Ain't Talkin', Just Walkin' – Inspiration Comes From Odd Places

Question: Where do you find inspiration for your business development efforts?  

Some people find their motivation from YouTube Videos with soaring music, spacious images and cliches.  And that's fine.

Others find motivation from inspirational case stories such as people who climb mountains with only one leg, recover from tragedy/beat illness, and succeed despite odds that make you embarrassed to complain when the barista puts skim and not soy milk in your latte. And that's fine, too.

Me, many years ago in NYC: "I hate shaving."My roommate: "If you had no hands, you'd be happy to be able to complain about hating shaving." (Even so, I grew a beard.)

For business development, for me, it's a combination of three things:

1) Curiosity.  I meet a new person and I really want to know what they do, how they help others, what sets them and/or their offerings apart, and how they go about letting others know about this stuff.

2) Data.  I kind of get off on listening to folks say "Great work sells itself" and then checking to see the growth of their client base and the number of people they've networked with in the past 90 days, as well as their other business development efforts.  (Hint: doing a good job/having quality products are table stakes, not your business development plan. I have tons of data to prove this.)


Also, I like seeing how opportunities arise - using spreadsheets and forms.  Often, business developers are so sure they know who refers them business and how opportunities appear.  Often their beliefs are anecdotal and the actual metrics do not fully support them, or identify unnoticed veins of opportunity.  This takes effort, but the strategy is about as simple as it gets: Things that work once tend to work again. Things that work twice tend to work over and over again.

When you walk in the gym and suddenly feel tired, how do you steel your heart for the work-out, and even push yourself to do one more rep, one more mile, 100 more calories, ten more pounds?

3) The music in my iPod.  Today, while on the treadmill (since it was too cold for rollerblading), Bob Dylan's "Ain't Talkin', Just Walkin'" came on.  I found this motivational.  Four simple words.  I also like the lines: "Heart burnin', still yearnin'" and "My mule is sick, my horse is blind."  Now the rest of the song isn't very inspiring from a BD perspective, but I do like the idea that Bob Dylan (or the fictional singer of this song) is simply moving forward and not spending time telling people about what he "plans" to do. 

So... from where do you find inspiration for your business development efforts? (Post below if you are so inclined.)  If you don't know, perhaps finding this source would help motivate you to put one foot in front of the other and move forward. 

/talkin'.

But I Licked it First! -or- How to Ensure Prospects Die on the Vine

So here's the situation: One of your sales reps, partners, whatevers meets someone at a networking event. He or she logs the contact in your CRM (which is great), but then the wheels come off. No one else at your organization can even touch that contact or that company. Oh, they can, but they won't.

Why not? Because if anything ever closes from that contact or that company, the person who logged the contact has progenitor, that is, proof he or she was the origin point and, in many situations, gets all the credit and commission – regardless of any effort past the first touch.

"But everyone should advance the lead for the good of the business," you say from your corner suite.

"All I will get is pain and grief if I even go near it," they mumble from their office a floor (or more) below.

--

Why "licked it first?"

You open a box of donuts. There is one Boston Creme donut in there, but Bob quickly leans down and licks it. While many others wants that donut, no one will ever touch it. Why not? Because Bob licked it.

Eventually, the donut goes stale and it's tossed into the garbage.

Sadly, this describes the "origination" policies of many sales & marketing organizations. (And, in my world, every organization is a sales & marketing organization.)

How can you solve the donut problem? Drop a plastic knife into the box. Then people will cut off part of the donut and leave the rest for others.

--

An interesting 'fail.'

Sitting in a meeting (as a consultant), I learned that marketing had "stopped" delivering leads to a specific business developer. Funny, since the marketing team had no knowledge that they had been formerly successful for that individual. No credit was provided to marketing on the BD's reports. No mention that the efforts had led to "over the transom" calls. Not even a "Hey, thanks!" Nothing. Until, of course, the leads stopped arriving. And then, the marketing team was criticized for suddenly being a failure. (How heart warming!)

