Transactional
“We don’t do transactional, we do relationship with our clients.” Everything is transactional. They have different depths, dynamics and trade-offs. Are some business relationship something more, though? And here comes the thing: it’s not about the transaction itself, it’s about the meaning. And there are meaningful relationships. And others that are not. Which ones are the ones that will make YOU, and your customers grow? On which ones would you rather focus on?
Everything is sales.
You heard that right. Everything is sales. But doing sales is not (necessarily) selling. It’s helping to buy.
Real questions
“There are enough real questions and issues to solve – let’s not solve problems that don’t exist [like stop calling soft skills, something else].” That was a reply to Soft Skills from 2 days ago. Real questions will NEVER get all the time and dedication and focus to be solved as A real question. They’re not in siloes. Everything is connected and interdependent. Problems are not mutually exclusive: If you fix A, you can’t fix B. Because something’s been in use for a long time (hello, status…
Not being the expert
Not behaving like the expert can take many forms. One of them: trying to avoid pushback, arguments, or resistance in your relationship with clients. It can hurt you more than help. You can be in the order-taking business, if you prefer. And that’s fine. The impact that comes from it, though, will be smaller. You can be in the service business, where your impact will be higher. Or you can be in the transformation business, and help them achieve the potential your customers have. How you want…
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Sometimes you need time to regroup. Do it with intention. That beats busy-ness. Always.
Teach the game in verse
Friend-of-the-list and daily emailer Kevin Freidberg sent this message “Teach the game in reverse”. And I read “Teach the game in verse”, which also makes absolute sense, since his writing sounds like that to me (do go check him out). You can think of how you share your thinking in a sense of poetry —verse. Trying (to see) that will push you into some boundaries: space, time, ideas. This will get to be more on point on what you wanna say. And without the need to fill in the things with tons…
Soft skills
What’s that even supposed to mean: soft skills? Next-level thought leadershit? As you can feel, I have an itch with the term “soft skills”. What’s “soft” about… leadership? communication? empathy? honesty? trust? Is it soft because you can’t measure it? Just as you can’t measure love, right? So love is soft. Makes you soft. And, as soft, it can be disposable. Or is it?
Your job is to be an orange
“While the client always wants to level the playing field and compare “apples to apples,” your job is to be an orange. Do everything you can to show why you’re different.” Tim Williams Be the orange when they’re trying to compare apples. Be a square showing your edge, in a world full of circles. When they’re waiting for you to convince them, show them the way they can do best —even if that means it’s not you who does the gig. When they’re waiting for more of the same, bring the surprise. And…
Repeating yourself
To be a “thought leader”, they say you need to be authentic, original and come up with new, innovative, disruptive ideas that no one has ever said before. That you can’t repeat yourself. Buillshit. It’s fine to repeat yourself. In fact, do that. Like in music, add some new riffs, new instruments, new versions, new interpretations. Say the same thing, in as many ways as you can. You’ll find new angles, new holes to fill, new spaces to leave, new ways to see. Just like a song and its own…
Surprise
To Sting, the essence of all music is surprise. Sting. Interview w/ Rick Beato. And in business, it goes the same way: the essence of all (meaningful) business is surprise. Marty Neumeier in his book Metaskills sustains: “While it’s possible to define beauty, it can’t be reduced to a pat formula for the simple reason that one of the components of beauty is surprise. In everything we experience as beautiful, there is a moment of surprise when we first encounter it. If there’s no surprise,…