don’t go your way.
- Make referral requests very specific once you have over delivered in your existing relationship. You only do it with the people who it makes sense to ask, be clear about exactly what you want, and then assure them that you will deeply invest in the new relationship as well. Ask for referrals when it’s a win for everybody involved.
- It’s crucial to have a reward mechanism associated directly with business development activities. Many business development activities have no immediate payoff, and this can lead to feeling less motivated to put in the work, despite business development being one of the most important things you can do for the long-term success of your business.
- You have to build your own reward mechanism that rewards your effort and creates a positive feedback loop. Batch your business development tasks and then schedule a rewarding activity right afterwards. It’s during that following reward that you should reflect on the fact that you did a hard thing that your future self will appreciate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to stay consistent, focusing on the things that will help your future self stay happy, and hack their own habits to win?
- How is your no button? You need to manage your energy as much as your time. You have to be remarkably intentional about what matters most because if you don’t protect your time and your calendar, the world will decide where you put your energy.
- 40% of the reason why people don’t achieve their quarterly goals or weekly targets is a lack of visibility and intentionality. It’s a lack of alignment with the things that matter most and the behaviours that create the results that you want.
- If you protect your time and commit to business development, block off the following time period to reward yourself with something that gives you energy. If you don’t schedule it, you’ll fall back into the inbox and miss the positive feedback that keeps you wanting to do it.
- The most sustainable way to stay motivated for business development is to remember your why. Keep your purpose front and center.
- Look at your life through the lens of energy and build in times in your life to recover and re-energize. Step outside, take a walk, do an act of kindness, meditate, or say a prayer. Reward yourself and remind yourself why you do it.
- Identify the things in your life that are the most important and then put those onto your calendar first. Everything else should be added around those things.
- Molly has her purpose statement (To inspire, lead, and connect with courage and optimism) all over her house and office as a way to remind her what’s important. It’s how Molly realigns with what she is chasing after a tough day. If you don’t know what you’re chasing, that’s what you need to figure out first.
- Your purpose statement is what gives you the clarity to say no to the things that don’t align with what matters most.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How do we deepen our relationships, but also meet the right new people and handle the first couple of weeks?
- One of the easiest ways to meet new people is to over deliver to your current clients so that they want to help you and are happy to make introductions.
- Know the difference between referrals and introductions. Asking for a high level of specificity in the ask is crucial to getting new relationships into play. When you over deliver in a relationship, they know that it would be a clear win for the other person and they’ll feel safe vouching for you.
- When we are building new relationships, any way we can create opportunities that benefit both parties can be powerful foundations for growth.
- No matter how you go about meeting new people, the common thread is always leading with value. Molly speaks on stage 80 to 100 days out of the year, and before every engagement she does a pre-call to get into the head and the heart of the audience. Before she even steps on stage, Molly has over delivered on the front end, well before she asked for something in return.
- The people that win business listen first and have the courage to go off script. This is how you can become an authentic chameleon, take what you heard, and deliver what matters most to the other person.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How can busy professionals create and close the meaty business that we all want?
- Be relational, not transactional. When we stay relational we can do powerful things. A client relationship is like a marriage, you have to show up every day and continue to add value to their world or they will go somewhere else.
- Consistently over-deliver and add tremendous value to your client’s and prospect’s lives. If you pour into the people that matter to you, it creates a platform where if you ask for a referral or a favour, they are happy to do it for you.
- Throwing in little extras around the services you provide have a disproportionate impact on your relationship.
- Getting into someone’s head and heart is how you stand out. Most people are thinking that way or doing the things that connect that way, and if you do it consistently over time and from an authentic place, your prospect can’t help but like and trust you.
- Oftentimes, the things that don’t cost money can have the most value of all.
- Don’t aim to close the deal. Instead, build a vibrant ecosystem of relationships. When you do that you naturally generate opportunities for your pipeline over time.
- You need enough in your pipeline to avoid desperation. Prospecting is like dating, you need to develop a relationship with the person before you propose to get married.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to grow their book of business, their relationships, and their career?
- You have to behave in a way that sends a message to the people you want to work with and for, that the relationship matters so much to you that you behave like they are your client already.
- In all business development relationship conversations, people are asking the same basic questions. “Do I like you?”, “Can you help me?”, and “Can I trust you?”. When you act like you have the business before you already do and behave as you care about them, they can answer those questions with a yes.
- Every business development conversation starts with curiosity. When you’re curious you can discover the gaps in their world and find a way to add value to them. People like us when we help them and make their world better.
- What can you do to show up in your client’s and prospect’s world and help them feel like they matter to you? Especially one week or one month after you have that initial conversation.
- You have to believe in the process and put systems and triggers in place to create that and turn follow-up into a routine.
- The big moment is not the pitch, it’s after they leave and you have the opportunity to behave in a way that shows them that they matter to you. It’s not about making money right now, it’s the fact that if you lean in and add value and make their lives better, they can’t help but trust you and appreciate that.
- Once you have the process in place you have to be disciplined about it. Build your process around follow-up into your calendar and don’t leave it in your inbox.
- You have to schedule the things in your life that matter most. Block that time and protect it. If you want to stay top of mind with your prospects you have to stay connected, stay curious, and stay in their world.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER
Ron Friedman shares the principles of Decoding Greatness and reveals why the stories we are told about success are wrong. Learn how to reverse engineer greatness in any field by becoming a collector, how to create a scoreboard that leads to success, and a simple technique for hacking your habits and guaranteeing that you improve your skills over time.
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How can the audience get better at growing their book of business, their relationships, and their career?
- The big idea behind Decoding Greatness is that the stories we were told about success were wrong. We were told that either people are born with special talents or that greatness comes from years of practice. The third story that most people don’t know is that those at the top of a profession have most often mastered the skill of reverse engineering.
- Reverse engineering is simply taking the best examples within your field and working backward to see how it was achieved and what can be applied to what you’re working on. Methods vary depending on the field you are in.
- Regardless of what field you are in, having the reverse engineering mindset of looking to decode how something is created is the key to getting better.
- Become a collector. Most of the great people in the world started off as collectors before they were creators. Finding greatness requires seeing greatness in others. If you see something that you want to achieve, collect examples of those things and you will begin to identify the patterns that are different from other things. Finding the differences is the first step to figuring out what makes someone or something unique.
- Asking great questions is another method of discovering the differences when you have the opportunity to speak to your model directly. A mindset of naive curiosity is one of the fastest ways to allow people to open up when they are with you.
- Contrast this reverse engineering method with the idea of practice makes perfect. Improvement through isolation is a failing strategy. You can’t practice an idea you’ve never considered. The real path to greatness is having a systematic approach to learning from the best and applying it to your work.
- Simply copying someone else’s formula will probably not work for you. Their value proposition may not apply to your industry or the audience expectations may have shifted. The key is to evolve what you are modeling to make it unique to you and novel to the people viewing it.
- One way of doing that is by combining two or three examples of greatness and taking the elements that resonate with you to create the best possible version.
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How can we create and close more big opportunities and business?
- We know from the research that anything you want to improve on you need to keep score of. In other words, you need to track your numbers.
- Simply relying on closed deals is not enough. There are way more metrics that you can track that are better indicators of progressive improvement. You have to identify the metrics that indicate you are doing a good job in your field and track them over time.
- When you track those numbers the metrics become motivating. You tend to be more mindful of what you decide to do and it exposes wasteful effort.
- We are sensitive to numbers evolutionarily speaking. Numbers give us crucial information that we need to succeed in many different areas of life.
- Only tracking the lagging indicators like deals closed is only half the picture and they aren’t directly in your control. You need to track leading indicators that are in your control as well.
- Your scoreboard needs a balance between short-term and long-term goals. This applies to the overall success of your career, but extends into your personal life and relationships as well. We want to avoid over-optimization of a single metric to the detriment of everything else. Metrics can be a mix of both quantity and quality.
- In terms of metrics that you should focus on, you need to work backward from your target audience. Not all prospects are created equal. We would all be wiser to think about the one person that you want to work with the most and how to replicate them.
- Subjective metrics can still be beneficial, but even within those metrics there are things to drill down on to identify what makes the metric important. In the case of meaningful conversations, did both parties speak equally? Was there self-disclosure from both sides? When you compare the ordinary to the extraordinary you will be able to identify some objective metrics that you can aim for that will enable you to be more successful.
Mo asks Ron Friedman: What can we do to deepen our relationships using all of the knowledge in Decoding Greatness?
- Use your relationships as test markets. Test markets are often used by successful entrepreneurs to fine-tune their ideas before they go to market. This enables you to take a lot more risk and test more things before going big.
- When it comes to deepening your relationships with potential clients, ask for advice on a potential approach you’ve been considering. Avoid asking for feedback because requesting advice primes them to think about the potential ways you could improve, and you get great feedback at the same time.
- People love to feel like they can contribute and their opinion is valued. Ask for advice.
- In relationships, people want to be valued, respected, and appreciated, and what better way to honor someone than asking for their input on something that you can improve.
- Positioning yourself as better than your clients will work up to a point, but if you want to deepen your relationship and get them invested in your success, asking for advice is the way to do that.
- There is also the advantage of getting the perspective of someone that you can’t see on your own specifically because of your level of expertise. Advice can open up your mind to ideas that you haven’t considered and can lead the other person to suggest people that would be interested in that offering.
- Start a collection of people who communicate well and deepen relationships effectively. We all have people in our lives that we can emulate and create a collection that will allow you to decode and discover meaningful patterns.
- When communicating, start with what’s important to the other person and not what’s important to you. If you have established a scoreboard, you can also create a checklist to measure your communications against.
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How do we hack our own habits to be successful?
- When most of us think about improving our skills we tend to think about a practice that’s narrowly defined in the present. If we look at those who are at the top of their field, their definition includes the past, present, and future.
- Looking to past experiences by keeping a five-year journal is how you get an extra perspective. Reviewing our previous day alongside that same day one year before will give you additional insights, and the five-year journal automates the practice.
- Additional benefits of the journal are that it improves your memory and helps you recognize how often your fears are overblown in the moment, and this gives you more confidence to handle challenges going forward.
- Research shows that if all you do is write down what you learned today, your performance will improve by up to 25% on the following try.
- Reflective practice is a method that will generate improvement over time.
- Practicing in the future is exemplified by imagery. Athletes imagine their performance in advance using all five senses. Experts that use this technique improve faster and extend to all professions.
- One of the best uses of imagery is imagining that you stumble and how you recover. This teaches you that whatever comes up you can get better. This technique helps you front-load decisions and allows you to simply execute in the moment.
- If you write down what can go wrong in a meeting and how you would handle it, your confidence will go through the roof and it will allow you to be more present in the conversation.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Friedman.
- Decoding is extremely powerful. Mo has had great success taking models that worked for another company and decoding it and then applying it in his own way, and has noticed that without a concrete vision or model to emulate, the odds of success go way down.
- If you want to decode greatness, start by becoming a collector. Having only one model can be restrictive. Combining the elements that work across models can create a synthesis of the best examples and lead to a better end result.
- Track your behaviors because there is no way to be successful and feel great about it without tracking something of your own.
- We love numbers and are intrinsically drawn to them as they indicate success in life at a very fundamental level.
- If all you are looking at is lagging indicators, you won’t feel motivated in the short-term and it can lead to feeling defeated. We need to pull the metrics back to things that we can control instead of focusing on the outcome. What can you do today to be just a little bit better at what you do?
- The cumulative effect of your leading indicators is long-term success. If you don’t track the metrics that matter most you can end up making missteps for months without even realizing it.
- When it comes to business development, think about your performance all the time. One of the benefits of the pandemic is the ability to record your Zoom calls with potential clients and review the conversation. You can look at the number of questions you asked, when the other person leaned in or checked out, and more. Practice in the past and review your past performance on a regular basis.
- Practice in the present and write down what you’ve accomplished today. Having a meeting with yourself to review your progress is incredibly valuable.
- Practice in the future. Focus on the imagery of the elements that are important to business development meetings. Anticipate what might happen, what questions you might receive, and what might go wrong and this will give you the confidence to deliver effectively.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Friedman.
- Decoding is extremely powerful. Mo has had great success taking models that worked for another company and decoding it and then applying it in his own way, and has noticed that without a concrete vision or model to emulate, the odds of success go way down.
- If you want to decode greatness, start by becoming a collector. Having only one model can be restrictive. Combining the elements that work across models can create a synthesis of the best examples and lead to a better end result.
- Track your behaviors because there is no way to be successful and feel great about it without tracking something of your own.
- We love numbers and are intrinsically drawn to them as they indicate success in life at a very fundamental level.
- If all you are looking at is lagging indicators, you won’t feel motivated in the short-term and it can lead to feeling defeated. We need to pull the metrics back to things that we can control instead of focusing on the outcome. What can you do today to be just a little bit better at what you do?
- The cumulative effect of your leading indicators is long-term success. If you don’t track the metrics that matter most you can end up making missteps for months without even realizing it.
- When it comes to business development, think about your performance all the time. One of the benefits of the pandemic is the ability to record your Zoom calls with potential clients and review the conversation. You can look at the number of questions you asked, when the other person leaned in or checked out, and more. Practice in the past and review your past performance on a regular basis.
- Practice in the present and write down what you’ve accomplished today. Having a meeting with yourself to review your progress is incredibly valuable.
- Practice in the future. Focus on the imagery of the elements that are important to business development meetings. Anticipate what might happen, what questions you might receive, and what might go wrong and this will give you the confidence to deliver effectively.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How do we hack our own habits to be successful?
- When most of us think about improving our skills we tend to think about a practice that’s narrowly defined in the present. If we look at those who are at the top of their field, their definition includes the past, present, and future.
- Looking to past experiences by keeping a five-year journal is how you get an extra perspective. Reviewing our previous day alongside that same day one year before will give you additional insights, and the five-year journal automates the practice.
- Additional benefits of the journal are that it improves your memory and helps you recognize how often your fears are overblown in the moment, and this gives you more confidence to handle challenges going forward.
- Research shows that if all you do is write down what you learned today, your performance will improve by up to 25% on the following try.
- Reflective practice is a method that will generate improvement over time.
- Practicing in the future is exemplified by imagery. Athletes imagine their performance in advance using all five senses. Experts that use this technique improve faster and extend to all professions.
- One of the best uses of imagery is imagining that you stumble and how you recover. This teaches you that whatever comes up you can get better. This technique helps you front-load decisions and allows you to simply execute in the moment.
- If you write down what can go wrong in a meeting and how you would handle it, your confidence will go through the roof and it will allow you to be more present in the conversation.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Mo asks Ron Friedman: What can we do to deepen our relationships using all of the knowledge in Decoding Greatness?
- Use your relationships as test markets. Test markets are often used by successful entrepreneurs to fine-tune their ideas before they go to market. This enables you to take a lot more risk and test more things before going big.
- When it comes to deepening your relationships with potential clients, ask for advice on a potential approach you’ve been considering. Avoid asking for feedback because requesting advice primes them to think about the potential ways you could improve, and you get great feedback at the same time.
- People love to feel like they can contribute and their opinion is valued. Ask for advice.
- In relationships, people want to be valued, respected, and appreciated, and what better way to honor someone than asking for their input on something that you can improve.
- Positioning yourself as better than your clients will work up to a point, but if you want to deepen your relationship and get them invested in your success, asking for advice is the way to do that.
- There is also the advantage of getting the perspective of someone that you can’t see on your own specifically because of your level of expertise. Advice can open up your mind to ideas that you haven’t considered and can lead the other person to suggest people that would be interested in that offering.
- Start a collection of people who communicate well and deepen relationships effectively. We all have people in our lives that we can emulate and create a collection that will allow you to decode and discover meaningful patterns.
- When communicating, start with what’s important to the other person and not what’s important to you. If you have established a scoreboard, you can also create a checklist to measure your communications against.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How can we create and close more big opportunities and business?
- We know from the research that anything you want to improve on you need to keep score of. In other words, you need to track your numbers.
- Simply relying on closed deals is not enough. There are way more metrics that you can track that are better indicators of progressive improvement. You have to identify the metrics that indicate you are doing a good job in your field and track them over time.
- When you track those numbers the metrics become motivating. You tend to be more mindful of what you decide to do and it exposes wasteful effort.
- We are sensitive to numbers evolutionarily speaking. Numbers give us crucial information that we need to succeed in many different areas of life.
- Only tracking the lagging indicators like deals closed is only half the picture and they aren’t directly in your control. You need to track leading indicators that are in your control as well.
- Your scoreboard needs a balance between short-term and long-term goals. This applies to the overall success of your career, but extends into your personal life and relationships as well. We want to avoid over-optimization of a single metric to the detriment of everything else. Metrics can be a mix of both quantity and quality.
- In terms of metrics that you should focus on, you need to work backward from your target audience. Not all prospects are created equal. We would all be wiser to think about the one person that you want to work with the most and how to replicate them.
- Subjective metrics can still be beneficial, but even within those metrics there are things to drill down on to identify what makes the metric important. In the case of meaningful conversations, did both parties speak equally? Was there self-disclosure from both sides? When you compare the ordinary to the extraordinary you will be able to identify some objective metrics that you can aim for that will enable you to be more successful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Mo asks Ron Friedman: How can the audience get better at growing their book of business, their relationships, and their career?
- The big idea behind Decoding Greatness is that the stories we were told about success were wrong. We were told that either people are born with special talents or that greatness comes from years of practice. The third story that most people don’t know is that those at the top of a profession have most often mastered the skill of reverse engineering.
- Reverse engineering is simply taking the best examples within your field and working backward to see how it was achieved and what can be applied to what you’re working on. Methods vary depending on the field you are in.
- Regardless of what field you are in, having the reverse engineering mindset of looking to decode how something is created is the key to getting better.
- Become a collector. Most of the great people in the world started off as collectors before they were creators. Finding greatness requires seeing greatness in others. If you see something that you want to achieve, collect examples of those things and you will begin to identify the patterns that are different from other things. Finding the differences is the first step to figuring out what makes someone or something unique.
- Asking great questions is another method of discovering the differences when you have the opportunity to speak to your model directly. A mindset of naive curiosity is one of the fastest ways to allow people to open up when they are with you.
- Contrast this reverse engineering method with the idea of practice makes perfect. Improvement through isolation is a failing strategy. You can’t practice an idea you’ve never considered. The real path to greatness is having a systematic approach to learning from the best and applying it to your work.
- Simply copying someone else’s formula will probably not work for you. Their value proposition may not apply to your industry or the audience expectations may have shifted. The key is to evolve what you are modeling to make it unique to you and novel to the people viewing it.
- One way of doing that is by combining two or three examples of greatness and taking the elements that resonate with you to create the best possible version.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
decodinggreatnessbook.com
ronfriedmanphd.com
Vanessa Van Edwards shares the science of charisma and connection and talks about how to create deeper and more authentic relationships. Learn why the Golden Rule is not the best way to work with prospects and what you should be doing instead, how to understand and use the three levels of intimacy, and the one exercise you need to identify your most important business development efforts.
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: What’s your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, deepen their relationships, and enhance their career?
- Vanessa likes to joke that she’s a recovering awkward person. She used to believe that charisma was something you were born with, but the truth is that charisma can be taught.
- The research indicates that most charismatic people have honed their charisma and learned very specific interpersonal skills that help them create relationships. You don’t have to fake it until you make it to be charismatic.
- The most practical way to develop your own charisma
- Highly charismatic ranked off the charts compared to their peers in two very specific traits: warmth and competence. They need to be combined to be effective. Many professionals put too much emphasis on competence, which can actually make you intimidating, cold, or hard to talk to. Warmth alone can make you a pushover and encourage people to take advantage of you.
- The number thing to consider is where you fall on the balance between warmth and confidence. Over the next few weeks and months, pay attention to where you fall and if you need more of one trait or the other, that is your first step towards becoming more charismatic.
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: What can people do to create more opportunities and build their book of business?
- Vanessa was raised on the Golden Rule but that rule actually started getting her in trouble. When she switched over to the Platinum Rule “Treat others as they would like to be treated” the game changed completely.
- Of the big five personality traits, Openness and Conscientiousness are the two biggest blocks to closing more deals and bonding with clients.
- When you’re high in Openness you like new ideas and new things. When you’re low in Openness you like things the way they are and prefer habit and routine. The thing to keep in mind in pitching situations, if you use the Golden Rule and you’re high in Openness and speaking to a prospect that is low in Openness, you’re going to completely scare them away.
- An easy way to figure out what sort of person you’re dealing with, ask them out to lunch. Whether they try something new or prefer their tried and true favorite will give you a hint.
- The Openness of your prospect should dictate your pitch. For a low Openness person, minimize the change and emphasize what isn’t changing and the proof.
- Conscientiousness has to do with how someone approaches details. Low Conscientiousness people are more about big ideas whereas high Conscientiousness people feel more secure knowing all the details.
- Openness is important for pitching, Conscientiousness is for planning.
- Honoring someone’s personality is one of the deepest ways we can respect our fellow human beings.
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: How can people deepen their relationships?
- Vanessa had a lot of surface relationships in her life but she found some research that completely changed the way she interacts with people.
- There are three different levels of intimacy in a relationship. The first level is called general traits. At this stage, we are just trying to understand their basic personality traits. Level two is personal concerns. This level involves additional questions revolving around a person’s origin and emotions. The third level is called self-narrative and for many people, they don’t have any relationships at this stage.
- The self-narrative is the story someone tells themselves about themselves. Unlocking someone’s self-narrative is the most critical part of understanding someone’s motivations and why they act the way they do.
- If you want to deepen your relationship you have to structure your interactions around these levels of intimacy.
- If you’re curious about the third level, you have to start by identifying your own self-narrative. Do you see yourself as a martyr or a hero? Unlucky or lucky?
- A powerful yet risky question to ask if you want to dive deeper into a level 3 relationship is “So what’s your story?” If you’re going to ask it, make sure that you have a good answer yourself.
- Radical transparency is key. If you want to get to know someone, tell them that’s what you want to do and get them to buy in first.
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: How can we hack our habits and stay focused on deepening our long-term relationships?
- How we manage our people and our work is just as important as how we implement the work.
- Vanessa’s company uses an exercise called Start, Stop, Continue. You should always be evaluating what you are starting, stopping, and continuing. Every month Vanessa’s team has an opportunity to list new ideas for things that can move the needle, identifying which tasks are working well, and perhaps most importantly, which activities need to make way for something else.
- Having a not-to-do list is crucial. You need to be able to say no to anything that is hampering your productivity or your success.
- Personally, this exercise should be done once a month. As a team, once per quarter and before jumping into it you should explain what the purpose of the exercise is. Give them a chance to think about it and then set aside two to three hours to go over everything.
- If you don’t think you’ll have enough time to commit to this, take the social media apps off your phone and take your time back.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Vanessa Van Edwards.
- Charisma can be learned, just like business development skills. Just like anything complex, it is both learned and earned.
- One of the deciding factors in Mo’s father’s restaurant when he was growing up was his ability to tell a good story, and that skill rubbed off. People weren’t coming in for the prices since it is impossible to compete with the farmers, but because there was a story and connection available.
- The first step to learning something is the awareness that you can learn, and then putting yourself on the path to learn it.
- For the people that are high in Openness, you should emphasize the high level concept and the newness of your pitch. For people who are more systems and detail focused, the key thing to emphasize is the lack of change and how your pitch will streamline what they are already doing.
- In the Herrmann Brain Dominance model, the other opposing pair is Facts vs. Feelings. For someone who is focused on the facts you should emphasize that you are high value and worth the price you charge. It’s about being efficient with their time hitting the most important points. For Feelings, you want to emphasize trust and the relationship with the prospect.
- Good rainmakers shift their communication to emphasize what the other side finds important. Great rainmakers emphasize a little bit on all four quadrants and wait for the prospect to lean in on something in particular.
- If we are going to be efficient and effective, we are by nature, always climbing and finding better uses for our time. You should always be trying to level up what you are working on, and by definition, that means eliminating the lower value activities.
- The world has a status quo bias, so we need a mechanism for reevaluating things you should take off your plate and things you should begin doing. Commit some time each month to do the Start, Stop, Continue exercise that Vanessa recommended in the previous episode.
- If you don’t have a system for that right now, that should be your first step. If you don’t have time for this exercise, that’s an indication that you definitely need it. Eliminating even small tasks can result in hundreds of hours each year to start doing new things which could change the game for your business development efforts.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Vanessa Van Edwards.
- Charisma can be learned, just like business development skills. Just like anything complex, it is both learned and earned.
- One of the deciding factors in Mo’s father’s restaurant when he was growing up was his ability to tell a good story, and that skill rubbed off. People weren’t coming in for the prices since it is impossible to compete with the farmers, but because there was a story and connection available.
- The first step to learning something is the awareness that you can learn, and then putting yourself on the path to learn it.
- For the people that are high in Openness, you should emphasize the high level concept and the newness of your pitch. For people who are more systems and detail focused, the key thing to emphasize is the lack of change and how your pitch will streamline what they are already doing.
- In the Herrmann Brain Dominance model, the other opposing pair is Facts vs. Feelings. For someone who is focused on the facts you should emphasize that you are high value and worth the price you charge. It’s about being efficient with their time hitting the most important points. For Feelings, you want to emphasize trust and the relationship with the prospect.
- Good rainmakers shift their communication to emphasize what the other side finds important. Great rainmakers emphasize a little bit on all four quadrants and wait for the prospect to lean in on something in particular.
- If we are going to be efficient and effective, we are by nature, always climbing and finding better uses for our time. You should always be trying to level up what you are working on, and by definition, that means eliminating the lower value activities.
- The world has a status quo bias, so we need a mechanism for reevaluating things you should take off your plate and things you should begin doing. Commit some time each month to do the Start, Stop, Continue exercise that Vanessa recommended in the previous episode.
- If you don’t have a system for that right now, that should be your first step. If you don’t have time for this exercise, that’s an indication that you definitely need it. Eliminating even small tasks can result in hundreds of hours each year to start doing new things which could change the game for your business development efforts.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: How can we hack our habits and stay focused on deepening our long-term relationships?
- How we manage our people and our work is just as important as how we implement the work.
- Vanessa’s company uses an exercise called Start, Stop, Continue. You should always be evaluating what you are starting, stopping, and continuing. Every month Vanessa’s team has an opportunity to list new ideas for things that can move the needle, identifying which tasks are working well, and perhaps most importantly, which activities need to make way for something else.
- Having a not-to-do list is crucial. You need to be able to say no to anything that is hampering your productivity or your success.
- Personally, this exercise should be done once a month. As a team, once per quarter and before jumping into it you should explain what the purpose of the exercise is. Give them a chance to think about it and then set aside two to three hours to go over everything.
- If you don’t think you’ll have enough time to commit to this, take the social media apps off your phone and take your time back.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: How can people deepen their relationships?
- Vanessa had a lot of surface relationships in her life but she found some research that completely changed the way she interacts with people.
- There are three different levels of intimacy in a relationship. The first level is called general traits. At this stage, we are just trying to understand their basic personality traits. Level two is personal concerns. This level involves additional questions revolving around a person’s origin and emotions. The third level is called self-narrative and for many people, they don’t have any relationships at this stage.
- The self-narrative is the story someone tells themselves about themselves. Unlocking someone’s self-narrative is the most critical part of understanding someone’s motivations and why they act the way they do.
- If you want to deepen your relationship you have to structure your interactions around these levels of intimacy.
- If you’re curious about the third level, you have to start by identifying your own self-narrative. Do you see yourself as a martyr or a hero? Unlucky or lucky?
- A powerful yet risky question to ask if you want to dive deeper into a level 3 relationship is “So what’s your story?” If you’re going to ask it, make sure that you have a good answer yourself.
- Radical transparency is key. If you want to get to know someone, tell them that’s what you want to do and get them to buy in first.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: What can people do to create more opportunities and build their book of business?
- Vanessa was raised on the Golden Rule but that rule actually started getting her in trouble. When she switched over to the Platinum Rule “Treat others as they would like to be treated” the game changed completely.
- Of the big five personality traits, Openness and Conscientiousness are the two biggest blocks to closing more deals and bonding with clients.
- When you’re high in Openness you like new ideas and new things. When you’re low in Openness you like things the way they are and prefer habit and routine. The thing to keep in mind in pitching situations, if you use the Golden Rule and you’re high in Openness and speaking to a prospect that is low in Openness, you’re going to completely scare them away.