Now the marketing team knew their efforts were, possibly, indirectly helping that BD guy, since he was doing well on sales and they were promoting his services – but they did not know a specific direct path was working.

Why didn't the BD mention anything before? Because he did not want to lose the commission or have to fight for it. Also note: the marketing team at this organization receives no commission for being part of the success path. None. But the BD guy did not want to lose the leads to a "house" account, or even have to share the kudos, so he said nothing. Who won here? (Considering all the parties and making a mental tally...) No one! And everyone left the meeting annoyed at everyone else.

Who's fault is this? Leadership's for rewarding individual success and punishing teamwork.

So what can be done?

1) Time bombs. Set up a rule that any contact that has no activity for 30, 60, 90, or 180 days is fair game. (Think "fast fish" from Moby Dick ... which I believe I referenced in an earlier post.)

2) Teamwork. Sure, give credit for the original touch, but not 100% credit. What is the right number? The one that gets people to request help from the 'licker' (creating a pursuit team) vs. watching the contact die on the vine.

3) Bonus for growth, not specific sales. Sure, give the 'licker' a spiff for bringing the contact into the fold (after something closes or, at least, after there is a real proposal/contract on the table of course), but also give the other team members a bonus for hitting their larger goals.

4) Psychic rewards for playing nice. Publicly thank the other players, by name, and with some small or non-monetary reward. Too many leaders publicly call out the individual who originally licked the contact or brought the ball over the finish line without even recognizing the blockers or tacklers. Or, perhaps worse, pacifying them with "...and the many other people who helped here..." said right before the bonus check is handed over to the single individual.

A simple question.

Are you creating Bobs that lick the best donuts? ...or are you dropping a plastic knife in the box to promote teamwork?

What is a Promoter and how do I make more of them?

In February, I wrote a blog post entitled: Stop Networking! You Already Know Enough People. While you don't see comments here at Blogger, I continually receive notes and in-person queries, many of which are basically the following question:

"OK, so how do I monetize my 'large enough' network?"

Good question. Strike that. Great and possibly, the best question.

First of all, there are three types of people in your network:

1) Promoters and prospects

2) Time sucks

3) Friends and family

Separate your network into the three categories as above.

If they fall into category 1… keep them on the list.

If they fall into category 2… take them off your list and DO NOT SPEND ANOTHER SECOND ON THEM. You will never get that time back. This is why you have so many people on your list and, adding up the hours spent on them will only make you cry. I suggest you throw away the rear view mirror and move forward.

If they fall into category 3… take them off your networking list and put them on your holiday card/BBQ invite list.

Your list should now only have promoters on it and should be, at most, 5% of the original size.

"OK, so how do I figure out who my promoters are?"

Assess them against the three attributes, starting with the first one.

1) Access.

They hang around people who could be your clients. If they do not have access to your prospect network, they can never be promoters and will only ever be time sucks. In other words: If they are on your networking list and they do not pass the "access test" then take them off your networking list. Send them e-blasts, perhaps, but not lunch invitations.

|> I've watched a lot of football over the years, and I have never seen someone in the stands throw a receiver a touchdown pass. Nor have I seen someone in the audience get an assist for a hockey or soccer goal. <|

2) Interest.

They believe you can help their network and want to help you. You can test this by providing them with a referral or an introduction to a promoter of their own and seeing if they return the favor. If they live at the end of a cul-de-sac... take them off your list. Or, you can ask for a specific referral and see how they react. Better, though, to start by helping them and see if they pay-this-forward, even if it's not to you.

3) Understanding.

They appreciate the value you can provide to their network. Note: I did not say they understand what you do, definitely not how you do it, or why you are so special. In many cases, (cough cough...approaching 100% of all cases), the only thing that makes you special is they are willing to refer you to their clients.

Prospect: "What sets you apart from the 500 other people who seemingly do what you do?"

You: "I'm in the room with you right now and they aren't."

