Real Relationships Real Revenue - Video Edition | Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career

Mo asks David Burkus: How do we develop and deepen relationships when everything is virtual? A study showed that the average person’s network shrunk by 25% to 30% over the first half of 2020. That decrease was almost entirely driven by males because of the general tendency for men to bond over activities. We tried to recreate these activities virtually but it doesn’t work the same way. When you’re looking to use a tool like Zoom to deepen a relationship, it requires more structure. You have to show up with questions and a level of conversation designed to deepen the relationship. Work sprints are another option, which are scheduled times where you complete your work in a meeting environment to emulate the coworking space. In addition to these activities, you can also introduce rituals into your team communication to deepen the connection. Between structured conversations that explore non-work topics and physical things like rituals, we can go pretty far in deepening relationships in a remote working environment. The questions don’t matter as much as having a plan and being intentional. Asking questions that are open-ended and answered in a work or non-work context is a good start. One of David’s favorite questions is “Who is your favorite superhero?” No matter what the answer is, you will learn something interesting about the other person. The more you know about someone, the more reason you have to follow up with them and find you have something in common.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com davidburkus.com

Mo asks David Burkus: How can we create demand and get deals done virtually? The traditional method of closing a deal usually involved meeting clients in person but it wasn’t the activity itself that determined the failure or success of the deal. It was the whitespace around the meeting that built the bonds that led to trust. Most people don’t build that into their virtual meetings, which is something that we really need to do. You build trust and bonds in the unstructured, open space around the meeting time and you need to build that into remote environments. What are the white space moments that built relationships in person and how can you recreate those experiences in your remote working environment? To allow people to get to know each other, give them space to ask questions and get answers. Structure some questions to allow people to learn about each other and in a way where everyone has the opportunity to share a problem they are facing. One of the best questions you can ask is “If you and I are meeting again a year from now over a bottle of Champagne, what are we celebrating?”     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com davidburkus.com

Mo asks David Burkus: How do you develop relationships with your clients virtually? The future of work is working from anywhere. The truth is that we are not going back to the office. Even before the pandemic, studies were showing that people are more engaged when they are out of the office 40% to 60% of the time. We need greater flexibility, trust, and autonomy with the people that we collaborate with in a remote environment. Communication is actually more important now that it was before. We can’t take as many non-verbal cues as we could when we were working together, so we need to be more deliberate and empathetic in our communication. One of the first things we need to be doing with prospective clients is talking about how we are going to be working together. This is now part of the process of closing the deal. One major tip is that eye contact is not eye contact when you’re communicating online. You have to look into the camera lens to recreate the experience and connection of eye contact. The other thing to realize is that communication is more asynchronous than ever before. Make sure you have clear writing and thinking in your written communication. You also have to be clear about what each method of communication is meant for. To enroll clients, the easiest way is to have an established communications system within your team already. Create a team-working agreement and then use that to create the framework of client communication. Schedule a meeting to create your team-working agreement, and get answers to all of the questions written down into a shared document. Then get every team member to agree.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com davidburkus.com

