What I learnt meeting Steli Efti
It really boils down to one thing.
So I got to meet Steli Efti last Saturday when he was in Berlin, Germany. I picked him up from the airport and drove him to his AirBnB in town. I like that about Steli — he doesn’t have much time to spare, but he will always find ways to make time for you.
I’m not sure what I had expected from this 30m drive. A secret hack on lead generation? A life-changing framework for closing more deals?
Steli has a lot of these under his belt, and shares them freely on his blog and podcast. I have learnt a lot from him this way, so I was excited to meet him in person and get personal advise on the stuff I’m working on.
I probably was too excited. He’d never met me before, so how could I expect a ready-to-deploy strategy to success, custom-tailored to my needs, within half an hour from Steli?
I shouldn’t have believed he could give me any meaningful advice that factored in my personal goals, background and skills.
Except he did. It just wasn’t what I’d expected.
I was ready to get down to business and create a complex sales strategy for myself. But sometimes the simplest things are the most valuable.
All he did is reveal to me something that — deep down — I already knew. It took somebody like Steli to say it out loud for me to take it serious. And even though he used very different and polite words, in essence, this is what he had to say:
Stop whining and get your ass to work.
He realized I had all systems in place to continue. All I needed to do is actually start selling. “But that’s what I’m uncomfortable with”, I said.
He pointed out that I’m a decent sales person — and I don’t think he said it just to please me. I am in fact able to communicate with clients, educate and consult them in order to close a deal. And I enjoy that.
What I don’t enjoy is prospecting: I can’t stand lead generation and cold contacts. I feel extremely uncomfortable bothering people with my humble self. I’m missing fuel for my sales machine.
How Steli wants you to do things you don’t like
So, here’s Steli’s tip on how to do things you’re uncomfortable with doing:
Do NOT look for the magic pill
What should a person with weight issues do to get in shape? That’s right. Eat broccoli and work out. Who likes doing that? Nobody.
That’s why people are looking for a thousand and one ways to lose weight with pills an diets even though everybody knows the straight forward way to do it.
Just like me with prospecting. And Steli is 100% right there.
DO take small steps
Things don’t like doing take a little longer. You lack the passion and drive to perform the necessary steps. But that’s okay. Here’s what Steli wants you to do:
Whatever it is you’re struggling with, break it down into small, tiny baby steps that you can do every single day. This is not about reaching your goal. It’s about building the muscle (the habit) of doing that every day — no matter how far it gets you on a daily basis. Only when you get used to doing it, increasing the quantity and quality of your new daily routine will have a significant effect.
Steli pointed out that this won’t get you where you want to be in a month. It might actually take a few years. But he truthfully realized, that the only alternative is doing nothing — and most of us have been hiding from the tasks we don’t like for much longer already. So it’s time to change that up.
What this means for me
My takeaway from Steli’s lesson is as simple as yours should be. Since prospecting is my weak spot, I’m going to cold-contact one new lead every day for now. Yes, just one. But one every day.
I’m aware cold-emailing is probably not what will work for me in the end. I’m open to finding more efficient ways to get in touch with prospects. But whatever this will be, I’m spending fifteen minutes to half an hour every day doing prospecting work, and while it’s not much — I’m building the habit of doing so. And you should, too.
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