Odds are, there are dozens or hundreds of people who do what you do and only your mother thinks you are special. (Or at least you hope she does.) Please do not waste any time trying to explain what you do or what sets you apart. Even if they could understand, which they can't, they don't care. They only care that you can help their network. Better to tell them when you can help. ... but that's a blog post for another day.

Next up:

> Triggers and USPs

> The LinkedIn trick for finding the real promoters in your network … and what you can do to find them if you aren't using LinkedIn. (Read: You like doing things the hard, old-fashioned way.)

Referrers, Promoters and Yetis

Yetis? Yes, yetis. And you heard it here first.

One of our goals as networkers is to create referral sources. And we all know what they are. People who send you leads.

There has also been a lot of discussion and research on promoters and net promoter scoring(TM) … a registered trademark of Satmetrix as it turns out. I have been using the term "promoter" to mean "proactive referral source" for a long while now (maybe even before net promoter scoring came into existence.) Unsure if I am using the term "promoter" in a technically correct manner, but I very much doubt it matters. Others call them "angels" or "ambassadors," which is fine. You can call them whatever you want.

|>My thinking, as many know and as I expect I have written in this blog before, is that you need 8-12 promoters in your network. If you do not have them, either go get them or go get a "real" job, since you will have trouble staying in business without them if you rely on rainmaking.<|

Gene Rosendale of ASA uses a term called "witnesses," which fits nicely into the strategy I've always employed. A "witness" is someone in the room when the relevant pain is being felt by your potential customer. The witness will help guide this prospect to contact you. My strategy was to have active promoters who understood your unique selling proposition (USP) and were able to ask questions that help lead your prospects to uncover the pain that you can uniquely salve. And then point them your way. "Witness" is an elegant term for this person. And far faster to explain as you have just read.

But even this does not go far enough.

|>We need to look for people who can present potential value above the "you should" metric and move to the "you will" one. That term is "Yetis."<|

Why a "yeti?"

One the same day recently, two people pulled out their iPads and asked me the exact same question: "Have you gotten an iPad, yet?" This was not the first time I have been asked this question about products or services – and I've specifically been asked the question for iPads at least 5 times so far.

Why do these people assume that it is only a matter of time until I get an iPad ... or a Kindle ... or call a certain person to help with a specific business issue?

The answer is that they, themselves, can't imagine why you haven't yet already done so. They believe that the product or service is not only a perfect fit, but a known and obvious solution; the only one that'll do the job well enough to even be worth considering. In fact, them thinking you already know this is a compliment and an insult: You are "in the know," but not yet wise enough to take the obvious next step.

Yetis.

So, how do you create Yetis?

1) Find the pain for which your product or solution is a clear and obvious salve.

2) Create witnesses (often current customers) who cannot imagine why others haven't yet used your offering to salve that pain.

Sound simple? Sound easy? Of course it's neither. Both of those bullets are hard work. But every "yet" is money in the bank and you can only get there by creating Yetis, so it's worth it. And the closer you get, the better off you will be.

Finally, since so many people forget that current customers are the best referral sources, this might help them see their customers in a new way, that is, covered head to toe in shaggy fur.

Stop Networking! You Already Know Enough People.

The golfer steps up to the tee, pulls out a driver and swings. The ball soars perfectly straight, right down the middle of the fairway.

Without even admiring the drive (or where the ball eventually stops), the golfer places another ball on the tee and swings again. Another great drive! Also right down the middle of the fairway. This one skips twice, hits one of the many other balls (just white dots from where the golfer stands) and the two balls roll forward a few feet before they stop, both hitting other balls along the way.

The golfer places yet another ball on the tee...

For many people, this golfing analogy describes their networking (and sadly, entire business development) strategy. Stand at the tee, hit lots of balls onto the fairway and either hope for a hole-in-one or that, by some miracle, one of the balls will knock another one onto the green. Once the ball is on the green, we suddenly notice it and try to putt it into the hole. The problem is that the fairway is often littered with balls that have sat there for years and years and years.

