Business Growth Newsletter #185: Trust, Predictable growth, New cat

GREG’S RIGHT FIT NEWSLETTER #185
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Quick notes to help you get more sales and marketing done in less time. . . next week.

In this issue:

– Techniques for FIT
– Being Human
– Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT
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• Our trust in a person or entity is not based on some objective measure or set of criteria. It’s purely subjective and starts with the thought, “do they have my best interest in mind?”
• Usually, trust is described as something won or lost, you either have it or you don’t. In reality, trust comes and goes so you can recover if its damaged, or conversely see it slip away after years of work.
• Start your work with clients by checking yourself in the mirror and asking if you have their best interest in mind. If the trust they have in you is going to be subjective, might as well focus on the one thing you can control, your intent.
• Let go of the idea you’re being judged on effort. Effort comes second to outcomes. Yoda put it succinctly, “Do or do not. There is no try.” That said, if your results are subpar, we’re going to look at your effort, so put in the work too.

Being Human – Predictable growth
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“I don’t predict.” – Peter Drucker

Diagram 1–Predictable Growth Model

I have been visiting with new prospects the last two weeks and it forced me to go into the archives and dust off my Predictable Growth Business Development Model. I created it to help firms quickly assess where we should focus to build a sales process which rapidly produces predictable results but hadn’t used it in a while. I forgot how effective it is and it’s another reminder to revisit activities that worked in the past because they usually still work.

Diagram 1 identifies the 3 key segments of a business development system producing predictable results:

• Your Target Market’s Awareness of the problems you solve/results you achieve.
• Inside the market, Identifying Multiple Buyers.
• The Quality of Discussions with buyers for opportunity development.

Target Market Awareness is just as it sounds. How well do the companies in your target market know the problems you solve and the results you get? It’s where your marketing function should be focused.

Multiple Buyer ID’d is part of your cross selling effort. Inside your target market, how many different “buyers” involved in the decision process are you talking to? How many are aware of your firm? The larger the target market organization, the more buyers your team should be looking for. This is both a marketing and sales focus.

Discussion Quality is how effective your people are at developing opportunities when sitting in front of buyers. It’s the sole function of your business development/sales team.

When all three segments are working together, you end up with Predictable Growth because your pipeline will have new leads coming in from marketing, more internal opportunities generated by client managers, and bigger opportunities developed in business development/sales conversations. The data from all these activities gives your leadership insights into the future and lets you predict growth.

Conversely, when one or more of these segments are out of balance, new opportunities are missed, we enter late into the client’s decision process and have deals torpedoed, or deals are skinny, languish, and don’t close.

The way the assessment works is to assign your firm a score on each of the three segments on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is “we’re terrible at this,” 5 is “we’re average,” and 10 is “this is our firm’s competitive advantage.”

You’re aiming for balance to start, then improvement across all areas. For instance, if you’re a 7 for Market Awareness, a 4 for Multi Buyers ID’d, and a 6 for Discussion Quality, my advice is to look at pulling each section up to a 7 before improving the entire process. If we did that, where would it show up in your firm?

Inside each circle is a world of opportunity. If you need to talk about the general idea or a segment in detail, call me.

Good stuff.

Random Stuff

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“Growth is a challenge and when you try to grow under stress, it’s even more challenging.“

I wrote a new feature article for Canvas Magazine on getting the rightsalespeople on your team. Hint: find the ones that fit your company’s stage of growth.

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“What’s new, pussycat?”

 Mr. Roger’s Henrietta Pussycat

We have a new cat in our lives. No name yet, but she’s here making Wilson nervous. I’m sure he’ll get over it and they’ll be fine friends. As long as she sticks to the rules. (Wilson’s a stickler for the rules.)

When I see the word pussycat I’m reminded of a holiday party I went to many years ago where I ended up in a late night kitchen conversation with a prominent lawyer and his lovely wife. The host’s family cat walked in and this lawyer, a big burly corporate type, leans over to address the cat and says, “Here pussy, pussy. Who’s a good pussy?” going on an on in a sing song voice. Just thinking about it makes me giggle.

His wife saw my grin and smacked him telling him not to say that because we don’t call cats pussy’s. He was so confused. They went back and forth, him asking when we stopped calling them that and his wife looking at him incredulously saying “No one ever called it that” (we had been drinking quite a bit). I was crying from laughter. Probably the same way my Australian friend did when I told him to hang in there because I was pulling for him.

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