Don't Re-Invent the Wheel

Last year I had a problem with chasing people.

Not physically chasing people – that would be weird 😉 Chasing people in the sales process.

Instead of reaching out to potential partners and clients after a sale conversation with something to say, I would ask questions like:

“Did you get a chance to look at that proposal?”

Or

“Have any questions now that you’ve had some time to digest?”

While these seem harmless on the surface, they don’t help the people on the other end have any new thoughts. It reminds me of a parent nagging their child about picking up the trash.

“Yes Mom, I know. I’ll get to it!”

So I reached out to my sales mentor at the time @Marcus Sheridan and asked him for better ways to create more natural conversation.

His answer?

“What did you talk about on your sales call?”

“Did you resolve everything 100%, without objection?”

Of course not.

“Then send them over some more compelling information about how they can overcome their challenge, and ask about the info.”

I did as he asked, and instantly my response rates got over 40% higher!

On a sales follow-up.

You read that right.

It was a huge win. In fact, that piece of advice with the suggestion to attach a video to the email completely changed the way I do follow-up now.

Here is the article on LinkedIn where I share the actual stats. ←- LINK

Here’s the problem though. I spent WAY too much time tinkering around with my own thoughts and testing out different words to ask the same boring questions.

Instead, I should have gone straight to someone who was already very successful at getting responses.

We call that – “Don’t Re-Invent the Wheel”

You’ve probably heard that phrase before from you dad in the garage, or a wise mentor of your own.

Many times we hear the phrase and say to ourselves – ‘yep, makes sense’.

But when it comes time to take the advice, 3 things often get in our way:

We desire to be creative
As entrepreneurs a hallmark of our personalities is figuring things out. That means we think of things that others often don’t.

It makes us feel good to connect with an idea that is “ours” and apply it to a problem successfully.

We desire to be original
Not only do we like to make our ideas work, we want them to be something no one else has thought of.

A brand new thing that people have never seen. That gives us street cred and authority in our space – we think.

We are being egotistical
But the truth is that we often just want to feel awesome for doing something all by ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with coming up with an original idea.

But it doesn’t say in any handbook, anywhere, that we have to come up with the ideas.

We are only in business to solve problems and serve others. How we get there is up to us.

There are three ways to fix these issues:

Be open
Ask the Lord to guide you in your search for an answer. We often forget to go straight to the Lord with our ‘everyday’ work problems. The good news is He doesn’t forget us. He can point us to other people’s hard work to solve our problems many times.

Be innovative
Sometimes you need something a little different to help your situation. Instead of inventing something brand new, take an idea that is already working someplace else and give it a twist. Take the principles and make it work for your situation.

Be grateful
Starting with a grateful heart will often knock our ego down a few notches and make us open. (See #1 🙂)

Now it’s your turn.

Which area could you stand to improve in?

Grateful,

Contact:
[email protected]

#kingdomecosystems, #impactfirst, #accelerator, #ego