All in Sales
When things are going well, we naturally focus our time doubling down on the things that have made us successful. Our offering are resonating, so we focus on raising awareness, pitching to those who haven’t bought yet and investing on expanding our reach, so that we can sell more.
All of that makes sense – why wouldn’t we double down and capitalize on what’s working?
A measure of ambition is a critical ingredient of success. We have to want what it is we’re after.
But too much ambition is a turn-off - and I don’t just mean for others, but to ourselves especially.
There’s probably many measures of this and we all have our own bar for what constitutes “too much”. For me, one of the most critical is when we calculate every interaction in terms of its payoff.
When the going’s good, it’s tempting to want more.
Our stock picks are at all time highs, so surely they’ll keep going higher…
Or sales are booming, and in that euphoria, it’s tempting to prioritize revenue growth over profitability or innovation.
No one wants to be told what to do, but everyone wants to understand what they should be doing.
From your employees to your colleagues to your customers, this is a truism.
If I give you an order, you’re not likely to take it well, no matter how well versed I am in the subject…
A common mistake of someone new to the sales process (whether you're selling a product to a prospect or an idea to your boss) is that the more detail you provide, the higher the chances of success.
Reality works quite differently, as I explain in today's episode. The fact is that the onus is on us to get our message across, which means we need to do the work, not the customer.
Like it or not, mistakes are par for the course.
As much as we’d like a perfect innings, there really isn’t any such thing.
That’s a function of the variability inherent in our environment. Our colleagues will not always act predictably. Competitors don’t always behave the way we’d like them to.
When we lose an opportunity (a sale, a promotion, a job offer, etc.), it’s normal - and OK - to feel down, especially if it was something we really wanted. After all, if we’ve really given it everything we had, we’ve made a commitment (emotional and otherwise) which, ultimately, has not been rewarded.
So, we take the lumps.
One of the most common conversations you’ll have, as someone who manages others, is the conversation about goal achievement.
That is, what will it take to achieve our goals? What needs to be in place for us to get there? It’s a good discussion (usually) that keeps all of us grounded on the practical steps that should be taken to enable us to get to where we want to go.
At some point, I think we all have to decide if we’re “For-Profit” or “For-Purpose”.
Yes, we can and should be about both, but one has to take precedence in defining who we are and what we’re doing.
To be “For-Profit” is to be focused on the numbers.
Self-awareness is a tricky thing.
I mean, we intuitively recognize its importance, but truly practicing it - balancing it - is another thing altogether. Certainly, we’ve seen examples of folks who run the entire spectrum.
Those who are like a bull in a China shop, completely oblivious to whatever anyone around them says or thinks - or perhaps they are aware but simply don’t care or believe it’s necessary to consider their views.
I know it’s a cliché to say this but we learn far more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.
The reasons are obvious, of course. Through our mistakes, we gain practical experience in what not to do - and it’s this experience that generates knowledge that is seared into our subconscious, often painfully so.
In a recent interview with Marc Maron, Rick Rubin (one of the greatest music producers of our generation) recounted an exercise he gave an artist to extract more authenticity and emotion from the lyrics this individual was writing.
“The person was writing lyrics and I thought the lyrics could be better…”
From early on, we’re taught to be “good” at our work which typically translates to developing strong, technical expertise.
We’re required to learn the right processes, the tools to be deployed and the results to be achieved as a result of following that process.
If we do this well, we’re hailed as ‘process experts’ which, generally speaking, is a good thing.
One of the problems I constantly struggle with when playing guitar is that, when I’m noodling around, I’ll gravitate towards the same chords and progressions.
In other words, I want to play something fresh and original, but I’m constantly back at G, Am, C and D.
At the end of the movie, Jurassic Park, the lead actors are in an enclosed space, surrounded by menacing velociraptors. It looks like their time is up, until suddenly, out of nowhere, a T-Rex suddenly appears and attacks the velociraptors, allowing our heroes to escape to safety.
That plot twist is called a Deus Ex Machina, which is Latin for God From The Machine…
One of Google’s tenets is “Fast is better than slow”.
The idea is that ‘getting to market’ i.e. shipping your product even if it isn’t perfect, is the most important thing. Instead of spending time nailing down every last detail, we need to put out a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and let the market tell us what needs to be improved.
When we're trying to sell an idea or a product, we want to say all the right things to the prospect, so that we can close the deal quickly.
In doing so, we can at times, sugar coat the message, or gloss over key issues that need to be grappled with upfront. All the more reason, as I discuss in today's episode, that we always be upfront - even if that means talking about difficult things.
Having our “fingers in multiple pies” seems like a good idea when we’re starting out.
Business environments are competitive, clients are demanding and surviving means doing whatever’s needed to make money.
Expectations management is everything in business. We understand and buy that when it comes to big picture issues - such as a client delverable.
But, as I discuss in today's podcast, it matters just as much in our more common day to day activities.
We love being the hero in our stories. But Donald Miller talks about there being only 4 key roles you can take on in your business story.
And being the hero isn't one of them. You need to be the guide, as I discuss in today's episode.