- An easy way to figure out what sort of person you’re dealing with, ask them out to lunch. Whether they try something new or prefer their tried and true favorite will give you a hint.
- The Openness of your prospect should dictate your pitch. For a low Openness person, minimize the change and emphasize what isn’t changing and the proof.
- Conscientiousness has to do with how someone approaches details. Low Conscientiousness people are more about big ideas whereas high Conscientiousness people feel more secure knowing all the details.
- Openness is important for pitching, Conscientiousness is for planning.
- Honoring someone’s personality is one of the deepest ways we can respect our fellow human beings.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Mo asks Vanessa Van Edwards: What’s your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, deepen their relationships, and enhance their career?
- Vanessa likes to joke that she’s a recovering awkward person. She used to believe that charisma was something you were born with, but the truth is that charisma can be taught.
- The research indicates that most charismatic people have honed their charisma and learned very specific interpersonal skills that help them create relationships. You don’t have to fake it until you make it to be charismatic.
- The most practical way to develop your own charisma
- Highly charismatic ranked off the charts compared to their peers in two very specific traits: warmth and competence. They need to be combined to be effective. Many professionals put too much emphasis on competence, which can actually make you intimidating, cold, or hard to talk to. Warmth alone can make you a pushover and encourage people to take advantage of you.
- The number thing to consider is where you fall on the balance between warmth and confidence. Over the next few weeks and months, pay attention to where you fall and if you need more of one trait or the other, that is your first step towards becoming more charismatic.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
scienceofpeople.com/pschool
scienceofpeople.com/captivate
Glen Jackson shares his extensive expertise and experience in relationship building and business development. Learn why doing the unexpected can create outsized results when it comes to your relationships with other people, how to sustainably and genuinely build trust with key clients and prospects, and why relationship building is the exact opposite of networking.
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your big idea on how we can grow our book of business and enhance our career?
- Glen’s big idea is the acronym DTU (Do The Unexpected) which is the exact opposite of an IOU. DTU’s are about motivation instead of obligation and when done sincerely and genuinely can be incredibly powerful in creating relationships.
- They come in all shapes and sizes. A smaller DTU could be writing a handwritten note to someone you interacted with recently. Everyone wants to feel noteworthy, and writing a note is a great example of how to make that happen.
- When you refresh others, you refresh yourself. Glen tells the story of how he got caught in the rain and was rescued by a cab driver that went out of his way to help Glen, and how Glen paid the cab driver back.
- One of the easiest ways to show that you care is listening well. In a conversation with someone, you may discover a topic that you can help them learn more about, and pointing them in the right direction is a simple way to do that.
- The best way to create influence with individuals is through empathy and showing that you care. Always tie the DTU to something meaningful to the other person because personalization is where the meaning is going to be.
- Everything you do is a brand ambassador. Everything you do is seen and everything you say is heard by someone.
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your best advice for an expert that wants to create and close more opportunities?
- The most important five-letter word in business is trust. Trust is the glue of life. Trust resides on the inside and that makes it extremely powerful.
- Trust is a mix of character and competency. Your character is your credibility as a human being and your competency is your reliability as a professional. When you combine both the end result is trust.
- You can’t force trust. Influence is freely accepted, it’s never forcefully delivered.
- Trust is a peculiar resource. The more you have it and use it, the more you get. It reduces the time and cost of making decisions. When you use the trust you have and don’t abuse it, it snowballs and accumulates over time.
- Most experts want to start off by doing all the talking, but knowing when to actually say something is key to building trust in a relationship. You should be listening more than speaking and asking thoughtful questions. Look for points of connection between you and the other person.
- Glen looks for the moment when he can encapsulate the problem they’ve been talking about during the meeting and then relay it back to them to show that he’s understood what they are trying to solve. From there he offers a possible solution to their problem.
- As a trusted advisor, a lot of people want to know you understand the problem. Don’t rush into trying to offer a solution before that first step. You should be able to recap the problem with clarity, and then provide ideas for moving forward.
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your best advice for experts to deepen their relationships?
- Relationship building is a commitment to establishing and investing in relationships that genuinely matter to you. Many businesses are great at establishing the relationship but fall short on the investing part.
- Relationship building is the exact opposite of networking. Networking is a task and relationship building is a commitment. Building relationships is more about transformation than a transaction.
- We live and work in a relational economy. Be more interested than interesting. Cultivate curiosity in what other people are doing and that will help you invest more deeply in that relationship.
- Great leaders that are preeminent impress at a distance and impact up close.
- To show your interest in someone, you have to be intentional and disciplined about it. There are four types of relationship builders and each type has a different mindset. You can be an Investor, Connector, Personalizer, or Observer. Play to your strengths and invest in the way the other person would also appreciate it.
Mo asks Glen Jackson: How can we stay on top of relationship building when so much is vying for our attention every day?
- Have a fresh ice mindset. Glen tells the story of the owner of Home Depot who wanted to discover the secret behind the success of his best performing store. Treating every day as if you had just opened your doors is the mindset you need to succeed in business and relationships.
- Remind yourself what your values are as an organization and live them out every day. You can’t be perfect but you can aim high. Just like external client-facing relationships, you have to invest in the relationships within the team as well.
- Just calling someone who would be delighted in hearing from you can make a massive cumulative impact over time. Your voice is something that can’t be replicated by a text or an email.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Glen Jackson.
- Do the unexpected. Many business developers find themselves in a sea of sameness. From a positioning and marketing standpoint, everything tends to blend in and look the same. If you’re in that situation the more power you have as an individual human and the more important you are in the decision-making process.
- The good news about being in an industry that is commoditized is that you are the brand and the differentiator. You are the number one thing that separates you from the competition.
- You can interact with clients and prospects differently in ways that they aren’t expecting. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. The more commoditized the industry is, the more that human interaction matters.
- Trust is vital to relationships and it’s one of the few resources in the world where the more you have and use it, the more you gain. If you’re in a meeting and all you are doing is focusing on building trust it takes the pressure off, speeds up the decision making process, and you are more likely to be chosen the next time.
- When we focus on building trust first and foremost, the right thing happens for the client and the right thing happens for you. Trust results in more purchases, more referrals, and more word of mouth.
- Be more interested than interesting. It’s very rare that people are interested more in other people than in speaking about themselves, but tons of research backs up this approach.
- If you can keep the spotlight on the other person, likeability is formed while you’re asking them questions. If you keep sending it back to them, once the conversation does swing back to you they will be much more curious and interested in you. 80% of the focus should be on the other person.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Glen Jackson.
- Do the unexpected. Many business developers find themselves in a sea of sameness. From a positioning and marketing standpoint, everything tends to blend in and look the same. If you’re in that situation the more power you have as an individual human and the more important you are in the decision-making process.
- The good news about being in an industry that is commoditized is that you are the brand and the differentiator. You are the number one thing that separates you from the competition.
- You can interact with clients and prospects differently in ways that they aren’t expecting. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. The more commoditized the industry is, the more that human interaction matters.
- Trust is vital to relationships and it’s one of the few resources in the world where the more you have and use it, the more you gain. If you’re in a meeting and all you are doing is focusing on building trust it takes the pressure off, speeds up the decision making process, and you are more likely to be chosen the next time.
- When we focus on building trust first and foremost, the right thing happens for the client and the right thing happens for you. Trust results in more purchases, more referrals, and more word of mouth.
- Be more interested than interesting. It’s very rare that people are interested more in other people than in speaking about themselves, but tons of research backs up this approach.
- If you can keep the spotlight on the other person, likeability is formed while you’re asking them questions. If you keep sending it back to them, once the conversation does swing back to you they will be much more curious and interested in you. 80% of the focus should be on the other person.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Mo asks Glen Jackson: How can we stay on top of relationship building when so much is vying for our attention every day?
- Have a fresh ice mindset. Glen tells the story of the owner of Home Depot who wanted to discover the secret behind the success of his best performing store. Treating every day as if you had just opened your doors is the mindset you need to succeed in business and relationships.
- Remind yourself what your values are as an organization and live them out every day. You can’t be perfect but you can aim high. Just like external client-facing relationships, you have to invest in the relationships within the team as well.
- Just calling someone who would be delighted in hearing from you can make a massive cumulative impact over time. Your voice is something that can’t be replicated by a text or an email.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your best advice for experts to deepen their relationships?
- Relationship building is a commitment to establishing and investing in relationships that genuinely matter to you. Many businesses are great at establishing the relationship but fall short on the investing part.
- Relationship building is the exact opposite of networking. Networking is a task and relationship building is a commitment. Building relationships is more about transformation than a transaction.
- We live and work in a relational economy. Be more interested than interesting. Cultivate curiosity in what other people are doing and that will help you invest more deeply in that relationship.
- Great leaders that are preeminent impress at a distance and impact up close.
- To show your interest in someone, you have to be intentional and disciplined about it. There are four types of relationship builders and each type has a different mindset. You can be an Investor, Connector, Personalizer, or Observer. Play to your strengths and invest in the way the other person would also appreciate it.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your best advice for an expert that wants to create and close more opportunities?
- The most important five-letter word in business is trust. Trust is the glue of life. Trust resides on the inside and that makes it extremely powerful.
- Trust is a mix of character and competency. Your character is your credibility as a human being and your competency is your reliability as a professional. When you combine both the end result is trust.
- You can’t force trust. Influence is freely accepted, it’s never forcefully delivered.
- Trust is a peculiar resource. The more you have it and use it, the more you get. It reduces the time and cost of making decisions. When you use the trust you have and don’t abuse it, it snowballs and accumulates over time.
- Most experts want to start off by doing all the talking, but knowing when to actually say something is key to building trust in a relationship. You should be listening more than speaking and asking thoughtful questions. Look for points of connection between you and the other person.
- Glen looks for the moment when he can encapsulate the problem they’ve been talking about during the meeting and then relay it back to them to show that he’s understood what they are trying to solve. From there he offers a possible solution to their problem.
- As a trusted advisor, a lot of people want to know you understand the problem. Don’t rush into trying to offer a solution before that first step. You should be able to recap the problem with clarity, and then provide ideas for moving forward.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Mo asks Glen Jackson: What is your big idea on how we can grow our book of business and enhance our career?
- Glen’s big idea is the acronym DTU (Do The Unexpected) which is the exact opposite of an IOU. DTU’s are about motivation instead of obligation and when done sincerely and genuinely can be incredibly powerful in creating relationships.
- They come in all shapes and sizes. A smaller DTU could be writing a handwritten note to someone you interacted with recently. Everyone wants to feel noteworthy, and writing a note is a great example of how to make that happen.
- When you refresh others, you refresh yourself. Glen tells the story of how he got caught in the rain and was rescued by a cab driver that went out of his way to help Glen, and how Glen paid the cab driver back.
- One of the easiest ways to show that you care is listening well. In a conversation with someone, you may discover a topic that you can help them learn more about, and pointing them in the right direction is a simple way to do that.
- The best way to create influence with individuals is through empathy and showing that you care. Always tie the DTU to something meaningful to the other person because personalization is where the meaning is going to be.
- Everything you do is a brand ambassador. Everything you do is seen and everything you say is heard by someone.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
pathtopreeminence.com
Marissa King shares the science behind the power of your network to create exponential results for your book of business. Learn about the three main network types and the strengths and benefits of each so you can understand exactly how to deepen your relationships and create more opportunities as well as why asking for help is the secret weapon of expert network professionals.
Mo asks Marissa King: How can we grow our book of business and career through networking?
- Research has shown that ⅔ of professionals, even those whose businesses depend on relationships, are actively resistant to the idea of networking.
- Our relationships are something that we hold dear, so being intentional and strategic about them seems morally off-putting for many people.
- We know that networking is certainly important and one of the best ways to overcome your initial resistance to it is to think about what you can give in an interaction instead of what you can get.
- It’s not just networking that matters, it’s your network. Understanding what your network looks like and what its current strengths are is going to be more effective than just increasing the number of people you know.
- From three decades of social science research, we know that most of the positive outcomes we care about are determined primarily by the type of network we have. We all have certain network signatures and there are three basic types.
- The first type is the Convener. These people invest a lot in maintaining existing relationships and have a few deep ties. This preference for stability comes with a lot of trust and emotional/psychological support.
- The second type is a Brokerage network. Brokers tend to straddle multiple social worlds careerwise, and talk to groups that don’t normally talk to each other. They are in the idea import/export business. Brokers have the strongest personality predictor, known as self-monitoring, which is a chameleon effect. The benefits of this type of network are innovation, creativity, and a better work/life balance.
- The third type is an Expansionist network, which is the quintessential network. Expansionists know exponentially more people than the average person and this kind of network is great for visibility, popularity, and influence.
- There is extraordinary value in your existing network, no matter what type you have. What are your current strengths and what needs do you have at the moment? Understanding that is your first step.
- The key to forming and maintaining a really effective network is in tapping to your existing network’s strengths, rather than just growing it.
- For Conveners, there is great value in reaching out to dormant connections. Those people are much more likely to provide you with new information because of the underlying trust that still remains.
- One of the best things you can learn from Brokers is focusing on where you are going rather than who you know. Spend time in a new space or learn a new hobby and by simply putting yourself in a new place you are likely to regenerate your network.
- The Expansionist ability of being able to give from one to many is a strength that anyone can take advantage of.
Mo asks Marissa King: How can high-end experts create more opportunities to close more business that feels authentic and leverages the idea of a powerful network?
- One of the most powerful things about networks is that we can use them to think about our relationships in general. You can grow your book of business by matching whatever you’re trying to sell with network thinking.
- If your product or service is hard to evaluate from the outset, one of the best things you can be is embedded in a network that can vouch for you, like a Convening network. The repeated exposure in this sort of network is critical to selling such a service.
- If your business involves either keeping people apart or putting them together, one of the key traits you need to cultivate is empathy and the perception of being empathetic. This overcomes the tendency of people to doubt your motives.
- The takeaway from Expanisionsts is to stay in touch with people in the network on a regular basis, especially if your product or service is easy to understand and purchase.
- The ability to close deals almost always boils down to trust. High-quality interactions with people in your network, no matter what kind of network it is, are how you build that trust.
- People want to help you. The power of networks is that when you put individuals together into groups you get outsized gains. By investing in your network and creating value for them, that value comes back multifold to you.
- When you don’t ask someone for help, you are denying them the ability to be helpful. By asking for help you are actually strengthening the relationship, as well as giving the other person a sense of mastery. People like people who ask for help.
Mo asks Marissa King: How can people use their networks to deepen relationships?
- Networks are relationships and the quality of those relationships is determined in the moment. Two of the biggest obstacles to deep relationships are simple distractions and not being present in the moment.
- If you’re in a meeting, turn your phone off and put it away. Simply having a phone on the table during a conversation makes it less pleasurable and it makes you look less empathetic.
- Research showed that the truth of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that how much of a hurry someone is in determines whether they stop to help. The key for everyone is to slow down and be present. Being in a hurry is the biggest roadblock to real connection.
- The most effective relationship-building super power you can have is the ability to listen. Most people believe they are great listeners but that’s not the case for the majority. Oftentimes people just need space to be seen and heard. Give them that full space and it’s amazing how quickly relationships can move forward.
- Self-disclosure and allowing people to see more hidden aspects of yourself is how you connect on a human-to-human basis. Finding uncommon commonalities is the key. If you discover that you both love to unicycle, it will lead to a much deeper connection than more surface level stuff.
- Give people more color and character. We all want to know each other as humans and that’s all part of your story.
Mo asks Marissa King: How can we hack our own habits to build the most robust networks?
- Our networks are often our most valuable asset but very few people are intentional about them.
- You don’t need to invest a lot of time into relationships to grow them, you just need to invest what time you have wisely.
- Pick one day a week and choose a 15-minute window to commit to reaching out to three people who can help meet whatever needs you have. A good place to start is the Give, Thank, or Ask framework. Send them an article or podcast you think they’d like, thank them for something they did, or ask them for something.
- People want to help you. The key is to keep the ask small and specific so it’s easy to answer. If someone doesn’t respond or says no, that’s okay too. It’s about putting yourself out there and creating the habit more than the outcome.
- Studies have shown that people overestimate how many people will say no to them by orders of magnitude. If fear is getting in the way, realize that you are more afraid than necessary.
- If you are struggling with the idea of connecting with other people, know that you are better than you think and people are more likely to say yes than you think.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Marissa King.
- Knowing your network helps you know what to do next. The three major types of networks are Conveners, Brokers, and Expansionists and by knowing your network type, you can know what to do to take it to the next level.
- Conveners are particularly well suited for people who promote or provide an ambiguous service, for example a high stakes trial lawyer. Having a network that lets people talk about you across different disciplines can be very powerful.
- For Brokers, thinking with empathy from all sides and knowing when to bring people together is key.
- For Expansionists, the trick is to keep everyone in your network and in a way that scales.
- Relationships are formed in moments. There are times when someone comes to you when the effort you put in is exponentially more important. Helping someone in a moment like that is something that they remember forever. Moments of truth are when you really find out what kind of relationships you’ve got.
- Put your phone aside, ask followup questions, pay attention, look for uncommon commonalities.
- Being present is something that you can be in control of. Assessing how present you are on a regular basis can make the difference.
- We all have to ask for help. So many professionals are resistant to asking for help but it’s an incredible way to establish a connection and deepen a relationship. It actually helps the other person at the same time by giving them the feeling of being helpful. That feeling correlates to likeability and self-esteem. Don’t be afraid to ask, you will probably get a positive response either way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
assessyournetwork.com
socialchemistry.com
linkedin.com/in/marissadking
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Marissa King.
- Knowing your network helps you know what to do next. The three major types of networks are Conveners, Brokers, and Expansionists and by knowing your network type, you can know what to do to take it to the next level.
- Conveners are particularly well suited for people who promote or provide an ambiguous service, for example a high stakes trial lawyer. Having a network that lets people talk about you across different disciplines can be very powerful.
- For Brokers, thinking with empathy from all sides and knowing when to bring people together is key.
- For Expansionists, the trick is to keep everyone in your network and in a way that scales.
- Relationships are formed in moments. There are times when someone comes to you when the effort you put in is exponentially more important. Helping someone in a moment like that is something that they remember forever. Moments of truth are when you really find out what kind of relationships you’ve got.
- Put your phone aside, ask followup questions, pay attention, look for uncommon commonalities.
- Being present is something that you can be in control of. Assessing how present you are on a regular basis can make the difference.
- We all have to ask for help. So many professionals are resistant to asking for help but it’s an incredible way to establish a connection and deepen a relationship. It actually helps the other person at the same time by giving them the feeling of being helpful. That feeling correlates to likeability and self-esteem. Don’t be afraid to ask, you will probably get a positive response either way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
assessyournetwork.com
socialchemistry.com
Mo asks Marissa King: How can we hack our own habits to build the most robust networks?
- Our networks are often our most valuable asset but very few people are intentional about them.
- You don’t need to invest a lot of time into relationships to grow them, you just need to invest what time you have wisely.
- Pick one day a week and choose a 15-minute window to commit to reaching out to three people who can help meet whatever needs you have. A good place to start is the Give, Thank, or Ask framework. Send them an article or podcast you think they’d like, thank them for something they did, or ask them for something.
- People want to help you. The key is to keep the ask small and specific so it’s easy to answer. If someone doesn’t respond or says no, that’s okay too. It’s about putting yourself out there and creating the habit more than the outcome.
- Studies have shown that people overestimate how many people will say no to them by orders of magnitude. If fear is getting in the way, realize that you are more afraid than necessary.
- If you are struggling with the idea of connecting with other people, know that you are better than you think and people are more likely to say yes than you think.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
socialchemistry.com
assessyournetwork.com
linkedin.com/in/marissadking
Mo asks Marissa King: How can people use their networks to deepen relationships?
- Networks are relationships and the quality of those relationships is determined in the moment. Two of the biggest obstacles to deep relationships are simple distractions and not being present in the moment.
- If you’re in a meeting, turn your phone off and put it away. Simply having a phone on the table during a conversation makes it less pleasurable and it makes you look less empathetic.
- Research showed that the truth of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that how much of a hurry someone is in determines whether they stop to help. The key for everyone is to slow down and be present. Being in a hurry is the biggest roadblock to real connection.
- The most effective relationship-building super power you can have is the ability to listen. Most people believe they are great listeners but that’s not the case for the majority. Oftentimes people just need space to be seen and heard. Give them that full space and it’s amazing how quickly relationships can move forward.
- Self-disclosure and allowing people to see more hidden aspects of yourself is how you connect on a human-to-human basis. Finding uncommon commonalities is the key. If you discover that you both love to unicycle, it will lead to a much deeper connection than more surface level stuff.
- Give people more color and character. We all want to know each other as humans and that’s all part of your story.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
socialchemistry.com
Mo asks Marissa King: How can high-end experts create more opportunities to close more business that feels authentic and leverages the idea of a powerful network?
- One of the most powerful things about networks is that we can use them to think about our relationships in general. You can grow your book of business by matching whatever you’re trying to sell with network thinking.
- If your product or service is hard to evaluate from the outset, one of the best things you can be is embedded in a network that can vouch for you, like a Convening network. The repeated exposure in this sort of network is critical to selling such a service.
- If your business involves either keeping people apart or putting them together, one of the key traits you need to cultivate is empathy and the perception of being empathetic. This overcomes the tendency of people to doubt your motives.
- The takeaway from Expanisionsts is to stay in touch with people in the network on a regular basis, especially if your product or service is easy to understand and purchase.
- The ability to close deals almost always boils down to trust. High-quality interactions with people in your network, no matter what kind of network it is, are how you build that trust.
- People want to help you. The power of networks is that when you put individuals together into groups you get outsized gains. By investing in your network and creating value for them, that value comes back multifold to you.
- When you don’t ask someone for help, you are denying them the ability to be helpful. By asking for help you are actually strengthening the relationship, as well as giving the other person a sense of mastery. People like people who ask for help.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
socialchemistry.com
Mo asks Marissa King: How can we grow our book of business and career through networking?
- Research has shown that ⅔ of professionals, even those whose businesses depend on relationships, are actively resistant to the idea of networking.
- Our relationships are something that we hold dear, so being intentional and strategic about them seems morally off-putting for many people.
- We know that networking is certainly important and one of the best ways to overcome your initial resistance to it is to think about what you can give in an interaction instead of what you can get.
- It’s not just networking that matters, it’s your network. Understanding what your network looks like and what its current strengths are is going to be more effective than just increasing the number of people you know.
- From three decades of social science research, we know that most of the positive outcomes we care about are determined primarily by the type of network we have. We all have certain network signatures and there are three basic types.
- The first type is the Convener. These people invest a lot in maintaining existing relationships and have a few deep ties. This preference for stability comes with a lot of trust and emotional/psychological support.
- The second type is a Brokerage network. Brokers tend to straddle multiple social worlds careerwise, and talk to groups that don’t normally talk to each other. They are in the idea import/export business. Brokers have the strongest personality predictor, known as self-monitoring, which is a chameleon effect. The benefits of this type of network are innovation, creativity, and a better work/life balance.
- The third type is an Expansionist network, which is the quintessential network. Expansionists know exponentially more people than the average person and this kind of network is great for visibility, popularity, and influence.
- There is extraordinary value in your existing network, no matter what type you have. What are your current strengths and what needs do you have at the moment? Understanding that is your first step.
- The key to forming and maintaining a really effective network is in tapping to your existing network’s strengths, rather than just growing it.
- For Conveners, there is great value in reaching out to dormant connections. Those people are much more likely to provide you with new information because of the underlying trust that still remains.
- One of the best things you can learn from Brokers is focusing on where you are going rather than who you know. Spend time in a new space or learn a new hobby and by simply putting yourself in a new place you are likely to regenerate your network.
- The Expansionist ability of being able to give from one to many is a strength that anyone can take advantage of.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
assessyournetwork.com
Kara Goldin shares how she persevered through difficult setbacks and challenges on her way to growing a $100 million beverage company by being relentlessly curious and creating her own opportunities out of adversity. Learn how great business developers can ensure their long-term success by thinking differently, always looking for the opportunities around them, and creating a persistent mindset around adding value to their client’s business.
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What is your best advice on how to focus on business development, grow our book of business, and grow our career?
- The first thing you can do is take care of your existing customer base since they were the customers that got everything started.
- Our natural instinct is to fear the companies with more money and more experience, but historically speaking those are the companies that end up in trouble because of their inability to change.
- The key to great business development is to figure out how to think differently. To look for new opportunities you need to come at them from the point of view of the underdog with passion and curiosity.
- As a consultant, sitting back and waiting for an RFP to land in your inbox is not a good strategy. You become stuck in reactive mode and more commoditized, with a low chance of winning. Creating your own opportunities is much more important.
- Kara learned early on not to listen to all the rules, and by doing so she ended up gaining access to an incredible amount of opportunities. She relates the story of landing her first job out of college and how the skill of “half-listening” and just being willing to learn and put herself out there opened doors for her all over the country.
- Don’t answer for other people. When it comes to pursuing relationships, don’t dismiss yourself before you try. Overthinking is what prevents people from creating the relationships and networks they want to have. Have fun with it and brush off the rejection.
- Perseverance is 100% a skill that you can learn and master.
- History definitely helps us if we allow it to help us. Look back at what worked and what didn’t.
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What can we do to create and close more opportunities?
- Look around at the unique opportunities that other people are not paying attention to. The key to being the best salesperson or business development person is always looking for a way to solve problems and thinking like the customer.
- Don’t be afraid to think differently and put yourself in the shoes of your customer so you can see their problems from their perspective.
- The key to understanding people is in understanding what they really want. What is the one thing that they care about most and how can you help them get it?
- Most business developers make the mistake of starting with themselves and what they want.
- Creating opportunities is fundamentally about listening to people and understanding what problem they want to solve. Kara is an incredibly curious person who likes to ask questions and this is how she finds the opportunity to help someone.
- Kara gains more inspiration by learning from other businesses outside her industry. She prefers to expose herself to new ideas and new approaches by purposely putting herself in situations where she’s going to learn something new.
- Just being a good person and doing what you do well every single day is how you attract more opportunities into your life. Acknowledging someone else’s problem and authentically trying to help them with it is the simple secret to success.
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What is the best way to deepen relationships with the people who matter to us?
- Deepening relationships stems from understanding what other people’s goals are and what you have in common with them.
- Before meetings, Kara doesn’t do much research because she wants to understand what’s important to them directly.
- People remember the surreal moments in their life. Unlikely shared experiences with someone are a great way to create a connection with them and develop an authentic relationship.
- You have to do the work and have a presentation ready, but if you can relate with the prospect and have a genuine conversation with them it can be even more persuasive. Building a relationship in unique ways is a simple way to set you apart. The first interaction is often awkward, but if you push through and break the ice, the next interaction can be seamless.
- To rekindle older relationships, engage them along the lines of something that you share. Just reaching out and making an offer to have them join you for an event or webinar is a great way to start off and almost no one does it.
- Asking why is a powerful tool to finding a solution to problems. Being in the pursuit of a solution can allow you to become a connector for other people. If you can be a bridge for other people, you become more valuable to them and they will often want to reciprocate.
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What is your habit when you get told no?
- Kara was a gymnast when she was growing up but she never really excelled at it. It was during those training sessions where she learned the discipline to always look for the good in the experience.
- Kara tells the story of how she lost Starbucks as a client for the Hint beverage company, a loss of 40% of her business in the span of two weeks. Despite the loss, having the product in Starbucks was the foundation of her opportunity to get into Amazon’s grocery business and led to Kara realizing that customer data is crucial.
- After being told by both Starbucks and Amazon that they weren’t going to share their customer data with her, Kara realized that she needed to focus on business development and start her own direct-to-consumer business. Seven years later, direct-to-consumer sales are now over 50% of the business.
- There were plenty of naysayers that said beverages can’t be sold over the mail but business has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic, which wouldn’t have happened had Kara listened to the people saying it couldn’t be done.
- Challenges and failures are the learnings that help you to do better in the long run.
- Great growth-oriented business developers take a setback and feel the pain, yet realize that there is something to learn from and opportunities can still come from it.
- When you get told no, it’s important to understand their why. Maybe that deal is not meant to be part of your journey but there is always something to learn from the experience and opportunity to find out more. Get all the info you can. A phone call about why you lost may not sound like a fun conversation but can be very enlightening.
- Be a resource to people that is a joy to be around. Resourcefulness is a crucial aspect of business development.
