Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Last Thursday, I was watching Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as Wayne Brady invented a song, on the spot, like no one else can. Drew Carey would throw out a musical style, the audience would yell out topics, and Wayne would instantly compose and sing a song, with perfect rhymes, double entendres, wit and humor.
That got me thinking a lot about improvisation, which has been a big part of my life since I started playing guitar at age 12. Improvisation became a theme a few more times throughout the weekend, inspiring this week’s newsletter, Improvise your success.
Improvise your success connects, chimpanzees, bonobos, The Second City, jazz and my second book together to create this message: Improvise!
There is a place in business for policy and programming, and there are many places for improvising. So what do you think? Is improv important to your business success?
Newsletter link: Improvise your success
Posted in Conversation, Creativity, We relationships | 4 Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
The disciplines of marketing and sales need to unlearn their most fundamental principle: That marketing and sales are about disseminating information.
The accepted views of marketing and sales look something like this: Marketing is a rain cloud, showering information down on the marketplace. And sales is a water hose, spraying information at specific customers.
Marketing is not a rain cloud, and sales is not a water hose. If you get people wet, they will duck. They will not listen.
Marketing and sales are not about spraying your stories at customers. They are about creating engaging stories in your customers’ mind, stories in which you figure as an important character.
Stop showering your customers with information. Start engaging them in conversations
Posted in Conversation, Marketing | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Yes, tear up your elevator pitch. Tear it into little pieces. Want to know what to do with the little pieces? Read today’s newsletter, Tear up your elevator pitch.
Posted in Sales - Ditch the Pitch | 2 Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
Conversation. Genuine Dialogue.
Relationship-building encounters can’t happen without it.
Make this a week of awareness about conversation. During every interaction – with customers, vendors, partners, colleagues, bosses, direct reports, etc. – keep “The Conversationometer” alive in your mind:
- Are you and the other person engaged, at each moment, in true, genuine dialogue, or is one (or both) of you practicing “monologue disguised as dialogue?”
- How fluid is the conversation? What can you do to make it more fluid?
- How well are both of you listening?
- How relevant are your responses to each other? Are each of your answers and comments based on what came before in the conversation, or on a “pre-approved agenda” you wanted to force into the conversation?
Monologue does not move relationships forward. Conversation is critical.
Make this a week of conversation.
Posted in Conversation | 3 Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
This quote, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, captures why many businesses are missing the marketing potential of social media. Similar to the early days of Internet marketing in the mid-90’s, these businesses are focused on the technology and software (the “needles”), and not on the underlying reasons the needles move. A focus on technology and software applications leads many business people to see social media as just another channel of mass media, through which their mass marketing messages can travel. This is what causes businesses to claim “We’re on Facebook!” when their social media marketing is just seen as another way to “get the word out.” (See this earlier post I wrote on tompeters.com, along with the rich comments from the tompeters.com community.)
Emerson’s quotation is actually a perfect metaphor for social media, since the “magnetism” that we should focus on is found in the social connections and relationships that you can nurture and facilitate with social media.
It’s easier to believe in magnetism, and not in needles, if you focus on a few key points that differentiate social media from mass marketing:
• Mass marketing is one-to-many. Social media is about facilitating community.
• Mass marketing is about “getting the word out.” Social media is about nurturing conversations.
• Mass marketing is about creating a transaction. Social media is about strengthening connections.
Community, conversation and connections. This is the magnetism.
Posted in Marketing | 3 Comments »
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
Today’s (Sunday, 8/30/09) New York Times ran an article titled “The Mediocre Multitasker.“ Researches at Stanford’s “Communications Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab” set out to find what makes great multitaskers be able to accomplish so much. To their surprise, they found out that multitaskers are actually very ineffective, and get much less done than those who don’t multitask. “Multitaskers are were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford Nass, one of the study’s investigators. He added, “High multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”
As I’ve written many times, one of the key reasons people fail to create relationship-building encounters during business interactions is that they don’t engage fully in their interactions. They look at emails while they talk on the phone. They read text messages the moment the messages arrive, even though they may be in the middle of a conversation with a colleague. While another person is talking, a part of their brain is dedicated to reviewing this week’s soccer carpool schedule.
This research provides tangible support for what I’ve been saying: We don’t actually multitask, we “time slice,” quickly switching between mental tasks. If you insist on typing an email while you talk on the phone, you are compromising your relationship with the person on the phone. Why? Because part of the time you are not actually in the conversation. The other person is there all by himself.
Focusing on one task at a time is really difficult. But it’s necessary, especially if you want to build relationships during your business interactions. Wisconsin Public Radio host (and master interviewer), Ben Merens, has published a wonderful CD called “Unitasking: 25 Tips for Better Listening,” which offers advice on how to focus on the conversation you are in, and not be distracted by the noise of daily life. (There are also tips in Chapter 2 of my book, We, and in my free ebook, Encounters.)
