Finding the line

July 3, 2012July 2, 2012 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine, a great salesman, was giving advice to a colleague of mine who was new to fundraising.

His suggestion: if you don’t get thrown out of at least one meeting in your first year you’re not being bold enough in your asks.

This wasn’t conceptual advice – it meant actually physically being shown the door.

Now I admit in nearly six years of fundraising I haven’t actually been thrown out, but I’ve definitely made some pretty outrageous asks. At the same time, until I actually find the line I don’t fully know where it is.

You could be fundraising, you could be a freelancer, you could be selling just about anything – 9 times out of 10 we all are less bold than we could be and should be.

Yes be respectful, always, but find the line.

The deadline opportunity

December 7, 2011December 6, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Deadlines force focus, can create superhuman results, can help people who have been dithering decide to act.

They are, in short, incredible opportunities.

Your leadership challenge is to see deadlines coming and plan for them appropriately, get the groundwork and underpinnings and infrastructure in place well in advance so that you can use them to your and your customers’ advantage.

So, for example, since you know deadlines are going to help you close a sale, you work backwards from the deadline, you have all your prep work in place, and then you make the deadline part of the pitch long before it arrives. This way you use the deadline to your and your client’s advantage, to help them move from good intention to action.

A good deadline is a terrible thing to waste.

Abundance

July 8, 2010July 7, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Here’s something I hear all too often: “Oh, we can’t ask her to donate (buy) to this new project (product), she already gives (buys) so much.”

Which way does the value flow again?

Remember, remember, remember, people don’t give (buy) and get nothing in return. They didn’t give because they were temporarily hoodwinked, cajoled, tricked, or otherwise pushed unaware over some invisible line. They gave to accomplish something, to express something, to be more of the person they want to be. And that’s true whether they give $50 or $50 million.

OK, so that’s easy to say and it sounds so sensible.

But if it’s sensible then the right thing to say when you’re creating something new, something exciting, something powerful, is, “Wow we’d better make sure we take this idea to the people who are our biggest supporters. They’d be so bummed if they missed out on this opportunity.”

There’s a world of difference between “Please would you give to this?” and “This idea is so exciting, you don’t want to miss out on it.” A bigger difference still when “you don’t want to miss out” is so real, is something you feel in your bones, because then it’s true and you and the person you’re talking to feel and know that truth.

And yes, this is just as true when you’re selling a project, selling a gig, selling a software solution as it is in philanthropy.

The conversation you want to have, the conversation you can have right now, starts with, “Imagine this amazing, exciting thing. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make this happen together?”

Not a zero sum game. Abundance.

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Getting out of Quadrant 2

June 17, 2010June 17, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

When you start out in life, just get out of school, and are out there pounding the pavement for that first job or trying to make that first sales call, more often than not you’re carrying around a mental model that says: “To pull this off, I need to get my point across effectively. I need to convince the person I’m meeting with that _________” (they should hire me; they should buy this product; they should give to my organization.) In service of this goal, you execute your plan of where the meeting is going to go, you get your points across, and you do most of the talking.

Why not? It’s what you’ve been trained to do. It’s a Quadrant 2 approach. And it often doesn’t work.

About 10 years ago, right before I headed into a job interview, my wife said to me, “Make sure you give THEM time to talk too.” Novel. In the first of the three interviews I had that day, meeting with a garrulous, extroverted Vice President, I spoke for about 5 minutes of the one hour interview. And I got the job.

Most high-achieving Type A folks need to move to the left.

And all of us need to figure out in which quadrant we are most comfortable, and to figure out how to get better at switching from one to another depending on the person we’re meeting and the relationship we’re trying to build.

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Throwing Boomerangs

April 8, 2010April 7, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Not surprisingly, I’ve never learned how to throw a boomerang properly. When I have thrown them, some come back and some don’t. How long it takes, the path they take, these are all variable.

Today an old friend who just had a new baby asked me for the name of a good, affordable lawyer to draw up his will. It just so happens I had someone to recommend, a lawyer named Joanne Sternlieb with a private practice that I used, with great satisfaction, when my first child was born.

I’m pretty sure Joanne has forgotten about me – I was just one of many clients, many years ago – and she’s probably not aware how happy I was with her work. Yet she did such a good job and provided such a good value that when someone asked me, six years later, for a recommendation, I passed her name along instantly.

Joanne threw a boomerang. She provided a service and an exceptional experience that came back to her – even though in this case it took many years. If she’s throwing lots of boomerangs every day, then over time the enterprise builds: sometimes in obvious, linear ways (two weeks after working with one client she gets hired by that client’s friend), but just as often (I’d guess) less predictably.

