Changes happen all the time and it’s often difficult to navigate them. The way we do it is through Clarity.
In this episode, Bill gives you several areas of your business and life that you need to develop clarity in and just how you can do it.
To download my FREE guide, “5 Reasons You Don’t Have Enough Clients”, just go to http://5reasonsclients.com!
Do you feel stuck? It could be in your business, in your career, or really in any area of your life. Stuckness always seems to creep in, doesn’t it?
As we approach the end of the year and we start planning what the next year will look like, we should pay close attention to this feeling.
In this episode, Bill shares some stories on getting stuck and some tips on how you might just get yourself unstuck in the future.
To download my FREE guide, “5 Reasons You Don’t Have Enough Clients”, just go to http://5reasonsclients.com!
The WSJ just published an article in October ‘22, that suggested there are 700,000 sales jobs open right now in the US. My observations are congruent with that.
In my client base, EVERY CLIENT is looking for sales help. EVERY. ONE.
And with 7,000,000 unemployed (and going higher every month) it strikes me as odd that so many sales positions remain open.
Yet, they have trouble filling these highly paid positions.
My Two Daughters Are Why
I have two lovely, impressive daughters, Kelly, the older, and Kara, the younger. Both are in the tech space and have good jobs, earning good money, with a good future.
But neither one of them wants anything to do with sales.
And in the tech space, the salesperson can be a high-income earner – and can be extremely mobile.
And all that resistance after having a father (me) who has been in the sales coaching space for nearly 30 years – 5 books, 1000 podcasts, online courses. I guess the biblical quote. “A prophet is without honor in his own home” rings true. 🙂
So why their reluctance?
They’re both easy to talk to and listen to. They’re both engaging. They’re both sharp and don’t let anything slip by them (sometimes annoyingly so 🙂 They’re both good writers and communicators. And they both are unafraid of strangers.
What gives?
Well, it’s the same thing that ‘gives’ for many people who could be great in the sales profession but have not made the move. They are sales-reluctant.
This article deals with some myths about selling and some advice (from Dad).
Value is ALWAYS tied to the relief of pain. Once you understand this, the pressure is off. Share on X
How does it feel now? More confident in your ability to handle this? Thought so. Glad to have helped.
If you’re considering a move, OR, if you’re in sales now but not achieving at your highest level possible, I created a course called THE NEW RULES OF SELLING.
It is a comprehensive, yet an easy-to-consume course that will propel you forward. I’ve lowered the price to $97 so that it’s accessible to the masses.
If you’re considering a move to, or up, check it out. And make the move. You’ll thank me in 10 years.
Technology brought upon a lot of changes and improvements that would dictate your future in sales. In this episode, Bill Caskey talks about the history of employment to pinpoint these changes and how they help you understand the flow that the sales industry is following. He presents five questions that will surely help guide you towards the right path and secure your position in the place where sales is at the moment and in the foreseeable future. Understand why it’s necessary to keep up with technology and improve your skills even if you have people who will do them for you. Also, learn about the impact of investing time and money in yourself in order not to get swept away by the progress of the environment.
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I wanted to give you one more episode. I want to have you give this some thought. You’re heading into some downtime maybe at least at some point, hopefully you’ll be able to shut it down. What I want to talk about is you looking at yourself. Not just for 2021, although that seems to be the common theme, is what are you going to do next year? What are your goals? What are your plans? I want you to take a little bit longer, look at this and not look at this as what you need to do in the next 30 days, but what you need to do over the next year or two. You can get started quickly. You should, but I want to have a little bit longer view of this. If you have not checked out BillCaskey.com, lots of free resources there. If you want to get in touch with me, you are free to do so.
We’re working on putting together some programming. If you’re a CEO, president, you want me to help you with your team or if you’re an individual contributor or leader, you can get access to me on the page. I listen to a lot of podcasts. That probably is in sync with what you thought. Some podcasts are good. Some episodes are bad. It doesn’t take me long before I can figure out pretty quickly whether I want to listen to it or not. One podcast that I especially like is James Altucher. He’s quirky and funny. I like him. He has some interesting guests. He had a guest by the name of Jeff Wald who wrote a book called The End of Jobs.
