What makes you worthy?

The state of being “busy” is an adjective most people use in almost every other conversation. Especially in a startup environment, where thought leaders, journalists, investors, engineers, designers, business developers, customers, users, students and interns are always in a rush. “I’m busy” has become a friendly way of asking to filter any irrelevant information from the relevant and to get straight to the point where it might be of interest. In an environment like Silicon Valley where everybody is pitching an idea to make the world a better place, it is challenging to stand out from the crowd and to become worthy of investing more time for chatting with. But how to do that? How to break the ice and make the pep talk appealing?

Because I’m a friend of being very pragmatic and I love sharing patterns that can be applied right away, let me share a story and analyze that with you rather than just emphasizing the four steps for how every conversation of yours becomes sexy.

1. Be quick-witted and authentic

Couple of Fridays ago I was at HanaHaus in downtown Palo Alto, what I usually like to do when meeting people. Beyond the fact of having a great cappuccino, they do have a nice outside patio as well as enough spaces inside if you want to work quietly. In any case, I just had wrapped up a conversation and was about to sit down, when a young man approached me — we’ll call him Max to simplify the story — telling me that what he especially liked in a recent blog post of mine on how market segmentation simplifies growth hack, were the examples of “segmented positioning” that helped his startup increase their conversion rate by 35% from “cold touch” to “prospect demos” they scheduled! Max emphasized, that since they applied that in any given communication, their business became more relevant to their prospects and it was much easier to build a dialogue that finally made it smoother to achieve their goals of scheduling a demo with their potential customers.

AFTERMATH:

What hooked me? Why did this person win my attention? Well, if somebody not only recognizes you but also describes some work you did and breaks down how it eventually impacted their business, then you just want to start a communication. Key advice in such a scenario is to be quick-witted and prepared to build a story around something that matters / or might matter to the person.

Of course it makes a difference if you meet in person or you contact the person via phone or email. But in the age of social networking with all the information we have available around any specific person on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social channels, it’s not that hard to create a story around any recent post or profile. And because I’ve been asked many times what if the person is not on social media, then what is always an icebreaker is the topic of “the weather” as long you are authentic and you smile from the heart, so that your empathy overflows beyond the simple intent of chit chatting. Of course keep the opening short and move that over to something relevant that matters.

Now, before you start any conversation, ask yourself if you would be in the person’s role and everybody would want to approach you, what would you like to hear that would be different from what the other 99% are most probably saying?

TASK

Prepare a “hook” sentence that is fun, authentic and might apply to almost any conversation. Rehearse it and work on your authenticity. Keep adjusting it and you’ll never be caught off guard again when you are at the right time at the right place.

2. Be a confident storyteller

Back to the second part of the story, where Max had approached me by sharing the positive impact my work had done. At this point — I wanted to hear in depth about their business.

On my question of what they do, Max told me that two years ago when his car lamp blinked to “add oil” — he stopped at a local car dealer. Their customer service took him in front of a screen with a black background on green font text with the intention of leading him through their service packages in order for Max to make a decision on what the ideal service would have been.

It was such a bad experience — “Not to say almost ridiculous, to see people operate with customers in a way that is simply not acceptable nowadays. I almost felt responsible to help them,” said Max, and that’s when he came up with the simple idea to empower small medium businesses with a mobile app, to provide their clients a rich and fun customer experience beyond just getting an oil change.

Max continued that 83% of all small medium businesses in the States have no tool that connects them with their clients beyond social media and that many of them still are spending high dollars for fruitless mailings … the old school.

We ping ponged a couple of KPIs back and forth such as customer retention, pricing model, cost of acquisition, margins and Max gave me also a high level overview about the roles within his company. He knew what he was talking about!

… let’s analyze what happened …

AFTERMATH:

Why was I listening to Max — compared to many others pitches — a great experience even though his technology was nothing really new?

2 things:

a. Max didn’t pitch a product — but he told a story. While telling a story you can feel the vibe and the passion and in a story, the teller conveys mainly three things…

1. How and when the person came up with the idea
2. The problem that was recognized
3. The vision on how to solve that problem

In other words — when telling a story, you don’t sell a product or a problem — but create an “experience” where you take your listener on a journey they can associate with. This works in person as well as on the phone.

b. Be confident and humble

When pitching with no story — the entire context of the conversation is less tangible, too cold and therefore unsexy. Imagine if Max had just spoken about the general automotive market numbers, the dealer’s mentality overall and the lack of customer service — how would that have sounded? Which story would have been more appealing … the one that happened for real or the one with facts and figures?