- Understanding the probabilities also helps give you perspective. If you are swinging for the fences and have a low probability of success and you know that, if it doesn’t work out it’s not going to be so disappointing.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Kara Goldin.
- Think differently. Expose yourself to lots of different ways of thinking by going outside of your industry and learning from people who do things differently. Typically when you go to conferences with like-minded people who are doing the same things you are, you tend towards the average of those people.
- By exposing yourself to completely different industries, you open yourself up to incredible insights. If you share the same struggle but day-to-day work is very different, that’s where you can find some of your best ideas.
- This is the reason mastermind groups can be so powerful. If you aren't part of a group with diverse perspectives and experiences, either join one or create one.
- Create your own opportunities. The best opportunities are created before a client knows they have them. This goes back to the “move without the ball” concept from Mike Daimler. Average business developers wait until they receive an opportunity and then they react. Great business developers create their own opportunities by investing in the potential client and put themselves in a position where they are the natural choice.
- Offer your time upfront at no charge and dig into a client’s problem. Start helping them and end it at the point where you should get paid to do the real heavy lifting.
- A great give-to-get satisfies three criteria. It’s relatively easy for you, it should be valuable to the client, and it should lead to the next step.
- The number one correlation to success is to keep helping people. Great business developers are undaunted and keep reaching out and finding ways to help. They create connections and show that they care.
- Most people quit after one setback. Great business developers are undaunted, continue to be helpful, and are always adding value.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Kara Goldin.
- Think differently. Expose yourself to lots of different ways of thinking by going outside of your industry and learning from people who do things differently. Typically when you go to conferences with like-minded people who are doing the same things you are, you tend towards the average of those people.
- By exposing yourself to completely different industries, you open yourself up to incredible insights. If you share the same struggle but day-to-day work is very different, that’s where you can find some of your best ideas.
- This is the reason mastermind groups can be so powerful. If you aren't part of a group with diverse perspectives and experiences, either join one or create one.
- Create your own opportunities. The best opportunities are created before a client knows they have them. This goes back to the “move without the ball” concept from Mike Daimler. Average business developers wait until they receive an opportunity and then they react. Great business developers create their own opportunities by investing in the potential client and put themselves in a position where they are the natural choice.
- Offer your time upfront at no charge and dig into a client’s problem. Start helping them and end it at the point where you should get paid to do the real heavy lifting.
- A great give-to-get satisfies three criteria. It’s relatively easy for you, it should be valuable to the client, and it should lead to the next step.
- The number one correlation to success is to keep helping people. Great business developers are undaunted and keep reaching out and finding ways to help. They create connections and show that they care.
- Most people quit after one setback. Great business developers are undaunted, continue to be helpful, and are always adding value.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What is your habit when you get told no?
- Kara was a gymnast when she was growing up but she never really excelled at it. It was during those training sessions where she learned the discipline to always look for the good in the experience.
- Kara tells the story of how she lost Starbucks as a client for the Hint beverage company, a loss of 40% of her business in the span of two weeks. Despite the loss, having the product in Starbucks was the foundation of her opportunity to get into Amazon’s grocery business and led to Kara realizing that customer data is crucial.
- After being told by both Starbucks and Amazon that they weren’t going to share their customer data with her, Kara realized that she needed to focus on business development and start her own direct-to-consumer business. Seven years later, direct-to-consumer sales are now over 50% of the business.
- There were plenty of naysayers that said beverages can’t be sold over the mail but business has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic, which wouldn’t have happened had Kara listened to the people saying it couldn’t be done.
- Challenges and failures are the learnings that help you to do better in the long run.
- Great growth-oriented business developers take a setback and feel the pain, yet realize that there is something to learn from and opportunities can still come from it.
- When you get told no, it’s important to understand their why. Maybe that deal is not meant to be part of your journey but there is always something to learn from the experience and opportunity to find out more. Get all the info you can. A phone call about why you lost may not sound like a fun conversation but can be very enlightening.
- Be a resource to people that is a joy to be around. Resourcefulness is a crucial aspect of business development.
- Understanding the probabilities also helps give you perspective. If you are swinging for the fences and have a low probability of success and you know that, if it doesn’t work out it’s not going to be so disappointing.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What can we do to create and close more opportunities?
- Look around at the unique opportunities that other people are not paying attention to. The key to being the best salesperson or business development person is always looking for a way to solve problems and thinking like the customer.
- Don’t be afraid to think differently and put yourself in the shoes of your customer so you can see their problems from their perspective.
- The key to understanding people is in understanding what they really want. What is the one thing that they care about most and how can you help them get it?
- Most business developers make the mistake of starting with themselves and what they want.
- Creating opportunities is fundamentally about listening to people and understanding what problem they want to solve. Kara is an incredibly curious person who likes to ask questions and this is how she finds the opportunity to help someone.
- Kara gains more inspiration by learning from other businesses outside her industry. She prefers to expose herself to new ideas and new approaches by purposely putting herself in situations where she’s going to learn something new.
- Just being a good person and doing what you do well every single day is how you attract more opportunities into your life. Acknowledging someone else’s problem and authentically trying to help them with it is the simple secret to success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What can we do to create and close more opportunities?
- Look around at the unique opportunities that other people are not paying attention to. The key to being the best salesperson or business development person is always looking for a way to solve problems and thinking like the customer.
- Don’t be afraid to think differently and put yourself in the shoes of your customer so you can see their problems from their perspective.
- The key to understanding people is in understanding what they really want. What is the one thing that they care about most and how can you help them get it?
- Most business developers make the mistake of starting with themselves and what they want.
- Creating opportunities is fundamentally about listening to people and understanding what problem they want to solve. Kara is an incredibly curious person who likes to ask questions and this is how she finds the opportunity to help someone.
- Kara gains more inspiration by learning from other businesses outside her industry. She prefers to expose herself to new ideas and new approaches by purposely putting herself in situations where she’s going to learn something new.
- Just being a good person and doing what you do well every single day is how you attract more opportunities into your life. Acknowledging someone else’s problem and authentically trying to help them with it is the simple secret to success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Mo asks Kara Goldin: What is your best advice on how to focus on business development, grow our book of business, and grow our career?
- The first thing you can do is take care of your existing customer base since they were the customers that got everything started.
- Our natural instinct is to fear the companies with more money and more experience, but historically speaking those are the companies that end up in trouble because of their inability to change.
- The key to great business development is to figure out how to think differently. To look for new opportunities you need to come at them from the point of view of the underdog with passion and curiosity.
- As a consultant, sitting back and waiting for an RFP to land in your inbox is not a good strategy. You become stuck in reactive mode and more commoditized, with a low chance of winning. Creating your own opportunities is much more important.
- Kara learned early on not to listen to all the rules, and by doing so she ended up gaining access to an incredible amount of opportunities. She relates the story of landing her first job out of college and how the skill of “half-listening” and just being willing to learn and put herself out there opened doors for her all over the country.
- Don’t answer for other people. When it comes to pursuing relationships, don’t dismiss yourself before you try. Overthinking is what prevents people from creating the relationships and networks they want to have. Have fun with it and brush off the rejection.
- Perseverance is 100% a skill that you can learn and master.
- History definitely helps us if we allow it to help us. Look back at what worked and what didn’t.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
karagoldin.com - Get her book Undaunted
Grant Baldwin shares how getting booked and paid to speak not only positions you as the authority in your space, it can help you create and deepen relationships with potentially hundreds or thousands of your ideal clients all at the same time. Learn how to create and close more deals from the stage, how to set up a system that puts your follow-up process on autopilot, and how to fill your pipeline for years to come.
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: What’s your big idea on how to get better at business development?
- Public speaking is the key and because of Covid, there is even more opportunity for virtual speaking.
- One of the major benefits of public speaking is that you get real-time feedback from the audience. Like a business idea, a presentation is an educated guess, and getting feedback is crucial. You can see people responding directly to what you’re saying and you get immediate feedback that can help you refine your message and idea.
- Speaking also builds rapport and connection with people in a way that isn’t possible via an email or blog post. Speaking is no different than any other service-based business and the human connection plays a major part in that.
- Many people try to overcomplicate speaking or think that they need to be famous in order to speak, but as speakers you are simply in the problem solving business.
- In the corporate world, speaking is a form of lead generation. From a speaking stand point, you become the authority on what you talk about and it can generate a lot of business for you at the same time.
- Speaking is flexible and you get to decide how it fits into your business. It can be a full-time effort or just a few times a year, it’s up to you.
- If you are an account manager, speaking will help you better understand the challenges that your audience/clients are experiencing. You can use that information to become better at what you do.
- You can use speaking as a marketing engine as well as for getting into the weeds with your clients and understanding their problems on a deeper level.
- Speaking can also give you the confidence to take on more responsibility within your organization.
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can people use public speaking to create and close deals?
- As speakers, we have to realize that we are in the problem solving business. The audience doesn’t care about whether you are passionate about your topic, they want to know why what you are saying matters and what it means to them.
- Be very clear about what actual problem you are solving for your audience. The more specific, narrow, and clear you can be, the easier it is to book gigs.
- One of the most common mistakes is speaking to everyone about everything. We need to hone down our message and narrow our focus. By doing one thing really well, you’re more likely to attract the right clients and the right audience.
- As speakers, one of the best things you can do to build your business is to be really clear about solving one specific problem for one specific audience.
- The other key is learning where your ideal audience gathers. All over the world, there are natural gathering points for the people that are your ideal clients. The first thing you should do is to begin building relationships with the organizers of those spaces. Conferences and trade shows are already interested in finding speakers for those events,so getting an audience with them is an easy way to get your foot in the door.
- Another possible avenue is to organize your own event. For many audiences, there is no existing gathering point so creating your own event is a great way to fill a room and give a speech directly to the people you want to speak to.
- Virtual events are another great option, especially as people become more comfortable with the technology involved, and they can be put together more spontaneously than an in-person event.
- Events don’t have to be large to be valuable. Small local events are a good resource too.
- Event planners are in the risk mitigation business so there has to be a high level of trust in the the speakers they hire. One of the best ways to create that experience with you as a speaker is to invite people to your presentations and create a mixed audience of clients and prospects.
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can we use speaking to deepen relationships?
- One of the best things about speaking is that oftentimes it’s an in-person human experience. People do business with those they know, like, and trust, and there’s no better way for that than meeting someone in person at a conference or an event, especially if you’re a speaker who is seen as an authority.
- Speaking at an event gives the audience a sense of who you are, and whether they can trust you to connect with their people. It’s a way to build the camaraderie and rapport that leads to future business.
- Being a speaker at an event changes the way people think about you. Your perceived value and reputation skyrockets after speaking and you’re assigned a certain level of authority that’s hard to replicate in other ways.
- Being a speaker also gives you the opportunity to get to know other speakers.
- Speaking gigs don’t always result in commercial opportunities right away; sometimes they are a means of connecting to other speaking opportunities. You never know who will be in the audience and what that relationship could turn into.
- Part of being a speaker is planting a lot of different seeds with a large number of people. Being a speaker is a long-term business and you can find opportunities by being persistent, following up, and just constantly showing up.
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the long-term and stay top-of-mind?
- Speaking is a person-to-person business. One of the keys to success as a speaker is regularly following up with past events or with events that you would like to speak at. There is a consistent turnover each year as event organizers look for new voices and little touch points over the course of a few years will help you stay top-of-mind when they begin the process of looking for their next speaker.
- The more times someone is exposed to you and what you do, the more likely they are to feel familiar with you and take you up on your offer.
- To organize your follow-up efforts you need to have a system. This could be in the form of a spreadsheet or a CRM, but it can’t just be in your head.
- Pre-schedule your follow-up tasks months into the future, that way your only day-to-day task will be to check your CRM and see what you need to do in terms of follow-up for that day.
- One of the most important things you can do as a speaker is have a system in place to help you be responsible in your follow-up. When you do follow up after promising to do so, you’re giving the person a taste of what it is like to work with you.
- People want to do business with people who make their life easy.
- In terms of tasks and time, Grant checks his CRM (currently Hubspot, but the software isn’t as important as the system) each day and then executes on that follow-up task first. These follow-up tasks also give him a high level view of the leads in his pipeline which allows him to plan ahead.
- Like a flywheel, you have to keep putting energy and effort into your business or at some point it’s going to stop. You need to put in a little bit of work each day to keep your business going. Build in the time now or it’s going to be 100 times harder to get things going again in six months when you run out of work.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Grant Baldwin.
- Speaking is an incredible way to simultaneously create and close business at the same time, either by going to where your ideal client already gathers or by organizing your own event. Both methods work well.
- If you’re trying to land a speaking gig for a big event or conference, you usually have to start a year in advance. You need to figure out who the decision makers are and get your name in front of them before they start looking for speakers. Learn what themes they want to emphasize for the following year and get into a dialogue with them so you can show them you can deliver on what they want to accomplish.
- Ideally, you want to be able to show why your unique perspective will solve their problem. If you can stay top-of-mind while they are writing out what they are looking for in a speaker, you’re going to win far more often.
- If you do the work up front and help them shape where the event is going, it will greatly increase the odds of your success.
- If your ideal client tends not to gather in a specific space then putting your own conference together can create great results. The first step is to find one or two partners and then look to work together with a university or non-profit. If you can combine someone known for their knowledge, someone known for their technology, and someone known for their research, you can create an incredible brand for your conference.
- This kind of event creates an incredible level of collaboration between you and your partners as well as for the people attending.
- Sometimes it’s best to start with a small, intimate group instead of a grand-scale event.
- When you’re speaking, you’re building a relationship with your audience at scale.
- There is a major difference between delivering a talk on your own and delivering it with a client. Not only is it an incredible relationship-building experience with that client, you are also able to change the mindset and expectation of the audience at the same time.
- One of the biggest benefits of speaking is the scale and efficiency of each presentation. Make your talk about whatever you would talk about in a one-on-one conversation. Don’t let the organizer determine the topic completely. Instead find win/wins that meet in the middle.
- People do what they rehearse in their mind. Ideally, you want people in your audience identifying with the stories you’re telling on the stage. At some point in the conversation, you make the next step as easy as possible.
- The goal is to have a speech that actually converts into a conversation with the people you want to talk to, either by making the offer directly in the presentation or by offering a more in-depth one-to-one discussion.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Grant Baldwin.
- Speaking is an incredible way to simultaneously create and close business at the same time, either by going to where your ideal client already gathers or by organizing your own event. Both methods work well.
- If you’re trying to land a speaking gig for a big event or conference, you usually have to start a year in advance. You need to figure out who the decision makers are and get your name in front of them before they start looking for speakers. Learn what themes they want to emphasize for the following year and get into a dialogue with them so you can show them you can deliver on what they want to accomplish.
- Ideally, you want to be able to show why your unique perspective will solve their problem. If you can stay top-of-mind while they are writing out what they are looking for in a speaker, you’re going to win far more often.
- If you do the work up front and help them shape where the event is going, it will greatly increase the odds of your success.
- If your ideal client tends not to gather in a specific space then putting your own conference together can create great results. The first step is to find one or two partners and then look to work together with a university or non-profit. If you can combine someone known for their knowledge, someone known for their technology, and someone known for their research, you can create an incredible brand for your conference.
- This kind of event creates an incredible level of collaboration between you and your partners as well as for the people attending.
- Sometimes it’s best to start with a small, intimate group instead of a grand-scale event.
- When you’re speaking, you’re building a relationship with your audience at scale.
- There is a major difference between delivering a talk on your own and delivering it with a client. Not only is it an incredible relationship-building experience with that client, you are also able to change the mindset and expectation of the audience at the same time.
- One of the biggest benefits of speaking is the scale and efficiency of each presentation. Make your talk about whatever you would talk about in a one-on-one conversation. Don’t let the organizer determine the topic completely. Instead find win/wins that meet in the middle.
- People do what they rehearse in their mind. Ideally, you want people in your audience identifying with the stories you’re telling on the stage. At some point in the conversation, you make the next step as easy as possible.
- The goal is to have a speech that actually converts into a conversation with the people you want to talk to, either by making the offer directly in the presentation or by offering a more in-depth one-to-one discussion.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the long-term and stay top-of-mind?
- Speaking is a person-to-person business. One of the keys to success as a speaker is regularly following up with past events or with events that you would like to speak at. There is a consistent turnover each year as event organizers look for new voices and little touch points over the course of a few years will help you stay top-of-mind when they begin the process of looking for their next speaker.
- The more times someone is exposed to you and what you do, the more likely they are to feel familiar with you and take you up on your offer.
- To organize your follow-up efforts you need to have a system. This could be in the form of a spreadsheet or a CRM, but it can’t just be in your head.
- Pre-schedule your follow-up tasks months into the future, that way your only day-to-day task will be to check your CRM and see what you need to do in terms of follow-up for that day.
- One of the most important things you can do as a speaker is have a system in place to help you be responsible in your follow-up. When you do follow up after promising to do so, you’re giving the person a taste of what it is like to work with you.
- People want to do business with people who make their life easy.
- In terms of tasks and time, Grant checks his CRM (currently Hubspot, but the software isn’t as important as the system) each day and then executes on that follow-up task first. These follow-up tasks also give him a high level view of the leads in his pipeline which allows him to plan ahead.
- Like a flywheel, you have to keep putting energy and effort into your business or at some point it’s going to stop. You need to put in a little bit of work each day to keep your business going. Build in the time now or it’s going to be 100 times harder to get things going again in six months when you run out of work.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can we use speaking to deepen relationships?
- One of the best things about speaking is that oftentimes it’s an in-person human experience. People do business with those they know, like, and trust, and there’s no better way for that than meeting someone in person at a conference or an event, especially if you’re a speaker who is seen as an authority.
- Speaking at an event gives the audience a sense of who you are, and whether they can trust you to connect with their people. It’s a way to build the camaraderie and rapport that leads to future business.
- Being a speaker at an event changes the way people think about you. Your perceived value and reputation skyrockets after speaking and you’re assigned a certain level of authority that’s hard to replicate in other ways.
- Being a speaker also gives you the opportunity to get to know other speakers.
- Speaking gigs don’t always result in commercial opportunities right away; sometimes they are a means of connecting to other speaking opportunities. You never know who will be in the audience and what that relationship could turn into.
- Part of being a speaker is planting a lot of different seeds with a large number of people. Being a speaker is a long-term business and you can find opportunities by being persistent, following up, and just constantly showing up.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: How can people use public speaking to create and close deals?
- As speakers, we have to realize that we are in the problem solving business. The audience doesn’t care about whether you are passionate about your topic, they want to know why what you are saying matters and what it means to them.
- Be very clear about what actual problem you are solving for your audience. The more specific, narrow, and clear you can be, the easier it is to book gigs.
- One of the most common mistakes is speaking to everyone about everything. We need to hone down our message and narrow our focus. By doing one thing really well, you’re more likely to attract the right clients and the right audience.
- As speakers, one of the best things you can do to build your business is to be really clear about solving one specific problem for one specific audience.
- The other key is learning where your ideal audience gathers. All over the world, there are natural gathering points for the people that are your ideal clients. The first thing you should do is to begin building relationships with the organizers of those spaces. Conferences and trade shows are already interested in finding speakers for those events,so getting an audience with them is an easy way to get your foot in the door.
- Another possible avenue is to organize your own event. For many audiences, there is no existing gathering point so creating your own event is a great way to fill a room and give a speech directly to the people you want to speak to.
- Virtual events are another great option, especially as people become more comfortable with the technology involved, and they can be put together more spontaneously than an in-person event.
- Events don’t have to be large to be valuable. Small local events are a good resource too.
- Event planners are in the risk mitigation business so there has to be a high level of trust in the the speakers they hire. One of the best ways to create that experience with you as a speaker is to invite people to your presentations and create a mixed audience of clients and prospects.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
Mo asks Grant Baldwin: What’s your big idea on how to get better at business development?
- Public speaking is the key and because of Covid, there is even more opportunity for virtual speaking.
- One of the major benefits of public speaking is that you get real-time feedback from the audience. Like a business idea, a presentation is an educated guess, and getting feedback is crucial. You can see people responding directly to what you’re saying and you get immediate feedback that can help you refine your message and idea.
- Speaking also builds rapport and connection with people in a way that isn’t possible via an email or blog post. Speaking is no different than any other service-based business and the human connection plays a major part in that.
- Many people try to overcomplicate speaking or think that they need to be famous in order to speak, but as speakers you are simply in the problem solving business.
- In the corporate world, speaking is a form of lead generation. From a speaking stand point, you become the authority on what you talk about and it can generate a lot of business for you at the same time.
- Speaking is flexible and you get to decide how it fits into your business. It can be a full-time effort or just a few times a year, it’s up to you.
- If you are an account manager, speaking will help you better understand the challenges that your audience/clients are experiencing. You can use that information to become better at what you do.
- You can use speaking as a marketing engine as well as for getting into the weeds with your clients and understanding their problems on a deeper level.
- Speaking can also give you the confidence to take on more responsibility within your organization.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thespeakerlab.com
David Burkus shares extremely timely strategies for deepening your relationships in a virtual world, whether that’s within your team that’s spread across the globe or with prospective clients that are just getting to know you. Learn how to create a system for communication that makes your remote team more effective, how to recreate the white space online where bonds and trust are built, and how to ask better questions to really get to know someone.
Mo asks David Burkus: How do you develop relationships with your clients virtually?
- The future of work is working from anywhere. The truth is that we are not going back to the office. Even before the pandemic, studies were showing that people are more engaged when they are out of the office 40% to 60% of the time.
- We need greater flexibility, trust, and autonomy with the people that we collaborate with in a remote environment.
- Communication is actually more important now that it was before. We can’t take as many non-verbal cues as we could when we were working together, so we need to be more deliberate and empathetic in our communication.
- One of the first things we need to be doing with prospective clients is talking about how we are going to be working together. This is now part of the process of closing the deal.
- One major tip is that eye contact is not eye contact when you’re communicating online. You have to look into the camera lens to recreate the experience and connection of eye contact. The other thing to realize is that communication is more asynchronous than ever before. Make sure you have clear writing and thinking in your written communication. You also have to be clear about what each method of communication is meant for.
- To enroll clients, the easiest way is to have an established communications system within your team already. Create a team-working agreement and then use that to create the framework of client communication. Schedule a meeting to create your team-working agreement, and get answers to all of the questions written down into a shared document. Then get every team member to agree.
Mo asks David Burkus: How can we create demand and get deals done virtually?
- The traditional method of closing a deal usually involved meeting clients in person but it wasn’t the activity itself that determined the failure or success of the deal. It was the whitespace around the meeting that built the bonds that led to trust.
- Most people don’t build that into their virtual meetings, which is something that we really need to do.
- You build trust and bonds in the unstructured, open space around the meeting time and you need to build that into remote environments.
- What are the white space moments that built relationships in person and how can you recreate those experiences in your remote working environment?
- To allow people to get to know each other, give them space to ask questions and get answers. Structure some questions to allow people to learn about each other and in a way where everyone has the opportunity to share a problem they are facing.
- One of the best questions you can ask is “If you and I are meeting again a year from now over a bottle of Champagne, what are we celebrating?”
Mo asks David Burkus: How do we develop and deepen relationships when everything is virtual?
- A study showed that the average person’s network shrunk by 25% to 30% over the first half of 2020. That decrease was almost entirely driven by males because of the general tendency for men to bond over activities. We tried to recreate these activities virtually but it doesn’t work the same way.
- When you’re looking to use a tool like Zoom to deepen a relationship, it requires more structure. You have to show up with questions and a level of conversation designed to deepen the relationship.
- Work sprints are another option, which are scheduled times where you complete your work in a meeting environment to emulate the coworking space.
- In addition to these activities, you can also introduce rituals into your team communication to deepen the connection.
- Between structured conversations that explore non-work topics and physical things like rituals, we can go pretty far in deepening relationships in a remote working environment.
- The questions don’t matter as much as having a plan and being intentional. Asking questions that are open-ended and answered in a work or non-work context is a good start. One of David’s favorite questions is “Who is your favorite superhero?” No matter what the answer is, you will learn something interesting about the other person.
- The more you know about someone, the more reason you have to follow up with them and find you have something in common.
Mo asks David Burkus: How can we keep focused on doing the right things when we are constantly distracted in this virtual world?
- The short answer is to not focus on it. Studies have shown that when timelines are too far away we tend to think that it’s going to be too difficult to accomplish. This applies to health and investing, as well as career goals. The key is to make the long game into your short-term goal.
- You will always default to the short term. Think about your long-term project and identify the milestones that will lead up to it, then focus in on those. This is especially important in a remote environment where no one is actively looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re getting things done.
- Milestones have to be co-created with the client. Your team also needs a regular check in process where you cover three key things for each person involved: “What did we just accomplish?”, “What are we focused on now?”, and “What is blocking our progress?”
- The real challenge in a client engagement is when nobody wants to admit they need help. If you take the time to record those regular check-ins and address the obstacles to progress, you can avoid that situation.
- Without a regular cadence of communication, you can end up with a client that is really angry with you and you may not know the reason why.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of David Burkus.
- Figuring out how to work and thrive in a virtual world is only going to become more important going forward.
- We need to have an agreement with our internal teams and our clients regarding how we are going to work together and communicate with each other. You need to know which platforms are meant for what kinds of communication so that you can be more efficient and effective.
- Once you work it out internally, you can share it with your clients and give them an idea of how you can work together while also giving them a model to implement in their own businesses.
- White space built into your remote meetings is crucial. The white space around traditional in person meetings doesn’t happen anymore and that was where the informal chat occurred that allowed relationships to develop naturally. Add space to your calendar to have the meeting before the meeting to make this easier.
- Be more intentional with your questions. In a virtual world it’s even more important. Being general upfront and asking questions that can be answered either personally or professionally are great for opening up the possibility of getting to know the person.
- The Champagne Question is a great first step to helping a client craft a future that’s better for them. People need positivity and optimism in their life and you can add that to their life by asking them the right questions and exploring the answers.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of David Burkus.
- Figuring out how to work and thrive in a virtual world is only going to become more important going forward.
- We need to have an agreement with our internal teams and our clients regarding how we are going to work together and communicate with each other. You need to know which platforms are meant for what kinds of communication so that you can be more efficient and effective.
- Once you work it out internally, you can share it with your clients and give them an idea of how you can work together while also giving them a model to implement in their own businesses.
- White space built into your remote meetings is crucial. The white space around traditional in person meetings doesn’t happen anymore and that was where the informal chat occurred that allowed relationships to develop naturally. Add space to your calendar to have the meeting before the meeting to make this easier.
- Be more intentional with your questions. In a virtual world it’s even more important. Being general upfront and asking questions that can be answered either personally or professionally are great for opening up the possibility of getting to know the person.
- The Champagne Question is a great first step to helping a client craft a future that’s better for them. People need positivity and optimism in their life and you can add that to their life by asking them the right questions and exploring the answers.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mo asks David Burkus: How can we keep focused on doing the right things when we are constantly distracted in this virtual world?
- The short answer is to not focus on it. Studies have shown that when timelines are too far away we tend to think that it’s going to be too difficult to accomplish. This applies to health and investing, as well as career goals. The key is to make the long game into your short-term goal.
- You will always default to the short term. Think about your long-term project and identify the milestones that will lead up to it, then focus in on those. This is especially important in a remote environment where no one is actively looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re getting things done.
- Milestones have to be co-created with the client. Your team also needs a regular check in process where you cover three key things for each person involved: “What did we just accomplish?”, “What are we focused on now?”, and “What is blocking our progress?”
- The real challenge in a client engagement is when nobody wants to admit they need help. If you take the time to record those regular check-ins and address the obstacles to progress, you can avoid that situation.
- Without a regular cadence of communication, you can end up with a client that is really angry with you and you may not know the reason why.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mo asks David Burkus: How do we develop and deepen relationships when everything is virtual?
- A study showed that the average person’s network shrunk by 25% to 30% over the first half of 2020. That decrease was almost entirely driven by males because of the general tendency for men to bond over activities. We tried to recreate these activities virtually but it doesn’t work the same way.
- When you’re looking to use a tool like Zoom to deepen a relationship, it requires more structure. You have to show up with questions and a level of conversation designed to deepen the relationship.
- Work sprints are another option, which are scheduled times where you complete your work in a meeting environment to emulate the coworking space.
- In addition to these activities, you can also introduce rituals into your team communication to deepen the connection.
- Between structured conversations that explore non-work topics and physical things like rituals, we can go pretty far in deepening relationships in a remote working environment.