Sales Future: The job tenure will continue to go downward because people are mobile and able to take new jobs.
In that podcast episode, I encourage you to listen to it, it’s about an hour long, Jeff, the author, talks about how jobs have morphed over the years. Going back couple hundred years, we had the agricultural economy where 80%, 90% of Americans and people all over the world were in agriculture. That was an hour of work for an hour of pay. There was not much mechanization there. It was all by hand. We moved into the industrial economy and the industrial revolution, mid 1800s, then we moved into what he calls the electrical economy then into the information economy. That’s where we are now, the data, the information economy.
He is suggesting that jobs will change a lot brought on and accelerated by what we went through in 2020. This trend was on aligned to happen anyway. It was accelerated by the pandemic. Two areas that he says is pretty safe, one is creative, anything that has to do with creative. It’s hard to outsource creative projects. He says outsourcing is obviously going to be a big factor. It’s not outsourcing to China and India though. It’s outsourcing outside of your company. He said, if a company wants to launch a product, the VP of marketing may not walk around the building and say, “Who’s available for this project?” He or she may say, “Who are the best five people I can get in the world or in the US or whatever economy you’re in to launch this product?”
If you aren't constantly learning how to do your job better and take on new responsibilities or skills, somebody else will take your place. Share on XWe will bring people in as an ad hoc team for a period of time, then disband them. That way, the company doesn’t have to pay all the overheads and long-term salaries, but they can get good people. They may pay more in the short run for those people, but they won’t be burdened with all the overhead of having a bunch of people sitting around with nothing to do. I know in most companies, that’s not the case, but sometimes if I don’t have people who can do it, I need to go outside to get it done. That was one thing that he said is going to be a dislocation and jobs of the future won’t always be you go in, you work in a cubicle and when you’re done, it’s 5:00, you clock out and you leave. It’s a 9:00 to 5:00 or 8:30 to 5:00 job. He says that’s all going to change. It’s already started to change. One thing that he brought up that I thought was interesting is he said, in 1960, what is the average duration for a job? How long will people typically work at a company?
What is your guess on that? 1960? What was the average tenure of the employee at a job? It’s five years. He says, “Do you know what the average tenure of a job is now or back then?” It was 4.2 years. He said, “This idea that it used to be that people got a job and they stayed forever.” Now we don’t do that. He said, “It’s not true. The stats and the data don’t back that up. The tenure has gone down, but it hasn’t gone down that much.” His point there is that the job tenure will continue to go downward because people are mobile. They will be able to take new jobs now. They don’t want to move, but they don’t have to move because a lot of jobs are going virtual. He says that number will continue to go down the average tenure or duration of a job.
The other thing he said is a couple of jobs cannot be outsourced. One is sales and one is anything creative. That’s good news for those of us who are in the sales profession or who train and coach salespeople. I was enthused about that. He talked about though that the role of sales will change. He didn’t get into a lot of that. I want to get into this a little bit now, but he said the roles of all these jobs you’re going to change. It used to be that when you had a creative person and you wanted to hire somebody or bring them on for a project, you bring them into the office. You’d sit in a room. You’d document everything. That’s not happening. It probably won’t because the creative may not be proximate to the company, may not be down the hall or down the road. It may be across four states. If you find a creative person who is good at what they do, what difference does it make where they are?
That’s the creative side, back to sales. As I look at sales and the people that I work with, the companies and the individuals, I do see a lot of changes coming. I want to give you five things. I wouldn’t even call them skills, although they could be, there are some skills underneath each one, but things that you’re going to need to prepare for as a sales professional or as a customer acquisition professional, anybody who is in the game, VP of sales, CEO, entrepreneur, president of attracting clients and keeping clients, what skills will you need? What areas of focus will you need to be better at in order to do that? I’m going to go through these one at a time. I’ve got five. This is not an exhaustive list. I want to give you some things to think about here and then you have to grade yourself if it got any improvement in that. “Do I need coaching there? Do I need to buy a course in that?”