I naturally want to multitask, and avoiding it is very difficult for me; I’m a poster child for the Struggle Against Multitasking. But I have learned the price of multitasking, and the benefits of unitasking. I am always more effective when I don’t multitask, especially when I am in interactions with other people.
Go ahead! Shatter the myth! Believe this: You can’t multitask. You can only do one substantive thing at a time. Now, start practicing.
Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Do you like it when a salesperson gives you his “pitch?”
Is your likelihood of buying based on how well he pitches you … or how well he converses with you?
Ditch the pitch!
Today’s newsletter, The End of the Sales Pitch, discusses how the best selling isn’t about convincing, it’s about engaging and diagnosing through conversation. It’s about the end of the sales pitch, and a focus on the sales conversation.
Share your comments below!
(Please see a related post from me on tompeters.com)
Posted in Conversation | 15 Comments »
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
Every day we’re on the phone with people, and we notice they are going through emails, or surfing the web, while talking with us. Everyone I speak with has this experience, regularly.
How do we notice this? Because we notice that the person we are speaking with is not engaged with us. We notice that the flow of conversation is broken. We notice that the other person has no idea what we just said. We hear the clicks of their keyboard.
I wrote a post back in December called, Are you here? in which I encouraged readers to call people out if they are not paying attention during a conversation, particularly a phone conversation.
My brother Phil and I were talking tonight, and we were trying to decide on a clever way to do this. We were looking for a short, powerful phrase to say to people that would have the meaning of, “Hey, are you with me? I’d love it if you would stop looking at your computer screen and focus on our conversation!”
We first thought about yelling out, “Slimy!” because for years we’ve pronounced the word “emails” backwards as “slimy,” as in, “I’m going to go fire up my laptop and check my slimy.” But, I know, that’s way to obscure. (Oh, did I forget to mention, Phil and I have a very strange habit of speaking backwards with each other? We’ve been doing it since we were little kids. Can you see how “emails” would be “slimy?”)
Do you have any great suggestions for this call out?
It might be as simple as, “Are you with me?”
Or, “Is now a good time to talk?”
Or, “Would you like me to wait?”
Or, “If you’re transcribing this conversation, be sure to spell my name correctly. It’s S-T-E ..”
Or, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” just to test if they are listening.
I’d love your suggestions. (And, of course, if you ever notice me doing “slimy” while we’re on the phone, you have my permission to call me out, with whatever phrase you want.)
Posted in Conversation | 10 Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
It’s Day 2 of my 17-day odyssey, sharing ideas with people from Seattle to Mauritius.
I’m writing while on a flight from Seattle to Newark, 25 rows behind Rudy Giuliani, who is sitting in the aisle seat in the first row of first class. Rudy got on the plane early, and did a great job of keeping his eyes glued to his BlackBerry as people stared when they crowded past him. (Update for those of you who read yesterday’s post: After much hassle, I got my suitcase back from United Airlines. And, I stayed calm throughout it all.)
One irony of my travels is that, although I’m traveling alone, I’m constantly engaged in conversations. Conducting interactive workshops, side conversations with people during these events, engaging in a stream of phone calls as I move from place to place, chatting with people in lines at the airport; I’m always talking with people.One thing I always try to be aware of is the quality of the conversation I’m in.
How fluid is the dialogue? Is there too much monologue? Are we connecting and sharing? Are we both present? I grade myself pretty hard. If you’re speaking with me, and I drift into monologue, you can bet that I know it and I’ll chastise myself later. If you catch me spacing out, not paying attention to what you’re saying, you should be confident that I caught myself also. (Even though I’m spacing out.)
In fact, if you’re ever speaking with me, in person or by phone, and you think my quality of conversation is lacking, I invite you to call me out on it.I think of this self-monitoring as “The Conversationometer”, and I think it is a really healthy tool to use, all the time. In every conversation, especially those with customers, continuously monitor the quality of your dialogue. Is the dialogue fluid?
Am I listening, and responding based on what I’m hearing? Are we locked in together in true dialogue, or are we committing “monologue disguised as dialogue?”In an interview on page 83 of my book We, Karyn Kedar uses the metaphor of a sailboat tacking with the wind to explain how to keep a conversation on track. You’re paying attention, constantly feeling the wind, and making adjustments as needed to move swiftly through the water.Why is it so important to self-monitor your contribution to a conversation? Because your customer is also monitoring the quality of the conversation.