- The questions don’t matter as much as having a plan and being intentional. Asking questions that are open-ended and answered in a work or non-work context is a good start. One of David’s favorite questions is “Who is your favorite superhero?” No matter what the answer is, you will learn something interesting about the other person.
- The more you know about someone, the more reason you have to follow up with them and find you have something in common.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mo asks David Burkus: How can we create demand and get deals done virtually?
- The traditional method of closing a deal usually involved meeting clients in person but it wasn’t the activity itself that determined the failure or success of the deal. It was the whitespace around the meeting that built the bonds that led to trust.
- Most people don’t build that into their virtual meetings, which is something that we really need to do.
- You build trust and bonds in the unstructured, open space around the meeting time and you need to build that into remote environments.
- What are the white space moments that built relationships in person and how can you recreate those experiences in your remote working environment?
- To allow people to get to know each other, give them space to ask questions and get answers. Structure some questions to allow people to learn about each other and in a way where everyone has the opportunity to share a problem they are facing.
- One of the best questions you can ask is “If you and I are meeting again a year from now over a bottle of Champagne, what are we celebrating?”
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mo asks David Burkus: How do you develop relationships with your clients virtually?
- The future of work is working from anywhere. The truth is that we are not going back to the office. Even before the pandemic, studies were showing that people are more engaged when they are out of the office 40% to 60% of the time.
- We need greater flexibility, trust, and autonomy with the people that we collaborate with in a remote environment.
- Communication is actually more important now that it was before. We can’t take as many non-verbal cues as we could when we were working together, so we need to be more deliberate and empathetic in our communication.
- One of the first things we need to be doing with prospective clients is talking about how we are going to be working together. This is now part of the process of closing the deal.
- One major tip is that eye contact is not eye contact when you’re communicating online. You have to look into the camera lens to recreate the experience and connection of eye contact. The other thing to realize is that communication is more asynchronous than ever before. Make sure you have clear writing and thinking in your written communication. You also have to be clear about what each method of communication is meant for.
- To enroll clients, the easiest way is to have an established communications system within your team already. Create a team-working agreement and then use that to create the framework of client communication. Schedule a meeting to create your team-working agreement, and get answers to all of the questions written down into a shared document. Then get every team member to agree.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
davidburkus.com
Mike Michalowicz delivers a powerful message that entrepreneurs and business development professionals need to hear. Learn some incredible hacks you can use right now to deepen your business relationships, identify exactly what you should be working on to make the greatest impact, and learn how to multiply your best clients and grow your book of business exponentially.
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: Why do you have to start with sales?
- Sales create cash for a business. We usually start a business to create financial freedom, and to get there we need sales, but sales are not sufficient in themselves. They are the foundation to the Business Hierarchy of Needs.
- If you realize and feel that your offering is superior to your competitor’s, then you have an obligation to sell it. If your prospect goes with the competitor, they are getting an inferior offering.
- Making your clients aware of your offer and putting it in front of them is the best way to serve them. Not selling your offering is doing them a disservice.
- Just like people, businesses have a hierarchy of needs as well. Foundationally, we need sales because it creates cash. Once we’ve got sales we need to extract that cash to bring about stability, also known as profit. Once you have that addressed, you need to create efficiency and order. The level above that is impact, and it’s where your business goes from being about transactions to becoming about transformation. The final level is legacy, which is where the work you are doing is so important that it must continue for generations.
- The hierarchy functions like a pyramid, where if you want to grow, you need to expand the sales base.
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: What’s the number one thing people can do to get more yeses?
- The most powerful concept is client cloning. We need to focus on our best clients and identify what we know about them. Then you develop an avatar around those attributes and go to where those people congregate.
- As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. We have to concentrate our efforts on the areas and mediums where our best clients are so we can get in front of them.
- Once you begin cloning your best clients, it also brings a new level of efficiency to your business. You work with similar clients in similar situations, and the resolution becomes consistently the same, which elevates your ability to scale.
- People are looking to know, like, and trust you, and selling right off the bat is not the best approach. Educational marketing is the most effective method to build the rapport you need to land clients and once they are ready to make a decision on someone to do it for them they will pick you.
- When you have people that are intrigued and interested in what you do, have a clear, concise and reasonable next step for them to do.
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How can we use your framework to deepen our most important business relationships?
- The easiest way to connect with your client is to learn the language that they use.
- Ask your best clients what you are doing right, and they will tell you what they judge you on.
- The thing you do right is actually the thing you need to improve most to create an extraordinary relationship.
- Deepen your relationships by doing the right thing better. Your clients will tell you exactly what they need if you ask them.
- You can ask what you’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to get the truth if there’s a potential confrontation. Instead, ask what’s wrong with your industry. You’ll be surprised by what you hear.
- Ask your clients about what other vendors they depend on too, and then go and deepen those relationships. Tap into the vendor wealth that surrounds your clients.
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How do we hack our habits so we keep evolving and getting better?
- The first thing you do in the day is the most impactful. Sadly, most people open their email first which then dictates their behavior.
- You need to time block the first part of your morning to focus on your most important work. Don’t do anything like email which can divert you from the path.
- Any time you want to fix or improve a single thing, you need to focus on it exclusively each day until that one project is done.
- Use the momentum effect to your advantage. It’s actually the discipline of not doing that will actually result in more effective action. Even a 15-minute block of time at the very beginning of your day will yield positive results and make it easier to get the momentum going.
- If you want to strengthen a chain, focus on the weakest link. If you fix that, the strength of the whole chain gets elevated and you can focus on the next weak link. We can be so much more efficient if we just focus on one thing at a time.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mike Michalowicz.
- There is the evolution of a business that can be broken down. You don’t want to focus on the higher level elements until addressing the foundations. This is where the Business Hierarchy of Needs comes in.
- The foundation of any business that’s service based is sales. You have to get good at business development, if you don’t you will stagnate and fall back. Once you start getting money in the door, you can start thinking about profit and efficiency. Then the next step is making the biggest impact on the people you serve that you can. You can then focus on the legacy of the business so that you can leave the world in a better state than you found it in.
- Business development is the foundation, but it’s also intertwined with each level and constantly revisited.
- The three questions for clients is a great framework for identifying how you can deepen your relationship with them. “What am I doing right?”, “What’s wrong with our industry?”, and “What other vendors/partners do you depend on?”.
- By systematizing those three questions you have an excellent process for identifying where to focus on next.
- Focus on one project at a time, even if you have multiple projects you’re working on over a given time period. It can play off your grand overarching strategy in the long term, but you have to pull those big things down to one specific task and focus on that to completion.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mike Michalowicz.
- There is the evolution of a business that can be broken down. You don’t want to focus on the higher level elements until addressing the foundations. This is where the Business Hierarchy of Needs comes in.
- The foundation of any business that’s service based is sales. You have to get good at business development, if you don’t you will stagnate and fall back. Once you start getting money in the door, you can start thinking about profit and efficiency. Then the next step is making the biggest impact on the people you serve that you can. You can then focus on the legacy of the business so that you can leave the world in a better state than you found it in.
- Business development is the foundation, but it’s also intertwined with each level and constantly revisited.
- The three questions for clients is a great framework for identifying how you can deepen your relationship with them. “What am I doing right?”, “What’s wrong with our industry?”, and “What other vendors/partners do you depend on?”.
- By systematizing those three questions you have an excellent process for identifying where to focus on next.
- Focus on one project at a time, even if you have multiple projects you’re working on over a given time period. It can play off your grand overarching strategy in the long term, but you have to pull those big things down to one specific task and focus on that to completion.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How do we hack our habits so we keep evolving and getting better?
- The first thing you do in the day is the most impactful. Sadly, most people open their email first which then dictates their behavior.
- You need to time block the first part of your morning to focus on your most important work. Don’t do anything like email which can divert you from the path.
- Any time you want to fix or improve a single thing, you need to focus on it exclusively each day until that one project is done.
- Use the momentum effect to your advantage. It’s actually the discipline of not doing that will actually result in more effective action. Even a 15-minute block of time at the very beginning of your day will yield positive results and make it easier to get the momentum going.
- If you want to strengthen a chain, focus on the weakest link. If you fix that, the strength of the whole chain gets elevated and you can focus on the next weak link. We can be so much more efficient if we just focus on one thing at a time.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How can we use your framework to deepen our most important business relationships?
- The easiest way to connect with your client is to learn the language that they use.
- Ask your best clients what you are doing right, and they will tell you what they judge you on.
- The thing you do right is actually the thing you need to improve most to create an extraordinary relationship.
- Deepen your relationships by doing the right thing better. Your clients will tell you exactly what they need if you ask them.
- You can ask what you’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to get the truth if there’s a potential confrontation. Instead, ask what’s wrong with your industry. You’ll be surprised by what you hear.
- Ask your clients about what other vendors they depend on too, and then go and deepen those relationships. Tap into the vendor wealth that surrounds your clients.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: What’s the number one thing people can do to get more yeses?
- The most powerful concept is client cloning. We need to focus on our best clients and identify what we know about them. Then you develop an avatar around those attributes and go to where those people congregate.
- As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. We have to concentrate our efforts on the areas and mediums where our best clients are so we can get in front of them.
- Once you begin cloning your best clients, it also brings a new level of efficiency to your business. You work with similar clients in similar situations, and the resolution becomes consistently the same, which elevates your ability to scale.
- People are looking to know, like, and trust you, and selling right off the bat is not the best approach. Educational marketing is the most effective method to build the rapport you need to land clients and once they are ready to make a decision on someone to do it for them they will pick you.
- When you have people that are intrigued and interested in what you do, have a clear, concise and reasonable next step for them to do.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: Why do you have to start with sales?
- Sales create cash for a business. We usually start a business to create financial freedom, and to get there we need sales, but sales are not sufficient in themselves. They are the foundation to the Business Hierarchy of Needs.
- If you realize and feel that your offering is superior to your competitor’s, then you have an obligation to sell it. If your prospect goes with the competitor, they are getting an inferior offering.
- Making your clients aware of your offer and putting it in front of them is the best way to serve them. Not selling your offering is doing them a disservice.
- Just like people, businesses have a hierarchy of needs as well. Foundationally, we need sales because it creates cash. Once we’ve got sales we need to extract that cash to bring about stability, also known as profit. Once you have that addressed, you need to create efficiency and order. The level above that is impact, and it’s where your business goes from being about transactions to becoming about transformation. The final level is legacy, which is where the work you are doing is so important that it must continue for generations.
- The hierarchy functions like a pyramid, where if you want to grow, you need to expand the sales base.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
fixthisnext.com
Josh Linkner shares why tiny innovations can yield oversized results for business development professionals and how small experiments can lead to game-changing breakthroughs. Learn why you should never forget the dinner mint when interacting with prospects and clients, how to run mini experiments, and how to boost your business development efforts with a little dash of creativity.
Mo asks Josh Linkner: What is your big idea on how listeners can focus on business development, grow their book of business and relationships, and grow their careers?
- Josh’s big idea is actually a little idea. We don’t need to bet everything on a single idea because innovation isn’t restricted to billion dollar ideas that change the world. When we think of creativity as small little acts or micro innovations it becomes more accessible, less risky, and actually builds additional skills over time.
- Many professionals struggle with doing any business development at all. The work always seems to get in the way and breaking it down to little acts makes it much more likely you will get things done and see actual results.
- Little acts of innovation could be changing up the form of your prospecting email or experimenting with the way you run a sales meeting. It’s small adjustments or counter intuitive acts of creativity that unlocks big results.
- Josh tells the story of how his relatively small business landed a $30 million contract by a simple act of innovation and everyday kindness.
- Look for anything you can test within your business processes because business development isn’t a mysterious skill you need to learn; it’s just a series of small experiments.
- One of the techniques that Josh uses to initiate innovation is the Judo flip. Look at the prevailing approaches in your industry and think about what the polar opposite might be.
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can professionals use the concepts of Big Little Breakthroughs to close more business?
- In the research for the book, Josh uncovered eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. One mindset in particular is called “Don’t forget the dinner mint.”
- For a business development person, adding a little creative flourish to each interaction you have in the course of business. A small 5% increase in effort can generate disproportionate outcomes.
- If you’re pitching your services to a prospect, before you hit the send button, think about what extra you can add that is unexpected. It could be an extra feature or shorter delivery time. Every single touchpoint or interaction with a prospect is an opportunity to add a little extra.
- Every extra touch can drive a significant impact in terms of your overall results.
- It doesn’t always have to take the form of an extra service; it could also take the form of a unique experience.
- The dinner mint strategy can also help differentiate your business from other service providers.
- Another idea has to do with the notion of experimenting being very provocative. What if every week you ran five little experiments in your business processes? This is how you can find tiny innovations without risking too much, and if you land on a winner, you can expand it out once you have enough data to justify it.
- Instead of thinking you need to come up with one idea to transform your business, what if you came up with three smaller ideas each week? When you break them down into smaller bets, it’s much less risky and you increase the odds of winning over the long-term.
- Your creativity is more like your weight than your height. You can adjust your weight with your behavior and your creativity works the same way.
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How do we use the Big Little Breakthrough concepts to deepen relationships?
- Creativity and innovation are tools that we use to focus on product development or marketing, but they also apply to relationships.
- In a relationship setting, think about the other person’s big problem and about how to solve their issue.
- The more you fall in love with your client’s problems, and the more they view you as someone who is aligned with them, the relationship becomes transformed.
- Mo had a similar experience with a lawyer friend he had where he had to have a difficult conversation with her but the end result was that it completely changed her career trajectory.
- Feedback is a gift. If you care about somebody you have to be willing to have hard conversations with them. If you do, you demonstrate that you care about them and that deepens the relationship.
- Failure is a part of life, in terms of relationships, those are opportunities to deepen relationships. Owning your mistakes and doing what it takes to make it right is how you show integrity in relationships.
- Doing a feedback session after a loss sets up the next win. Even when you win, there is an opportunity to ask for feedback on how to improve. This shows that you are always working on your game and are committed to over delivering. This takes your relationship from transactional to one of substance.
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can we hack our habits with Big Little Breakthroughs?
- The short-term tends to scream the loudest, to the detriment of the long-term. Over the next 12 months, if all you do is what you’ve done before, you're likely to fall about 30% short of the results you could have achieved. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still.
- Think of your effort, time, and energy in the same way that you do as your stock portfolio. You wouldn’t take all your money and invest it entirely in one stock. The same principle has to apply to your time. It’s important to carve out some of your schedule to be strategic and think about the future.
- Some day a company will come along and put you out of business, it might as well be you. A constant stream of reinvention allows you to control at least some of the inevitable disruption that will happen to your business.
- The first thing is to try a 5% adjustment. Carve out just two hours each week for the next four weeks where you’re not going to do anything tactical and only focus on heads-up strategic thinking. Josh has issued this challenge to thousands of people around the world and found they experienced a 0% decline in productivity but by the end of the 30 day period, most people report that those two hours are the most productive time they spend.
- Use your creativity to solve your short-term problem and it will, in turn, solve your long-term problem.
- The first thing you need to do is challenge the assumption that it’s impossible to be more efficient or to find space to commit to head-up thinking. Creatively rebalancing your calendar and creating an untouchable day or untouchable morning can make a huge difference.
- If we want certain desired outcomes, it’s the rituals and rewards that will support them.
- If you need help saying no, make a list of things you are going to stop doing. Having a simple framework (Think, Do, Feel) can help you benchmark things against so you will make better choices.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Linkner.
- Don’t forget the dinner mint. Don’t forget to add an element of surprise and delight for each interaction you have with a prospect or client. That tiny amount of extra effort often has an outsized impact on the end result.
- There was a study that showed the effect of different ways of adding dinner mints to people’s meals and they found some pretty interesting results. Little good things have a big weight because they are unexpected. When you add up the little surprises and delights, they can outweigh the inevitable bad experiences.
- The most valuable things you can do are things that help your client succeed, both on a professional level and a personal level. These could be little ways to innovate the delivery or make the experience a little more unique. You could also improve the process or offer them additional information or connections.
- Tweaking the way you do things and measuring the results can lead to incredible breakthroughs. One example is the way that Mo offered webinars and follow up content. One simple tweak led to 10x times the result.
- Small, low risk experiments in each area of your business will yield some incredible results. Not everything will succeed, but that’s why they’re small.
- Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. What can you deliver that will be streamlined and effective, but also unique? A simple improvement would be to describe what you do in your client’s language instead of your own. A little extra effort in the delivery and presenting the solution in the client’s own language will make it feel completely unique to them and create a much more memorable experience with your business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Linkner.
- Don’t forget the dinner mint. Don’t forget to add an element of surprise and delight for each interaction you have with a prospect or client. That tiny amount of extra effort often has an outsized impact on the end result.
- There was a study that showed the effect of different ways of adding dinner mints to people’s meals and they found some pretty interesting results. Little good things have a big weight because they are unexpected. When you add up the little surprises and delights, they can outweigh the inevitable bad experiences.
- The most valuable things you can do are things that help your client succeed, both on a professional level and a personal level. These could be little ways to innovate the delivery or make the experience a little more unique. You could also improve the process or offer them additional information or connections.
- Tweaking the way you do things and measuring the results can lead to incredible breakthroughs. One example is the way that Mo offered webinars and follow up content. One simple tweak led to 10x times the result.
- Small, low risk experiments in each area of your business will yield some incredible results. Not everything will succeed, but that’s why they’re small.
- Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. What can you deliver that will be streamlined and effective, but also unique? A simple improvement would be to describe what you do in your client’s language instead of your own. A little extra effort in the delivery and presenting the solution in the client’s own language will make it feel completely unique to them and create a much more memorable experience with your business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can we hack our habits with Big Little Breakthroughs?
- The short-term tends to scream the loudest, to the detriment of the long-term. Over the next 12 months, if all you do is what you’ve done before, you're likely to fall about 30% short of the results you could have achieved. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still.
- Think of your effort, time, and energy in the same way that you do as your stock portfolio. You wouldn’t take all your money and invest it entirely in one stock. The same principle has to apply to your time. It’s important to carve out some of your schedule to be strategic and think about the future.
- Some day a company will come along and put you out of business, it might as well be you. A constant stream of reinvention allows you to control at least some of the inevitable disruption that will happen to your business.
- The first thing is to try a 5% adjustment. Carve out just two hours each week for the next four weeks where you’re not going to do anything tactical and only focus on heads-up strategic thinking. Josh has issued this challenge to thousands of people around the world and found they experienced a 0% decline in productivity but by the end of the 30 day period, most people report that those two hours are the most productive time they spend.
- Use your creativity to solve your short-term problem and it will, in turn, solve your long-term problem.
- The first thing you need to do is challenge the assumption that it’s impossible to be more efficient or to find space to commit to head-up thinking. Creatively rebalancing your calendar and creating an untouchable day or untouchable morning can make a huge difference.
- If we want certain desired outcomes, it’s the rituals and rewards that will support them.
- If you need help saying no, make a list of things you are going to stop doing. Having a simple framework (Think, Do, Feel) can help you benchmark things against so you will make better choices.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How do we use the Big Little Breakthrough concepts to deepen relationships?
- Creativity and innovation are tools that we use to focus on product development or marketing, but they also apply to relationships.
- In a relationship setting, think about the other person’s big problem and about how to solve their issue.
- The more you fall in love with your client’s problems, and the more they view you as someone who is aligned with them, the relationship becomes transformed.
- Mo had a similar experience with a lawyer friend he had where he had to have a difficult conversation with her but the end result was that it completely changed her career trajectory.
- Feedback is a gift. If you care about somebody you have to be willing to have hard conversations with them. If you do, you demonstrate that you care about them and that deepens the relationship.
- Failure is a part of life, in terms of relationships, those are opportunities to deepen relationships. Owning your mistakes and doing what it takes to make it right is how you show integrity in relationships.
- Doing a feedback session after a loss sets up the next win. Even when you win, there is an opportunity to ask for feedback on how to improve. This shows that you are always working on your game and are committed to over delivering. This takes your relationship from transactional to one of substance.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can professionals use the concepts of Big Little Breakthroughs to close more business?
- In the research for the book, Josh uncovered eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. One mindset in particular is called “Don’t forget the dinner mint.”
- For a business development person, adding a little creative flourish to each interaction you have in the course of business. A small 5% increase in effort can generate disproportionate outcomes.
- If you’re pitching your services to a prospect, before you hit the send button, think about what extra you can add that is unexpected. It could be an extra feature or shorter delivery time. Every single touchpoint or interaction with a prospect is an opportunity to add a little extra.
- Every extra touch can drive a significant impact in terms of your overall results.
- It doesn’t always have to take the form of an extra service; it could also take the form of a unique experience.
- The dinner mint strategy can also help differentiate your business from other service providers.
- Another idea has to do with the notion of experimenting being very provocative. What if every week you ran five little experiments in your business processes? This is how you can find tiny innovations without risking too much, and if you land on a winner, you can expand it out once you have enough data to justify it.
- Instead of thinking you need to come up with one idea to transform your business, what if you came up with three smaller ideas each week? When you break them down into smaller bets, it’s much less risky and you increase the odds of winning over the long-term.
- Your creativity is more like your weight than your height. You can adjust your weight with your behavior and your creativity works the same way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Mo asks Josh Linkner: What is your big idea on how listeners can focus on business development, grow their book of business and relationships, and grow their careers?
- Josh’s big idea is actually a little idea. We don’t need to bet everything on a single idea because innovation isn’t restricted to billion dollar ideas that change the world. When we think of creativity as small little acts or micro innovations it becomes more accessible, less risky, and actually builds additional skills over time.
- Many professionals struggle with doing any business development at all. The work always seems to get in the way and breaking it down to little acts makes it much more likely you will get things done and see actual results.
- Little acts of innovation could be changing up the form of your prospecting email or experimenting with the way you run a sales meeting. It’s small adjustments or counter intuitive acts of creativity that unlocks big results.
- Josh tells the story of how his relatively small business landed a $30 million contract by a simple act of innovation and everyday kindness.
- Look for anything you can test within your business processes because business development isn’t a mysterious skill you need to learn; it’s just a series of small experiments.
- One of the techniques that Josh uses to initiate innovation is the Judo flip. Look at the prevailing approaches in your industry and think about what the polar opposite might be.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
biglittlebreakthroughs.com
Nathan Barry shares the secrets of the world’s most effective communicators and how you can leverage the power of automation to scale your business development efforts to the moon. Learn how business development professionals can use email and content to grow an audience that is hungry for their expertise, reach more people in a deeper way at scale instead of just 1-to-1, and how the compound gains of consistent action can lead to incredible results.
Mo asks Nathan Barry: What’s your big idea for growing a book of business, growing relationships, and growing a career?
- Nathan used to play video games and he likens having an audience and a newsletter to having the cheat codes for business. Having an engaged audience that you can push content to is incredibly powerful.
- Some platforms have followers, like social and blogging, and others allow you to push content in front of your audience. The push method puts you in control and makes those platforms much more valuable in achieving your business goals.
- Many professionals don’t think of an email list as a relevant tool for building a book of business, but if you have a list of the right people that want to hear from you it can definitely be a powerful asset.
- Even if you’re not selling something through your email list, you can still build the mind share and reputation with your audience that increases your value in their mind.
- Delivering value is key. When it comes to professional services, a cadence of once a month is more than sufficient and the important thing is quality over quantity when it comes to communication.
- The best approach is to augment your close relationships with the vital few and combine it with a larger audience where you are delivering content. Those people are your prospective clients and finding a communication method that has leverage is how you can scale relationships considerably.
- Content allows someone to get to know you on a deeper level, well before you ever talk to them in person or on a phone call.
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How can we get more of the meaningful work we want to do?
- When you think about all the service providers you could hire, you consider all sorts of things like price, location, rapport, but near the top is actual expertise. One of the most effective ways to signal your expertise is to teach what you know.
- Nathan originally started off designing apps for the iPhone for other people, and in the process of trying to land more freelancing gigs, he had the thought that if he had written the book on iPhone app design it would make landing clients much easier. This led him down the path to creating a newsletter and writing a book.
- It’s hard to remember where you are in every conversation with every prospect you are currently talking to. This is where automation comes in and one of the reasons why email can be such an effective communication tool. You could create an automated sequence that delivers your content and includes the appropriate calls to action at the right time.
- It’s also possible to leverage your content that you’re delivering over time and turn that into a book down the road.
- When you’re just getting started with a smaller list it can be discouraging. When you have 0-10 subscribers, the first thing you should do is ask them where they currently go to learn about your topic and what their biggest pain points and struggles are. This gives you very valuable information and lets you know where you can potentially add content and lets you know what your follow up content should be. Whatever the audience is struggling with is exactly what your content should help them with.
- As your list grows, it’s okay to start asking them to share your content with people they think would benefit from it. Once you approach the 100-1000 mark, you can start bundling your content into a free ebook or course or resource and use that to continue growing your audience.
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do you deepen relationships with an email list?
- When you first meet someone, your relationship is initially pretty shallow. Nathan likes to take as much information about himself and include that into his email sequence because that allows people to get a glimpse of who he is.
- Being authentic, open, and direct is a way you can help people get to know you and instill that vital trust.
- Any stories that you can teach and share are going to help someone who is following along feel like they can trust you.
- It’s also important to take your prospect on a journey where they are learning about you consistently over time while you are delivering value to them. An email course is a great tool to accomplish this.
- As a blogger or content creator, you can turn your best content into email content and use it as the basis of your email course. You can make sure thatyour prospect gets to know you at a set cadence over time and has already consumed your best content.
- By automating this kind of a sequence, you get leverage and scale so the hours you put to create the client onboarding system payoff considerably in the future.
- The most common place people struggle when building an audience is in being too broad. People are usually trying to solve a specific problem, so the more you can create content around that specific problem the more effective the hook in bringing people into your audience.
- The sequence of content also trains people to open your emails. If your content is good, you drastically increase the odds of them opening your next email.
- Great content also shapes the person’s questions and mindset for what they should be thinking about once they do get on a call with you.
- The trouble with creating content is that it can be very time consuming, and this is why the automation is so important for leveraging and scaling the work you are putting in.
- A common concern is that if you give away too much for free that no one will hire you, but the opposite is actually true. The more they learn, the more likely to realize how complicated what you do can be and understand that they need to hire a professional.
- If you’ve already been serving clients, you’ve probably already been doing half the work to create these kinds of assets that can work for you in the long term.
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do we hack our own habits to keep building their audience?
- The most important thing you can do is do it consistently. Anywhere you can find leverage and compound returns are crucial to your long term success. This is where habits come in.
- Creating content is a long term game and if you only do it for a few months you’re not going to see a lot of traction. Nathan uses an app called Streaks to track his habits and his chain of accomplished actions every week, including sending a newsletter every week, writing every day, exercising and practicing the piano every day.
- If there is something that you want to get compound gains from, do it every day, even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes.
- It’s consistent effort over a long period of time that is going to get you the results you want.
- If you break your streak, that’s okay. Just don’t miss twice.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nathan Barry.
- ConvertKit has grown from a startup to $25 million a year in revenue. His perspective on seeing how thousands of professionals use his platform gives him a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t.
- Teach everything you know. Many professionals resist the idea for fear of giving away all their best stuff for free, but the opposite tends to be true. The more you give away, the more the prospect realizes that they need your expertise to help them in their specific situation.
- The right place to switch from teaching to pitching is at the point where you have adequately framed the problem and figured out how you could work together. Teaching naturally flows into the conversation around working together.
- Give with abundance and do it in a way that scales. If you’re going to spend nearly a hundred hours packaging your education, you should absolutely use a platform like ConvertKit to automate it and scale your efforts.
- Once you set up something that’s automated, it works for you forever.
- Share what you are working on and what you’re learning with the people in your audience. Automation allows you to develop a relationship with a prospect without actually having to be there and sharing your story is incredibly powerful in getting people to bond with.
- For Nathan, the two most important things in business that he’s looking for is leverage and compound returns. Automation fits that bill.
- Once you create a piece of content, think of ways that you can use to help more people at scale. Develop fewer things and leverage them more effectively.
- When you think of your time when it comes to business development, ask yourself what things you can do that will pay off and work for you forever. Build it once and do it right, and then put it out in a way that scales.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
nathanbarry.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nathan Barry.
- ConvertKit has grown from a startup to $25 million a year in revenue. His perspective on seeing how thousands of professionals use his platform gives him a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t.