Sales Future: The way you learn how to write is to write, and the only way to improve at it is to keep doing it. The better writer you are, the better communicator you are.
Number one is lifelong learning. A lot of people talk about that. It’s a phrase that’s thrown around a lot, but he said we have to get serious about it. If you aren’t constantly learning how to do your job better, do different parts of it better, take on new responsibilities, get better at marketing or whatever the skills are that you need to be better at, somebody else will be there to take your place. Tenure is not going to matter as much. The question is, are you the best person to do the job? My question to you is, are you a lifelong learner? The way I would ask that is how much money do you invest in yourself each year? Do you take a percentage of your income and throw it back into you? You should. I know I do.
A lot of people that I see who are successful have think nothing of investing 5% to 10% of their income every year, whether it be online classes, small group coaching or one-to-one coaching like we do, taking a class at a community college. I’ve got a client who is about 55 years old who thought he was pretty good at technology, but he felt like things were passing him by, so he went out and hired a 28-year-old friend of his daughter’s. They went to college together. He was in the tech business. He brought him in and spent a few hours with my client and spent $300 or $400 on this. He had a long list of things that he wanted to learn how to do.
Never count on somebody else to market you like you can market yourself. Share on XThis young man taught him, from scratch, how to edit and record audio, how to record and edit video, how to set up a simple webpage or a website. He had 4 or 5 things that he wanted done. After those 3 or 4 hours, he knew how to do those things. You say, “He’s the CEO. What does he need to be building webpages for?” He won’t be building web pages, but he needs to know how it works. He needs to know how easy it is to record an edit video because when someone comes to him in the company and says, “I don’t have time to record and edit video.” He can say, “I learned in an hour. I’ll teach you in fifteen minutes. How to do it, still got that time as an excuse?” How much of your income is going back into yourself? Are you a lifelong learner? I don’t mean picking up books, although that’s not bad. I don’t mean consuming mass quantities of podcasts. I mean learning something. I’m going to give you 3 or 4 things here that you can apply to that. Learning something that’s going to be valuable for you in your business going forward.
Number two skill is video. Anything that has to do with video, shooting video, writing the script for the video, editing it, uploading it. I know you may have people that do that for you, which is fine, but you need to understand how to craft and produce good video. You don’t have to learn how to do a documentary if you don’t want, but you need to at least learn how to do video. You need to know how YouTube works. Do you know how many billions of hours a day are watched on YouTube? It’s 1 billion, but that still seems like a lot. I can’t fathom.
I don’t know how to put that in context. It’s like when somebody says, “You know how much money he made?” It’s like you would stretch, end to end, $100 bills to the moon and back. The point is that lots of businesses are on YouTube. Here’s another interesting stat from Gallup, only 9% of small businesses have YouTube channels. You know the big guys do, but what about you? If you’re a small business, I use small business $100 million or less, or you have a territory and you’re a frontline sales professional, do you have a YouTube channel?
They’re easy to set up. Could you create a channel that has all of your videos on it, that houses them, so that when somebody says, “Tell me a little bit more about what you do.” You tell them, say, “I’ll send you a link to my YouTube channel. I’ve got a lot of videos there on some of the experiences and case studies and interviews with clients.” Number two is video. It’s a skill. There’s a lot of skills within that, but you need to be better at producing video. Stop worrying about what they look like, start producing them. You don’t have to upload them if you don’t like them, but you got to sit in front of a camera with a microphone and you’ve got to try. You’ve got to make a stab at this.