--

I promised I'd assess the last three years of networking coaching efforts to determine how many professionals and companies needed more contacts in order to reach their business development goals.

Individuals: 12/79 (15%)

Organizations: 4/10 (40%)

Of 79 individuals, I can recall only 12 that didn't already have plenty of contacts to fuel their business development plans. This counts two professionals who had long lists of contact, but after review it was determined that they didn't have enough of the right contacts, so did need to meet new (more targeted) people.

Organizationally, only 4 of the 10 companies needed lead generation efforts; they had enough names in their contact databases.

|>A caveat: No one nor any company should ever stop marketing. Using the analogy above, you should have a plan to continually drive balls onto the fairway. But if your business development effort does not include a strategic, step-by-step plan for moving these people from 1) initial meeting to 2) engaged community member to 3) referral source/prospect, then you are wasting your time meeting them.<|

Recently, I asked a professional to print out his contact list so we could assess it for potential clients, promoters and centers of influence. His administrative assistant contacted me with some desperation in her voice.

"Do you really need a print out? It's eighty-four pages."

I asked, "How many per page?"

A long pause as she counted. "Thirty-seven."

Let's do the math: 84 x 37 = 3,108 contacts! To be fair, the last page only had 27 names on it, so we didn't quite hit 3,100. Also to be fair, this professional knew he had enough network contacts already. However, we both looked at this list and wondered where we would even start. The list itself was overwhelming.

|>The question is: If you output all your contacts onto a spreadsheet, how many would you have?

A better question is: How many more do you need? Odds are (85% likely by my non-statistical count), the answer is none. You already have enough.<|

So... Put down your driver, get out an iron and start clubbing those balls down the fairway and onto the green. The good news is that no one is counting strokes*. They only care about how many balls you get onto the green and into the hole.

And here's a question for the business leaders out there: Can you see all those white dots out on the fairway? That's wasted opportunity! And wasted cost of getting the balls out there. (Do that math if you need additional motivation.)

*Many companies do track the number of tee shots. Some even compensate on this. We can argue whether or not this is valuable and that is arguable. However, if you are only measuring tee shots and sunk balls, then you deserve what you are getting, which is a lot of wasted time and money meeting people who will be contacted once and then left to rot on the fairway.

Quick Networking Tip: Teeing Up "Business Talk" Over Lunch

It was never hard for me to mix business and lunch. In fact, I don't quite understand why it is for other people - especially since most of our weekday lunches are with other business folks, even if they have also become friends over the years.

Perhaps I had lunches with good networkers who weren't shy about mixing the two, so I learned from them. (In at least one case, I know this is true.)

Anyway... I'm often asked for tips and figured I'd put a couple of them here.

Have a mental agenda. (Required.)

Bring a relevant article to share.

Tee up the conversation with phrases like:

"During the business part of our lunch, I'd like to..."

"After we order and before the food comes, let's talk shop."

Set up the lunch with a business topic.

"Let's go to lunch, since I am not 100% sure who might be a good prospect for you."

"Hey, why don't you look at my LinkedIn profile beforehand and let me know of anyone you might want to meet."

"I see you now offer _______ service. Let's grab a bite; I'd like to learn more."

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind.

Happy networking.

E-mail Advice That Makes People Angry ... or How to Keep Your E-mails Typo-free.

One of the toughest jobs of a Marketing Director is telling people that they had a typo in their e-mail or sent an unprofessional e-mail.

People don't want to hear it.

"I was going 100 miles an hour that day. Of course, I'd have a small typo."

"A typo? Who cares? Every e-mail has typos these days."

"So I forgot to include a subject line. Stop being so picky."

But the truth is that you are judged by your work and your work includes the e-mails you send. And here's a tougher truth: People are looking for reasons not to hire or keep you. They are actively looking for any excuse so they can justify their business decision of not using your service or not buying your products.

When I see a typo, I wonder:

a) Are they careless? Or

b) Do they simply not care?

