Is what you doing right now something the world can’t live without?  Are you the difference between success and failure?  Are you truly indispensable?

“So, Seth, do you consider yourself indispensable?”

That’s what I wanted to say.  But I ran out of time.

The reality is that the thinking of a guy like Seth is quite indispensable.  You can’t really live without it.  You may survive.  You might be the last of your friends around at 87.  But what you did probably won’t have really mattered…

After a string of emails and the kindness of Seth (and Ishita) to take a few questions from me last week on Seth’s new manifesto, Linchpin, I started to round out the edges of my thinking around edginess…

Part 1: Is life like art?

Seth Godin is a legend in any discussion of “changing the world”.  After more a decade of writing with a distinct perspective about community and marketing and the art of being the dude that doesn’t let the wheels fly off the operation, Seth really makes it personal with the idea of fear.  He makes the case that:

“fear is the dominant emotion of our lives –Seth Godin”

What stops us from being amazingly successful is our fear of failure, our fear of being different, our fear of not doing what we are told, our fear of being laughed at.  We are afraid of our own destiny.  We have the choice to do something shocking and we trade it in for a few less laughs?

Part 2: Why are we so scared?

Gives us all something to think about.  Right?

But, Seth goes further, he talks about the value of what we do as artists.  That being edgy (on the edge of what the rest of world things is normal) is risky and amazingly rewarding…

Part 3: Can you put a price tag on what you do?

What a great reminder to avoid toxic influences in our day-to-day lives.  I make the mistake many times of trying to win over all the detractors —  at the risk of losing my core focus on the overall goal.  Many of you find yourselves doing the exact same thing.  You get burned out trying to change the wrong part of “the world”.  Some things, some people will not change while you are alive….

Know that what you do is amazing, unique, and sometimes only partially comprehensible.  And just know that means you won’t be able to convince everyone of your value.  Be edgy.  Fight for your destiny.  And avoid “schmoes” who make you insane.

Part 4: Do you expect a “Thank You”?

Part of being effective (on the edge of outrageous opportunity) is the idea of giving away your talents.  They are a gift.  Something that you don’t expect to be fully compensated for.  Can someone really pay you enough to get the extra mile with each email or phone interaction you make for your company?

That means that you create art.  And you let karma bring you the appreciation.

You do what only you an uniquely do and stop worrying about “getting the credit”.

Part 5: Are you doing enough? Anything at all?

..

Nothing gets done until someone else benefits from your passion (your “gift”).  Sadly, we too often trade what is safe for what would change the world.  That means that we fight for our “day job” and the pay raise when we should be focusing on investing in other people’s lives and our own personal development.

And putting in amazing amounts of effort is an admirable quality.  It shows discipline.  But it’s not “art”.

Art is when you finish what you started.

It’s when you close the prospect….. It’s when you finally make contact with a contact that help you influence the decision maker….  It’s when you take hopes and wishes for a deal and turn it into a relationship….

It’s not so much about about what you do but how you do it.

Part 6: Are you the guy who will successfully have bad ideas?

Wouldn’t you like to know that you are indispensable?  That without you the wheels falls and the cart crashes to the ground.  Not in a twisted egomaniacal sense of tyranny, but in a somber sense of inspiration.

Art is edgy.

From the raw definition.

Some art connects with a large audience.  Some a much smaller group.

You will fail along the way.  At least it might appear that way.  If you use failure as your laboratory for building your destiny, you will find that each time you hit an obstacle you fight to get back to the edge.

Because at the edge is where you’ll find success.  That’s when you’ll realize that you are indispensable…

]]> http://danwaldschmidt.com/2010/02/edgyconversations/seth-godin-indispensable-edginess/feed 27 http://danwaldschmidt.com/2010/01/edgyconversations/no-im-not-like-that http://danwaldschmidt.com/2010/01/edgyconversations/no-im-not-like-that#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:53:35 +0000 Dan Waldschmidt http://danwaldschmidt.com/?p=2090

We hate to be misunderstood. Better yet, we can’t stand over-hearing (in someone else’s casual conversation) that our motives or intention suck.