Mike Michalowicz delivers a powerful message that entrepreneurs and business development professionals need to hear. Learn some incredible hacks you can use right now to deepen your business relationships, identify exactly what you should be working on to make the greatest impact, and learn how to multiply your best clients and grow your book of business exponentially.   Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: Why do you have to start with sales? Sales create cash for a business. We usually start a business to create financial freedom, and to get there we need sales, but sales are not sufficient in themselves. They are the foundation to the Business Hierarchy of Needs. If you realize and feel that your offering is superior to your competitor’s, then you have an obligation to sell it. If your prospect goes with the competitor, they are getting an inferior offering. Making your clients aware of your offer and putting it in front of them is the best way to serve them. Not selling your offering is doing them a disservice. Just like people, businesses have a hierarchy of needs as well. Foundationally, we need sales because it creates cash. Once we’ve got sales we need to extract that cash to bring about stability, also known as profit. Once you have that addressed, you need to create efficiency and order. The level above that is impact, and it’s where your business goes from being about transactions to becoming about transformation. The final level is legacy, which is where the work you are doing is so important that it must continue for generations. The hierarchy functions like a pyramid, where if you want to grow, you need to expand the sales base.   Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: What’s the number one thing people can do to get more yeses? The most powerful concept is client cloning. We need to focus on our best clients and identify what we know about them. Then you develop an avatar around those attributes and go to where those people congregate. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. We have to concentrate our efforts on the areas and mediums where our best clients are so we can get in front of them. Once you begin cloning your best clients, it also brings a new level of efficiency to your business. You work with similar clients in similar situations, and the resolution becomes consistently the same, which elevates your ability to scale. People are looking to know, like, and trust you, and selling right off the bat is not the best approach. Educational marketing is the most effective method to build the rapport you need to land clients and once they are ready to make a decision on someone to do it for them they will pick you. When you have people that are intrigued and interested in what you do, have a clear, concise and reasonable next step for them to do.   Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How can we use your framework to deepen our most important business relationships? The easiest way to connect with your client is to learn the language that they use. Ask your best clients what you are doing right, and they will tell you what they judge you on. The thing you do right is actually the thing you need to improve most to create an extraordinary relationship. Deepen your relationships by doing the right thing better. Your clients will tell you exactly what they need if you ask them. You can ask what you’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to get the truth if there’s a potential confrontation. Instead, ask what’s wrong with your industry. You’ll be surprised by what you hear. Ask your clients about what other vendors they depend on too, and then go and deepen those relationships. Tap into the vendor wealth that surrounds your clients.   Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How do we hack our habits so we keep evolving and getting better? The first thing you do in the day is the most impactful. Sadly, most people open their email first which then dictates their behavior. You need to time block the first part of your morning to focus on your most important work. Don’t do anything like email which can divert you from the path. Any time you want to fix or improve a single thing, you need to focus on it exclusively each day until that one project is done. Use the momentum effect to your advantage. It’s actually the discipline of not doing that will actually result in more effective action. Even a 15-minute block of time at the very beginning of your day will yield positive results and make it easier to get the momentum going. If you want to strengthen a chain, focus on the weakest link. If you fix that, the strength of the whole chain gets elevated and you can focus on the next weak link. We can be so much more efficient if we just focus on one thing at a time.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mike Michalowicz. There is the evolution of a business that can be broken down. You don’t want to focus on the higher level elements until addressing the foundations. This is where the Business Hierarchy of Needs comes in. The foundation of any business that’s service based is sales. You have to get good at business development, if you don’t you will stagnate and fall back. Once you start getting money in the door, you can start thinking about profit and efficiency. Then the next step is making the biggest impact on the people you serve that you can. You can then focus on the legacy of the business so that you can leave the world in a better state than you found it in. Business development is the foundation, but it’s also intertwined with each level and constantly revisited. The three questions for clients is a great framework for identifying how you can deepen your relationship with them. “What am I doing right?”, “What’s wrong with our industry?”, and “What other vendors/partners do you depend on?”. By systematizing those three questions you have an excellent process for identifying where to focus on next. Focus on one project at a time, even if you have multiple projects you’re working on over a given time period. It can play off your grand overarching strategy in the long term, but you have to pull those big things down to one specific task and focus on that to completion.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mike Michalowicz. There is the evolution of a business that can be broken down. You don’t want to focus on the higher level elements until addressing the foundations. This is where the Business Hierarchy of Needs comes in. The foundation of any business that’s service based is sales. You have to get good at business development, if you don’t you will stagnate and fall back. Once you start getting money in the door, you can start thinking about profit and efficiency. Then the next step is making the biggest impact on the people you serve that you can. You can then focus on the legacy of the business so that you can leave the world in a better state than you found it in. Business development is the foundation, but it’s also intertwined with each level and constantly revisited. The three questions for clients is a great framework for identifying how you can deepen your relationship with them. “What am I doing right?”, “What’s wrong with our industry?”, and “What other vendors/partners do you depend on?”. By systematizing those three questions you have an excellent process for identifying where to focus on next. Focus on one project at a time, even if you have multiple projects you’re working on over a given time period. It can play off your grand overarching strategy in the long term, but you have to pull those big things down to one specific task and focus on that to completion.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How do we hack our habits so we keep evolving and getting better? The first thing you do in the day is the most impactful. Sadly, most people open their email first which then dictates their behavior. You need to time block the first part of your morning to focus on your most important work. Don’t do anything like email which can divert you from the path. Any time you want to fix or improve a single thing, you need to focus on it exclusively each day until that one project is done. Use the momentum effect to your advantage. It’s actually the discipline of not doing that will actually result in more effective action. Even a 15-minute block of time at the very beginning of your day will yield positive results and make it easier to get the momentum going. If you want to strengthen a chain, focus on the weakest link. If you fix that, the strength of the whole chain gets elevated and you can focus on the next weak link. We can be so much more efficient if we just focus on one thing at a time.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: How can we use your framework to deepen our most important business relationships? The easiest way to connect with your client is to learn the language that they use. Ask your best clients what you are doing right, and they will tell you what they judge you on. The thing you do right is actually the thing you need to improve most to create an extraordinary relationship. Deepen your relationships by doing the right thing better. Your clients will tell you exactly what they need if you ask them. You can ask what you’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to get the truth if there’s a potential confrontation. Instead, ask what’s wrong with your industry. You’ll be surprised by what you hear. Ask your clients about what other vendors they depend on too, and then go and deepen those relationships. Tap into the vendor wealth that surrounds your clients.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: What’s the number one thing people can do to get more yeses? The most powerful concept is client cloning. We need to focus on our best clients and identify what we know about them. Then you develop an avatar around those attributes and go to where those people congregate. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. We have to concentrate our efforts on the areas and mediums where our best clients are so we can get in front of them. Once you begin cloning your best clients, it also brings a new level of efficiency to your business. You work with similar clients in similar situations, and the resolution becomes consistently the same, which elevates your ability to scale. People are looking to know, like, and trust you, and selling right off the bat is not the best approach. Educational marketing is the most effective method to build the rapport you need to land clients and once they are ready to make a decision on someone to do it for them they will pick you. When you have people that are intrigued and interested in what you do, have a clear, concise and reasonable next step for them to do.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Mo asks Mike Michalowicz: Why do you have to start with sales? Sales create cash for a business. We usually start a business to create financial freedom, and to get there we need sales, but sales are not sufficient in themselves. They are the foundation to the Business Hierarchy of Needs. If you realize and feel that your offering is superior to your competitor’s, then you have an obligation to sell it. If your prospect goes with the competitor, they are getting an inferior offering. Making your clients aware of your offer and putting it in front of them is the best way to serve them. Not selling your offering is doing them a disservice. Just like people, businesses have a hierarchy of needs as well. Foundationally, we need sales because it creates cash. Once we’ve got sales we need to extract that cash to bring about stability, also known as profit. Once you have that addressed, you need to create efficiency and order. The level above that is impact, and it’s where your business goes from being about transactions to becoming about transformation. The final level is legacy, which is where the work you are doing is so important that it must continue for generations. The hierarchy functions like a pyramid, where if you want to grow, you need to expand the sales base.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com fixthisnext.com