Don’t believe that you can get away with monologue, or weak dialogue, without being found out. Use The Conversationometer to ensure that you are totally engaged in genuine dialogue with your customer.When I witness someone entrenched in monologue, it often seems like they aren’t even aware of what they’re doing. They get on a roll, blabbing away, without even noticing that they’re not really in a conversation. I want to hold an aural mirror up to their ears (that’s a bizarre image) and say, “Listen to yourself!” Which is ironic, because most of the time no one else is listening to the monologuer.The most important asset your business has is its relationships, and true conversation is the blood flow of relationship-building encounters.
Think of The Conversationometer as being like one of those heart monitoring machines in the hospital. Don’t flatline.
Posted in Conversation | 6 Comments »
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Last night began a 17-day odyssey, with travels taking me to speaking events in Seattle, New Jersey, Mauritius (look on your globe a few inches to the right of Madagascar), San Francisco (two events), and then up to Wisconsin with my band to play three times over a weekend. I’m expecting 64 hours in the air over the next two and half weeks, in addition to about 16 hours in airports and 12 hours getting to and from airports. I’ll make it home for a few odd nights along the way, staying just long enough for my geriatric dog, Puck, to get confused.
I’m excited about the work on these trips, but a bit concerned about dealing with all of the travel. While on the flight this last evening, I was thinking that the best way to deal with mega-travel like this is to treat it like yoga. Relax, be present, don’t be anxious about things happening in other places. Focus on the moment I’m in right now. Avoid thinking, “When are we gonna get there?” and don’t let any travel hassles shake my peace of mind. The four-hour flight from Chicago to Seattle was enjoyable; I settled into my seat, got some work done, read a bit, chilled out.
Well, this peaceful mentality was tested 10 minutes after arriving in baggage claim in Seattle, when it became clear that my suitcase (full of today’s presentation materials) didn’t make it on the flight. But just as my blood started to boil, I caught myself. Yes, I think United Airlines is inept for making me wait in baggage claim, and then in a baggage service line, when they’ve known that my bag was lost for the last three hours. Why not send a message to me while I’m on the flight? Why not give me $100 to buy some stuff instead of saying “Government regulations give the airlines 24 hours to find a bag before requiring remuneration?” Why not apologize?
But I didn’t get upset. I stayed calm. Actually, I wasn’t calm for the first 30 seconds after the United agent confirmed that my bag was still in Chicago, but I caught myself. I remembered that I have tons of travel in the next few weeks, and I don’t want to let these hassles interrupt my peace of mind. This is not my normal reaction; I’m embarrassed to think about how many times I’ve lost my cool in airports. But, hey, much of life is about practice and progress.
So why does this matter, beyond me keeping my personal stress levels down?
We Relationships are the great business differentiators in our new economy. It’s very difficult to create lasting product advantages, and even more difficult to create lasting service advantages these days, because, if you are successful, your competitors are constantly trying to copy what you do and steal your customers. But where your customers may see your products and services as replaceable with those from competitors, a personal We Relationship with you is unique, because it can’t be copied by the competition.
One of the biggest hurdles to creating relationship-building encounters is how the chaos in our lives makes it difficult to be fully present as we engage with our customers. Here’s a common scenario: In a workshop, I’ll ask attendees if they can tell when someone they’re speaking with on the phone is simultaneously checking email or surfing the web. Invariably, people say they can discern this behavior, because it is obvious the other person is distracted. Next, I ask them if they will commit that, for one week, they will not look at their computer screens during phone calls. Just as invariably, people laugh and say, “No way, I know I can’t do it. I’m so busy, I can’t resist looking at emails while I’m on the phone so I can get two things done at once.”
Now, take the same scenario, and add to it distractions from the BlackBerry, project deadlines, problems with other customers, personal issues, etc. If we let these distractions get to us, we will not be able to engage our customers fully, and we will end up creating relationship-eroding transactions instead of relationship-building encounters.
Think about that. As the distractions and stresses of modern business life increase, we are less able to have relationship-building encounters, at a time when relationships are the most valuable product we create.
As I wrote in this newsletter, We Are Not Multi-Taskers, “At any given moment, at places all over the planet, millions of interactions between buyers and sellers are devolving into mere transactions, missing the chance to be relationship-building encounters, because the people in the interaction are not fully present.” (For more on the idea of being present during customer interactions, see Chapter 2 in We or my free ebook, Encounters.)
So, if I let United Airlines’ ineptitude take over my brain, how will I be able to engage the audience to whom I will be speaking a few hours from now? How will I be able to be fully present on the important call I need to have with a client before my speech?
As the Buddhists say, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” You will be distracted. People, and your BlackBerry, will interrupt you. Thoughts about one customer will enter your mind as you speak with another. People you work with will piss you off, and your blood will start to boil. United will lose your bag, too.
But remember, relationship-building encounters are the most important thing you produce every day. The more you can focus on the customer with whom you are speaking, right now, and ignore the distractions, the more successful you will be.
Posted in Customer Encounters | 8 Comments »
Read