How many times have you been in a conversation with a bunch of people when you thought you heard your name spaced too close to an insult or some other negative nonsense?

Maybe a little something like this:

Crowd: That Dan guy….  <faded mumbles>…  what a moron!  I would never do something like that…..  idiot…. you’re telling me…  what a loser!

You: Hey, you guys talk’n to me?

Better yet (what you really want to say): “You guys talking about me?”

You’ve been there, haven’t you?  I know I have.

And for a guy who trained for an Ultimate Fighting competition, it can be hard to bite your lip and leave the area before it becomes the scene of a crime (that would be a bad intention).

Here’s the kicker:

Usually it’s our fault people challenge our intention….

Oh, sure, I know that really we can’t help what other people think or do.  We all get that.

What most of us still don’t understand is the idea of rephrasing our discussions around clearly stating our intention.

Get what I am saying?

Instead of explaining the 6 things that we are going to do; and then justifying the 19 sub-reasons why doing those things is the best way to accomplish our goal, many times it simply easier to state our intention.

Follow me?

Replace “I am going to…..” with “I intend to……”

Now don’t start throwing things at your computer screen (yet…).  You’re right.  It is a subtle shift.  It’s a small deal.  But it has strong psychological power…

People will take “pot-shots” at your actions all day long.  Frankly, it’s pretty easy to do.  Still further, you’ll find people who take what you think is a success and turn it into a “major failure”.  They’ll lambast your 1st Prize ribbon as self-serving and selfishly ego-maniacal luck.  They’ll call you all manner of sophisticated names and even use religion, race, or pedigree as a platform for mis-characterizing your activity.

If you happen to eavesdrop long enough you’ll find out that you might have even murdered the queen of England…

It’s fairly ridiculous behavior.  Right?

Here’s an observation for you:  These same people back down when you say VERY clearly what you are “intending”…

When you say “I intend to make that happen”, they say “Go to it…”.  But when you say “I am going to do that”, they say “Over my dead body”

While we are jealous and petty people at times, we find ourselves reluctant to challenge inanimate intention…  When a motive is clearly stated, we tend to accept it.  Start stating yours…

Don’t take this lightly.  Here some things to consider:

1. Be smart about the abuse you decide to take — Life is short but it certainly comes at you hard.  It’s a non-stop game of survivor.  Be careful about how much effort you place in convincing people of your point of view.  Leave the politics around tactics to someone else and state your motives right up front.  It will take a lot of guts for someone to challenge you.  Some still will.  And, maybe, you do need to be challenged.  You will find, though, that the mindless jibber-jabber fades into the background when you are clear about your intention.
2. Create your own drama to boost your productivity — Great politics is great PR.  You certainly don’t want to launch a full scale ad campaign every time you want to get something done, but it doesn’t hurt though to tell your side of the story first.  Create the narrative before people start imagining.  There is a reason we call the imagination “wild” — because it is.  Stating your intention early and often keeps all of us sane and motivated.  The more you remind people of the goals from the beginning, the less you will find yourself “challenged” as you attempt to navigate an every changing tactical landscape.
3. Make doubters look like idiots, debating themselves — Make your activities a by-product of your intention and strategical downplay your exact movements…  Let’s talk turkey here.  You don’t always know how you are exactly going to get something done.  Right?  You might have a ton of experience in a specific area, but that doesn’t mean that this challenge is exactly like all the rest.  You might want to tell us more about the destination than the journey.  Ask the doubters what tactics they would like to employ to get your goal accomplished.  One of two things will happen — your goal will get done or you will silence your critics.  Either way, I am sure you’ll be happy.

Let me show you how this works:

I intend to change the world of high-performance…

That’s my motivation.  That’s what I am “up to”.

And, no, in case you overheard the same thing I did, I’m not like “that”.  Just a guy with a different perspective trying to help you be more effective and unstoppable.

