Mind the Gap. Save the Quarter.
You can get anxious about the gap in your quarter. Or you can get busy. You won’t always close the gap, but how you go about it will always make you a better and more complete seller.
You can get anxious about the gap in your quarter. Or you can get busy. You won’t always close the gap, but how you go about it will always make you a better and more complete seller.
Perhaps there’s a friend in your life who shows up for you; not just with a kind thought or a supportive word, but ready to work. He’s someone you know will keep showing up, keep serving and doing for others, but he’ll do it with such humility and grace that … well, you might not completely appreciate him fully until the day he’s not there. For me that friend was Nick Johnson. And that day was today.
Too often, we not only ignore the implications of complexity, we actively conjure it up. We share dazzling flow charts and demos, packed with cylinders and data sources and lightning bolts. Terabytes of this and nanoseconds of that. We let our geek flags fly… and unintended consequences follow. It highlights what we know vs. what they don’t. It makes the customer feel unprepared, under-resourced. Complexity is the petri dish where doubt grows.
Want attention? Then pay more than your share. Do the work up front to really understand those on the other side of the screen. Engage in pre-meeting communication and planning to really align with their needs. Greet people when they show up. Have a second question to ask and really care about the answer. I’m going to work to be Attention Neutral going forward: for all I get, I’ll try to put back that much and more. I won’t just listen as much as I talk; I’ll care as much as I want to be cared about.
In my career I’ve seen about eight of these economic pullbacks, six of them in the digital era. No one can say exactly how long, precisely how deep, or specifically which companies come out better. But I’m confident in offering one blanket prediction and one bit of universal advice.
We here at Upstream appreciate the hard job you do. May a look at this list give you the extra lift you need in a moment of challenge.
Most of us show up for our hard-to-book C-Suite interactions with an agenda that’s far too junior and tactical, and we get swiftly delegated or – worse – ignored. It's because we don’t fully realize what the C in C-Suite stands for.
Too many of us plan meticulously for much of the meeting, but fail to do any planning for how it will end. Too much time is spent early on exposition and data, and too little is left for the disciplined closing process that could actually lead to a sale. Another mad, disorganized packing job ensues. And the probability and next actions we post in our CRM are little more than educated guesses. It doesn’t have to be this way.
As sellers and executives, we’re both sporadically connected to our colleagues and yet consistently alone in our work, accompanied by only our numbers, hopes and doubts. At Upstream Group, we are asking – humbly and curiously – what our role should be in this Season of Both. Why do our customers and community truly need us now? We are finding answers and developing strategies based on a handful of questions… questions I’d like to share with you today.
We spend an overwhelming share of our time building stories and presentations and proposals – our sandcastles – and almost no time on the closing and qualification strategies that would help them withstand the rising tide of the customer’s conflicting agendas and the waves of our competitors’ subsequent proposals and ideas.
We all get to decide how we show up. Leaning into these decisions won’t necessarily change the numbers or the circumstances, but they will change the narrative from one of anxiety and randomness to a story of perseverance, growth and personal victory. They may not change your Q3 number, but they will change YOU.
The world of work we shut down in March 2020 is gone. Thinking we can just go back to it by getting on the train and turning on the lights is unrealistic to the point of delusion. Attracting, hiring and retaining valuable employees has never been trickier. What you could solve in 2012 with more money and a bigger title requires much more thoughtful answers today. Your competitive future depends on them.