Seth Godin | A Sales Guy

My Big Weakness

I have a big weakness. I know it and it got the best of me this a.m. I am very short and impatient with new idea laggards or as Seth Godin put it the “resistance.” I inappropriately tore into someone this a.m. who I felt was being a resistor and it wasn’t fair to them.

I have been working an initiative at work that is different, it is outside the norm. It leverages new tools, communication approaches and engagement. I have been working it since March. The process has been painful in many ways. I’ve encountered the resistant at multiple different stages. The people who say, “I don’t get it,” ”Have you gotten executive approval?” ”This isn’t going to work.” “It’s too risky, what if people do this and that with it.” ” We can’t do this because . . . ” I am continually having to address these people and it makes it hard to be successful in introducing new things. I really struggle with the people who ask these questions and make these types of statements. I see them as being in the way.

The resistance, as Seth Godin calls it, is that part of our brain that wants to be safe, it avoids change, follows the rules and likes the status-quo because it’s predictable.

Seth describes the resistance at work in his book Linchpin like this:

You work with people who are totally at the mercy of the resistance. They assist the devil by being his advocate in meetings. They follow the rule book, even parts you didn’t know about. They love what worked before and fear what might be coming.

He’s right and I don’t handle these people well. My personality is like that of a shark. Not the aggressive nature, but the metaphor by which sharks must keep moving to breathe. Sharks need to keep water moving through their gills in order to breathe. If they stop moving, they run the risk of suffocating. In this manner, I am a lot like a shark. I breath progress, and momentum. I can’t stand the feeling of stagnation. I need things to keep moving.

I bit this persons head off today because I felt like they were being the resistance. It felt like they were slowing things down. They asked me one of those fear based questions. They asked if we had approval and support from another group. It didn’t feel as if it was asked in a way that suggested they were looking to help the effort or improve on it but rather to control the effort. I didn’t handle it well.

I apologized both on the phone and in a separate email. Regardless of his question, I was wrong to respond the way I did.

That being said, moving forward I need to be more cognizant of how I engage with the resistance. No one ever wins by trying to “stamp” out the resistance. It takes tact. Tact, currently I am not very good at.

Selfishly, I wish I didn’t have to deal with it. I wish the resistance would flip the switch and start from the positive, what could be gained, how things could be better, etc. I wish the resistance could see they have more to gain than lose by moving forward, by change.

The biggest irony in this tale, is much of the early resistance has come back and said they were wrong and they like the new effort and the value it is providing. This is always nice to hear. But man, it would be so much nicer if the fight just didn’t have to happen. Until then, I need to get better at managing the resistance, because fighting it just doesn’t work.

Lessons Learned from Seth Godin – Sources of Insight (sourcesofinsight.com)
A Look at Godin’s Linchpin: Get Uncomfortable & Get out the Cowbell (downtheavenue.com)
Book 67: Linchpin (mootbox.com)

July 19, 2010 | Filed under: Career Development,Personal Development,What I Think! | View Comments |

It’s Not What You Do . . .

It’s what you do that others don’t.

Seth Godin has a defining post up today. It’s defining in that it crystalizes, in the simplest of terms, the difference between greatness and success and average and mediocrity.

Seth talks about the last 10% .

In most fields, there’s an awful lot of work put into the last ten percent of quality.

Getting your golf score from 77 to 70 is far more difficult than getting it from 120 to 113 or even from 84 to 77.

He’s right.

This holds true in sales. It takes ten times more effort to consistently be at 150% of quota than it does to consistently make quota.

I’m often asked what is the difference between good sales people and great sales people. I posted about the difference here a while back. After reading it I recognize much of what I talk about regarding the great sales people requires the last 10%. It’s a lot harder to know you customers business than your own products. It’s a lot more work to find dormant or latent opportunities than it is to respond to a customer request. In the future, when I’m asked what’s the difference between a good and great sales person, I’m going to say the last 10%

The last 10% in sales is HARD WORK, period. There are millions of sales people, all trying to win over your customers. The bar is already high. Sales is filled with Type A overachievers. This makes the last 10% in sales harder than in other fields.

The last 10% is the difference between good and great sales people.

The next time someone asks me what the difference between a good and great sales person is, that’s what I’m going to tell them. And then I’ll say, It’s the difference between good and great anything.

May 19, 2010 | Filed under: Personal Development,Sales Process,The Chase | View Comments |

Things That Matter Now

Seth Godin launched an ebook today. “What Matters Now”

Read it! It’s good. Get it here.