What do you intend to do?

This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays.  I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…”

(at least I thought so)

We really thought through the whole process and I am pumped by the stack of “stuff” sitting in our kitchen that needs to be wrapped.

It’s about the relationship, right?

There are people you care about — people around whom you really want to build a history.  It kind of parallels your deal making process.

Makes sense, right?  You want to do business with people that you can stand being around.  People you like.

That’s about building a relationship.  Not seasonal email torpedoing.  But a consistent communication thread.

My inbox got me thinking……….

How special would you feel if you were sent the following e-card from someone that you spent money with this year?

I love the “We hope this communication is welcomed…”  Makes me feel like you really remember who I am.  And are you really giving me the option to unsubscribe from next year’s seasonal greetings?

You tell me.  Maybe I am being picky.

Now how about this one…  Are you feeling the love?

I now have to click on a link to go a site to see all the Christmas warmth you can’t wait to share with me… As if that isn’t enough to do, there is the obligatory signature language informing me that I could be sued for mishandling the email you are sending me.  WOW…. way too much baggage for me to do anything with.  I just have to archive it…

These both ended up in my inbox (along with a tiresome few others…) and I just didn’t have the energy to keep clicking through to link after link so I could get in the Christmas spirit.  It kind of made it all feel like a “chore”…

Like maybe our relationship wasn’t so important after all…

Know what I mean?

It gets you thinking.  What’s the logic behind this?

Who emerged from their marketing “bat-cave” with the fantabulous idea that impersonal seasonalized hyperlink creation was something that made customers feel like “you care”?

Was there a memo in the late ’90s that I missed?

Two words: CALL ME…

I know I’m a little cranky when it comes to this stuff, but doesn’t it seem a little dis-ingenuous?  Even if you give the sender the “benefit of the doubt”, you can’t overlook the general lack of creativity.  The fact remains that in the haste to have another “client touch”, the marketer forgot to put himself in the recipient position.

Here’s reality: No one really reads this stuff.

(not even your grandma who has unlimited Facebooktime)

Maybe the first one you get (right after Thanksgiving), but right around the second week in December you are left with no other choice but massive select-and-archive.  You even feel a little bad about it, but you justify if by telling yourself that if you have time, you’ll dig them out later at home to look through.

And you never do…  It’s just not a high priority.

Without a relationship, you just avoid all the rest of  the noise coming at you.

And certainly this mirrors a hunch I have had for some time now as I talk with C-level executives and ask about their behavior to inbound messaging.  I decided to test my theory.  About a week ago, I put a poll up on LinkedIn asking the following question:

“If relationships really do matter in sales, why don’t we build better ones throughout our selling process?”

Here are the overall results:

• 40% stated that they didn’t have enough access to the right people to build a great relationship…
• 10% noted that they tried to build good relationships but didn’t know how to keep it up…
• 20% thought that it wasn’t really a good use of their time…  AND
• 30% admitted they weren’t really sure how to build great relationships…

When you study this further, you see that ALL of the CEO’s who responded to this question answered the same — that they had not developed this skill of long term relationship building.

Are you surprised?  You might have thought that senior level executives had “schmoozing” all figured out.  Maybe not.  Maybe there’s more to that cocktail parties and fast one-liners.

The numbers get more interesting when you look at the size of the companies responding.  All of the big guys (who would have the biggest sales and marketing budgets) all noted that they didn’t have access to the right people to build great relationships.

Essentially, the guys with the most advantages toward building the best relationships were the least likely to know how to get the right people.  Interesting indeed.

When you look at the age for relationship building, it becomes even more significant.  The young guys and old guys fall into the same category — limited access to the right executives.  While the mid-life high-performers know the right people, but aren’t really sure what to do to keep their attention.

Kind of what you would expect from life, right?  You work hard to get somewhere; and then once you’re there you push so far and fast ahead that you lose valuable ties to people who could be a valuable resource to you.