Number three, writing skills. This goes back a little bit to video, but it also goes to email, writing documentation, proposal writing. Any persuasive copy, you need to be better at. Most people don’t know how to write persuasive copy. It’s hard. Like I was telling my 2X Group, I listened to a podcast by Jerry Seinfeld. He writes an hour a day, seven days a week. An hour a day, he writes skits and things that he observes in the market and the world. He has all these little bits that he’s written over the years. He has a new book out, got 300 and some little sketches in it. He writes every day.
The guy interviewing him, Tim Ferriss said, “How did you learn to write so well?” He says, “The way I learned to write so well is I write every day.” Sometimes we can go to class, to school and do online programs, but sometimes the way you write is to write. It’s like a lot of things, the only way to learn how to do it and improve that is to keep doing it. I always believe that the better writer you are, the better communicator you are. I had a client in one of my groups at 2X Academy say that thing. He says, “Sometimes I ramble a little bit. When I write things out, I get a lot clearer, and my communication gets a lot better.” Even if you’re not a professional writer, if you don’t get called on to write copy, I still believe that writing has a lot of by-product value to you, so get good at it. That’s number three.
Sales Future: The clearer you are about your offer and the product or the service that you represent, the easier it is for somebody to say yes.
Number four, I’m going to use the term marketing here, but I don’t mean in the traditional sense of the word of pricing and promotion and graphic design. I mean more content and social media type marketing. Do you know how to generate new discussions with prospects? Do you know how to create content that causes someone to say, “Phil does that? I need that. I need to talk to Phil.” If you’re not doing that, people never know you even exist. If you have a client base of 100 clients and a territory, of course they know you exist, but are you creating something that you can post on social media, whether it’s LinkedIn or whatever platform, people see it, share it, consume it and reach out to you. Social media/marketing is going to be a critical area for sales professionals in the future.
I know some of you say, “I’ve got somebody that does that.” Maybe, but they probably don’t do it in the voice that is your voice. Anything you can do to get some more reps in at social media marketing, you can listen. There’s a good podcast called Social Media Marketing. It’s Michael Stelzner. Listen to podcasts. Learn the basics of marketing now. Never count on somebody else to market you like you can market you. You can have somebody at your company who is a marketing director. They might be marketing the brand of the company, but who’s marketing you? Probably nobody.
You’ve got to be more attuned to that. Sometimes the way you have to look at yourself when it comes to personal brand marketing is you have to get outside yourself a little bit and say, “If I’m representing Bill Caskey and I’m his marketing person, how am I going to market Bill?” You have to get outside of yourself because you’re humble and you feel a little self-conscious about putting your stuff out there. You can’t. There’s a way to do it so you don’t look weird, but you’ve got to learn how to market yourself and how to brand yourself.
Number five, I believe we’ve all got to get better at this concept of packaging. Whether we’re packaging an assessment and selling an upfront assessment to prospects, whether we’re packaging an offer of some kind like, “If you work with me, here’s what you get. Here’s what you don’t get. Here’s what’s included. Here’s how everything works.” You’ve got to become a better packager of your value. You can take that to mean a lot of different things, but let’s say you sell accounting services. You have done this in the past where you reach out to somebody and they say, “Come on in. I’m not happy with my accounting firm. I’d like to talk to you.”
At some point, you’re going to have to present an offer. “Here’s what it looks like to work with my firm. We do this and then we do this and here’s what’s included. Here’s what the promise is about what you’re going to get at the end. Here’s how we handle issues.” The clearer you are about your offer, offer I mean the offer of your value, the product that you represented, the service, the clearer you are, the easier it is for somebody to say yes, and worse or better, the harder it is for them to say no, because once they say no, they’re walking away from all that value.
What got you here won't get you there. Share on XI find that we all struggle with that, me included, is we’ve got to get a lot better at giving voice to our offer. The way you do that is to package it and understand packaging. I hope that helped you. Those are five. There’s more where that came from. As Wayne Gretzky’s dad, Walter, said to him, the world’s oldest and most overused cliches, “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.” That’s what I wanted to give you, is let’s start to look at the sales profession of where it’s going, not from where it was because what got you here won’t get you there. The question is, what demands are going to be needed for you to continue to grow your income, your power and your impact? These five skills or ideas will help you get there. Go to BillCaskey.com. I know it’s been a weird 2020 for a lot of us. It’s been good for some, not so good for others, but take some time and relax. I will see you back here and we will be talking to you then.