- Teach everything you know. Many professionals resist the idea for fear of giving away all their best stuff for free, but the opposite tends to be true. The more you give away, the more the prospect realizes that they need your expertise to help them in their specific situation.
- The right place to switch from teaching to pitching is at the point where you have adequately framed the problem and figured out how you could work together. Teaching naturally flows into the conversation around working together.
- Give with abundance and do it in a way that scales. If you’re going to spend nearly a hundred hours packaging your education, you should absolutely use a platform like ConvertKit to automate it and scale your efforts.
- Once you set up something that’s automated, it works for you forever.
- Share what you are working on and what you’re learning with the people in your audience. Automation allows you to develop a relationship with a prospect without actually having to be there and sharing your story is incredibly powerful in getting people to bond with.
- For Nathan, the two most important things in business that he’s looking for is leverage and compound returns. Automation fits that bill.
- Once you create a piece of content, think of ways that you can use to help more people at scale. Develop fewer things and leverage them more effectively.
- When you think of your time when it comes to business development, ask yourself what things you can do that will pay off and work for you forever. Build it once and do it right, and then put it out in a way that scales.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do we hack our own habits to keep building their audience?
- The most important thing you can do is do it consistently. Anywhere you can find leverage and compound returns are crucial to your long term success. This is where habits come in.
- Creating content is a long term game and if you only do it for a few months you’re not going to see a lot of traction. Nathan uses an app called Streaks to track his habits and his chain of accomplished actions every week, including sending a newsletter every week, writing every day, exercising and practicing the piano every day.
- If there is something that you want to get compound gains from, do it every day, even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes.
- It’s consistent effort over a long period of time that is going to get you the results you want.
- If you break your streak, that’s okay. Just don’t miss twice.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do you deepen relationships with an email list?
- When you first meet someone, your relationship is initially pretty shallow. Nathan likes to take as much information about himself and include that into his email sequence because that allows people to get a glimpse of who he is.
- Being authentic, open, and direct is a way you can help people get to know you and instill that vital trust.
- Any stories that you can teach and share are going to help someone who is following along feel like they can trust you.
- It’s also important to take your prospect on a journey where they are learning about you consistently over time while you are delivering value to them. An email course is a great tool to accomplish this.
- As a blogger or content creator, you can turn your best content into email content and use it as the basis of your email course. You can make sure thatyour prospect gets to know you at a set cadence over time and has already consumed your best content.
- By automating this kind of a sequence, you get leverage and scale so the hours you put to create the client onboarding system payoff considerably in the future.
- The most common place people struggle when building an audience is in being too broad. People are usually trying to solve a specific problem, so the more you can create content around that specific problem the more effective the hook in bringing people into your audience.
- The sequence of content also trains people to open your emails. If your content is good, you drastically increase the odds of them opening your next email.
- Great content also shapes the person’s questions and mindset for what they should be thinking about once they do get on a call with you.
- The trouble with creating content is that it can be very time consuming, and this is why the automation is so important for leveraging and scaling the work you are putting in.
- A common concern is that if you give away too much for free that no one will hire you, but the opposite is actually true. The more they learn, the more likely to realize how complicated what you do can be and understand that they need to hire a professional.
- If you’ve already been serving clients, you’ve probably already been doing half the work to create these kinds of assets that can work for you in the long term.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
nathanbarry.com
Mo asks Nathan Barry: How can we get more of the meaningful work we want to do?
- When you think about all the service providers you could hire, you consider all sorts of things like price, location, rapport, but near the top is actual expertise. One of the most effective ways to signal your expertise is to teach what you know.
- Nathan originally started off designing apps for the iPhone for other people, and in the process of trying to land more freelancing gigs, he had the thought that if he had written the book on iPhone app design it would make landing clients much easier. This led him down the path to creating a newsletter and writing a book.
- It’s hard to remember where you are in every conversation with every prospect you are currently talking to. This is where automation comes in and one of the reasons why email can be such an effective communication tool. You could create an automated sequence that delivers your content and includes the appropriate calls to action at the right time.
- It’s also possible to leverage your content that you’re delivering over time and turn that into a book down the road.
- When you’re just getting started with a smaller list it can be discouraging. When you have 0-10 subscribers, the first thing you should do is ask them where they currently go to learn about your topic and what their biggest pain points and struggles are. This gives you very valuable information and lets you know where you can potentially add content and lets you know what your follow up content should be. Whatever the audience is struggling with is exactly what your content should help them with.
- As your list grows, it’s okay to start asking them to share your content with people they think would benefit from it. Once you approach the 100-1000 mark, you can start bundling your content into a free ebook or course or resource and use that to continue growing your audience.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
Mo asks Nathan Barry: What’s your big idea for growing a book of business, growing relationships, and growing a career?
- Nathan used to play video games and he likens having an audience and a newsletter to having the cheat codes for business. Having an engaged audience that you can push content to is incredibly powerful.
- Some platforms have followers, like social and blogging, and others allow you to push content in front of your audience. The push method puts you in control and makes those platforms much more valuable in achieving your business goals.
- Many professionals don’t think of an email list as a relevant tool for building a book of business, but if you have a list of the right people that want to hear from you it can definitely be a powerful asset.
- Even if you’re not selling something through your email list, you can still build the mind share and reputation with your audience that increases your value in their mind.
- Delivering value is key. When it comes to professional services, a cadence of once a month is more than sufficient and the important thing is quality over quantity when it comes to communication.
- The best approach is to augment your close relationships with the vital few and combine it with a larger audience where you are delivering content. Those people are your prospective clients and finding a communication method that has leverage is how you can scale relationships considerably.
- Content allows someone to get to know you on a deeper level, well before you ever talk to them in person or on a phone call.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ConvertKit.com
Luke Burgis shares the incredibly powerful concept of mimetic desire and how it shapes our behavior in fundamental ways. Learn why your mental models are the foundation for everything you do, how to figure out what motivates you at a core level, and how to eliminate the negative aspects of desire and replace them with a transcendent desire that drives you to change the world.
Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers?
- Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic.
- Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear.
- Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else.
- Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models.
- Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere.
- When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical.
- Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development.
- Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them.
- One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire.
- Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about.
- The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits.
- By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business?
- Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need.
- At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires.
- Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business.
- Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out.
- Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available.
- Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest.
- The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm.
- The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships?
- We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements.
- Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship.
- Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time.
- A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you.
- Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire.
- In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits?
- It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy.
- You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult.
- Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be.
- In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations.
- Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray.
- We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing?
- If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model?
- Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do.
- In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality.
- Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey.
- It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another.
- We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis.
- Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you.
- We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds.
- A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed.
- When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?”
- All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire.
- Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com/quiz
lukeburgis.com
lukeburgis.com/motivation
winning-more.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis.
- Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you.
- We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds.
- A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed.
- When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?”
- All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire.
- Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com
winning-more.com
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits?
- It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy.
- You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult.
- Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be.
- In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations.
- Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray.
- We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing?
- If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model?
- Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do.
- In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality.
- Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey.
- It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another.
- We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships?
- We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements.
- Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship.
- Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time.
- A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you.
- Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire.
- In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com
lukeburgis.com/motivation
Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business?
- Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need.
- At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires.
- Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business.
- Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out.
- Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available.
- Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest.
- The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm.
- The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com
Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers?
- Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic.
- Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear.
- Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else.
- Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models.
- Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere.
- When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical.
- Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development.
- Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them.
- One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire.
- Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about.
- The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits.
- By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
lukeburgis.com/quiz
lukeburgis.com
Shawn Blanc shares how margin impacts every area of your life, and why every professional who is serious about building authentic business relationships needs margin to do it. Learn how margin allows you to say yes to the most important things, how to create genuine relationships, and why slowing down and planning can save not just your business, but also your life.
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: What big idea do you have that professionals can use to do a better job at business development?
- Margin, also known as breathing room, is the space in our lives between the stuff that we do and the limit where we fall off the cliff. It’s very easy, especially in the world of business, for people to push their energy to the absolute limits where there is zero margin in our lives.
- Margin can apply to more than just business, it can apply to all areas and relationships in your life.
- Having breathing room in Shawn’s life helps him lean into his strength as a Yellow thinker. Shawn feels the constant need to fill every moment in his life with something productive, so the reminder of building in the margins is critical to doing his best work.
- Working on projects that are due weeks ahead instead of the next morning allows you to work more effectively with less stress.
- For business and your personal life, margin exists to benefit your relationships. When you have no margin in your life you are tapped out in your schedule and physically, and this leaves little strength left over for your relationships, including business development.
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we use margin to grow our book of business and get more opportunities?
- Shawn shares the parable of the good samaritan and how margin relates to opportunities.
- The ability to say no to certain opportunities is as important as the ability to say yes. When we are not clear around our priorities or have no margin within our schedule, it can be easy to say yes to everything and become overwhelmed. This puts strain on your work when truly great opportunities come your way.
- Margin can enable us to say yes to the most important stuff. It also helps us know when to say no to certain things so that we can show up with our greatest strength during times of opportunity.
- Evaluating opportunities is not binary, it’s an organic process. The first step is knowing your values and understanding how you work within your daily schedule. Does the opportunity align with what you care about? If it does, what are the most important things on your schedule, and do you have enough resources and time to say yes to the opportunity? Lastly, if it is important and time is tight, is there something you can give up on to take the opportunity on?
- Business development is probably one of the most important things you can do for your career, yet it’s one of the first areas the professionals let slide when time gets tough. Great rainmakers have a roadmap for what they are going to do in terms of business development.
- You have to be proactive with your time and have the clarity to know what the most important things are so they don’t get pushed aside.
- Shawn’s team works in eight-week cycles which have been transformative for his business. The first six weeks are focused work time for clearly defined projects and the following week is a buffer for review. The eighth week is time off for the entire team.
- This work cycle structure allows Shawn’s team to accomplish more in less time while also building in time to recover and celebrate what they have achieved.
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How can we use margin and apply it to long-term relationships?
- Margin exists for relationships. We need to have breathing room in our time, in our money, and in our energy to be able to build relationships. Margin allows us to build and strengthen and grow long-term relationships as well as new ones.
- People often view the business of business development and sales as an impossible environment to build authentic relationships but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build the relationship first and it can result in additional business, but if not that’s okay too.
- Margin is the foundation for being truly authentic in a relationship. Without it, you will find yourself in meetings because you need the business and it will come across in the conversation.
- Margin helps us with perspective and allows you to create relationships in the long term.
- Great business development is about creating a better future for other people. Your core expertise is how you impact people in a positive way and relationship-oriented business development is how you do that.
- In Shawn’s experience, providing a lot of value upfront and being clear about the nature of the relationship is what leads to long-term success. The idea of serving is paramount instead of converting each user to a customer immediately.
- Having confidence in your ability to help people is the key to turning them into a customer. The imposter syndrome is what prevents people from understanding the value they can actually add to their customer’s lives. Pulling people from one side of complexity to the other is immensely valuable.
- For some people, you need to charge enough money just to get their attention. A big part of your pricing is who your target customer is, and what price you need to charge to deliver your best work. For Shawn, the number is high enough so that the client will take it as seriously as he will.
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done?
- There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life.
- Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit.
- Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you.
- You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out.
- It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you.
- The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop.
- Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area?
- Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule.
- If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc.
- You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time.
- Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks.
- When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way.
- Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them.
- If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy.
- If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc.
- You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time.
- Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks.
- When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way.
- Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them.
- If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy.
- If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done?
- There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life.
- Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit.
- Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you.
- You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out.
- It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you.
- The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop.
- Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area?
- Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule.
- If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How can we use margin and apply it to long-term relationships?
- Margin exists for relationships. We need to have breathing room in our time, in our money, and in our energy to be able to build relationships. Margin allows us to build and strengthen and grow long-term relationships as well as new ones.
- People often view the business of business development and sales as an impossible environment to build authentic relationships but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build the relationship first and it can result in additional business, but if not that’s okay too.
- Margin is the foundation for being truly authentic in a relationship. Without it, you will find yourself in meetings because you need the business and it will come across in the conversation.
- Margin helps us with perspective and allows you to create relationships in the long term.
- Great business development is about creating a better future for other people. Your core expertise is how you impact people in a positive way and relationship-oriented business development is how you do that.
- In Shawn’s experience, providing a lot of value upfront and being clear about the nature of the relationship is what leads to long-term success. The idea of serving is paramount instead of converting each user to a customer immediately.
- Having confidence in your ability to help people is the key to turning them into a customer. The imposter syndrome is what prevents people from understanding the value they can actually add to their customer’s lives. Pulling people from one side of complexity to the other is immensely valuable.
- For some people, you need to charge enough money just to get their attention. A big part of your pricing is who your target customer is, and what price you need to charge to deliver your best work. For Shawn, the number is high enough so that the client will take it as seriously as he will.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we use margin to grow our book of business and get more opportunities?
- Shawn shares the parable of the good samaritan and how margin relates to opportunities.
- The ability to say no to certain opportunities is as important as the ability to say yes. When we are not clear around our priorities or have no margin within our schedule, it can be easy to say yes to everything and become overwhelmed. This puts strain on your work when truly great opportunities come your way.
- Margin can enable us to say yes to the most important stuff. It also helps us know when to say no to certain things so that we can show up with our greatest strength during times of opportunity.
- Evaluating opportunities is not binary, it’s an organic process. The first step is knowing your values and understanding how you work within your daily schedule. Does the opportunity align with what you care about? If it does, what are the most important things on your schedule, and do you have enough resources and time to say yes to the opportunity? Lastly, if it is important and time is tight, is there something you can give up on to take the opportunity on?
- Business development is probably one of the most important things you can do for your career, yet it’s one of the first areas the professionals let slide when time gets tough. Great rainmakers have a roadmap for what they are going to do in terms of business development.
- You have to be proactive with your time and have the clarity to know what the most important things are so they don’t get pushed aside.
- Shawn’s team works in eight-week cycles which have been transformative for his business. The first six weeks are focused work time for clearly defined projects and the following week is a buffer for review. The eighth week is time off for the entire team.
- This work cycle structure allows Shawn’s team to accomplish more in less time while also building in time to recover and celebrate what they have achieved.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Mo asks Shawn Blanc: What big idea do you have that professionals can use to do a better job at business development?
- Margin, also known as breathing room, is the space in our lives between the stuff that we do and the limit where we fall off the cliff. It’s very easy, especially in the world of business, for people to push their energy to the absolute limits where there is zero margin in our lives.
- Margin can apply to more than just business, it can apply to all areas and relationships in your life.
- Having breathing room in Shawn’s life helps him lean into his strength as a Yellow thinker. Shawn feels the constant need to fill every moment in his life with something productive, so the reminder of building in the margins is critical to doing his best work.
- Working on projects that are due weeks ahead instead of the next morning allows you to work more effectively with less stress.
- For business and your personal life, margin exists to benefit your relationships. When you have no margin in your life you are tapped out in your schedule and physically, and this leaves little strength left over for your relationships, including business development.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
thefocuscourse.com
Ozan Varol shares how thinking like a rocket scientist can unlock business innovations that most people would not believe are possible. Discover the lessons and ideas that allowed NASA to put a man on the moon and how to apply them to business development, the subtle insight that led to the creation of Netflix, and why questioning your assumptions is the secret to innovation and long term success.
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we take Ozan’s content and become better skilled at business development?
- Ozan opened his book with the story of how John F. Kennedy pledged a literal moonshot despite the lack of technology at the time that could make it possible. Ozan wrote the book to show that it wasn’t just the technology that made putting a man on the moon possible, it was the framework of thinking that kicked everything off.
- The big takeaway from what NASA was able to accomplish is the combination of idealism and pragmatism. Dreaming big and then working backward from that dream and figuring out what needs to happen to get there, then methodically attacking each problem along the roadmap.
- Sometimes a challenge can galvanize your entire team to make your goal into a reality.
- Reasoning from first principles is a powerful way of reimagining and reframing what is possible. It’s a method of breaking a problem down and questioning your assumptions, and letting go of everything except for what is essential.
- One assumption from rocket science that didn’t change until recently was the idea that rockets couldn’t be reused. SpaceX and Blue Origin have used first principles thinking to reimagine what’s possible and it’s because someone was willing to step back and question the accepted wisdom of the time.
- Hack through your business assumptions. You owe to yourself and your clients to create a better vision that allows you to serve them even more.
- It’s important to ask yourself whether you own your assumptions or do your assumptions own you? Is it possible to question your assumptions and replace it with something better?
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we do a better job of getting the kind of work that we want?
- One of the biggest problems in the business right now, especially in this time of uncertainty, is that we assume that other businesses around us know something that we don’t, so we end up copying their strategies.
- This ends up in a race to the center, where businesses start to look more and more like each other.
- First-principles thinking is a way of questioning assumptions that you or other people have taken for granted. One of the best tools for identifying your invisible assumptions about your business is cross-pollination. Look at other industries and see what they do because what is commonplace in one industry can be completely innovative in another.
- A great example is the origin story of Netflix, where Reid Hastings had the idea of applying the subscription model that gyms use and applied it to video rentals.
- Most of us can not see our outdated assumptions because we are too close to the problem. There is immense value in stepping outside of your industry for inspiration.
- The humility that comes from saying you don’t know something is very rare, but that is the mindset that often leads to innovation. Many of the business leaders that have transformed the way we do things have done so with the beginner’s mindset after entering another industry from the one they started in.
- Bring people into the conversation that know nothing about what you are working on. Beginners have a way of looking at a problem that more experienced people can’t even see. Experts should not work in isolation, they should benefit from the input and the “dumb” questions of amateurs.
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we deepen relationships for long term success?
- There is a simple concept within rocket science known as “test as you fly, fly as you test”. It's about making sure your experiments are as close to the real conditions as possible. In business, we almost never experiment and instead go from idea to execution immediately.
- Look at whatever you are offering from the perspective of the people that you are serving. It’s hard to see the human component of our product or service from a PowerPoint presentation. Keeping the client’s perspective in mind is how you increase the value of your relationship with them.
- The client won’t know what it will be like to work with you, but if you can give them a sample (the Give to Get), you can set yourself apart from the competition and give your client value upfront. This shows them what your relationship will look like, which is something that no email, sales page, or presentation can do.
- The best way to reframe a question is to step away from a tactic and see the overall strategy. Often the tactic becomes a trap. If you’ve become used to using the same tactic to reach people you won’t see the other options that are possible. There are other tactics available that fit into your overall strategy but you need to be able to step back and see what is possible.
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we hack our own habits to be successful over a long period of time?
- The best way to grow your business is to do nothing. So many of us are in constant hustle mode, constantly going from one thing to the next. There is an incredible value in simply doing nothing but thinking.
- Schedule time every day that is dedicated to unplugging and thinking. Don’t approach it with an agenda or an outcome, just write down whatever comes to your mind. 95% of your thoughts will be junk, but the remaining 5% can be invaluable.
- Research shows that when you are daydreaming, a region of the brain called the default node network comes alive and that region is associated with creativity. When you let your mind wander you are allowing your subconscious to connect the dots that you would otherwise have missed.
- This is why so many great ideas come to people in the shower. If you can take that and build it into your day, you’ll find that it will become the most valuable time on your schedule.
- Do what works for you. Thinking time can take the form of going for a walk, exercising, or just sitting in your favorite armchair. As long as you are stepping away from distractions you are opening yourself to great ideas.
- We are walking repositories of epiphanies, the problem is we are generally too distracted to receive them. Creativity comes as a subtle whisper, and if you’re not paying attention, it’s very easy to miss.
- Avoid using your phone or laptop to take notes. For Ozan, that means a notepad and pencil.
- Put it on your calendar and treat it like a meeting. Start it as an experiment and start small.
- Part of the reason that people shy away from this kind of practice is there doesn’t appear to be an immediate return on the time. Approach it as a long term investment that will turn into amazing opportunities in the future. You need to find a balance between the short term demands of business and your long term vision.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ozan Varol.
- Always having a couple moonshot ideas that you are working on is incredibly valuable as you are working on the day to day tasks of business development.
- For something to be a moonshot, it has to be something that would completely change the game, for example, a 10x investment. What can you work on that is totally different from what you are doing right now, that if it worked, would be a 10x game changer for your business.
- There is a large correlation between highly efficient people and problem solvers and the ability to reframe questions. The ability to reframe the question behind your actions is how you can achieve incredible results. Instead of getting stuck in a rut, stepping back and seeing the bigger strategy may be what you need to do to see better alternatives.
- By reframing the question we get a much broader context of what we might do next.
- Being willing to admit that you know nothing opens up your mind to learning. The beginner’s mindset is liberating and puts you in a position to learn more.
- We have to seek outside our tiny ecosystem of our business and clients to see other ways of doing things that can unlock innovations that can change everything.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ozan Varol.
- Always having a couple moonshot ideas that you are working on is incredibly valuable as you are working on the day to day tasks of business development.
- For something to be a moonshot, it has to be something that would completely change the game, for example, a 10x investment. What can you work on that is totally different from what you are doing right now, that if it worked, would be a 10x game changer for your business.
- There is a large correlation between highly efficient people and problem solvers and the ability to reframe questions. The ability to reframe the question behind your actions is how you can achieve incredible results. Instead of getting stuck in a rut, stepping back and seeing the bigger strategy may be what you need to do to see better alternatives.
- By reframing the question we get a much broader context of what we might do next.
- Being willing to admit that you know nothing opens up your mind to learning. The beginner’s mindset is liberating and puts you in a position to learn more.
- We have to seek outside our tiny ecosystem of our business and clients to see other ways of doing things that can unlock innovations that can change everything.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we hack our own habits to be successful over a long period of time?
- The best way to grow your business is to do nothing. So many of us are in constant hustle mode, constantly going from one thing to the next. There is an incredible value in simply doing nothing but thinking.
- Schedule time every day that is dedicated to unplugging and thinking. Don’t approach it with an agenda or an outcome, just write down whatever comes to your mind. 95% of your thoughts will be junk, but the remaining 5% can be invaluable.
- Research shows that when you are daydreaming, a region of the brain called the default node network comes alive and that region is associated with creativity. When you let your mind wander you are allowing your subconscious to connect the dots that you would otherwise have missed.
- This is why so many great ideas come to people in the shower. If you can take that and build it into your day, you’ll find that it will become the most valuable time on your schedule.
- Do what works for you. Thinking time can take the form of going for a walk, exercising, or just sitting in your favorite armchair. As long as you are stepping away from distractions you are opening yourself to great ideas.
- We are walking repositories of epiphanies, the problem is we are generally too distracted to receive them. Creativity comes as a subtle whisper, and if you’re not paying attention, it’s very easy to miss.
- Avoid using your phone or laptop to take notes. For Ozan, that means a notepad and pencil.
- Put it on your calendar and treat it like a meeting. Start it as an experiment and start small.
- Part of the reason that people shy away from this kind of practice is there doesn’t appear to be an immediate return on the time. Approach it as a long term investment that will turn into amazing opportunities in the future. You need to find a balance between the short term demands of business and your long term vision.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we deepen relationships for long term success?
- There is a simple concept within rocket science known as “test as you fly, fly as you test”. It's about making sure your experiments are as close to the real conditions as possible. In business, we almost never experiment and instead go from idea to execution immediately.
- Look at whatever you are offering from the perspective of the people that you are serving. It’s hard to see the human component of our product or service from a PowerPoint presentation. Keeping the client’s perspective in mind is how you increase the value of your relationship with them.
- The client won’t know what it will be like to work with you, but if you can give them a sample (the Give to Get), you can set yourself apart from the competition and give your client value upfront. This shows them what your relationship will look like, which is something that no email, sales page, or presentation can do.
- The best way to reframe a question is to step away from a tactic and see the overall strategy. Often the tactic becomes a trap. If you’ve become used to using the same tactic to reach people you won’t see the other options that are possible. There are other tactics available that fit into your overall strategy but you need to be able to step back and see what is possible.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we do a better job of getting the kind of work that we want?
- One of the biggest problems in the business right now, especially in this time of uncertainty, is that we assume that other businesses around us know something that we don’t, so we end up copying their strategies.
- This ends up in a race to the center, where businesses start to look more and more like each other.
- First-principles thinking is a way of questioning assumptions that you or other people have taken for granted. One of the best tools for identifying your invisible assumptions about your business is cross-pollination. Look at other industries and see what they do because what is commonplace in one industry can be completely innovative in another.
- A great example is the origin story of Netflix, where Reid Hastings had the idea of applying the subscription model that gyms use and applied it to video rentals.
- Most of us can not see our outdated assumptions because we are too close to the problem. There is immense value in stepping outside of your industry for inspiration.
- The humility that comes from saying you don’t know something is very rare, but that is the mindset that often leads to innovation. Many of the business leaders that have transformed the way we do things have done so with the beginner’s mindset after entering another industry from the one they started in.
- Bring people into the conversation that know nothing about what you are working on. Beginners have a way of looking at a problem that more experienced people can’t even see. Experts should not work in isolation, they should benefit from the input and the “dumb” questions of amateurs.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we take Ozan’s content and become better skilled at business development?
- Ozan opened his book with the story of how John F. Kennedy pledged a literal moonshot despite the lack of technology at the time that could make it possible. Ozan wrote the book to show that it wasn’t just the technology that made putting a man on the moon possible, it was the framework of thinking that kicked everything off.
- The big takeaway from what NASA was able to accomplish is the combination of idealism and pragmatism. Dreaming big and then working backward from that dream and figuring out what needs to happen to get there, then methodically attacking each problem along the roadmap.
- Sometimes a challenge can galvanize your entire team to make your goal into a reality.
- Reasoning from first principles is a powerful way of reimagining and reframing what is possible. It’s a method of breaking a problem down and questioning your assumptions, and letting go of everything except for what is essential.
- One assumption from rocket science that didn’t change until recently was the idea that rockets couldn’t be reused. SpaceX and Blue Origin have used first principles thinking to reimagine what’s possible and it’s because someone was willing to step back and question the accepted wisdom of the time.
- Hack through your business assumptions. You owe to yourself and your clients to create a better vision that allows you to serve them even more.
- It’s important to ask yourself whether you own your assumptions or do your assumptions own you? Is it possible to question your assumptions and replace it with something better?
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
weeklycontrarian.com
Dr. Ivan Misner shares his expertise as one of the world’s most effective networkers and talks about the nuts and bolts of creating real relationships that drive real revenue. Learn why the quality of the people you surround yourself with will determine so much of your life and business and how to ensure your inner circle aligns with your core values, plus tips for networking in a way that leads to long term business development success.
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: What is your big idea on how business development experts can grow their book of business, their relationships, and their careers?
- The quality of the people you surround yourself with determines the quality of your life.
- Imagine that you live your life in one room with one door and it’s one-way entrance only. If that were true would you be more selective about the people that you let into your life?
- The room is a metaphor for your mind, and when you have a relationship with someone, business or personal, their fingerprints are all over your brain for the rest of your life. This is why it’s vital to be very selective on the front end.
- Your experiences with people, the good and the bad, will affect your decisions for the rest of your life.
- You have to ask yourself whether a client is going to be worth the money and the psychic energy you are going to invest in the relationship.
- The selectivity starts with understanding your personal values. If you don’t know what’s important in your life you will take anyone that comes to your door. Clients don’t have to have the exact same values as you, they just can’t be incongruent with the things you believe are the most important.
- You’re better off turning down a client or an employee if you believe they will take you in the opposite direction of your personal values.
- One of the most important values in Dr. Misner’s organization BNI is that giver’s gain. If you want to be able to get business from people you have to be willing to give them business.
- Networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s a way to build a solid foundation for a strong, successful business. It’s an attitude and not an expectation.
- Creating a great organizational culture changes that organization forever. Your business’s core values should be short and repeated constantly.
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we grow our book of business?
- There is a networking disconnect, where everybody goes to networking events wanting to sell but nobody is there to buy. Networking is all about relationships, it’s more like farming than hunting.
- Avoid selling the first time you meet someone. Plant the seed of the relationship first and then cultivate it over time.
- Ivan recommends the 24/7/30 follow-up system. Within 24 hours of meeting someone, send them a note and let them know that you enjoyed getting to know them. Within 7 days find them on social media and make a meaningful connection with them. Go where they are, not where you want to be. Within 30 days reach out to them and ask to have a conversation about what they do. The whole time you avoid selling to them and focus instead on just building the relationship.
- Start with the other person in mind and get to know them as a human being. It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s how well you know each other that counts.
- The important thing is not about who is in your database, it’s who is willing to help you if you asked.