Young or old, big or small — we all need to work a little harder to keep our relationships strong.  They are our lifeblood, our lifeline to accomplishing our life’s mission.

So think about how you treat your relationships.

Are you asking friends to triple-click through your e-card nonsense, or are you bold enough to just say “Thank You”…  and mean it…

P.S.  Thank you to all the amazing readers of The DEW View!  Have a Happy Holidays.  I am grateful that I was able be a part of your 2009 selling year.  Take some time to get recharged and then let’s plan on changing the world together in ’10….  Thanks again!!!

Think through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer.  Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful?  Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a home run by working with you?

It’s not logical.  In fact, it doesn’t really make sense from a “nuts-and-bolts” perspective.

But like anything, when you swing the opposite direction, you get a better perspective.  Instead of being illogically helpful, let’s look at being illogically awful.  Let’s look at the bad emails we send and see how we can make them better.

The endless onslaught of crappy emails has accelerated.  It has gotten serious.  For some reason, crazy sales people who need to have a strong Q4 all decided that they need to mass email the world in the hopes that we will magically take an interest in their nonsensery.

There is no interest in a relationship or learning what might be important to you or me.  It’s all about their email and how they have access to an amazing service that we “can’t miss out on”.  I want to drag them into my office, throw them on the floor and let them know this simple fact that they are overlooking:

We have thoroughly enjoyed not “enjoying” your service; and if your current care of us is any indication of your future care, then we are best served to not be your customer….. ever — for the sake of our health.

It is such a horrible experience to get these emails.  It’s like a sudden nausea that has me tasting a little stomach acid in my mouth.  I feel sick but my head’s not warm.  I just don’t feel well after reading this chicanery.

I had one such illogically awful encounter earlier this month when I received the following email in my inbox…

Of course, I was more than a little surprised and then annoyed at the premise of the email. (In this case, “annoyed” is a code word for “enraged”).

1. There is no mention of my name in this entire email (I am not totally sure if she sent this to the right person…)
2. There is value statement (I can’t figure out what really sets Melissa apart as being worth my time…)
3. There is no call to action (I am kind of confused as to what logical action Melissa expects from me…)
4. There is way too much content (I immediately start skimming because it “appears long and boring…)
5. There is different color font in the email (I start wondering “why” and if there’s a special reason…)

So I emailed Melissa back.  And yes, I was in a funk.  My time had been wasted.  My intelligence had been insulted.  I was upset with myself that I had even given Melissa time in my busy day.  I was irate and so I shared my thoughts:

I just asked Melissa why being “illogically awful” was a reason why I should care. And not to be outdone or undeterred she let me know.  She wasn’t trying to woo me as a customer.  She was throwing data at me and hoping that I might be interested.

AWFUL!

A truly “illogically awful” experience.  Melissa clearly did not want me as a customer.

A lot of sales books tell you that you qualify and don’t take chances with customers — that you do exactly what Melissa did:

• That you refine your questions to only work with prospects who have money and time…. you get then give…
• That you only build a relationship once you see that your prospect has something “in it” for you…  you prioritize based on immediate perceived value…
• That you trade enough negotiable points and win a deal without taking any risks…. you never appear vulnerable or genuine…
• That you explain all your moves logically in a “I always win” matrix… you need to appear important and in control…

But let’s not belabor the illustration.  We can learn how to be “illogically helpful” by doing everything that Melissa failed to do.