Are you looking to grow your business or practice? In this episode, Bill Caskey helps you identify and evaluate your assets and the things your company is good at and understand where your company’s room for growth is. Something that companies and people rarely do on their own is an assessment of their own assets. Bill talks about the importance of knowing the kind of assets available to companies to grade yourself on how well you are utilizing them. Tune in and understand your own assets, and leverage what you and your team are good at.
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I’m glad you joined me. If you are reading this prior to December 10th 2020, make sure you join me at 4:00 PM Eastern in The 2X Academy. You can go to The2XAcademy.com. I’m going to be doing an entire 90-minute training workshop on goal setting and planning for 2021. We’ve done it a couple of times for clients. We’ve got the bugs worked out. It’s good. I think you’re going to leave inspired. If you want to take part in that, go to The 2X Academy. If you are reading this after December 10th 2020, make sure you join in 2021. We got twelve months of great content. Every month, I go live for 90 minutes talking about an episode or an issue that is pertinent for sales professionals and leaders alike this year in 2021.
When I go into a company and work, companies invite me in. I spend six months to a year with them, sometimes more. One of the things that we do is assemble a list of the assets that the company has. Usually, the assets are 10 to 12 things that the company and the people within the company are good at. The problem is I don’t see that use that much. Prior to me coming in and doing that, people don’t understand what kind of assets are available to them. I’m assuming that you’re reading this, wanting to grow your practice, business or territory in 2021, it’s important to take a little time and a good time of the year to do it and take an assessment of your assets. Ask yourself the question, “Am I using these assets to the utmost of my ability to leverage those assets into business, discussions and sales?”
People just don't understand what kind of assets are available to them. Share on XI’ve got five of them here for you. I want to go through these one at a time. I’d like for you to grade yourself on them. On a scale of 1 to 10 or A to F, grade yourself, how well are you taking advantage of these assets? Number one, your personal knowledge. You have a ton of knowledge about your business, the problems that people have and the prospects. You’ve got tons of knowledge about the solutions that you bring forth. You’ve got knowledge of the processes and the frameworks that you use to solve those problems. I find most companies don’t have a place where they list these assets and you should. As you’re an individual performer, you need to be thinking, “What are the assets I have when it comes to my knowledge? What do I know how to do?” What do you know how to do that you can put on display in some way, either through LinkedIn, video, podcasting or articles? That’s another episode we’re not going to get into, but it’s important. You first have to understand what is your personal knowledge.
The second thing is, “What’s the internal knowledge inside your company?” I work with a lot of companies that have technical expertise. Maybe the sales professional does not or the sales team doesn’t, but the company does. There are internal engineers, experts, smart dudes, smart guys and girls who can bring something to the table. After you do the personal knowledge, I want you to list the internal knowledge. “What do the people in your company know that you can use and leverage?” It could be something. I’ve got a client who has a lot of smart, technical and sophisticated people inside their company. They do an interview series once a month, where they interview one of these people. They talk about how this knowledge that is intrinsic inside the organization can be brought forth and help clients.
There was an article I read on digital transformation. What it said was, “Your customers are looking for knowledge. They’re looking for know-how. They’re looking for you to share your expertise so that they don’t have to look around other places. They can go right directly to you. If your only message is a sales message or a pitch message, they’ll pass you by. They’ll go find somebody else where they can get the know-how.” Number two, find out what your internal knowledge is and start using that and bringing that forth. It doesn’t have to be interviews. It could be just you sitting down and questioning one of your smart people, “What’s one of the features of our product that is underutilized? When people buy it, they don’t realize what they’re getting?” They’ll tell you. They’ll reel it off the top of their head. You’ll be able to use that knowledge in your standing with prospects and your lead generation.