When the CEO of a client company sends me an e-mail with a typo I think it's (b) they simply don't care. Why should they bother to proofread internal e-mails or e-mails to vendors? And while this might surprise people who know me... I agree. I hope they have better things to do than proofread internal e-mails. In fact, I hope everyone does.

So, we are only talking about typos in external e-mails.

But I really don't want to write a post on why sending unprofessional e-mails is bad. If you don't agree, you've already stopped reading. But if you do care that the people in your organization write proper e-mails, without typos, but don't want to get that snippy nasty-gram back for actually trying to help... here is your solution:

Send them the below portion of this blog post. Say it's from me. With love.

---

Three e-mails you should never send and how to ensure you never (or at least very rarely) do.

1) An e-mail with a typo.

First of all, go to Preferences in your Outlook® and select all the check spelling options. This will add squiggly lines under all your misspelled words as you compose them and it will also ask you to "ignore" or "change" all misspelled words before you send the e-mail.

However, this will not stop you from sending homonyms or other typos that are correctly spelled, but not the correct word. (Think back to the old poem with the line: "My checker tolled me sew.")

The most common one here seems to be "their" and "there." Another example, my personal demon, is using the word "from" when you mean "form."

Here's a trick to avoiding this kind of typo: Read the e-mail aloud before you send it.

Your eyes might not catch the typo, but your ears will.

Try to catch the errors below.

• "You should receive the PDF form Nicki by 5pm today."
• "I now you like sushi, so let's meet at Yasu."
• "I never did here from Marc. Did you?"

A spellchecker also won't catch contraction errors such as the very common "your" instead of "you're" one. Since the "read aloud" trick doesn't seem to work all the time on these errors, here's an additional trick: Read all contractions as if they weren't contractions. That is, when reading the e-mail aloud say, "you are", even when you wrote "you're."

Try to catch the errors in the two following sentences.

• "Every sentence should stand up on it's own."
• "I haven't seen you're boss around lately."

The spell checker should also catch typos in the subject line, but, for some reason, this tends to be a good place to find typos, anyway.

Simple advice here: Proofread your subject lines, too.

2) An e-mail without a subject line.

I seem to receive a greta deal of these and I am unsure how it happens. Outlook should pop-up a message line that reads: "This message has no subject. Are you sure you want to send it?" If you get that message, click "cancel" and add a subject line.

Try, right now, to send a message without a subject line. If you don't get that message box, contact your IT person. In the past you must have selected the "Don't show me this message again." option. Why you did that is beyond me. But you did and, sadly, there is no preference you can check to get it back. Your IT person can, however, fix it. And once it's fixed, there is never (not ever!) a good reason to choose the "never show" option, since you should only see that box when you accidentally forget to include a subject line.

Let me put that more directly: You should want to be notified when you are about to make a careless mistake. Don't stop your computer from helping you.

Also, if you proofread your subject lines and see that there is nothing to proofread, then, well, add something to proofread.

3) An e-mail without a body. ("Subject line messaging")

For some reason, people think this is efficient.

Subject line: Please send me the updated Petrovich file. I also want Version 2 of the Montrose one. Thanks.

Body:

Yep, I get it. What more did you need to say? The whole message was in the subject line.

But let me explain how e-mail works in this century.

1. There is a preview pane now. So I can read most of your e-mail without opening it.
2. The 'In' box is actually a thin column where people can see the sender's name and only a few words of your subject line. So I have to open up the e-mail anyway.
3. When I open the e-mail, Outlook puts the subject line in a grey box, making your amazing creation harder to read.

So, when your recipient opens your e-mail, he likely sees only the body of your message, which reads:

Body:

Then it's a treasure hunt for the message. This is the opposite of efficient.

In fact, if I'm looking at your message on my smart phone, I could read your whole two sentence message without actually opening the e-mail unless you use your special trick of putting the entire message in the subject line.

