Success Advice
Don’t Pitch Straight Away: Show Value And Build Rapport First.
Understanding this concept has helped me in business and in life.
Whether you like it or not, your existence on this planet is made up of a series of pitches. You pitch to get into school. You pitch to get a girlfriend. You pitch to get a job or start a business. You pitch to get married. You pitch to have kids etc.
What are so many of you doing wrong?
Blindly pitching like a cheap salesperson in a 1990’s infomercial, selling a magic sponge.
Start with rapport.
Example to start with:
You send me a blind message on LinkedIn.
You say to me that you have the best product in a particular field and you’d like to discuss it with me.
You make no reference to anything I’ve done or anything that shows you know me.
You use a generic pitch template that you’ve sent to lots of people before me.
What do I do when I see any message, on any platform that does any of these four things? I do what the majority do.
I delete your message, ignore you and never deal with you or your business again.
And the beauty? It takes less than one second to get rid of your message and delete you forever.
I’m not telling you this to be an a**hole; I’m telling you so that you’ll stop hurting your chances of success. You must always start with rapport before you pitch anything. Period.
How do you start with rapport Mr. Tim?
You start by sending a quick message that’s no more than nine sentences long.
• The message must have a paragraph every three sentences so it’s easily readable.
• You must sound human. Crack a joke, show empathy etc.
• You must respect the persons time.
• You must get to the point quickly.
• You must show you care and you’ve done your research on the person.
This list above helps to build some initial rapport and make you likable. Likable people go places in life and get to chat with people that are valuable to them.
“Rapport is always the first step, not the pitch. The pitch works once rapport exists”
I thought everyone knew this but I’ve learned recently that this is not well-known. Now it is, no excuses.
By using rapport, you create a bridge that allows ideas to flow between yourself and the person you’re trying to chat with and eventually pitch. Once that bridge is established, you have a way to get through to the person and get them to take action.
Show value first.
What do I mean? Value is such a broad thing to explain. In simple terms, value means to deliver something that can be beneficial to the other person. The aim is actually mutual value. That’s where you both win out of the interaction.
Showing value is straight-forward.
“First, you do your research on the person you want to pitch. Then you try and work out what’s important to them”
Let me give you an example:
The other day I went to meet with a very influential recruiter about looking at some career options. Everyone wants him to represent them and he knows every possible company you could ever dream of working for. The roles he works on are all high paying and his endorsement can change your career.
Rather than go in and pitch him on why I’m the best candidate since Steve Jobs created Apple, I did my research. I checked out his Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
I looked back on previous written correspondence we’d had. I worked out who initially introduced us to re-establish leverage and trust.
By doing my research, I took the following action:
– I didn’t wear a suit when I met him because his Twitter profile said he loves jeans
– I worked out where he was born (a place I’d been to) and talked about it
– I found a couple of highly influential people he didn’t know and offered an intro to them to drive revenue for his business
– I found one skill I had that he desperately needed (blogging and social media assistance)
The big pitch.
I arrived at the cafe early to meet the recruiter. I asked what he wanted and he requested a juice. Rather than just get him a bottle like any other monkey would, I asked him to take a seat (showing him I was paying) and spoke with the waitress to assess what juice options they had.
The waitress informed me that they had bottled juice and freshly squeezed juice. I told her that freshly squeezed would be great. Let’s stop there a second. Why did make the extra effort? Because demonstrating value involves showing that you care first. It’s the little details that count.
I finally took a seat and started with rapport building. I then created a sense of community by introducing several people we’d both worked with so things felt natural and like we were from the same flock.
I then spoke briefly about things that were personal to him to further demonstrate rapport.
Once all of that was out of the way, the execution was really easy. I’ll go slow.
I started by confirming that the thing I think he needed (social media advice) was something he wanted. I demonstrated using my phone, the ability to fulfill that need. I then offered (for free) to assist him with it if he wanted help.
The second part of the process was to see if the contact I thought he must know was valuable to him. He confirmed the contact was and I offered an intro which he gladly confirmed he wanted.
Then I came in with the pitch. Word for word, here’s what I said:
“Hey, I’ve got this small challenge that I’d love your advice on. I’m looking to reinvent my career and am looking to see what’s out there in the market, job wise. Where should I start?”
Now let’s take a minute to analyze this action. At this point, I’ve built rapport, given him access to a skill that I have which he wants, added one highly valuable contact to his network and made sure he has the best tasting juice to make his morning.
What do you think his response was?
He said the following:
“Tim, I think I can help you. It’s probably a good time to see what’s out there. Can you send me your resume and a few roles that interest you, and I’ll start chatting with a few contacts I know that I think will have roles that you’ll love.”
Rapport, tick.
Mutual value demonstrated, tick.
Sounding human, tick.
Simple, short, non-confronting pitch delivered, tick.
There’s one final step though: You have to actually do what you say you’re going to do. Getting someone all hot and sweaty over your pitch is useless if you don’t take action.
And taking action is not enough. The action needs to be swift.
So, what I did was ten minutes later, after arriving back at the office, I sent him an email and did the intro with everything that was promised. Execution is everything.
***Closing Thought***
Pitching straight away without doing any of the above is lazy. Lazy people end up failing at life and having huge regrets. You must show value and be in rapport with anyone you want to pitch. Putting in the extra time means fewer pitches and more successful results.
The people you are pitching to have limited time (so do you) and they can’t say yes to every request. Therefore, you need to take time to do it right. Otherwise, when you get turned down all the time, you have no one else to blame but yourself.
“Blindly sending messages that have a selfish pitch will get you nowhere”
It’s wasting your time and making you feel like crap. You can 10X your results with this simple pitch strategy. Try it and let me know how you go.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
Success Advice
How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
Success Advice
Understanding the Power of Yes and No: How to Create Boundaries For Success
These words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds
The two smallest yet most powerful words in life, “Yes” and “No,” have a big impact on our growth on both personal and professional levels. In addition to affecting the choices we make every day, these words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds. (more…)
Motivation
From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone
By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality
Are you tired of feeling like a couch potato? Do you want to transform your life and become a go-getter? You’re not alone! Many people struggle with motivation, but the good news is that change is possible. (more…)
Success Advice
10 Micro Financial Habits for More Wealth and Peace of Mind
The World Economic Forum still reports that half of U.S. adults lack financial literacy
You’ve heard about developing financial habits, but what about micro-financial habits? Micro habits are the tiny things you can do every day with minimal effort that, together, transform your future. (more…)
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