Number three, your email list. You may not have an email list specifically for your clients. I would like for you to, but your company probably has Salesforce or a CRM of some kind. You can drag that email list of people who are in your territory or your jurisdiction out. Don’t forget about that. That is something that I find companies underutilize. We’re guilty of that. We’ve got probably 5,000 to 6,000 people on our email list. We don’t do enough with it. Every time we send out something, we get good things back. I’m not talking about a daily email unless that’s how you’re set up. I’m talking about taking a look at who you have on your list. What can you do each week? Let’s say, a weekly email where you share something of value. Your email list is one of those hidden gems and assets that allows you to keep connected with your prospects over the course of time. Do you have an email list? Rate yourself there. Rate yourself not just whether you have one or not, but how you use it. Do you develop it? Do you leverage them?
Evaluating Your Assets: Your customers are looking for knowledge and know-how and for you to share your expertise so that they don’t have to look around other places.
Number four, your unique talent. I have a client that he started working with about a month ago and there were five of them on the team. One of the first exercises I put them through was they’re going to be doing a lot more social media content. I said, “What is each of your unique talents?” We went around the room and they shared their unique talent what they thought it was. I went around again and had everybody else comment on Julie. She was one of the ladies, for example. Julie had her own impression of her unique talent, but everybody else had slightly different variations of that. Sometimes it’s hard for us to see what our talents are. It’s easier for those around us to see it. I’d like for you to maybe do a little poll inside your office. This may sound odd, “What do you see my talents to be? What do you see me do that feels like I can do it in my sleep or do it like I’m falling off a log, heading into the river?”
Your unique talent is important because the more you can be in that space of using it, we’ve heard people call it the zone of genius. There are all sorts of names for it. Determine what’s unique about you in the business world and then double down on that. If you’re going to be shooting LinkedIn videos or writing articles, write about what you know and what you’re good at. You become almost mindless and you love doing it. In this case, Julie is a project manager. One of the things she loves to do is break projects down so that they can get accomplished on time and on budget. That’s a unique skill. There are project managers a dime a dozen out there, but she has a very specific way she does it. It may be part of a certification she’s gone through. That doesn’t matter. I’m more interested in, “What do you love to do? What are you good at? What’s unique about you?” Figure out a way to get that knowledge out into the world.
Number five, interactions and relationships. If you’re in professional selling, on the phone, account developing, client success, whoever you are as you’re reading this, you have constant, continuous interaction with prospects, clients and strategic partners. Every one of those develops a unique skill. Every one of those is an asset. For example, let’s say you’re on the phone with a prospect. The prospect asked you a question that you’ve been asked maybe a couple of times before, but the way they asked it was interesting. You answered it in a certain way. The answer to that question becomes an asset. I want you to use that.
I’ve got one client who puts together a Facebook Live video every Friday afternoon. He goes through his week and says, “What were the questions that I was asked this week about my product, the trends in the industry, the problems and the pandemic?” Whatever you want to talk about, he captures those. In some weeks he says, “I have 3 or 4. In some weeks, I have ten. I never do ten. I only do 3 or 4 four, but I can save those for the next week.” Your interactions with prospects can be a treasure trove of assets for you. Once you know what kinds of questions people ask you and the answer to those questions, those are assets. The world might want to know that because for every prospect that asks you a question and you answer it, there might be 100 other prospects who have that very question, but they’ve never thought to ask it. How many times have you heard someone in a group asked a question and you were like, “I wish I’d have thought of that, I never thought about that, I don’t understand that, I’m glad you asked that?” That’s exactly what we’re doing here.
