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Do These Serious Words Hurt Your Performance?

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“Just being stubborn can look a lot like courage!”  was the quote my client gave me.  I agree and it got me wondering.  In today’s climate of business books and blogs about every conceivable high-sounding skill we “have to have” to succeed, are the serious-sounding labels worrying us and hurting our performance?

  • Books say we have to have “courage”.  Courage is good, but can’t we just be stubborn and optimistic?
  • We have to have “vision”.  Could we just have clear, constructive, dynamic plans for the future?
  • We have to be “assertive”.  Can we just be clear-thinking, gracious, plain-spoken, and undistractable?

I like the plain words.  I want my clients and readers to be clear-thinking, gracious, and undistractable.

If you like the plain words too, what examples can you think of?  Please comment; I would thoroughly enjoy discussing this with you.

Which Tools To Solve This Problem Are Right In Front of You?

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Recently I mentioned I didn’t like Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons. The plot was a little too repetitive for my taste.

Problem solving

The female hero did have two strong problem-solving techniques. I covered one in that recent post; here’s the other. As her situation becomes more dangerous, she “was starting to come unhinged…feeling terrible frustration with no tools to handle it. You have tools, she told herself, you always have tools. What tools are right here in front of me in this room? What data are right here?”

You have the data

You have plenty of data around you that you can plug right into tools you already know how to use. You usually have ample data, tools, and therefore, answers.  You have tools, tell yourself, what tools are right here in front of me?

Be still

You just have to be still enough, for long enough, to tell yourself:  I have the tools and the answers.

I know this works because I’ve used it.

Do you think it will work for you too?  Please share your thoughts.  I look forward to hearing from you.

The Answer’s Right There – Do You See It?

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I didn’t like Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons. The plot was too repetitive for me, and it is not true that man can direct and limit God’s plans. But I liked this line from the female hero. Cornered by the bad guy, she said to herself, “Remember! Remember the answer to this!”

Can you hear what she’s doing?

Rather than ask her mind for an answer to what looked like an unsolvable problem, instead she told her mind simply to remember it. The supposition that she knew the answer created the idea that the answer already exists in her mind, thus eliminating the hopelessness and the churning mind.

I’ve tried it.

“Remember!  Remember the answer to this!”  has eased my mind and freed my problem-solving every time I’ve tried it.  Try it.  Tell me if it works for you.

The character has another problem-solving technique I’ll describe tomorrow.

Do you have a favorite problem-solving or mind management technique that calms you down and helps you solve problems?  Please ‘Comment’ and tell us about it.

 

Watch Out – Don’t Be Good At This

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My husband and I were having a deep conversation about being diligent and deliberate, working every day toward goals, not slacking off or procrastinating. I described that I recover well from a wasted hour or a day spent procrastinating; I say I needed the rest or that it was good to get so many low-ranking tasks done.

But I was lying.

The truth is I’m embarrassed, a little ashamed, and I beat myself up pretty badly about procrastinating.  Here’s what I’m good at: I’m good at taking the shame and promising to do better next time.

I announced, “I’ve made a decision.”

“I do not want to be good at taking the shame and making excuses. I do not want to practice that ability anymore. I do not want to be good at it. There are other things I want to be good at instead.”  I listed a few.

I can’t say strongly enough to watch out for the things you practice being good at.  Do you agree? What things do you practice being good at that might be doing you harm?

Please comment and join the conversation! 

Is the “Unique Selling Proposition” Outdated?

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C. Richard Weylman says in the Aug 2013 issue of Customer Relationship Management that his notion of a “unique value promise” should now replace the “outdated ‘unique selling proposition’ approach, which emphasizes product features, company attributes, and price.”

This part he’s got right.

Mr. Weylman is correct that marketers and managers must forget about touting their company’s attributes and their products’ features, and speak to the customer only about what she cares about emotionally: the brand’s promise of benefits, valuable outcomes, and experiences.

This part he’s got wrong.

Successful firms I’ve worked with have always defined their “Unique Selling Proposition” in the modern customer-centric, customer-values-centered way, and never defined it as product features and price. We wouldn’t have been keen to switch to Mr. Weylman’s jargon of “unique value promise”. We don’t need any more jargon confusing our budding marketers and salesmen.

His points are already covered by the modern concepts of the successful customer-centered brand. Enough with the new jargon to make our brands sound stronger. Let’s just make our brands actually perform strongly.

Do you agree?  Please click “comment” and let’s talk about it.

One Way to Discover Your Client’s Deepest Need

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Discovering your client’s deepest need is your most important objective.  There is one best way to discover it.  (This post is part of my Core Content and curriculum about Relationship Selling and your client’s “deepest need”.)

Here’s how I learned once and for all about discerning the client’s deepest – and often unspoken – need.  At my old engineering firm, I was the Client Program Manager serving a particular Air Force client. We were doing a lot of work for them and hoped to do a lot more. I spent hours of face time with the chief point-of-contact at the Air Force, paying attention to their wants and needs and being helpful.