In a storytelling, things one mentions serve to decorate the story because details are important, while any facts mentioned in a regular pitch tends to oversell the business described. We all wear a BS filter — which tends to alarm our gut feeling when something is too rational. In a regular pitch you try to sell and defend something. Often it’s a sign that people lack confidence. However in a storytelling one humbly shares what happens, which increases empathy.

TASKS

Formulate your story and prepare yourself on the questions: What’s your story? What was the moment that sparked the idea? How did you feel when that happened? What did you envision for how this could be solved? Make it fun and worthwhile chatting about! This is the most important asset for all frontliners in your company!

3. Care about people’s responsibility

As you can analyze in the first two steps, the person who approaches the “target person” is aiming first to get their attention and secondly to have relevance with what is being presented. In the next step it’s all about caring about the “target person”, so that the dialogue leads automatically to empathy.

Max caught my attention with the way he approached me and sparked my interest with the business story he told. Now — smart as he is — he moved on to build a relationship by caring about my situation. Max asked me what I was doing right now. What exactly was I in charge of? What did my ROI look like and within what time did I make that count? What drove my passion? How did I invest my time, money, talent and lessons learned? Max really cared to understand my status quo!

AFTERMATH:

Regardless of if on the phone or in person, caring about what others do has 2 huge benefits:

1. The one who’s being asked gets the feeling that the person is not just rushing through something, but that the person actually cares about the other’s situation. The huge result of it that many underestimate is that by building a dialogue, the probability of creating a unique experience that raises empathy is VERY high. Rather than coming from a perspective of scarcity — where everything must be quick … one demonstrates a position of abundance, where it’s not about getting to a goal — but making a difference that just leads to a consequence — rather than aiming for it.
2. With every answer received, one can customize the business value proposition depending on what the goal is in the conversation. With every piece of information, one can express admiration for what others are accomplishing — or don’t you like that when your boss / colleagues says how “awesome” that is what you are doing?

Most communication pitfalls that have a low conversion rate use the following weak approach

TASK

Understand that most people we want to do business with have 3 responsibilities. Responsible for a) team, b) budget and c) to do things in time. When this is fulfilled — people get recognition and are rewarded.

How does your business deal fit into this constellation? Does it help their a / b / c responsibility? If not — how can you help the person make that work? What is it they have on their plate right now? Break it down for your business case, then, ask the person you contacted … and position your solution smartly.

4. Create urgency and ask

Max had caught my attention, made his story relevant, and shown appreciation for what I cared about. Now it was time to get into the next step.

Flow for how to capitalize the majority of your conversations.

Tommaso, we are closing our bridge round and we already have 60% committed. I loved our chat and I definitely see how you can add value to our business. I see that what we do is of interest to you but I respect everybody’s time and I already have taken much of yours today … I’m around Palo Alto Tuesday and Thursday next week and I’d be happy to meet on a cappuccino or we might grab lunch together — while I show you our business opportunity in more detail. What works best for you, TUE or THU?

AFTERMATH

In these four steps we analyzed that in order to get to your goal you need to build a relationship first and not go straight to the point. Unlike when you meet somebody in person, on the phone you are just limited to your voice. In this situation the importance of building the relationship first is crucial to increase the probability of getting to your goal. Once you have established that, you can then go straight to the point and ask directly. Don’t forget to ask! If you don’t ask, you don’t know if it works. I also advise that it is better to be prepared to get an initial rejection to your first ask — so that in the case that this happens you don’t get caught off guard and can offer alternatives, rather than stutter because of a no!

Last but not least … ALWAYS create FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out! You see, Max didn’t say just “let’s meet” … but he made clear that there’s something going on RIGHT NOW — and we might want to meet next week- otherwise I lost the opportunity. Why should we meet now?

TASK

Formulate your ask depending on what you want to achieve. Give alternatives and never ask questions that might be answered on a yes or no. Be firm in what you are asking and package an urgency where your “target person” gets the sense there’s something going on right now.

Have fun with what you do — and come from a position of abundance and you’ll win every conversation!

What makes you worthy? Rather than hitting harder and just aiming a goal, first create an experience by storytelling and a dialogue that leads to empathy! This is GOAL #1. Appreciate and understand what other people do and your business goal becomes just the logical consequence of a great conversation — that is different, authentic and remarkable.

TAKEAWAY

• Be quick-witted and authentic
• Be a confident storyteller
• Care about people’s responsibility
• Create urgency and ask

Click the share button and make this information available to your network too! YOU ARE AWESOME! THX

Originally published at whatittak.es.