Write about what you're good at. Share on XI’ve said before on this show and others, “Make a list of the top 10 to 15 questions that your prospect has right at the outset of the sales process at the very top of the funnel questions. Go through and answer those. Do it in a Frequently Asked Questions piece, maybe document each one and put it on LinkedIn in the polls and article sections. Maybe you shoot a video on each one.” The point of all this is that you are building an asset base. Every interaction you have with a prospect or a client can work into that because of the conversations you had. Somebody asked you, “Bill, what do you think about the trends of training over the next couple of years?” “I never thought about that.” I have thought about that, but let’s say I hadn’t. As I think about it, I might think, “There are three trends.” You’ve got an article or something you can produce and publish.
Digital transformation and the buyer-seller dance are going to be different in 2021 and beyond. People don’t want you to take them to lunch, play golf or kibitz for two hours. They want to get right to the point, “What do you know that I need to know? How can you help me solve a problem? What does it look like? What does it cost?” The clearer you can make this in the market and using your assets to do that, the better off you’re going to be. I hope that helps you. Go to BillCaskey.com if you have other questions or want to get ahold of me. If you’re reading this prior to December 10th 2020, get your butt to The 2X Academy. It’s going to be an awesome 2021 goal setting and planning session. It’s $97 a month. It’s affordable and easy. Every month, I come to you with training. I hope that helps you. I will see you next time.
Finding your why is an advice that you most likely have seen or heard being thrown around a lot of times when it comes to businesses. The thing is, not everyone tells you how to do it. This time, Bill Caskey gets specific and lists down five questions that you should be asking yourself in order to find your “why.” With each question, he provides practical and concise reasons why it’s necessary to be able to give an answer which will ultimately lead you to discover your “why.” He also talks about what your primary motivator should be when starting your business and why declaring your uniqueness is such an important step.
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We’re going to talk about something that you’ve heard about quite often over the last few years. The idea of “what is your why?” Simon Sinek did a TED Talk years ago. It’s got 30 some million looks and views. He talked about how important it is for companies but individuals too to understand why you do what you do. Why are you in business? Not just what do you do but why do you do it. I want to talk about that on this episode.
I did a blog on my why’s, “Why do I do what I do?” I thought it would be helpful for you not just to know my why’s of being in business, but also give you a little bit of permission to think a little bit deeper rather than making money. That’s why I do what I do, or to provide for my children and family.
Those are all noble things, but to me, it’s got to be the work. The work has to be the primary motivator. The secondary motivators are what you get from work like rewards, benefits, money, fame, fortune, etc.
Finding Your Why: The work has to be your primary motivator. The secondary motivators are what you get from the work.
In this episode, I wanted to come back and give you a little mini-framework and a handful of things that might be able to help you. It’s a good time to do this to get back to the basics, “Why do you do what you do? “If you can communicate that effectively through the content that you produce or even the stories you tell when you’re face-to-face or on a virtual call with potential clients, it’s an important element of declaring your uniqueness in this world.
We all have very different why’s. It’s not like they’re going to entertain three vendors and you all three are going to have exactly the same why’s because these are very personal.
After I did that episode, I had several emails from people who said, “Good for you. I understand your why, but how do I come up with mine?” I’ve got five things here – five questions I would like to ask you.
If you want to take a little time in between each, pause, reflect on it, see if you can document, and write down some things that come to mind as I ask the question. That would be very helpful.
2. “Who is the common enemy?
Is it a person that’s the common enemy or is it a thing?” Usually, in this case, it will be a thing like status quo or average results. What are you and your customer up against? It could be something the customer has in their mind about a possibility of solving the problem or there’s no better thing out there. It could be a belief set.
You’ve got to have some enemy so that you can face up to the enemy with the prospect. In our business, it’s the acceptance of average. It’s the acceptance of, “This is who I am. This is what I do. There’s no way I can get better results.” It’s that toleration of the average that is our biggest enemy.
I have to line up with my potential client or client and face up to every day. Every great cause has an enemy either a person, group of people, or thing that works against them. You’ve got to find out, “What is the enemy you’re helping them battle?”
3. “What is your personal promise to them that if they follow your advice and solution, they will achieve?”