If you need convincing, this should help.

“In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs.” – Seth Godin

“. . . be courageous. the world needs your story in order to be complete.” -Anne Jackson

“Creating ways for people to solve their own problems isn’t just an opportunity in 2010. It is an obligation” – Jacquelin Novogratz

“You are RESPONSIBLE for your own EXPERIENCE” – Hugh McLoud

– “we all need to save the world. But trust me: the world will still need saving tomorrow.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven’t ever heard of twitter, blogs or facebook.” – Howard Mann

“When times are tough, vision is the first causality. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.”-Michael Hyatt

“Three guys with laptops” used to describe a web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.” -Chris Anderson

“Are you the most of anything?”-William Taylor

“Education has a ripple effect. One drop can initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric circle gaining in size and traveling further”.-John Wood

“The road to sustainability goes through a clear- eyed look at unsustainability.”-Alen Weber

“Management isn’t natural.”-Daniel Pink

“Everything I know about business I learned from poker:”-Tony Hsieh

“Not many people in our A.D.D. culture can stay FOCUSED, but those who can are on their way to winning”-Dave Ramsey

“There is little evidence that we will solve the environmental challenges of our time.”-Saul Griffith

“We need to embrace {slow capital}.”-Fred Wilson

December 15, 2009 | Filed under: Random,Web 2.0/Social Networking,What I Think! | View Comments |

Don’t Feed the Trolls

This post by Seth Godin rings true to me. I’ve experienced Trolls in every company I’ve worked.

Trolls

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.

Even as this post rings true the fact that Trolls exist at all has always been a mystery to me. They bring little value to an organization. They are almost always at the center of subversive efforts. Everyone knows who they are and can’t stand working with them. They are quick to say no, yet rarely say yes. Yet, despite this they thrive in every organization. Like weeds, the take root and are difficult to get rid of. I think the reason is because we do as Seth says and we ignore them. That’s the wrong approach.

Getting ridding of Trolls is a leadership issue. Trolls exist because they are fed. They’re fed because they are convenient when people need them. They’re fed, because they do our dirty work. They are fed, because most people don’t have the gumption to get them out. Trolls are crafty. They do their job to the letter of the law. They don’t give measurable, specific reason to let them go, yet their existence is almost always in conflict with getting things done.

Don’t ignore the Trolls. Stop feeding them. Then show some leadership and get them out . . . it is also a sign of being remarkable.

October 28, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance,Hiring/Firing,Leadership | View Comments |

Are you a Thermometer or a Thermostat

I absolutely love this.

Seth Godin quote from Tribes:

“A thermostat is far more valuable than a thermometer.

The thermometer reveals that something is broken. The thermometer is an indicator, our canary in the coal mine. Thermometers tell us when we’re spending too much or gaining market share or not answering the phone quickly enough. Organizations are filled with human thermometers. They can criticize or point out or just whine.

The thermostat, on the other hand, manages to change the environment in sync with the outside world. Every organization needs at least one thermostat. These are the leaders who can create change in response to the outside world, and do it consistently over time.”

I see thermometers everywhere. It’s easy to be a thermometer. There is little risk. Thermostats are different. They are measured on their output. How they can change the environment around them. Like themometers, they can tell you what’s wrong, but unlike thermometers, they then actually do something about it.

Are you a thermometer or a thermostat. The world needs more thermostats.

August 20, 2009 | Filed under: Leadership,My Reading Quotes | View Comments |

It Takes 3 Things To Improve Your Tribe

I’m reading Tribes on my fairly new Kindle. I love to say that.

Tribes is Seth Godin’s newest book on leading communities. Tribes are communities of people with shared interests. One my favorite parts so far is the idea of improving tribes.

Improving Tribes:

“. . . it takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe:

A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build

A connection between and among the leader and the tribe

Something to do – the fewer limits, the better

Too often organizations fail to do anything but the third.”

Seth is spot on here. Most organizations spend their time on the third, but with out as few limits as possible. Most formal tribes, or organizations like the companies we work for give the tribe plenty of things to do, and they come with plenty of limits. Traditional tribes are fraught with rules and limitations. The play not to lose, not to win.