The unexpected connections come when there are lots of people out in the world who, in the back of their minds, carry around a memory of you as the most exceptional person they’ve met doing what you do.

It’s easy, when you’re busy, to switch off when a given meeting or opportunity shows no sign of panning out in the short term; to think of interactions in terms of what can come clearly, linearly, right now. Of course that matters. But life is also about randomness and spontaneous, surprising connections, and about the things you put out in the world coming back in unexpected, positive ways.

By being your best self in all situations, by being generous and making every interaction positive and productive for the person you’re meeting, you’re throwing boomerangs.

So, did you throw any boomerangs today?

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The toughest sale

March 25, 2010March 24, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Here’s a riddle: all good product sales are not about the product, they’re about the story about the product, right? (Method soap tells a story about the kind of hip, environmentally conscious, non-ostentatious but still a little bit fancy consumer you are; there’s a whole ethos and culture and world outlook story that surrounds each iPhone (and, soon, iTouch) ; JetBlue sells an attitude about flying along with free TV.)

What about selling something that has no product? That seems hard to do. In fact, it seems so hard to do that if you could find someone who knew how to do that, you’d know that they were pretty darn good at their job – probably better at selling that someone who has a product AND a story to sell, right?

Selling philanthropy seems to me to be a product-free sale. It’s the pure sale of an idea, of an ethos, of who you can be.

So the riddle is: if philanthropy is a product-free sale, why aren’t the people selling philanthropy the best salespeople around?

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The indifferents

December 23, 2009December 21, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

There’s a group of people out there who love you. Your passionate fans who talk about you to anyone who will ask, who spread the word and your message and carry your brand with you. Cherish and nurture them.

There are others who have actively decided that you’re not for them.

And then there are the indifferents. The ones who have known about you for a while, who have heard your story for months or even years, who you’ve cultivated tirelessly. And they’re still not acting, not buying, not convinced.

What do you do about them?

Here’s a hint: which is more likely, that the person who has heard your message 15 or even 50 times will suddenly be convinced if you have just one more go at it? Or that you’ll find someone brand new and get them excited? That’s right, go for the new guy.

By the way, there’s a difference between indifferent and unconvinced, but it’s going to take a whole lot of work for you to figure out who’s who, work that may never pay off.

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The only guy I met

September 16, 2009September 15, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

The other day I took about eight boxes of books and clothes to the Salvation Army, part of a (meant to be) biannual, you-ever-going-to-wear-this-again? ritual that I talked about here.

I have to admit, there’s so much inertia around getting this done that when I get enough momentum to go through my closet, pack up clothes, and get out of the house, I don’t stop to ask whether the Salvation Army or Goodwill or anywhere else is the most efficient place to give things away. I just assume that stuff that I drop off at the local Salvation Army eventually ends up in the hands of the people who need it. Trust in a brand, through and through.

My local Salvation Army is an ominous, somewhat murky place: a giant, brick, 1930s warehouse with a single door leading to a small room with one small desk. The only other door opens to a giant room filled with trash bags of dropped-off, donated stuff.

The giant room is enough to raise some questions: how long do these clothes sit here? Do they end up in the right hands?

I should find out more, to be sure. But I haven’t and I don’t, yet I still end up feeling like things are going to be OK. Here’s why: the guy who mans that tiny front desk where I drop off the clothes is such an obviously compassionate, serious, considered person – and this comes across so readily in even a short interaction with him – that I’m left with a sense of confidence.

Specifically, I think, “if he’s here manning this ship, then he’s made a decision based on a lot more information than I’ll be able to get easily” Barring my own opportunity to really dig in and learn more, I’m going to trust this decision of his as proxy for my own due diligence.

To me, on this day, this guy was the whole story. He was the only guy I met, and he is the Salvation Army to me, just like the Zappo’s Customer Loyalty Team is Zappos to their customers (and if you haven’t seen this New Yorker article on Zappos, it’s worth the read). In fact, Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh doesn’t even care much about shoes, he cares about culture and about the consumer’s experience.

If this is right – if for most of the people most of the time, their experience of the organization is about the one person they meet – tell me again, what’s the desired profile of people who serve on the front lines in your organization (your delivery people, your teachers, your CSR reps, your repairmen and women, your fundraisers)? How important are these roles? What’s their status within your organization?

Is there a single reason why you’d want these folks to be anything other than your best, brightest, blow-me-out-of-the-water, if-you-work-here-it-must-be-great, people?

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Tag: sales

Finding the line

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The deadline opportunity

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Abundance

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Getting out of Quadrant 2

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Throwing Boomerangs

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The toughest sale

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The indifferents

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The only guy I met

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