1. Be personal — Start the email by calling me my name – my first name and leave off the “mister”….
2. Be brief — Keep it to 5 sentences max.  If you need to tell me more, don’t…
3. Be thorough — Tell me something you know I don’t know… and convince me you’re bad-ass…
4. Be creative — Leave me wanting to hear the rest of your idea…
5. Be different — Remove any buzzwords and industry “gibberish” that make me tune you out…
6. Be inspiring — Combine what you want from me with what I care about.  I might actually get involved…
7. Be important — Leave me good contact details so I can return your call or email and add you to my address book…
8. Be neat — Proof read your email to make sure it is grammatically “mostly correct”.  Bad punctuation is distracting…
9. Be safe — Don’t go nuclear on a random idea until we have a relationship. (i.e. politics, religion, etc…)…
10. Be vulnerable — Admit it if you want help.  If you claim to have it figured out and don’t I lose respect…
11. Be About Me — Rewrite your email if there are more I‘s and me‘s than you‘s.  You are writing to me so make it about me…

And here is the kicker: If you follow all the traditional sales rules (like Melissa did) you might never really ever lose a big deal.  You’ll never be in a position to question whether you made the right decision.  You’ll never have to take risks….

But you’ll never have the illogic to support yourself landing big deals.

]]> http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/10/edgyconversations/illogically-help-me-be-your-customer/feed 5 http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/09/edgyconversations/stop-shouting-at-me http://danwaldschmidt.com/2009/09/edgyconversations/stop-shouting-at-me#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:17:35 +0000 Dan Waldschmidt http://thedewview.com/?p=1204

Since when did we as business people decide that having conversations was too much work?

Instead of discussion with our customers and the community we decided that SHOUTING at the world was the “latest and greatest” in sales-marketry…  That being annoying was a great replacement for providing value to the community around us.

(If you see the guy who switched the playbook let me know so I can slip him over the border into North Korea.)

I want a lifetime ban on boring HTML newsletters.  They just suck.

At least pretend to know my name.  I feel like the other side of a bad date.  Like I am being used for just another number in your “see my 10 gabillion readers” quest for encyclopedic  nonsensery.

And here is the ironic part about the craziness of your bad content:

I really want to be inspired by what you have to say to me.  I want to get a rush of adrenaline and nod my head at the end of each paragraph as you rock it out.  That’s what I want from our conversation.

Instead, you think that your fancy picture (which I have now officially deemed “Lame 2009 Clipart” or L2C for short) does a better job of telling me what you really want me to know.

Here’s another paradox:  We all hate the loud dude in the office who just won’t shut up (which is usually me).   But then we turn around become the sales people of the world who fight fearlessly for our loud and impersonal emails that just do the same thing.

We need to stop thinking about emails as sales tools and more as conversation tools.

If you wouldn’t kick down your customer’s door and start spitting sales facts in his face in person, then don’t do it with your emails.

Stop shouting….

Start sharing.

High-performers in the world of “deal making” share the universal quality of self-assessment. It’s an internal process of strategically measuring the inputs and outputs of a process or idea (or just “what went down…”) and deciding if it could be done better.  And that’s all good.  It’s more than good — it’s necessary.

But it’s probably not good enough to make you an ALL-STAR (the stuff of legends)

You work better when you work with gut instinct.  At this stage in your deal process, you generally know what NOT to do (which is 2/3 of the learning process) and WHERE you need to head.  But to be the best, you have to be extraordinary — and that requires a different, new, or abstractly innovative idea.  Everything that your boss won’t probably agree with…. because it’s not safe.

But there’s actually science to prove that you do make better decisions from gut instinct rather than thinking too much.

“Whether evaluating abstract objects (Chinese ideograms) or actual consumer items (paintings, apartments, and jellybeans), people who deliberated on their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” write authors Loran F. Nordgren (Northwestern University) and Ap Dijksterhuis (Radboud University, The Netherlands).”

And check this out.  The science gets even more compelling.  After 5 different independent studies, the authors found that “the more complex the decision, the less useful deliberation became.”

That means that less “thought-manship” and more gut instinct is the key to outrageous deal success.

P.S.  Ever wonder why outrageous success is so hard to predict (i.e. there’s no formula)?  It’s because you’re thinking too hard about it.  As you move with gut instinct you see enough of the distance to move around obstacles to get to the finish line.  And, like running at the North Pole, you don’t really need to look over your shoulder because your competition is slim…. (and that’s where I like to play)

Warren Buffett famously coined the term “skin in the game” in his business insight that you can “guarantee” the success of a company by requiring C-level executives to use their own money to buy stock in the particular company they are running.  Since the company’s interests and the senior leadership’s interests are the same thing, you have maximum inertia in the right direction…

That’s great for running a business, but let’s go another direction.