Growth and shareholder value are the key drivers to business. Seth’s first two suggestions will bring more shareholder value and growth than over emphasizing the third. Employees or Tribes thrive in striving toward a vision. Their motivation comes from accomplishment and progress. Organizations need to do more of this. Also, tribe or organizational leaders need to engage with the tribe. They need to be connected with their organization. The traditional hierarchy not only divides organizations, it can cause tribes to splinter and competing agendas are created. Competing agendas will destroy a an organization in record time.

Achievement comes with leadership, not dictation. I think Seth got this part right. Only if more organizations/tribes could recognize this. They might achieve more of their goals.

Does your organization practice all three?

August 15, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance,My Reading Quotes,What I Think! | View Comments |

We Are The New Book Covers

Auren Hoffman of Summation and Seth Godin had two very interesting posts in the last week. Seth’s, comes from the old school perspective. Aurens comes from a new school perspective.

Seth’s post, The Purpose of a Book Cover, describes the role a book cover has in selling a book. In it he writes:

“Tactically, the cover sells the back cover, the back cover sells the flap and by then you’ve sold the book.”

“Books are better at creating conversations than most products.”

“Some ways that a book cover can accomplish its mission:

* Noticeable across the room (you see that lots of other people own it, thus making it likely that you’ll want to know why)”

Understanding Seth’s point. Auren has an interesting observations in his blog post, Book Conversations and the Imposition of the Kindle. In the post Auren observes how Kindle’s limit the ability for people to see what your reading and therefore it stunts the conversation.

. . . as we all move to reading books on our devices, we wont know what people in our proximity are reading anymore and conversations between strangers will go down.

This inability to have a book “Noticeable across the room” will impact the value of the book cover. The Kindle is going to viciously maim book covers as a way to sell books. The new book cover will be you and me.

As more and more people buy books online through the Kindle we will be unable to look to book covers to sell us. We will look to our social networks. We will decide to buy based on Twitters, Facebook, and LinkedIN. More and more of us will use applications like ReadingList by Amazon to share with our social networks what we are reading. Future versions of the Kindle will have a sharing component that Twitters or shares the books you download every time you download a new one.

I think Auren had a great observation. We are moving away from a time where we could see what people were reading. This will create fewer opportunities for face to face offline conversations. It will provide less opportunities for the book cover to do it’s job of creating conversations. Even more than before, books will have to be good, because we are the new book covers and if the book is not good, it won’t matter what’s on the cover.

Seth is/was right book covers sell the book by “teeing up the reader so the book has maximum impact.” But that is changing. Moving forward it won’t be the book covers selling the book, it will be you and me. Tactically, their won’t be a cover to sell the back, to sell the flap to then have you buy the book. It will be; you see it on a friends Facebook status, it shows up in your Twitter stream 3 times, it’s in your mom’s Amazon Reading list, so you download a sample to your Kindle and then if you like what you read you buy the rest, all without ever really knowing what the book cover looked liked.

Book Covers are dead!

July 2, 2009 | Filed under: Web 2.0/Social Networking,What I Think! | View Comments |

Reducing Supply

Seth Godin had a good post the other day about Executive compensation. He argued companies were so poor at marketing when searching for a CEO they defaulted to one tactic; pay. Like a sales guy discounting a deal because he can’t sell the benefits of the product. Companies increase salary to attract candidates, because the can’t adequately market the position.

I’m not sure I completely agree with Seth on this one. I think there is another aspect in play. Companies are afraid to hire wrong. The idea of hiring the wrong person is so crippling companies artificially reduce supply. With a potential of 100′s of capable candidates, organizations quickly reduce the list to a small “Who’s, Who” in the industry. The selection criteria has less to do with capabilities and more with status and name. Like big free-agent signings in professional sports, corporations throw big money at industry names .

Like the saying goes; “no one ever got fired for hiring IBM”. Board of Directors and the search committees are unwilling to be seen as having made a poor decision in such a high profile hiring. Therefore they hedge failure by securing the most measurable qualifications and hiring the candidate perceived to be the best choice by everyone else NOT in the hiring process. No one in the hiring process wants to have to defend their decision later.

To protect their reputations and avoid failure Boards artificially limit the supply of qualified candidates and in turn offer giant compensation packages to make sure their candidate doesn’t get away. If they do, they are left with few options.

Big money to CEO’s is more about fear of failure than it is about inability to attract and keep good talent. It’s supply and demand, except in this case supply is artificially reduced.

Doesn’t feel very market driven does it?

March 24, 2009 | Filed under: Hiring/Firing,Sales Leadership | View Comments |