What can you promise them?” This is not just a promise that comes out of nowhere. This could be a promise that comes as a result of you being inquisitive as to their problems, pains, where they want to go, their goals or dreams, which we always get and want you to ask.
Once you know that, where are you taking them? What’s the path of success? What’s the roadmap to help them get from where they are to where they want to be with your help along the way? What’s the personal promise to them if they follow you? You’ve got to have that. That’s part of your why, “I promise that if you do what I say, do it in the way and the order I say it, this is what will happen.”
4. I want you to describe your ideal client in detail.
What are their dilemmas? What are their untenable circumstances? What can they not live with or continue to live with? What do they face whether they know it or not?
I always suggest to my clients to write it out. Write a little mini-story, maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs. You surely know a lot about their lives, what they face, what they’re up against, what kinds of problems and challenges they have. Write it down. Be descriptive.
It’s almost like this is a teaser for a movie. When you see a teaser at the theater, the teaser either grabs you, and you say, “I have to see this.” Most of them don’t grab me. Most of them are clips from the actual movie.
They don’t carve a theme very well. As you describe your ideal client in detail, it will become very clear who you want to work with. That is your ideal client, who faces these dilemmas and problems, wants to get out of them and get to a clear future.
Finding Your Why: What attracted you to the business you’re in now is very different from what attracted you to the business years ago.
5. You and your preferences, “What kind of client are you unwilling to accept?”
Not all clients are created equal, even if they meet your demographic or psychographic requirements. What are some deal killers that would cause you to leave the process or run away from a prospective client? What will you not accept as you work with somebody?
The clearer you can be about what those yellow or red flags are, the clearer you are about why you’re there, who you want to work with, who you’re willing to accept, and who you’re not willing to accept. As you answer these questions, your why becomes a lot clearer to you.
If you’re in the consulting business and you help companies grow their business from $10 million to $50 million, that becomes a little bit easier of a why. If you’re in the telecom business and you help people solve big problems so that they can serve their customers better, then your why might require a little digging, but it’s still there.
Think about why you do what you do.
What attracted you to the business in the first place? What has kept you in the business in the long run?” What attracted you to the business you’re in is very different than what has happened to you as you’ve been in the business for 5, 7, or 10 years. That’s okay. The why’s can change in our lives as we get older and more mature, although people around me would doubt that. As we get older, more seasoned, and clearer then our ‘why’s’ can change. Take 15 to 20 minutes. Write those five questions down.
As we get older and more seasoned, our whys change. Share on XI hope that helps. You can go to BillCaskey.com if you want to know more.
On this episode of the podcast, I sit down with Connor Dube, Director of Marketing and Sales at activeblogs.com.
We discuss the most modern methods of using social media to conduct sales. Connor gives us 4 methods you can use to get the most out of social media when it comes to selling.
Also, enrollment is now open for both The 2X Group and The 2X Academy.
The 2X Group (Small Group Coaching): http://the2xgroup.com/
The 2X Academy (Online Virtual Training): http://the2xacademy.com
A few weeks ago, I asked you to share your perspective on THE most important skill heading into 2021.
If you did so, thank you. If you didn’t, no worries…I wanted to share the results.
I shot a quick video laying out THE #1 skill area on the minds of our subscribers AND gave you a couple of tips on how you can improve immediately.
Also, enrollment is now open for both The 2X Group and The 2X Academy.
The 2X Group (Small Group Coaching): http://the2xgroup.com/
The 2X Academy (Online Virtual Training): http://the2xacademy.com
Sometimes you can be a coach for people even if you don’t have a formal coaching relationship with them. In other words, when they are spending money with you.
This episode is about how to do that with people around you this holiday season when you’re with family and friends. This has been a tough year for people and your role as a good friend is to be someone who can be a light for them in what could be a world of darkness.
Also, enrollment is now open for both The 2X Group and The 2X Academy.
The 2X Group (Small Group Coaching): http://the2xgroup.com/
The 2X Academy (Online Virtual Training): http://the2xacademy.com