Doesn’t the client know how difficult this is?

The client had a challenging and dangerous engineering problem he wanted solved – the destruction of tons of dangerous, aged, decrepit-but-still-full gas cylinders. We hadn’t been given the project yet, so the hours I spent with the client each week devising plans and alternatives – I couldn’t bill any of that time. We didn’t have the project yet. I was on overhead.

As client Jim continued to offer that I could attend these (unbillable) meetings, I said to myself, “I like working with Jim, but he’s had enough contractors work for him that he knows I can’t bill any of this time. But we claim we want to be helpful, so I’ll work it out at the office somehow.  I’ll find other billable work and work extra hours.” At least I knew that my firm and I were proving to be helpful and to put the client’s needs above our own. We had shown that we could be relied on to help whether or not the time could be billed.

The client was about to compete a very large umbrella contract. As Program Manager it was my job to know the client’s deepest need and make sure my firm and our proposal satisfied that need.

Then it hit me.

“Jim is showing me every way he can – without saying it out loud – that the winning bidder will be the one who put this client’s needs ahead of their own. Even when it was difficult. Even when it was unbillable!  That is this client’s deepest need about their next contractor. That is this client’s discriminator. He’s shown me how to win this!”

Our proposal proved we were helpful and effective for this client, that we went above normal expectations about how much time we would spend. We won the contract, did terrifically hard and satisfying work, and made back every penny we’d spent in unbillable time. He had made his deepest need and discriminator perfectly clear; all I had to do was listen.

Please leave a comment and let’s talk.  This is such important stuff and can make a major difference in your career.  (This post is part of my Core Content and curriculum about Relationship Selling.)

What is a “Brand” Exactly?

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It’s very useful and challenging that the word “brand” has taken on so much meaning lately. It hasn’t been that long ago that “the brand” was thought of as only the item’s logo and slogan. “Brand” is now centered exclusively on the customer and her needs.

The Definitions of “Brand”

I like to go over the definitions of “brand” with my clients because there are layers of meaning in each definition, and the meanings make us think. Here are some:

“A brand is the memory of a valuable experience or outcome.”
“A brand is a promise of value.”
“A brand is a promise of the company’s values.”
“A brand promises the same valuable experience as last time.”
“A brand promises an emotional experience tied to personal benefit.”

And one of my favorites: “A brand is the evidence that the company knows and understands the customer’s deepest needs and the customer’s journey.”

What we have to do

Do you see the work that’s cut out for us?  Can you see in these statements what we as business leaders, project managers, or marketers can do that will lead directly to the customer’s happiness, and thereby the success of our brand?  Inside every one of those statements are ways to increase customer happiness and engagement, whether you’re a candy maker or an engineering firm.

Which one of the definitions will be most useful to your brand’s success?  Or do you have another favorite definition?  Please click “comment” above!

Watch My TEDx Talk

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Speaking at TEDx Creative Coast 2014 was a terrifically fun experience.  Even better was listening to the other fantastic speakers.   My TEDx topic was the always-daunting and mysterious “How To Stop Time”.  Watch the video to learn how!

My TEDx Talk starts with Drew’s awesome introduction at minute 2:54:13.  Watch us all on livestream.com.  I’ll post my individual video as soon as the video guys have it ready.  Enjoy and please tell me if you like it.

13 Essential Ways to Team Build

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We can’t discuss coaching the sales team without talking about developing a terrific proposal team, a terrific project team, a fabulous team, period.  Program managers have to be very good at nurturing and leading all those teams.  There is plenty of education about teams on the interwebz.  I’ll add the 13 essentials that worked so well at Radian Corporation:

  1. hire well:  hire well-spoken, composed, mature people we actually wanted to work beside late into the night
  2. which made it easy to lead them and train them with a light hand
  3. their good work made it easy to leave them to work autonomously
  4. and not interfere or micromanage them
  5. but being the one pushing the boundary of high-risk, scary big sales meant I had to watch my words, namely,
  6. I had to explain myself extremely well, making the goal specific and meaningful
  7. be encouraging and challenging
  8. let them know they were valid and valued
  9. then leave them alone, because they had to feel trusted
  10. when trusted, they excelled
  11. when all that worked, “correcting” them was a matter of one or two good questions from me
  12. and I was always grateful and very proud and they always knew, and
  13. we won a lot of our proposals.

One Simple Way To Get The Loyalty Of Your Team

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I used to tell my project teammates, “Tell me bad news quickly. Bad news does not improve with age. Just tell me. There’s nothing you can get into that, together, you and I can’t get out of.” I liked that. I liked being that manager. I liked showing solidarity with my team, and I liked going to bat for them. I liked knowing that I’d hear bad news from them in plenty of time to minimize bad results.

They weren’t going to get into very bad trouble because they WOULD tell me in time. See how that works? It’s kind of circular, but boy, did it work. Try it.

Please join in and describe the way you get your team out of a bad spot, or you increase teamwork.  Click “comment” above.

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