If you’ve played on an outdoor basketball court at all, then you know what it’s like to leave “skin in the game”.  It can be brutal.  Every dive and fall leaves a scrape, a gash, or a bruise.

The harder you play, the tougher you need to be.

So it is on the court of “changing the world”…

You should assume that you will leave skin in the game if you really believe in something:

• If you don’t have skeptics… then your idea isn’t big enough…
• If you don’t have critics…  then you are doing everything wrong…
• If you don’t have a nemesis…  then you are not changing the status quo…

If you have skin in the game, you can expect to be regularly maligned, misunderstood, hated… and most possibly SUCCESSFUL!

Your Effort Differentiates!

My CEO buddy Kriss Wilson posted a quote on Twitter from Buddha that fit right in to some of my recent thinking about selling and the differentiation between those who SELL and those who are “working on it.”

I return to my passion about effort and the idea of the PQ that creates All-Stars.

First — a quote from the mind of Kriss:

“Fools wait for a lucky day but every day is a lucky day for an industrious man.” ~Buddha

Quite a lot of selling is doing…

It’s about putting in the necessary effort to navigate your way around obstacles to be successful.  It’s about being indefatigable, unstoppable, completely motivated…

It’s NOT:

……saying,
…………thinking,
………………planning,
……………………preparing
…………………………debating,
………………………………creating,
……………………………………testing,
…………………………………………searching,
………………………………………………building,   or
……………………………………………………making calls!

It is about EFFORT and the art of EXECUTING!

It’s the age old principle of “making your own luck”!

No sooner had my mind stopping spinning when I got a call from Tom Searcy which led to another discussion with a CEO in need of “sales execution” — not any of the things listed above.

And I again questioned this.

WHY? Why is execution so hard for start-ups?

And it really comes to a handful of explanations:

• You don’t know how…
• You are too busy with less important details…
• You underestimate the required amount of hard work…

I usually find in working with high performing CEO’s that the last reason is by far the most common reason for lack of sales.  The “sweat cost” of “always on” selling is easy to underestimate and it’s deadly if not fixed”

Entrepreneurs give up just before they become successful.  CEO’s quit long after they should have given up on poor selling ideas.  High-end “sellers” over promise results without understanding the resources they are being promised by the organization.

What to do?

• Put in the effort!
• Stay committed to putting in the effort!

You can change just about anything when you have the effort to back up your planning!

What would you be doing if today were the last day for you to be alive?

Would you work harder, take the day off, or just spend the day with regrets?

For the vast majority of us, there will be more days than today, but there won’t be a way to get back the time you spent today NOT focusing on your priorities.>

Focus on your priorities for today like tomorrow might never come.  It’s amazing what you can accomplish with the proper perspective…

P.S  Don’t worry about getting it wrong as long as you are willing to keep trying…

I get asked all the time to take a look at a business plan or review a sales process (which I usually find intriguing).  There is something about a new idea with plenty of potential that gets me pumped up.

Not every investor is worth “getting in bed with” just because they have a bankroll.

I ran into this presentation poking fun at VC investors a few weeks ago and wanted to share.  It is pretty humorous how many of these are right on…

Here is what a VC would never say to you:  :-)

[slideshare id=1549490&doc=vcnonadmissions-090608115036-phpapp02]

Here is something else they wouldn’t say:

1. Investors have to believe in you executing (not your product magically becoming the next Google).
2. Investors are too busy  to hold your hand every day and make sure you meet all the other people in their portfolio.
3. Investors expect you to have the answers not to have to answer the same questions every meeting…

Just be informed!

Like your mom used to tell you, “Don’t believe everything you don’t hear…”