- If you follow up in a meaningful way with the goal of building a real relationship, it’s not going to feel formulaic or contrived. Helping and authenticity are key.
- Infinite giving does not mean that you’re an infinite victim. Giving can take all kinds of forms and there are a number of ways your giving will come back to you.
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we develop more and deeper relationships?
- BNI now has over 276,000 members and over the course of 2020, those members generated over $16 billion in business.
- A one-to-one conversation with people periodically is the best way to develop a relationship with them.
- The Gains exchange is a great way to deepen a relationship with someone you know. Write down your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and find out what you have in common.
- Ivan tells the story of two BNI members that were initially skeptical of the Gains exchange and discovered something they had in common that became the basis for a great relationship.
- People are usually open to the Gains exchange. You don’t have to frame the one-to-one beforehand if you approach it the right way.
- The perfect way to ask the Gains questions is to model it. Start with your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and show them what you want to know about them. The modeling provides the example instead of a perfectly designed question.
- Near the end of the conversation reiterate what you learned about them and open the idea of having another conversation in the future to connect on things that are important to them.
- If the other person has a need that you can help with by sharing a resource, that becomes the perfect reason to follow up. Before you ask for something, you should invest in the relationship with them first.
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we hack our own habits to keep building our relationships?
- Instead of saying we’re busy, we should think about our life being full instead.
- The foundation of networking is the VCP process. First, you have to be visible, then you move to credibility where people know who you are and that you’re good at it. Only then can you move to profitability.
- Most people try to leapfrog the process and go from being completely invisible and straight to profitability.
- When networking, you need to be aware of where you are in that process with that person because that will dictate the way you communicate with them.
- You always have to work on all three aspects of the process to maintain your business development efforts. Consistency is key.
- The biggest mistake that businesses make is doing a thousand things six times instead of doing six things a thousand times. It’s about doing fewer things and doing them well and not stretching yourself too thin.
- Work in your flame instead of your wax. Hire people to do the things you don’t want to do so you can focus on the things you want to be doing to carry your business forward.
- Ivan color codes his calendar and is very strict about his timelines. That’s how he knows what kind of day he’s going to have and he can see if he’s working on what he should be working on over the course of the week.
- Business people are constantly chasing bright shiny objects. Stop chasing the bright shiny distractions and focus on just doing the same things effectively over and over again.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Dr. Ivan Misner.
- Ivan Misner is the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest networking group. There is probably no one else on the planet who knows more about building a valuable network or relationships.
- We need to be very careful about who we allow into our inner circle. This can include strategic partners that we work with to grow our businesses, the clients we work with, to the people in our personal lives.
- Think about your current ecosystem and about who shares your core values and who you want to invest your time with.
- The people you allow into your metaphorical room you can’t kick out, so it’s important to be cautious on the front end.
- When you have negative experiences with people you don’t get that time back, and those experiences will influence your decisions for the rest of your life.
- Be very critical of the people you let into your life and be willing to let people go when you discover that they are not a fit.
- The core values of your organization have nothing to do with what’s on people’s resumes. Your core values should be concise and clear.
- When you start to get to know somebody the Gains exchange is a great way to build the foundation of the relationship. Enter into a dialogue about your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills to facilitate a great conversation.
- Model the response you are looking for by sharing your Gains with the other person and then ask them to reciprocate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Dr. Ivan Misner.
- Ivan Misner is the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest networking group. There is probably no one else on the planet who knows more about building a valuable network or relationships.
- We need to be very careful about who we allow into our inner circle. This can include strategic partners that we work with to grow our businesses, the clients we work with, to the people in our personal lives.
- Think about your current ecosystem and about who shares your core values and who you want to invest your time with.
- The people you allow into your metaphorical room you can’t kick out, so it’s important to be cautious on the front end.
- When you have negative experiences with people you don’t get that time back, and those experiences will influence your decisions for the rest of your life.
- Be very critical of the people you let into your life and be willing to let people go when you discover that they are not a fit.
- The core values of your organization have nothing to do with what’s on people’s resumes. Your core values should be concise and clear.
- When you start to get to know somebody the Gains exchange is a great way to build the foundation of the relationship. Enter into a dialogue about your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills to facilitate a great conversation.
- Model the response you are looking for by sharing your Gains with the other person and then ask them to reciprocate.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we hack our own habits to keep building our relationships?
- Instead of saying we’re busy, we should think about our life being full instead.
- The foundation of networking is the VCP process. First, you have to be visible, then you move to credibility where people know who you are and that you’re good at it. Only then can you move to profitability.
- Most people try to leapfrog the process and go from being completely invisible and straight to profitability.
- When networking, you need to be aware of where you are in that process with that person because that will dictate the way you communicate with them.
- You always have to work on all three aspects of the process to maintain your business development efforts. Consistency is key.
- The biggest mistake that businesses make is doing a thousand things six times instead of doing six things a thousand times. It’s about doing fewer things and doing them well and not stretching yourself too thin.
- Work in your flame instead of your wax. Hire people to do the things you don’t want to do so you can focus on the things you want to be doing to carry your business forward.
- Ivan color codes his calendar and is very strict about his timelines. That’s how he knows what kind of day he’s going to have and he can see if he’s working on what he should be working on over the course of the week.
- Business people are constantly chasing bright shiny objects. Stop chasing the bright shiny distractions and focus on just doing the same things effectively over and over again.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we develop more and deeper relationships?
- BNI now has over 276,000 members and over the course of 2020, those members generated over $16 billion in business.
- A one-to-one conversation with people periodically is the best way to develop a relationship with them.
- The Gains exchange is a great way to deepen a relationship with someone you know. Write down your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and find out what you have in common.
- Ivan tells the story of two BNI members that were initially skeptical of the Gains exchange and discovered something they had in common that became the basis for a great relationship.
- People are usually open to the Gains exchange. You don’t have to frame the one-to-one beforehand if you approach it the right way.
- The perfect way to ask the Gains questions is to model it. Start with your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and show them what you want to know about them. The modeling provides the example instead of a perfectly designed question.
- Near the end of the conversation reiterate what you learned about them and open the idea of having another conversation in the future to connect on things that are important to them.
- If the other person has a need that you can help with by sharing a resource, that becomes the perfect reason to follow up. Before you ask for something, you should invest in the relationship with them first.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we grow our book of business?
- There is a networking disconnect, where everybody goes to networking events wanting to sell but nobody is there to buy. Networking is all about relationships, it’s more like farming than hunting.
- Avoid selling the first time you meet someone. Plant the seed of the relationship first and then cultivate it over time.
- Ivan recommends the 24/7/30 follow-up system. Within 24 hours of meeting someone, send them a note and let them know that you enjoyed getting to know them. Within 7 days find them on social media and make a meaningful connection with them. Go where they are, not where you want to be. Within 30 days reach out to them and ask to have a conversation about what they do. The whole time you avoid selling to them and focus instead on just building the relationship.
- Start with the other person in mind and get to know them as a human being. It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s how well you know each other that counts.
- The important thing is not about who is in your database, it’s who is willing to help you if you asked.
- If you follow up in a meaningful way with the goal of building a real relationship, it’s not going to feel formulaic or contrived. Helping and authenticity are key.
- Infinite giving does not mean that you’re an infinite victim. Giving can take all kinds of forms and there are a number of ways your giving will come back to you.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: What is your big idea on how business development experts can grow their book of business, their relationships, and their careers?
- The quality of the people you surround yourself with determines the quality of your life.
- Imagine that you live your life in one room with one door and it’s one-way entrance only. If that were true would you be more selective about the people that you let into your life?
- The room is a metaphor for your mind, and when you have a relationship with someone, business or personal, their fingerprints are all over your brain for the rest of your life. This is why it’s vital to be very selective on the front end.
- Your experiences with people, the good and the bad, will affect your decisions for the rest of your life.
- You have to ask yourself whether a client is going to be worth the money and the psychic energy you are going to invest in the relationship.
- The selectivity starts with understanding your personal values. If you don’t know what’s important in your life you will take anyone that comes to your door. Clients don’t have to have the exact same values as you, they just can’t be incongruent with the things you believe are the most important.
- You’re better off turning down a client or an employee if you believe they will take you in the opposite direction of your personal values.
- One of the most important values in Dr. Misner’s organization BNI is that giver’s gain. If you want to be able to get business from people you have to be willing to give them business.
- Networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s a way to build a solid foundation for a strong, successful business. It’s an attitude and not an expectation.
- Creating a great organizational culture changes that organization forever. Your business’s core values should be short and repeated constantly.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
ivanmisner.com
bni.com
L. David Marquet shares his incredible insights into how the words we use shape the relationships between us and our team as well as our clients, and how we can stop using the industrial age mindset in the modern world. Learn how to create a resilient team that generates extraordinary results for your clients, how to stop obeying the clock, and why creating the right business development habits can determine the arc of your career.
Mo asks L. David Marquet: What big idea do you have around using the language of leadership to build client relationships?
- The language we use today has been passed down from our parents and grandparents, and is in essence an industrial age language.
- In the past, language has adapted and changed as the work and society have evolved but more recently, language has fallen behind. Work and society are changing more rapidly than our language and this leads to communication issues.
- The underlying theme of the industrial age in terms of human connections was conformity, where disrupting the hierarchy typically caused problems. We need to retrain ourselves to connect instead of conform and we do that through language.
- Connection language is about being vulnerable without sharing too much; incremental intimacy is the key. It’s about reinforcing the idea of improvement instead of knowing all the answers right away.
- Clients are shrewd and if you try to pretend that you know it all instead of being authentic and honest, the relationship will be damaged.
- Communication is not part of the training for most complex expertise. One activity that we can do is saying “I don’t know” to a question a few times a week and being observant about how you feel about it, even when you do know the answer.
- We teach leadership as if it’s history, but that’s not the right metaphor. Language is the perfect metaphor for leadership because it’s all about practice and the words that we use to communicate with other people.
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can the language of leadership help us control the clock?
- Controlling the clock is the antithesis of obeying the clock. In the industrial age it made sense because that’s the way production was done, but it doesn’t serve us in the way human teams interact now.
- For creative work, controlling the clock is about acknowledging deadlines but controlling the rhythm between action and doing, and pausing and thinking. Doing is all about focus, whereas variability is an ally for thinking.
- Many organizations are biased towards doing and action, and leave very little time for thinking and reflecting which leads to less innovation over time.
- Another aspect of the industrial age is coercion. The very structure of most organizations is about controlling the actions of other people, and if that bleeds over into your client relationship, it’s not going to be very healthy.
- Work with a client to choose a time to pause and get feedback, and as you get closer to the goal you can deliver more each time.
- You want your decisions to have expiration dates. When you reach the expiration date, you revisit the activity and evaluate what’s working. The key is to commit until that date.
- When we work in teams, we want the commitment to be small, so that the team can buy in without having to change their thinking right away. Make it easy for them to commit in the beginning instead of requiring them to admit their prior thought process was incorrect.
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can we use the language of leadership to deepen our relationships?
- There is a language difference between resilient and adaptive teams, and fragile teams. Adaptive teams are more open to dissenting opinions with people being willing to speak up. On fragile teams, only the loudest tend to get heard.
- One of the most common patterns is that word distribution matches the salary distribution of the people involved in the meeting.
- If you’re in a meeting, the point is not to get your point across, it’s to understand other people’s points and to structure the meeting so that the people that are underrepresented are invited to share. Vote first, and then discuss.
- If you sense there is a dissenting opinion you should shine a light on that. You need to celebrate a dissenting opinion because that’s where all innovation comes from.
- Avoid binary questions when you want to increase variability and increase innovation. Always go to the minority dissenting opinion first, you want to hear from the people that feel strongly one way or the other.
- You should focus your time and energy finding out what the group knows and maximizing learning in the limited time that you have, and you don’t do that by rehashing what the majority thinks.
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How do we get our team to focus on the right client development activities?
- We act our way to new thinking. When you want to change something, you need to act the way that those people would act and the thought process will follow.
- Our brains change as a result of our habits. In terms of language, simply switching out the term “they” for “we” can create a very unique team environment.
- Instead of looking for what you’re doing wrong, you need to look at the things that you’re doing right and celebrate those activities. Invite your team to tell their story.
- We tend to focus on the outcomes for the things we do. Habits don’t change from the desire for an outcome. You have to put yourself into an environment where it’s easy to have the habits that generate the results you want.
- Learn what it takes to change a small habit first, because if you haven’t gone through that process yet you have no right to ask other people, including your clients, to change their habits.
- Celebrate all the actions, yours and your team’s, before you start suggesting incremental improvements.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of L. David Marquet.
- We, as humans, are typically either thinking or we’re acting and we tend to bias toward action. For business development, this means it can be very easy to just do the next thing and do it right away. Sometimes that focus on action is not the right thing to do.
- Occasionally, we need to step back and think about the next right move, but that can also include our colleagues and even the client or prospect. Ask the client/prospect what kind of followup they want to see from you.
- Build default thinking time in with yourself, your team, and your clients, and then act. Put time in your calendar once a week for your thinking time and commit to it.
- It’s important to not think about completion as just being a deal getting closed. A complete phase in business development can be the Give To Get, then each next step after that. Each step is an opportunity to step back and meet with the team about what worked well and what should change.
- When you celebrate the small, incremental steps, you will do more of them.
- Business development is challenging. We all almost always default back to delivery so we need to create mechanisms to celebrate every completion we do.
- Business development is a journey. Ask open-ended questions and use each moment to learn and get better.
- If you put 100 hours into improving your technical skills, your clients probably won’t notice. If you put 100 hours into your business development skills, not only do you improve your book of business and networking ability, you also pull through your expertise. Make it a priority and all kinds of good things will happen along the way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Mo shares his insights from the habits of L. David Marquet.
- We, as humans, are typically either thinking or we’re acting and we tend to bias toward action. For business development, this means it can be very easy to just do the next thing and do it right away. Sometimes that focus on action is not the right thing to do.
- Occasionally, we need to step back and think about the next right move, but that can also include our colleagues and even the client or prospect. Ask the client/prospect what kind of followup they want to see from you.
- Build default thinking time in with yourself, your team, and your clients, and then act. Put time in your calendar once a week for your thinking time and commit to it.
- It’s important to not think about completion as just being a deal getting closed. A complete phase in business development can be the Give To Get, then each next step after that. Each step is an opportunity to step back and meet with the team about what worked well and what should change.
- When you celebrate the small, incremental steps, you will do more of them.
- Business development is challenging. We all almost always default back to delivery so we need to create mechanisms to celebrate every completion we do.
- Business development is a journey. Ask open-ended questions and use each moment to learn and get better.
- If you put 100 hours into improving your technical skills, your clients probably won’t notice. If you put 100 hours into your business development skills, not only do you improve your book of business and networking ability, you also pull through your expertise. Make it a priority and all kinds of good things will happen along the way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How do we get our team to focus on the right client development activities?
- We act our way to new thinking. When you want to change something, you need to act the way that those people would act and the thought process will follow.
- Our brains change as a result of our habits. In terms of language, simply switching out the term “they” for “we” can create a very unique team environment.
- Instead of looking for what you’re doing wrong, you need to look at the things that you’re doing right and celebrate those activities. Invite your team to tell their story.
- We tend to focus on the outcomes for the things we do. Habits don’t change from the desire for an outcome. You have to put yourself into an environment where it’s easy to have the habits that generate the results you want.
- Learn what it takes to change a small habit first, because if you haven’t gone through that process yet you have no right to ask other people, including your clients, to change their habits.
- Celebrate all the actions, yours and your team’s, before you start suggesting incremental improvements.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can we use the language of leadership to deepen our relationships?
- There is a language difference between resilient and adaptive teams, and fragile teams. Adaptive teams are more open to dissenting opinions with people being willing to speak up. On fragile teams, only the loudest tend to get heard.
- One of the most common patterns is that word distribution matches the salary distribution of the people involved in the meeting.
- If you’re in a meeting, the point is not to get your point across, it’s to understand other people’s points and to structure the meeting so that the people that are underrepresented are invited to share. Vote first, and then discuss.
- If you sense there is a dissenting opinion you should shine a light on that. You need to celebrate a dissenting opinion because that’s where all innovation comes from.
- Avoid binary questions when you want to increase variability and increase innovation. Always go to the minority dissenting opinion first, you want to hear from the people that feel strongly one way or the other.
- You should focus your time and energy finding out what the group knows and maximizing learning in the limited time that you have, and you don’t do that by rehashing what the majority thinks.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can the language of leadership help us control the clock?
- Controlling the clock is the antithesis of obeying the clock. In the industrial age it made sense because that’s the way production was done, but it doesn’t serve us in the way human teams interact now.
- For creative work, controlling the clock is about acknowledging deadlines but controlling the rhythm between action and doing, and pausing and thinking. Doing is all about focus, whereas variability is an ally for thinking.
- Many organizations are biased towards doing and action, and leave very little time for thinking and reflecting which leads to less innovation over time.
- Another aspect of the industrial age is coercion. The very structure of most organizations is about controlling the actions of other people, and if that bleeds over into your client relationship, it’s not going to be very healthy.
- Work with a client to choose a time to pause and get feedback, and as you get closer to the goal you can deliver more each time.
- You want your decisions to have expiration dates. When you reach the expiration date, you revisit the activity and evaluate what’s working. The key is to commit until that date.
- When we work in teams, we want the commitment to be small, so that the team can buy in without having to change their thinking right away. Make it easy for them to commit in the beginning instead of requiring them to admit their prior thought process was incorrect.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Mo asks L. David Marquet: What big idea do you have around using the language of leadership to build client relationships?
- The language we use today has been passed down from our parents and grandparents, and is in essence an industrial age language.
- In the past, language has adapted and changed as the work and society have evolved but more recently, language has fallen behind. Work and society are changing more rapidly than our language and this leads to communication issues.
- The underlying theme of the industrial age in terms of human connections was conformity, where disrupting the hierarchy typically caused problems. We need to retrain ourselves to connect instead of conform and we do that through language.
- Connection language is about being vulnerable without sharing too much; incremental intimacy is the key. It’s about reinforcing the idea of improvement instead of knowing all the answers right away.
- Clients are shrewd and if you try to pretend that you know it all instead of being authentic and honest, the relationship will be damaged.
- Communication is not part of the training for most complex expertise. One activity that we can do is saying “I don’t know” to a question a few times a week and being observant about how you feel about it, even when you do know the answer.
- We teach leadership as if it’s history, but that’s not the right metaphor. Language is the perfect metaphor for leadership because it’s all about practice and the words that we use to communicate with other people.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/
View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges
Josh Kaufman shares the fundamental frameworks that amplify business development success and breaks them down into actionable strategies that you can start implementing today. Learn how to speak the language of business so you can understand your clients on a deeper level, solve their problems more effectively, and determine which opportunities to pursue and which to pass over so you can make the most impact possible.
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful?
- Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development.
- Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well.
- Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client.
- Most employees know their job very well, but they don’t know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference.
- The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization.
- Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization.
- As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business.
- Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities?
- Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future.
- Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what’s possible.
- All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there.
- This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh’s career have come from posing this thought experiment.
- As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question.
- Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise because you weren’t framing the problem in that particular way.
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships?
- When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time.
- Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what’s important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows.
- You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness.
- There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people.
- The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time.
- The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can someone hack their own habits and accomplish more when it comes to business development?
- Most of us imagine a world in the undefined future where all our tasks are completed and there’s nothing left to do. Fortunately for us, that’s not the way the world works.
- We live in a finite world of tradeoffs with limited energy and attention. As a consequence of that, we have limited opportunities to get things done.
- We can make ourselves miserable by not realizing that we live in a world of tradeoffs. We must make choices between competing alternatives.
- You must be clear on your personal values and priorities to know what choices to pursue. They become the lens that helps you decide which opportunities will make the biggest difference in your life long term.
- You don’t want to spend all your time and energy climbing a ladder, to only discover at the top that it was leaning against the wrong wall.
- Being clear about what you want helps eliminate some of the existential pressure. You’re only responsible for figuring out what you should be doing to get to the end result you desire is instead of doing everything all at once.
- No is a complete sentence. It’s okay to pass on certain opportunities.
- There is a certain amount of status consciousness that doesn’t serve us when it comes to opportunity, but we have to keep our values in mind and use them to choose our direction.
- Most people try to avoid making a decision until absolutely forced to. When presented with multiple opportunities, most people will say they are all important. We don’t need to feel bad about the opportunities we are passing on, because that’s a necessary part of the process. It’s what allows us to enjoy the benefits of the things we value the most, and the more we can do that the more effective and happy we’ll be.
- We all have an unlimited opportunity, and we all have limited time, so creating a mechanism that allows you to embrace that is crucial.
- Business developers need to be proactive and make things happen, and that means making the right choices.
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman.
- Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don’t realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects’ words and language and understanding them on a deep level.
- Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage.
- Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It’s also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business.
- Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results.
- We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on.
- It’s okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
The Personal MBA
How to Fight a Hydra
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman.
- Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don’t realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects’ words and language and understanding them on a deep level.
- Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage.
- Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It’s also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business.
- Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results.
- We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on.
- It’s okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can someone hack their own habits and accomplish more when it comes to business development?
- Most of us imagine a world in the undefined future where all our tasks are completed and there’s nothing left to do. Fortunately for us, that’s not the way the world works.
- We live in a finite world of tradeoffs with limited energy and attention. As a consequence of that, we have limited opportunities to get things done.
- We can make ourselves miserable by not realizing that we live in a world of tradeoffs. We must make choices between competing alternatives.
- You must be clear on your personal values and priorities to know what choices to pursue. They become the lens that helps you decide which opportunities will make the biggest difference in your life long term.
- You don’t want to spend all your time and energy climbing a ladder, to only discover at the top that it was leaning against the wrong wall.
- Being clear about what you want helps eliminate some of the existential pressure. You’re only responsible for figuring out what you should be doing to get to the end result you desire is instead of doing everything all at once.
- No is a complete sentence. It’s okay to pass on certain opportunities.
- There is a certain amount of status consciousness that doesn’t serve us when it comes to opportunity, but we have to keep our values in mind and use them to choose our direction.
- Most people try to avoid making a decision until absolutely forced to. When presented with multiple opportunities, most people will say they are all important. We don’t need to feel bad about the opportunities we are passing on, because that’s a necessary part of the process. It’s what allows us to enjoy the benefits of the things we value the most, and the more we can do that the more effective and happy we’ll be.
- We all have an unlimited opportunity, and we all have limited time, so creating a mechanism that allows you to embrace that is crucial.
- Business developers need to be proactive and make things happen, and that means making the right choices.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships?
- When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time.
- Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what’s important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows.
- You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness.
- There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people.
- The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time.
- The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities?
- Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future.
- Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what’s possible.
- All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there.
- This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh’s career have come from posing this thought experiment.
- As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question.
- Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise because you weren’t framing the problem in that particular way.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful?
- Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development.
- Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well.
- Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client.
- Most employees know their job very well, but they don’t know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference.
- The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization.
- Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization.
- As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business.
- Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.
Mentioned in this Episode:
GrowBIGPlaybook.com
JoshKaufman.net
Dorie Clark shares the long term strategies that generate lasting business development success. Learn how to create relationships with interesting people and how that can lead to incredible outcomes, a simple system for saying no so you can say yes to the right things more often, and how pre-commitment can force you to create better business development habits, and more.
Mo asks Dorie: What’s your big idea when it comes to business development?
- One of the key things that professional service providers need to grapple with are the long term and short term needs of business and life. Long term relationship building is what really drives results, but in the short term we still need to generate business.
- When it comes to networking and building your network of relationships, there are three ways to go about doing it and the first is the most commonly thought of and also the reason the majority of people dislike networking.
- Short term networking is all about making the sale and what you can immediately extract from someone. When you already have a relationship with someone you can be direct and ask for the sale, but it’s not conducive to creating a real relationship.
- With long term networking you’re not trying to immediately get something out of the other person, and in Infinite Horizon networking you cultivate relationships solely because they are interesting and you never know where people will end up over time. It’s about having an infinite perspective of what’s possible.
- It’s about being helpful and meeting interesting people. When we think about networking most people think of it as a chore, but reorienting it towards meeting new and interesting people can change how we feel about it. Just getting to know someone is more than enough to build a great relationship.
- We are all pressed for time but we can all find an hour in our week to make this kind of networking possible, it’s just a matter of prioritizing it. In the era of the pandemic it’s also possible to host virtual cocktail parties to get to know people.
- Optimize for interesting, instead of money. Follow your curiosity, meet with interesting people, and you will go in interesting directions.
Mo asks Dorie: How can we use The Long Game to grow our book of business and create more opportunities?
- One of the things that frustrates a lot of people with big goals is that the goal seems so unattainable in the moment.
- 20% Time is a concept that a number of companies use to make it easier to achieve those larger, more long term goals. Business development professionals can use a similar concept within their own careers and pursue ideas that are interesting and have potential.
- You can accomplish almost anything, the key variable is the runway. Planning methodically to achieve your goal can make incredible things happen.
- You don’t have to make a leap of faith, if you have an audacious goal and give yourself enough runway while devoting small amounts of time to it consistently, there is very little risk involved.
- 20% Time is a way to achieve big goals in a way that derisks the proposition. Your 20% Time can take a number of forms from networking, to creating a podcast, to crafting a compelling keynote speech, and more.
- If you want to build a business development process that works it’s going to take time and you have to dedicate the time to make it happen.
Mo asks Dorie: How can we use the concepts of The Long Game to establish and build the relationship advantage?
- Turning down offers and clearing your plate is how you free up your time and space to connect with the right people. The more successful we become as professionals the more in demand we are, and the people who want to spend time with us may not be the people that we should be spending time with.
- Being able to say no more often and being comfortable while doing it is the key to being able to dedicate your time to the right things. One of the easiest ways to deflect well meaning people that you don’t want to commit to is simply asking for more information. Just by making them jump through some simple hoops and provide some more info you can screen out the tire kickers.
- The next step is to ask for a certain level of granularity in the request. Asking for an agenda is advance can be very valuable so you can focus directly on the important topics and cut out the fluff.
- Ask if it’s possible to discuss things asynchronously where they send you their questions and you reply with a voicemail when you have time. It’s also an option to simply invite someone to something you are already doing, which makes creating these kinds of connections scalable.
Mo asks Dorie: How can we hold ourselves accountable, hack our own habits, and keep doing what we know we should be doing?
- The first chapter of the Long Game deals with the question of why we seem to be so busy in our modern lives. One of the most critical aspects of senior leaders is setting the strategy for their organization and yet when asked, 96% of senior leaders say they don’t have enough time for strategy.
- We need to be honest with ourselves and realize that many of the constraints of “busyness” are in many ways things that we put on ourselves. For many of us there is a culture of busyness and research has shown a link to busyness and self-worth.
- We can set up structures in our lives to create pre-commitment and push us towards better behavior. Accountability groups are great examples. Creating accountability structures for yourself enables you to make habits of good behavior instead of negative patterns.
- High achieving professionals generally hate breaking commitments. Having activities in your calendar that you know you should do will make it much more likely that you will actually follow through.
- If you do the hardest but most beneficial activities early in the day, the rest of your work will sort itself out into your schedule. This avoids the chaos of the day from pushing those activities off indefinitely.
Mo shares his insights from Dorie's habits.
- Build time into your schedule specifically to interact with people that you find interesting. When Mo was originally designing the Grow Big principles and training he created the concept of narrowing your relationships to people that you can proactively commit to reaching out to once a month. One of the categories is interesting people because interesting people spend time with interesting people.
- Relationships with interesting people can lead to incredible places, even if there is absolutely no expectation of any commercial benefit to begin with.
- When someone asks you to do something that is not quite the best use of your time there are four simple steps to say no nicely. Dorie has another simple three step system of triage you can use to filter out the most egregious.
- First, ask for more info. Second, ask for more granular info. Third, suggest a different approach once you know what’s being asked of you.
- The power of pre-commitment to hack your habits is a great tool to ensure you do what you know you should do. Put those activities on your calendar and make them the default, instead of trying to fit them into the chaos of your day where they will be endless pushed off by the whirlwind.
Mentioned in this Episode:
growbigplaybook.com
dorieclark.com/join
dorieclark.com/toolkit
dorieclark.com/entrepreneur
dorieclark.com/subscribe
Mo shares his insights from the habits of Dorie Clark.