It's funny, since there is really no reason why "subject line messaging" is actually unprofessional (albeit lots of reasons it's inefficient), but my informal poll of about two dozen people revealed that NO ONE likes this and EVERYONE thinks it's unprofessional. A few of them used pretty choice words about the, and I quote, "D-bags" who do this.

So, stop it. Even (read: especially) for internal e-mails, since it'll come across as bossy and rude, not efficient.

END PART I. PART II WILL BE POSTED...SOMEDAY.

---

Here is the full "Candidate for a Pullet Surprise" poem, which includes the line: "My checker tolled me sew." (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)

10 ways to make sure you do NOT monetize your network.

A popular saying: Your network is your net worth.

This is why so many marketing advisors counsel on how to build a network. Some even teach you how to monetize it, which is the hard part (and why so many advisors focus only on the first, easier half.)

But I have yet to see anyone explain how to make sure you do NOT monetize your network. And yet so many people are accidental experts at this.

After studying some of the best (whose names will never be mentioned), I figured it'd be a good time to list out their top ten "skills."

1) Ignore other people's knowledge of the person you are meeting. Just because they know a lot about this person and why they might be valuable to you, they're not worth the 5-10 minutes to learn any of this.
2) Make sure not to thank referrers. Or even let them know you met their referral. Why should they need to know you actually met? Best to leave them guessing. And why should they care if it went well or was a near miss? So they can better tailor their next referral? Pah! Who needs that type of precision?
3) Broken funnel? Keep pouring them in! Your network is like a meat grinder. The more meat you jam into it the better. Never look at what comes out the other side. Ick. Right?
4) The latest networking tools are always the best. Networking is a technology race. Linked In? Maxed that one at 500. Twitter? That's so 2009. Foursquare? Been there, mayored that. Groupon? Time to move on. Whoever gets there first wins, right? If your network can't keep up, that's their problem.
5) Everything you do is noteworthy. Had lunch at a nice place? Tweet it! Tired of the heat? Post it on LinkedIn. Saw some funny shoes? Send out a link to the pic. They voted Jose off SYTYCD and he was your fave? Everyone needs to know. They hang on your every word.
6) LOL typos. OMG. poeple r to anal about typoos. Its 2010 and proofngg is 4 people with to much time. They kno u r busy and cant stop to proof your posts. They know if you they refer you business, youll b moar carful
7) The busier the better. Make sure you let people know how busy you are and how impossible it is to reach you. Busy = success. Simple fact.
8) Measure by number.* The more people in your network the better. The more retweets and pageviews, the higher your score. Breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings? You still have time for a couple coffees. Pipelines and relationship maps are for people with small networks, not for networking pros like you. And make sure you let everyone know, at every chance, how many others have fallen into your net.
9) Networking is a one-way street. ...and you are the princess in the castle at the end of the cul-de-sac. In fact, you take this to the next level. You make sure they know that you do not actually read anything they post. "If you want to reach me, send me an e-mail. I do not have time to read tweets." (Actual tweet.) Networking is not a conversation; it's a lecture. From you (the expert) to them (the fawning pupil who basks in the glory of being connected to you.)
10) Networking is synonymous to selling. You are the master of turning every coffee into a proposal meeting. Every breakfast into a presentation. They've finished their food and you haven't yet taken a bite. That's proof you are putting the time to better use. Now, mouth full, time to go for the close. You rock.

OK, I stopped at 10. I'm sure you can add more.



*I have to be serious for a minute. There are so many tools that measure the reach of your networking efforts, but so few that measure the impact in terms of revenue. If you provide professional services or work at a small company, you can (and should) do this by hand. If you work at a large company, take a random sampling. List out the networking platforms used by your clients (those that pay you actual money) and successful referral sources (those that connected you to people who pay you actual money). Then put a check mark if you can prove that they used this to become clients (or learn about additional product/service offerings) or successfully refer you to someone who became a client. More simply put: Make a list of networking efforts that your current targets are also using. When I did this for myself and for a couple other people, the results were decisive. In short: Keep panning where you are finding gold.