- Build time into your schedule specifically to interact with people that you find interesting. When Mo was originally designing the Grow Big principles and training he created the concept of narrowing your relationships to people that you can proactively commit to reaching out to once a month. One of the categories is interesting people because interesting people spend time with interesting people.
- Relationships with interesting people can lead to incredible places, even if there is absolutely no expectation of any commercial benefit to begin with.
- When someone asks you to do something that is not quite the best use of your time there are four simple steps to say no nicely. Dorie has another simple three step system of triage you can use to filter out the most egregious.
- First, ask for more info. Second, ask for more granular info. Third, suggest a different approach once you know what’s being asked of you.
- The power of pre-commitment to hack your habits is a great tool to ensure you do what you know you should do. Put those activities on your calendar and make them the default, instead of trying to fit them into the chaos of your day where they will be endless pushed off by the whirlwind.
Mentioned in this Episode:
growbigplaybook.com
Mo asks Dorie Clark: How can we hold ourselves accountable, hack our own habits, and keep doing what we know we should be doing?
- The first chapter of the Long Game deals with the question of why we seem to be so busy in our modern lives. One of the most critical aspects of senior leaders is setting the strategy for their organization and yet when asked, 96% of senior leaders say they don’t have enough time for strategy.
- We need to be honest with ourselves and realize that many of the constraints of “busyness” are in many ways things that we put on ourselves. For many of us there is a culture of busyness and research has shown a link to busyness and self-worth.
- We can set up structures in our lives to create pre-commitment and push us towards better behavior. Accountability groups are great examples. Creating accountability structures for yourself enables you to make habits of good behavior instead of negative patterns.
- High achieving professionals generally hate breaking commitments. Having activities in your calendar that you know you should do will make it much more likely that you will actually follow through.
- If you do the hardest but most beneficial activities early in the day, the rest of your work will sort itself out into your schedule. This avoids the chaos of the day from pushing those activities off indefinitely.
Mentioned in this Episode:
dorieclark.com/subscribe
Mo asks Dorie Clark: How can we use the concepts of The Long Game to establish and build the relationship advantage?
- Turning down offers and clearing your plate is how you free up your time and space to connect with the right people. The more successful we become as professionals the more in demand we are, and the people who want to spend time with us may not be the people that we should be spending time with.
- Being able to say no more often and being comfortable while doing it is the key to being able to dedicate your time to the right things. One of the easiest ways to deflect well meaning people that you don’t want to commit to is simply asking for more information. Just by making them jump through some simple hoops and provide some more info you can screen out the tire kickers.
- The next step is to ask for a certain level of granularity in the request. Asking for an agenda is advance can be very valuable so you can focus directly on the important topics and cut out the fluff.
- Ask if it’s possible to discuss things asynchronously where they send you their questions and you reply with a voicemail when you have time. It’s also an option to simply invite someone to something you are already doing, which makes creating these kinds of connections scalable.
Mentioned in this Episode:
dorieclark.com/entrepreneur
Mo asks Dorie Clark: How can we use The Long Game to grow our book of business and create more opportunities?
- One of the things that frustrates a lot of people with big goals is that the goal seems so unattainable in the moment.
- 20% Time is a concept that a number of companies use to make it easier to achieve those larger, more long term goals. Business development professionals can use a similar concept within their own careers and pursue ideas that are interesting and have potential.
- You can accomplish almost anything, the key variable is the runway. Planning methodically to achieve your goal can make incredible things happen.
- You don’t have to make a leap of faith, if you have an audacious goal and give yourself enough runway while devoting small amounts of time to it consistently, there is very little risk involved.
- 20% Time is a way to achieve big goals in a way that derisks the proposition. Your 20% Time can take a number of forms from networking, to creating a podcast, to crafting a compelling keynote speech, and more.
- If you want to build a business development process that works it’s going to take time and you have to dedicate the time to make it happen.
Mentioned in this Episode:
dorieclark.com/toolkit
Mo asks Dorie Clark: What’s your big idea when it comes to business development?
- One of the key things that professional service providers need to grapple with are the long term and short term needs of business and life. Long term relationship building is what really drives results, but in the short term we still need to generate business.
- When it comes to networking and building your network of relationships, there are three ways to go about doing it and the first is the most commonly thought of and also the reason the majority of people dislike networking.
- Short term networking is all about making the sale and what you can immediately extract from someone. When you already have a relationship with someone you can be direct and ask for the sale, but it’s not conducive to creating a real relationship.
- With long term networking you’re not trying to immediately get something out of the other person, and in Infinite Horizon networking you cultivate relationships solely because they are interesting and you never know where people will end up over time. It’s about having an infinite perspective of what’s possible.
- It’s about being helpful and meeting interesting people. When we think about networking most people think of it as a chore, but reorienting it towards meeting new and interesting people can change how we feel about it. Just getting to know someone is more than enough to build a great relationship.
- We are all pressed for time but we can all find an hour in our week to make this kind of networking possible, it’s just a matter of prioritizing it. In the era of the pandemic it’s also possible to host virtual cocktail parties to get to know people.
- Optimize for interesting, instead of money. Follow your curiosity, meet with interesting people, and you will go in interesting directions.
Mentioned in this Episode:
growbigplaybook.com
dorieclark.com/join
Pat Quinn shares his incredible insight into how to explode your conversion rate and get more people to say yes to you with the Storybrand structure. Find out how to win more clients and business by telling authentic stories that make your offer so compelling the client will be thinking “I’d thought you’d never ask!”
- Structure matters. Pat’s goal when he’s working with a speaker is for the audience to engage with the speaker after they’re done which means you need to structure your presentation differently. Engagement can take the form of doing business with you, using your service, or subscribing to your newsletter.
- The Storybrand formula has four steps: Heart, Head, Hand, and Heart. The first part, Heart, is your opening story where the purpose is not to sell, but to connect. The second, Head, is when you teach and help the audience. The third part, Hand, is where you ask the audience to do something with your call to action. The last part, Heart, is to finish with something inspiring. When you put all these things together you will have a presentation that will make people want to engage with you.
- Mo used to skip too early to the teaching part of the training but after going through Pat’s training he discovered that the personal story at the beginning is the most important part of the presentation.
- Everyone wants to be a leader and teach the audience, but you can’t lead until you have paced with someone. Pacing is not teaching or leading or selling, it’s saying that you’ve been where the audience is and understanding how they feel.
- Every communication you do in your business should be in the four part story format. You have some goals with a presentation but the biggest one is to connect and the best way to accomplish this is through episodic storytelling.
- The three goals of your opening story are to be ordinary, be extraordinary, and to show your why. Ordinary means showing you’ve struggled with the audience’s problems as well. Extraordinary means that you’ve solved at least one of their problems. If you can show your why and your passion about what you do, you will connect in an emotional way that will make them want to engage with you.
- Episodic storytelling is telling a story from a first person point of view. The first sentence is incredibly important. The secret is to start in the middle of the action which is the same way that great movies begin. This is very attractive and pulls people into your story in a way that reading off your resume can’t compete with.
- When you start your presentation in a predictable way, your audience will tune out and stop listening. When you start with a compelling story, you will stand out and rise above the crowd.
- After your story you still have to help your audience. Give away your best information because if you don’t help them at this point, you don’t build credibility and trust, and there will be no reason for them to believe that you can help them in a longer engagement.
- Most people think that you have to teach everything you know about the subject but that’s not the case. The person who teaches the most does not win the sale, they just leave their audience scared and confused. The person who wins the sale is the one who helps the most in the time they have. When asked to speak, the very first question you should ask is how much time you have.
- So many presenters try to cram as much material as possible into a time slot but that’s probably the biggest mistake that presenters can make. It’s vital you know how much time you have to speak.
- Use less of your time to teach and spend more on connection time and next steps. People do more business with those they like, so spend more time fostering the relationship.
- Have one simple, clear, and obvious single next step when putting in a call to action. Offering a menu of options leads to confusion. Tell the audience the right next step and make them say yes or no to that. A great presentation is like a sidewalk, it leads the person in front of you down a path to a single point of decision. The fewer options you give, the more people you will get to say yes.
- Don’t leave the audience wondering what to do next. You’re the expert, tell them the next step and the price that works.
- The right number of topics is three for the teaching portion of a presentation. Get to the stuff that actually helps people and give them a mix of real solutions that are both simple and complicated, short-term and long-term solutions. Short-term solutions give you instant credibility and long-term solutions lead to lasting results.
- You should make whatever you are talking about both simple and complicated. Simple so that they believe they can do it. Complicated so that they never try to do it without you.
- Your offer should be weaved into your content. If you get to the offer and it’s the first time your audience is hearing about it, it’s already too late. Our brains physically change when we detect a sales conversation.
- There is a second dialogue going on in every room. If your presentation is well designed, organized, and simple the audience is listening with about 20% of their brain. The remaining 80% is made up of everything else going on in their life but a good presentation can steer the second dialogue toward your offer. If you don’t introduce your offer early enough, you’ll surprise people.
- When you get to the offer at the end of your presentation, the response that you want from the audience is “I thought you’d never ask.”
- All great presentations have visuals which can take a number of different forms. Concrete deliverables will increase your conversion rate. When you have a deliverable, don’t just touch it and show it, do an “Is, Does, Means”. Tell them what it is, tell them what it does, and then tell them what it means. The money is in the meaning.
- Introduce the next step early on in your story and presentation. Limit the choices to the option of working with you or not working with you. Avoid declaring that everything will change, instead tell them the things that won’t change. The status quo is the comforting blanket around your offer.
- Actors and actresses are on stage pretending to be something they’re not. Pat teaches people to be themselves and make themselves more attractive to the companies they want to work with. If you do this you’re not selling, you’re just telling them how to get something they already want.
- There is no one right way to present. You don’t have to be funny, or glib, or quick witted. You have to know your story, have content that actually helps people, have one thing for them to do next, and every time you speak you will get new clients, more business, and make more of an impact on this world.
- There are two types of decision makers in every audience, tactical decision makers and emotional decision makers. If you only talk to the tactics you’re only going to get yes half as often as you should. Tell the audience what the offer is and also how it will feel. Close with emotion. The Hand is the tactical close, and the final Heart is your emotional close.
- Research shows that the emotional close doesn’t last as long as a tactical close. The goal at the very end is to have both aspects of the mind hot and ready to go.
Mentioned in the Episode:
advanceyourreach.com/growbig
GrowBIGplaybook.com
Mo Bunnell reviews the most important and timely insights from season 1 and talks about how to set yourself up for success during this time of the pandemic. Get clarity on how to stay focused, make consistent progress, and motivate yourself and your team to achieve even greater results while everyone else is binge watching their favorite TV shows.
- The last episode covered the timeless truths that every business development professional can use at any time with fantastic insights into the four major components of successful business development habits.
- Not addressing the realities of Covid-19 leaves a huge opportunity on the table. The Covid Clarities still fit within the timeless truths discussed earlier, but will be focused on the practical things to keep in mind in the latter half of 2020 and early 2021.
- Lots of the changes that have happened in the last seven months are here to stay.
- Get your own copy of the worksheet and the CliffsNotes of the Timeless Truths and Covid Clarities by going to bdhabits.com.
- The four main themes of season 1 were mindset, vision, accountability, and habits, split between the two perspectives, internal and external.
- Being helpful and top of mind is what our clients need right now to navigate their change. The number one thing that Mo is focused on is helping others learn to be helpful in this new world we find ourselves living in. The thing you have to realize is that you are not being annoying by reaching out and following up.
- The only time you shouldn’t follow up is when you’re not adding value. It doesn’t always have to be a sales pitch or thought piece, it could just be showing that you care. Frequency is important for relationships to develop, so we’ve got to take it on ourselves to reach out and be helpful.
- Mo retells a story of a major realization that a client had regarding follow up. Your clients need you right now, they need you to check in, and they need to know you care. If you’re adding value, you can’t follow up too often. How can you add the most value and stay top of mind with your most important clients?
- Certain aspects of our new virtual world are here to stay. If you treat the changes like they are permanent then you’re going to act rather than delay. Think of the difference between the first place you rented versus the first place you owned.
- If you’re waiting for the pandemic to end, or certain aspects of it to end, you’re renting your time. If you take the extreme position of assuming the changes are permanent and own your time, you will be way better off a year from now. Take advantage of the things that are easier now and do more of those, and you will have immense success.
- What do you need to learn to leapfrog the competition? Focus on that and keep improving. Avoid the mindset of “I can’t wait until this is over” and instead think about what skill you need to learn to be more efficient.
- Your most important clients are going through immense change and relationships are going to shift faster than ever before. You need to be in front of that trend by adding value and having a vision for their business. Help them navigate the change.
- A Value Group can be very valuable for both the people involved and for your business development efforts. Put together a value group of your most valuable clients and you will have success.
- What do you want your top clients to say about you a year from today? How do you want them to describe your relationship? Define that and start doing things that line up with that.
- Any time of immense change creates winners and losers. Learn fast and you’ll be a winner. Write down what you’re worried about regarding your own skills and use that as a starting point. Your identity changes by taking small considerate actions so create a purposeful plan that you can do every day. How can you leverage digital to accomplish more?
- Don’t judge yourself by pre-Covid measures, judge yourself by what makes sense now. What we were comfortable with is gone and you can no longer control those things. Reset your expectations on what is accomplishable now. If you don’t do that you can talk yourself into believing you’re a failure.
- What specific numerical outcomes should you choose that will let you know you're successful? Pick something realistic and don’t beat yourself up over things you can’t control.
- Keeping focus and accountability on a daily and weekly basis will create momentum. Create a visible process for invisible actions. Visible feedback gives you the motivation to achieve more.
- Focus on what you can control and you will make it through Covid. Figure out your MITs and other subjective actions you can control and start tracking them. What metrics can you track to keep you focused on daily and weekly sprints?
- Creating automation at scale is the key to getting more done, especially in a digital world. This can be tech solutions like a text expander, but the real power is in bespoke automation. If you’re ever asked something more than once, take the time to create a template for it and make it as valuable as you can.
- What templates or systems do you need to build where you can add 10x the value for the time spent?
- Having the right habits will determine your fate, especially in times of immense distraction. If your habits are moving you in the right direction, you will be much better off a year from now, but the same is true in reverse if your habits are moving you backwards. You need to focus on the right things so that you are in a better spot tomorrow.
- Assume this pandemic will never end, and keep focus on things you can do today. If you do that everyday, you will win. What are the most important rituals you need to have on a daily or weekly basis to stay focused?
Mentioned in the Episode:
bdhabits.com
Season 1 Summary Poster - sign up at for our free weekly newsletter at growbigplaybook.com and/or at bdhabits.com for our training course, and you will immediately receive this summary poster via email as an instant download
Mo Bunnell goes back through the incredible first season of Real Relationships Real Revenue. He pulls out the timeless truths and nuggets of lasting wisdom from each guest and applies them directly to business development. Listen and discover the transformative advice from the masters of mindset, vision, accountability, and habits.
- Interestingly enough, the recap episodes of season 1 of the podcast were more popular than the interviews themselves. During the interviews Mo tried to make them as timeless as possible so that the lessons learned will be as applicable in 2050 as they are right now.
- Mo went back and condensed all the nuggets of wisdom and lessons learned throughout the first season into a three page document which you can download at bdhabits.com.
- The timeless truths break down into four major themes spread out over two different perspectives. The themes being: mindset, vision, accountability, and habits.
- Servant sellers serve first and sell second. By serving first, you have the legitimacy to sell your solution and solve their problems. (Dan Pink episode 9)
- Of the 15,000 people that Mo has trained worldwide, Mike Deimler was the best business developer and trusted advisor that he could bring onto the show. According to Mike, if you start with the client’s perspective in mind, you are obligated to move them and encourage them to take action. When you start with the other, selling is a consequence of doing the right thing. (Mike Deimler episode 5)
- One of the most important things you can learn about business development is that if you start with the other and put your goals and objectives to the side, and instead focus on helping, you will do the right thing, which will always result in next steps, momentum, and trust.
- Business development is a learnable skill. If anyone tells you that you’re just born with it, they’re wrong. Any complex skill is both learned and earned, and that’s backed up by the science involved.
- Another way of reshaping your identity, is to reframe your goal into a question. Instead of assuming you’re not good at business development, ask yourself what a good business developer does and then use that to determine your next right action.
- Many people think an identity is born from a lofty goal, but it’s really made up by routinely doing things that make up that skill. As you do those things over time, your identity starts to transform.
- The external key is to be focused on the other person’s perspective and find ways to follow up with them. The internal key is to realize that anyone can learn the skills to be a world class business development expert.
- Business development is awesome. It is creating a different future for other people, and it is something to get better at, and if you do get better at it, it is generally the number one correlation to people having career success, having relationship success, and being able to control their life.
- You can move farther, faster, with a clear client vision. Don’t be afraid of disagreement. There will be times where you will have to ask permission to open the door to changing another person’s mind.
- Mike Deimler writes down the things that each of his clients should be thinking about to move their business forward. The act of writing those things down and seriously considering what those clients need compels him to share his vision for where they could be. It also forces him to be concise.
- Don’t let your expectations dissuade you. Bring it back to the little things you can do right now to get back on track. (Kelley O’Hara episode 1) Just keep doing the next right thing to help create the vision you want to help your client get to. Accept that you will have setbacks and just keep going.
- Your vision gives you the courage to say no to trivial distractions. One of Michael Hyatt’s big insights was that your quarterly goals inform your daily priorities, and that by writing down where you want to be in three years and then using that vision to determine the daily actions needed to get there is very powerful.
- Michael Hyatt’s framework of Drift, Driven, and Design is a useful way to understand how you are operating and where you are heading.
- Write down what you want to be known for in three years, how much business you want to bring in, what your daily habits look like, and what relationships you want to have. Those four things are enough to have a strong internal vision.
- You want to measure your outcomes and your results. The trick is not doing it too often. Goals are obviously powerful, but because there are often other external variables involved, it can actually be harmful to review your goals too often. Tracking something important subjectively is better than tracking something unimportant accurately.
- If you want to bring in more business, measuring how many Give-to-Gets you think that went well is a solid metric to track, even if it is subjective to your feelings. Having a mix of metrics between your full control and external variables is a good way to stay motivated and assess your effectiveness.
- Whatever results you have right now are by definition the byproduct of the system you’ve been running. (James Clear episode 3) You can’t hide from the results of your daily habits. If you love your results, that’s great, but there is always more to learn and improve on. If you don’t love your results, tweak your system.
- Measure the efforts you can 100% control often. Focus on the things you can control every single day and don’t outsource it to someone else because you will miss out on insights and immediate feedback that will keep you on track. Accountability happens by tracking the things you can control.
- If you lead a team, build out systems and start tracking the results for the whole team transparently. As results begin to change, the identity of the team will begin to change as well.
- The one universal thing to track are your Most Important Things (MIT) each week, determined by them being Big Impact, In Your Control, and Growth Oriented (BIG).
- Create systems that automate and scale. Automation extends beyond software. Keep templates of questions you get asked often and processes you use. 90% of the benefit of automation is in taking things that require human intervention and creating a process around them. Templates allow you to increase your productivity and get more done each week by adding hours of value in minutes of time.
- Write down what you do for business development and then think about which parts of that can be automated. If you view business development as a process, you can create templates that will pay immense dividends on your time.
- Create habits that celebrate consistent progress moving forward. There are three main things that impact your outcomes in life. The first is luck, the second is your choices and strategy, and the third is your systems and habits. If you master the last two, you increase the surface area for good luck to come your way. (James Clear episode 3)
- Dan Pink used to focus on the big hairy audacious goals, but he realized it always came back to habits. It’s about the small wins everyday. Do the things today that your year-from-now self will be happy you did today, and if you do that over and over again, it has a cumulative effect. (Dan Pink episode 9)
- Business development is the learnable skill and project that never ends. If you focus on the things you can control and keep making progress every day, you will find success.
Mentioned in the Episode:
bdhabits.com
bdhabitsforteams.com
Season 1 Summary Poster - sign up at for our free weekly newsletter at growbigplaybook.com and/or at bdhabits.com for our training course, and you will immediately receive this summary poster via email as an instant download
Mo Bunnell breaks down the incredible insights shared by Dan Pink and talks about how to be truly successful in business development. You’ll learn why big goals aren’t motivating and what you need to do instead, the mindset you must have to consistently build valuable relationships, and why most people have the ability to be good at sales, they just don’t realize it yet.
- B2B sales is essentially management consulting. Mo doesn’t distinguish between sales calls and calls where he is working directly with a client. Both involve servant selling and coming from a place of providing value first.
- There isn’t much of a difference because at all stages of a business relationship the focus is in figuring out their priorities, in their words, and how you can help. It’s all about understanding what the next step should be and advancing the relationship in a way that's a win for everyone involved.
- The servant selling mindset is one of the reasons Mo’s company has grown so much. When you take away the stress of being hired or not and just focus on being helpful using expertise, that’s how we can be successful.
- No matter your profession or position, if you can shed the idea of only selling or fulfilling and instead embrace being helpful, that’s when you will be your authentic self and will start advising people on what’s right for them.
- Be targeted on how you spend your time and who you spend it with, be proactive and intentional, and be bold enough to ask for the next step if it makes sense for the person on the other side, while staying in the perspective of the servant seller.
- Most people are not extreme introverts or extroverts and often the ones who have a little bit of both personality types find success at selling. This means that most people have the potential to be great at management consulting and it doesn’t require being a natural-born extrovert.
- Any complex skill is both learned and earned, and that includes business development. Anyone can learn the skill and there is always a new plateau to reach.
- Mo has had more advances in his business development expertise in the last few months of the Covid-19 pandemic than he’s had in the last several years because it has forced him out of his comfort zone and to try new ways of approaching business.
- Business development can be learned, we all have it in us to get better at it, and no matter where you think you are on the introversion/extroversion spectrum you can use that to your advantage. The majority of us have everything we need to succeed, we just need to keep getting a little bit better every day.
- Dan Pink used to be oriented around setting Big Hairy Audacious Goals but now he’s focused on small wins. The Progress Principle states that the people that are the most successful are the ones who focus on incremental progress. They also tend to be the happiest as well.
- Mo wasn’t always good at celebrating his progress until he put systems in his life that allowed him to go back and see how far he has come. Celebrating your small wins leads to improved efficiency and a higher level of general satisfaction.
- Business development has one of the least amounts of quick feedback in all the areas and fields that Mo has studied. Most disciplines give you immediate feedback on your performance which motivates you to do more of the right things. The more you disconnect the action from the consequence, the more likely you are to not do the action anymore. That’s why it’s so important to create your own business development reward system to get that feedback.
- If you keep being intentional, keep being proactive, keep being helpful, then you’ve got a chance to grow your relationships and book of business. If you delay taking the next step until you close the feedback loop you will get distracted and lose your focus.
- Be HIP! (Helpful, Intentional, and Proactive) No more than a week should go by before you go back and look back on your progress. If you keep doing the things in your control, you will be successful.
Mentioned in this Episode:
bdhabits.com
The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile
Dan Pink, New York Times best selling author of To Sell is Human, discusses the power of sales and why most people have the ability to become master sales people even if they believe selling is not for them. He also breaks down the science behind perfect timing and why small wins everyday are more powerful than the occasional home run when it comes to business development.
- Dan Pink tells the story of how he first became a New York Times best selling author and how even successful authors encounter self doubt.
- Snowballs can be both good and bad. An emotional cascade with small things going wrong consistently creates a negative momentum that can completely derail your life.
- Everybody struggles in some way. Writing a book is extremely difficult and everyday the Resistance is there trying to prevent you from doing what you know you should do. Dan keeps a card on his desk with the words “Beat the resistance” to keep him motivated.
- When you’re in a hybrid sales and business development role it becomes very easy to fall back on the delivery work and let the resistance to focus on business development beat you.
- We’re all in sales in some sense, whether we like it or not. The common perception of selling is that it’s duplicitous or underhanded, but research shows that effective selling is nothing of the sort.
- We are now in a world of information parity where buyers and sellers have the same information, instead of the information asymmetry of the past.
- In the B2B sales world, buyers are gathering more information before ever talking to anyone in sales. There is a premium on expertise as well, with B2B sales basically boiling down to management consulting. The world of B2B sales has become much more intellectually sophisticated and draws on a whole array of different skills. Gone are the days where a good handshake and a good golf game could close a deal.
- Leadership literature in the 1970’s changed the way we think about leaders and introduced the idea of servant leaders, this idea applies to the best sellers as well. Servant sellers serve first and sell next, and by serving customers first it gives you legitimacy to sell and solve their problems.
- People often believe that sales skills are inherent in some people who are born with it. Research shows that being extroverted is not the only way to be able to sell. Introversion and extroversion is a spectrum and people on both extremes were found to be ineffective salespeople. The best salespeople are a mix of both.
- People who are the most extroverted were poor at sales because they talked too much and listened too little. The idea that strong extroverts make better sales people is not true. Most of us are in the middle of the bell curve of introversion/extroversion which means most people have the native personality to be good at sales.
- The distribution varies a little bit by culture, but the vast majority of people fall in the middle of the curve. There aren’t any massive differences between cultures that makes sales an unreachable skill.
- Our cognitive abilities are not equal over the course of a day and we tend to move through the day in three stages: peak, trough, and recovery. Your peak is the best time for analytic work and high focus activity. The trough results in a considerable drop in performance across the board, and your recovery time is best for insight work.
- Most people should be doing analytic work in the morning, routine and administrative reports in the middle of the day, and insight work during the evening. For people in a hybrid role, this schedule can be optimized to fit their goals.
- There are individual variations in the optimal schedule but there are general rules that almost everybody can use to make the best use of their time.
- If you’re looking to better connect with your clients, Dan’s book A Whole New Mind is a great place to start. If you want to think about what motivates others and building a team, Drive is the book to get. If you want to understand how to optimize your schedule and energy When is the place to start.
- Go to danpink.com/pinkcast to get access to Dan’s compressed video insights.
- Dan is a big believer in small wins because they often cascade into something bigger. The real question you should be asking yourself is “What is one small thing I can do today to make things a little bit better?” Starting small and getting small wins is the secret.
- It always comes back to habits. It’s not about big home runs once a year, it’s about small wins every single day. Do things today that your year-from-now self would be happy you did today, and if you do that over and over again it has a cumulative effect.
Mentioned in this Episode:
bdhabits.com
To Sell is Human by Dan Pink
Drive by Dan Pink
When by Dan Pink
A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
Mo Bunnell breaks down the incredible insights of Michael Hyatt and shares how to use them to transform your business development efforts. Find out how to live your life by design by creating a compelling vision of where you want your business to be while eliminating, delegating, or automating tasks along the way.
- One of Michael Hyatt’s greatest strengths is being able to distill complicated things down into simple, easy-to-follow models. Michael said there are three ways you can live your life: drift, driven, and by design.
- There are many reasons why you might end up drifting, but the cumulative effect of drifting has a major impact on your life. You often find yourself unhappy and unsure if you’ve been doing the right thing most of the time. You don’t know if you’ve made progress because you haven't defined where you want to go.
- When it comes to business development, drifting is when you don’t have a plan for how you want to improve your book of business, your relationships, the techniques, or the platform you are using.
- Being driven is when you succeed in one area of your life at the detriment of others. That can take the shape of being hyper competitive and can end up harming yourself, your relationships, and your business with a focus on short-term gains over long-term gains.
- When you are living your life by design, you are following your established vision of what you want your future to look like. Living by design is probably when you are the happiest and most productive.
- There are two major intervals of Mo’s life where living by design transformed everything. He wrote down a brief description of what he wanted things to look like ten years in the future.
- There are four major aspects your vision should include based on the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument that covers the four ways that we think as humans. Your vision requires a theme, specific numbers, your day-to-day life, and what the people around say about your life at that point.
- Mo wrote down his goals and carried his written vision down with him for the first couple of years. The fact of writing it down and keeping it with him allowed him to reach his ten year goal in only eight years.
- The most recent ten year plan includes a spreadsheet and annual benchmarks. After creating the ten year vision Mo broke it down into smaller versions of that for each year on the way. Creating themes for each year makes it easier to implement new ideas at the right time and know exactly what you need to do to get where you want to go.
- Our brains are trained to think in weeks so make weekly the cadence of your progress. The happiest people, and the most productive, are the ones that celebrate incremental progress.
- The Rule of 72 is a shortcut for calculating compound growth rates and an easy way to predict how many years it takes for something to double. If you can get only 1% better every single week, after 72 weeks you will be twice as good as you are now.
- Most experts that have to bring in business, if they have time to invest they will probably spend that time getting better at their craft. But if they spent that time getting better at business development, that’s something the client will notice immediately and will have a bigger impact on their business. Focus on your business development habits and your craft will improve as a result.
- In order to free up time, you need to either automate, eliminate, or delegate most of the activities in your business. This is important because every minute you spend on business development is far more valuable than the average hour spent on delivery.
- Look back on your numbers for the last year and calculate your Grow Big Index; then, use that as your litmus test for what you should be doing now.
- What are some tasks that you can completely eliminate? Use your Grow Big Index to figure out if it’s valuable enough to be worth your time. If not, say no nicely and move on to the next task.
- Work with your team in a way that makes the most of your time while still being helpful to other people.
- Most people think of automation in terms of technology, but it extends beyond software. Think of the questions you get most and create well thought-out templates that address those questions. Extremely valuable and well thought-out templates allow you to give someone hours of value with only a few minutes of time.
- Write down what you do for business development and break it down into separate pieces like lead generation, creating demand, and staying top of mind. Then, consider which parts of that process can be automated. Business development is the project that never ends. It fuels your team’s and organization’s growth and it’s exciting to always improve it.
- The people that Mo has seen improve the most all have the same thing in common. The ones that stick to business development week in and week out, making incremental progress while improving themselves, are the ones who find success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
bdhabits.com
Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt
Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt
Michael Hyatt shares the power of a compelling vision and how it can completely transform your business. Find out how to craft your Vision Script and turn it into a roadmap for your business’s success, while giving you the perfect filter to avoid the trivial many and stay focused on the vital few.
- Michael tells the story of how he struggled early on when he and a partner started their own book publishing company.
- Michael’s company had a lot of success and opportunity for the first few years, but a disastrous partnership led to them being $1.2 million in debt and having all their assets seized, leaving them with nothing.
- People don’t always see the history of those who succeed. Great things come all of the time when we hit our low points. Never waste a good crisis. Crises are an opportunity to dig deep and be reflective.
- One of the major issues Michael had with his business was the lack of a clear vision as a company about where they were going. Without a clear vision it’s very hard to discern the difference between a distraction and an opportunity.
- Michael’s company found itself fracturing its focus and attention, spread its resources too thin and everything fell apart.
- Michael went back to work for Thomas Nelson and was given responsibility for one of the 14 divisions of the company, specifically the worst performing division in the whole company. This was where Michael first implemented the Vision Script and described what that division would need to be to turn it around.
- The Vision Script became so inspiring for the team that the division managed to become the highest performing division in the company in only 18 months and stayed that way for the next decade.
- No matter where you are in an organization as a leader, being a leader presupposes that you are leading people somewhere, which means you must have clarity and vision.
- There is a big difference between a Vision Script and a Vision Statement. A Vision Script is a detailed document that describes your future business in detail three to five years in the future written in the present tense.
- A Vision Script is broken down into four different sections. The team, the product, the marketing and sales, and finally the impact. This is essentially a whole brain description of your future vision.
- Before executing your vision, you have to create alignment in your organization around that vision. This is not something you can outsource as a leader, you need to do it yourself. Start with the highest level and then cascade it down.
- To get buy in from your team solicit their feedback. People buy into what they help create and this takes the burden off of you as a leader.
- Your Vision Script should be the first thing you check in at your annual planning meeting. You must have a cadence of review in your organization because vision leaks, you need to be constantly repeating the vision and reinforcing the path. When you come up with your annual goals, ask yourself what are the seven to ten things that will move you towards your vision and when they are deliverable.
- Your quarterly goals will inform your weekly priorities, and further down to your daily MIT’s. Limiting yourself to three major goals each quarter is more effective than aiming for a higher number of goals at the same time.
- A vision helps you identify what you’re going to focus on but it also allows you to exclude what you’re not going to focus on if you use it as a filter. If something falls outside the scope of your vision, it becomes an easy “no”.
- Strategy answers the question how you are going to get from where you are to where you want to go, and should be revised as often as necessary.
- All progress begins with an honest assessment of where you currently are, because it’s hard to move beyond where you are until you get honest about where you are.
- Establish hard boundaries around your work. When you restrict your work time you force yourself to get things done in the time allotted. With a clarity of vision you are able to create boundaries and choose what is the most important.
- In line with the Pareto Principle, what are the three actions that are going to drive the biggest results in your business?
- A lot of people think that to get more you’ve got to do more, but it’s not what you do, it’s about doing the right things. It all comes down to your vision which gives you the courage to say no to the trivial distractions.
- In order to serve your clients fully you have to be able to say no to lesser opportunities. Michael describes the systems he uses to protect his time and deliver his best every single day. Any structure is better than no structure at all.
- Michael has a powerful system of automation that simplifies his responses and saves him an incredible amount of time that anyone can apply.
- Michael uses the Power of No formula to make sure that he protects his time and honors his commitments without closing any doors permanently. People are used to not getting a response so they end up appreciating this kind of response. Most people can handle a no, what they can’t handle is no response.
- People are vision starved. As a leader, if you have a clear, compelling vision you will be amazed at how confident you will show up and how well your team will respond.
Mentioned in this Episode:
businessaccelerator.com/big
bdhabits.com
Mike Deimler is one of the best client relationship developers on the planet. In this episode, Mo brings to light the three major lessons that Mike Deimler shared during his interview and how you can apply them directly to business development.
- Making progress every day is crucial. Mike went through an extremely traumatic event as a child where he lost his eye and a close relative gave him a key piece of advice that changed his life. Mike decided to focus on making progress instead of being stuck as a victim.
- As a partner at BCG for the past 30 years, Mike always tries to make progress in three important areas: with his clients, his leadership roles at the firm, and within his personal life.
- In business development it’s very easy to have setbacks, maybe more than any other area of life. When setbacks happen it becomes easy to switch your focus to delivery and forget about growth.
- Mike’s system for business development has been a powerful framework for getting results. Taking a strategic perspective and writing down the top priorities your client should be focusing on is a great way to get started.
- As great as your ideas for your client are, you need to think about how you can persuade them to move from their current position. Start off by asking questions so you can understand their world from their perspective.
- By doing things when clients aren’t ready to hire him, Mike has created some of the most beneficial and profitable client relationships for his business. Making strategic investments into a client with a give-to-get is a great way to start a relationship.
- Investing in a person before they can hire you is another way to create demand for your expertise. The biggest contracts that are ever sold, by and large, are the ones created before there is actually a commercial opportunity. Moving without the ball will help you with a huge number of future client opportunities.
- The power of a system, when it’s implemented, is that it creates incremental momentum that moves you progressively towards your goals each and every day.
- How are you staying focused on doing the work that’s important right now but also always investing in the future?
- Proactive investing and give-to-gets, when done correctly, hit all six dimensions of Robert Cialdini’s Persuasion framework.
- It establishes authority and creates a need for reciprocity. You may not get anything in return right away but you almost always get some value back eventually. Instead of just talking about what you can do, a give-to-get puts you into a position to actually do it.
- Your give-to-get should have a clear next step for the client. Don’t overwhelm them by offering a number of options, make it clear and easy to understand what the simple next step is because people want to continue going down the road they are already on.
- People tend to spend time and money with people that they like so your give-to-get should be enjoyable. Build in some time to bond with the person on a human level.
- Try to include any potential decision makers on the project as part of the give-to-get meeting. Any sizable work often requires a number of decision makers to say yes to it.
- People want more of what there’s less of. If you are genuinely busy, make it known how special it is that you are offering them a give-to-get.
- If you can create valuable and enjoyable give-to-get meetings where you are helping your clients and that naturally leads to a next step it will create demand for your expertise.
- Check out the mini courses down below to learn how to apply these business development ideas to your organization.
- The most inspiring thing about Mike is his consistent drive to continue moving forward in all areas of his life and focusing on improving his craft. If you can always have an open mind and always be striving to get better yourself, then you’re going to continue to have a bigger and bigger impact on the world.
Mentioned in this episode:
bdhabits.com
bdhabitsforteams.com
winning-more.com
Mike Deimler shares three incredible business development lessons that he’s learned over the course of his 30-year career at one the most successful consultancies in the world. Learn the secret to creating powerful client relationships, why empathy is one of the most important skills you can cultivate, and how you can apply the same transformation that Michael Jordan underwent to become the greatest basketball player in the world to your own career.
- Mike Deimler is one of the best business development consultants among over 15,000 people that the Bunnell Idea Group has trained over the years. Business strategy has been Mike’s main focus for the past 30 years and he’s been working, thinking, or writing about business development for pretty much his entire career.
- Being good at relationship development and business development is a lot like being a good father, they are learned behaviours and anyone can become better at them.
- Mike tells the story of his near-death experience as a child and the lesson he learned when the surgeon told him that his eye couldn’t be saved.
- At the age of nine, Mike learned that he had a choice to make. He could be angry at what happened to him or he could make the most out of every single day of his life. Mike chose the latter and applies that lesson to all of the relationships in his life.
- If you’ve survived something difficult, you should look at it as a gift and make the conscious choice to value each day. You can pivot your strengths and learn new ways to thrive.
- Taking a strategic perspective comes down to taking another person’s perspective by listening and understanding where they are coming from. When working with CEOs, Mike always strives to understand what their view is and what their strategic agenda should be. When you take someone else’s perspective and internalize it, it forces you to think deeply about what they should be working on.
- For every client that Mike serves he writes down their strategic agenda on a single piece of paper. This requires him to be concise and sharp on the issues that matter most and helps establish a relative priority to the things that need work.
- To move someone to take action, you need to move them twice, both emotionally and intellectually. At the highest levels this takes persistence and the willingness to explore other possibilities, combined with the patience to see the process through. Some of the most important topics Mike has ever worked on took nearly two years for the change to really take place.
- If you’re pushing a product or service, you’re selling, and if you start with the client’s perspective in mind you are obligated to move them and encourage them to take action.
- When you start with the other, selling is the consequence of doing the right thing.
- If you’re ever uncertain in a meeting or a business development situation, just pause and listen to both the heart and the mind. You will rarely go wrong by taking a holistic approach to the other person’s perspective.
- If you can think of the opposing pairs of facts vs. feelings and big ideas vs. tactics, you’re going to make every meeting and comment better.
- More Judo, less Karate. Young partners often get anxious about business development and believe they need to push in order to sell. By coming at the meeting aggressively they end up defeating themselves. Sometimes the best thing to do in a meeting is to talk a lot less and listen a lot more. Talking is Karate, listening is Judo.
- When you’re listening more than speaking, the other person is coming to you and sharing what’s on their mind. Be comfortable with empty space in a conversation, not every second of the meeting needs a slide.
- There is always a balancing act between being proactive and waiting. Asking questions is important, but strategic perspective is about having a point of view. If you’re going to be a trusted advisor to anyone, you need to do the work to have a value-added perspective. The art of knowing when to pivot from asking questions to proposing solutions is an art.
- There will be times where you have to take a stance and press your point of view. Asking permission is one way of opening the door and changing the other person’s frame of mind. Don’t be afraid of disagreement.
- Starting off a meeting by asking questions first allows you to understand the other person’s position in their own words, which in turn allows you to propose a solution to their problem.
- Mike tells the story of attending the same high school as Michael Jordan and watching him develop as a basketball player, seeing what made him special first hand. During the course of Jordan’s career, it wasn’t until he transformed from the best offensive player in the world to the best complete basketball player in the world. He truly became the best when he learned to move without the ball.
- If you’re building a sustained relationship with anyone, the most important thing you can do is create opportunity for the client as well as your business. Putting your client in the right position so they can win is more important than scoring on your own.
- Like most behaviors, when you try something new, you have to try harder but as you move forward it becomes more intuitive. Nurturing relationships outside of the usual business transactions is something that nearly all successful business development professionals have a system for. If you’re just getting started learning these skills, it’s best to have a more disciplined approach.
- Mo shares a personal lesson he learned from his father that he applies to nearly every area of his life.
- The most common question Mike gets from young professionals is “How is it you’re so successful at building relationships with senior clients?” Think about your closest relationships and what you or the other person do to make them successful, chances are you’re going to think about empathy, honesty, compassion, and asking for feedback.
- Relationships require frequency, both parties need to put effort into communicating. The best relationships are fun as well, where spending time with the other person makes you feel good and you do the same for them.
- The best relationships in your life are the ones where you are both willing to be vulnerable. In business, when a client is willing to be vulnerable with you, you have truly become a trusted advisor. If you strive to make your business relationships as good as the best relationships in the rest of your life, the business will take care of itself.
Mentioned in this episode:
bdhabits.com
Blasting Through Plateaus - bunnellideagroup.com/blasting-through-plateaus/
Mo Bunnell breaks down the interview with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, and talks about why goals are not enough to achieve extraordinary results. Learn why your systems are the best place to start, how your habits shape your identity and not the other way around, and the essential framework for creating an exceptional business development system to get the outcomes you desire.
- Mo goes over a quick recap of the three major lessons learned in the interview with James Clear and how they can be applied to business development.
- Your current systems are perfectly designed to give you the current outcomes that you’re getting. This can also be looked at as your past six months of systems are perfectly designed to deliver your current results
- We all have systems whether we realize it or not. What systems have you had around business development for the past six months? Those are the systems that are delivering the current outcomes you are getting right now.
- Use the Most Important Things (MITs) framework to build up your business development habits. Choose three things to focus on that have a big impact, are 100% in your control, and are growth oriented.
- It’s easy to fool yourself to believe that doing your job well is growth oriented, but one small change can be the difference between regular service and generating additional revenue for your business.
- There are systems at individual levels, but you should also have systems at the team level that facilitate the outcomes you want as a team. Set up systems for setting goals as a team, how you are going to interact with each other and with clients, and for celebrating success.
- What are the metrics you can control as a team that you can use in your systems to know if you’re on track for success?
- Identity and how we think about ourselves is potentially one of the most important things to bringing in business. You don’t have to be the best in the world at business development; you just have to be better than the competition.
- Most people think that their identity changes when they change the goal, but it’s more important to think about it from the habit perspective. Every time you execute on a habit that moves you closer to your goal, that’s a small piece of evidence that you are the kind of person capable of achieving that goal.
- As you build those systems, your beliefs about your own abilities will change. Set your goals and then build the systems in a way that you can measure that can get you there.
- You should also build out systems across your team. Data transparency across a team can have a major impact on the overall results and takes a load off the team leader as the coach. As the results increase across the team, the team’s identity changes as well.
- Use James’ 4 law framework to help develop your business development habits and start off by auditing your existing system. No matter your discipline, there is a highly repeatable process that can be fine tuned and improved upon. Think of business development as a process that can be refined.
- Engage your potential clients in the process of a proposal. If they haven’t engaged and helped you define how you’re going to work together, then they haven’t bought in.
- You can look at the entire business development process and measure the metrics in each of the steps in a way that allows you to create a system of improvement.
Mentioned in this episode:
bdhabits.com
bdhabitsforteams.com
James Clear, author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits, shares the importance of creating a system of habits that makes reaching your goals simple. Mo applies the principles of Atomic Habits directly to the world of business development and shows you how starting small can create huge results in your business.
- James Clear recounts the story of the high school baseball bat incident, how he realized that something had gone horribly wrong and how he found himself fighting for his life.
- People are building habits all the time, but when your life is completely changed by a traumatic injury, you have to start as small as possible in order to rebuild them. Scaling down to what James could manage was how he was able to regain a sense of control over the life that he’d lost.
- You don’t have control over the random events that come your way, but you do have control over how you respond to those things and that usually comes down to your habits.
- Most people start with one foot in expertise and become great at what they do but once they reach the next level of success, they find themselves in a completely different world. This can often lead to them feeling defeated since they aren’t as skilled in the new area.
- Goals are helpful for setting a direction or a filter but they come with a lot of drawbacks. Your goal is your desired outcome, but your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. If there is ever a gap between your system and your goal, your daily habits will always win. Whatever results you have right now are by definition the byproduct of the system you’ve been running.
- It’s common in business for people to focus on the position or outcome, like doubling revenue or leads, but it’s more important to look at the system that’s running and the trajectory that business systems are driving towards.
- We want our results to change, but it’s not the results that need to change, it’s the habits that precede the result that need to change. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Goals are useful as check-ins, but more time should be invested into the system of habits that lead to the outcome you want.
- The Snowball system’s structure of lead and lag measures is very similar. Everybody is running systems whether they realize it or not. The questions you need to ask yourself are “How do I design a good system?” and “Which habits should I build?” This is where BIG goals come in to send you in the right direction.
- There are three main things that impact your outcomes in life. The first is luck, the second is your choices/strategy, and the third is your system of habits and behaviour. When you master the last two, you increase the surface area for good luck to come your way.
- People will often conflate the outcome they want to achieve with the person that they want to be. James believes you should shift the focus to the identity you desire instead of the goal because the real reason habits matter is that they can shape your sense of self. True behaviour change is really identity change.
- Another way of reshaping your identity is to reframe your goal into a question. Instead of trying to close more deals, ask yourself what a successful sales person would do and then use that to select the action that moves you in the right direction.
- Questions are superior to advice because advice is contextual and situations change. Life is dynamic and advice will not always fit the circumstances. Identity-based questions guide you based on the situation.
- There are four fundamental things that increase the odds of getting a habit to stick. The first is to make your good habits obvious and easy to see. The second is to make them attractive and appealing. The third is to make them easy and convenient. The fourth is to make your habits satisfying and associated with a positive emotion. If you want to break a bad habit, just invert those four.
- When it comes to business development, we should look for one-time actions we can take that will help the cause every day from that point on to help mitigate the roller coaster that businesses tend to ride most of the time.
- A lot of business development is done through a screen. Is there an app or a tool that you can use to make business development more obvious and prime yourself and your environment for that use?
- James talks about the idea of the Temptation Bundle, where you combine a task that you know you should do with a task that you want to do in order to encourage the more important action.
- Don’t let one piece of silence prevent you from following up. A failure should not be desired but it should be planned for. When following up, there will also be people who ignore your efforts, but by writing down your next follow-up in your calendar, you will be many times more likely to keep following up.
- Life has a series of seasons and your habits should be different depending on the season of life you’re in. The same idea can be applied to your career. When you reach a new level it will probably require new habits in order to succeed.
- As your career progresses, typically, your responsibility increases. When your responsibility increases your ability to say no to things and to prioritize also needs to increase. Saying no to something is only saying no to one thing, but saying yes to something means saying no to everything else. Everything comes with a trade-off.
- If you’re going through a change of season in your career or your life, it may be the perfect time to reread Atomic Habits. The process of building habits is essentially rebuilding and getting started over and over as your life changes.
- In business development, the goal is not to be the absolute best in the world, it’s just to be a little bit better than your competition. Business is mostly a winner-take-all proposition so put yourself in a position to make more shots and improve your craft, and each day you will be more likely to win.
- Start with doing something small every single day when you don’t know where to begin. Any goal you have can be broken down into a two-minute chunk that will help you master the art of showing up. A habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize and scale it up and expand it into something more.
- One of the most motivating feelings for the human mind is seeing progress. A simple strategy to improve your business development habits is to create a way to visualize your efforts even if you don’t get any direct feedback. A visual cue is a powerful way to see your progress and increase the odds of you keeping pushing forward.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Bdhabits.com
Mo Bunnell breaks down the three most important lessons shared by Kelley O’Hara and applies them directly to growing your business and winning more engagements. Learn how to cultivate a growth mindset, create a powerful feedback system that steadily builds momentum, and why preparation is your ultimate confidence-building weapon.
- There are three major pieces of content that Kelley O’Hara talked about in her interview that apply directly to business development: having a growth mindset, focusing on what you can control, and preparing to make progress.
- A common mistake that business developers make is in preparing to win engagements instead of preparing to make progress towards the goal.
- It can’t be said enough, business development can be learned. It doesn’t matter where you start or where you are now, there is always another level to grow to. Business development is such a complex skill that no one is born with it.
- Any complex skill is the roll up of dozens and dozens of skills, and because of that, no one is born with all of those. Nobody is born with everything they need. Business development is so in depth and requires so many hard and soft skills that it’s impossible to be excellent in all of them and there is always more to learn.
- Self-reflection is crucial to a growth mindset. For Kelley, the off season is when she really hones her craft. For business developers that want to get better at a skill, build in some time each week to decode how you did because your off season is in between meetings. Use a journal to track your progress and see where you are improving.
- Build in feedback loops for anything you want to become more skilled at. Any time something important happens and other people are around, ask them two key questions.
- When you frame a feedback loop in that way you will get really good information and it will help you improve. The problem with vague feedback is you will usually get positive feedback without the area to improve upon. Remember, asking better questions will give you better answers.
- Business development has less feedback than many other aspects of life, which can make it very difficult to know what to improve. Aim to disconnect yourself from the outcome so that you can keep moving forward.
- Perception, action, will. Whenever you’re in a moment that doesn’t seem to be going well, pull back and get some perspective, do something about it, and then keep at it. People often quit sooner than they should, don’t get discouraged.
- Track what you can control and use it as your motivation. Decode what you need to focus on to get results and develop a system to track what you can control to reach the goal. Even subjective measures are better than not tracking anything.
- Another common mistake business developers make is either tracking way too much and getting overburdened and burning out, or not tracking things that can move the needle because they’re too subjective. Start with simple tracking measures and build it out from there.
- There is no way that someone else can do the tracking for you. When you document what you do and your business starts to take off, you can go back and see what you were doing prior to the growth to connect the dots. Build in some time on a quarterly basis to do some deeper reflection and figure out what you need to prioritize in the next time period.
- Focus on preparation instead of perfection. If your bar is perfection, you will end up disappointed and in a negative thought loop. If you feel prepared going in, you are far more likely to perform better. Alternatively, if you feel unprepared, you will spend a large amount of time and energy just being stressed instead of performing at a high level. Do everything you can to prepare and walk in confidently.
- Do you know what your set pieces are? Think of a meeting as a bunch of set pieces that are put together in a random order. Prepare for those scenarios and you will be ready no matter what happens.
- There are several things you can do to prepare for a meeting. Write down your goal for the meeting and how you can frame it for the other attendees. You are going to win meetings in the first five minutes, not in the last five minutes.
- Plan for dynamic changes in every meeting. Think of the things that you are most afraid of happening and prepare for them and you will feel much more confident going in.
- Think through the most interesting questions you want to ask the person on the other side of the table. Also think about some of the questions they might pose to you and how you can engage them in a compelling dialogue.
- Think about the aspects of relationship building and how you can show commonality. There is a lot of research that shows commonality correlates to likability and likability correlates to purchasing.
- Preparing for weeks is the most important thing to keep up your business development progress. The week interval is so ingrained in our minds that it’s the perfect cadence for planning. Consider what actions you're going to take in the next week to make progress towards your goals or move a client through your pipeline.
- Rainmakers are the people that plan their weeks out and do a little bit each day to grow their business. Plenty of business owners end up in a roller coaster effect where when they get busy, they stop pushing business development forward, everything dries up.
- A quick recap on three major things learned from Kelley O’Hara.
- Mo retells the story of a company his team worked with and how they attacked a particular problem. The team figured out the three most important metrics to track and how those metrics improved over time.
- Learn the concept of the Give To Get and how to create a 60- to 90-minute strategic investment in a relationship. Mo’s team picked a few Give To Gets to build on and included those in the metrics they tracked.
- In terms of business development hours spent each week, the organization saw a 710% increase in time spent in only a few short weeks. They also almost doubled the amount of meetings requested with a jump from 60% to 96% in acceptance rate. They also saw a decrease in the Give To Gets scheduled because they became so busy with work.
- Just by tracking a few key metrics can lead to some incredible, business transforming results. After getting through the first few months it can generate a huge amount of momentum.
Mentioned in this Episode:
bdhabits.com
The Snowball System
Dr. Anders Erickson on Freakonomics Radio
Peak by Dr. Anders Erickson
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Measurement Case Study
In the opening episode of Real Relationships Real Revenue, Kelley O’Hara, one of the top athletes on the planet, reveals her secrets of focusing on what she can control to perform at a world-class level. Mo Bunnell applies Kelley’s principles to developing relationships and growing a book of business. Together they cover how to have a learning mindset, set up tracking systems, stay motivated through challenges and how to prepare for high-stakes events. Whether you perform on the field or in the boardroom, this episode will elevate your game.
- Mo shares a slightly embarrassing story of how he and Kelley met at Mo’s book launch party for The Snowball System.
- Kelley has had an incredible career culminating in winning multiple Olympic and World Cup gold medals, but it wasn’t always easy. Kelley had the defining moment of her career when she was at the World Cup but not getting onto the field. Just like in business development, she made a critical choice to focus on what she could do and what was in her control to get on the field instead of feeling like a failure and accepting the way things were.
- Kelley took stock of the situation and identified what actions were in her control to move forward. Taking action taught her a lot about being confident in herself and her skills, and her story as a world class athlete has direct parallels in the world of business development.
- Eventually Kelley got onto the field in game 5 of the World Cup when she was put in as a starter. They won that game and went onto the semi-finals against Germany, where Kelley scored her first goal on a national team and sealed the deal to get into the finals of the World Cup.
- Anything really complex is both learned and earned. There are plenty of people who are bigger, faster, and stronger than Kelley, but that didn’t stop her from honing her skills and becoming a world class footballer. Mo relates Kelley’s ideas to the way many professionals say others are “born with it” when it comes to business development, and how those who do are thinking about it all wrong. Just like the technical skills of a sport, business development can be learned.
- Kelley breaks down how she approaches learning the skill of football and the key mindset of top athletes that allows them to push through failure and stay motivated and how that applies to business meetings across the boardroom table.
- You’re never going to have a “perfect” game. Similarly in business, becoming better and honing your skills is a constant refinement towards perfection. Being conscious of all the various elements that contribute to your success is a key element to becoming an expert at anything.
- Every time you practice your skill, whether athletics or business related, get feedback that answers these two questions: What’s one thing to keep? What’s one thing you would change about what I did?
- Kelley talks about a business she’s involved with called Tame the Beast and how having a focus outside of soccer has actually made her a better player.
- Most business people think in terms of annual goals, but very rarely break those goals down into daily actions. Kelley’s approach to being a better athlete is very similar to Mo’s system for business development. Kelley talks about the key metrics and methods that athletes track to drive improvement.
- Weekly goals are the “how” of achieving your annual or ultimate goal. If you want to have an undefeated season you need to win every game, one game at a time and approach every single game like it’s all that matters. The same applies to business development. Take each meeting one at a time and focus on making each one a win.
- Tracking something important subjectively is better than tracking something unimportant accurately. Mo talks about the MIT (Most Important Things) process and how it can help you understand what to track over time.
- When you’re picking your three MIT’s make sure they’re BIG (Big impact, In your control, and Growth oriented). If you accomplish those things consistently over the course of a year, your life will completely change.
- It’s important for the person that is striving to get better to collect the data and review it themselves instead of giving it to another person to do. Data is the feedback you need to understand if you are where you need to be and what you need to get better at.
- Mo talks about his tracking system for his MIT’s and how he knows whether his week was a valuable week or not. They can include a number of different things from phone calls made to time spent in the gym.
- Food plays a crucial part in the life of an athlete. Kelley talks about her goal of writing a cookbook and her plan for taking it from a document on her computer and turning it into a real physical object. Her method for getting the writing done can be applied directly to any business or project.
- Preparing for high-stakes games is very similar to preparing for important business development meetings. Kelley’s coaches focused on practicing particular set pieces and scenarios to the point where the team could execute the plan without thinking about it. When you prepare for something to the point where you can do it in your sleep, you actually become even stronger in adapting to a new circumstance or variable.
- Preparation shows confidence, although many people believe it will make them robotic or disingenuous. When it comes to business development, being prepared shows that you put in the time and you actually care about building a relationship.
- Kelley reveals how she recovers from making mistakes and how she uses little wins to get herself back into the game when things aren’t going the way she hoped, a technique that can be applied to business development meetings when they start to go off the rails.
- Don’t let your expectations dissuade you, bring it back to the little things you can do right now to get back on track.
- Kelley tells the story of how habits have affected her life and how they can help you get through the valleys of your life. She also talks about how doing the mental work can help you be more effective with the physical work. Putting in the mental effort before a big meeting can drastically increase your odds of success.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Bdhabits.com
Kelley O’Hara on Instagram
Kelley O'Hara's favorite BEAST® products