Josh Linkner shares why tiny innovations can yield oversized results for business development professionals and how small experiments can lead to game-changing breakthroughs. Learn why you should never forget the dinner mint when interacting with prospects and clients, how to run mini experiments, and how to boost your business development efforts with a little dash of creativity.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: What is your big idea on how listeners can focus on business development, grow their book of business and relationships, and grow their careers? Josh’s big idea is actually a little idea. We don’t need to bet everything on a single idea because innovation isn’t restricted to billion dollar ideas that change the world. When we think of creativity as small little acts or micro innovations it becomes more accessible, less risky, and actually builds additional skills over time. Many professionals struggle with doing any business development at all. The work always seems to get in the way and breaking it down to little acts makes it much more likely you will get things done and see actual results. Little acts of innovation could be changing up the form of your prospecting email or experimenting with the way you run a sales meeting. It’s small adjustments or counter intuitive acts of creativity that unlocks big results. Josh tells the story of how his relatively small business landed a $30 million contract by a simple act of innovation and everyday kindness. Look for anything you can test within your business processes because business development isn’t a mysterious skill you need to learn; it’s just a series of small experiments. One of the techniques that Josh uses to initiate innovation is the Judo flip. Look at the prevailing approaches in your industry and think about what the polar opposite might be.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can professionals use the concepts of Big Little Breakthroughs to close more business? In the research for the book, Josh uncovered eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. One mindset in particular is called “Don’t forget the dinner mint.” For a business development person, adding a little creative flourish to each interaction you have in the course of business. A small 5% increase in effort can generate disproportionate outcomes. If you’re pitching your services to a prospect, before you hit the send button, think about what extra you can add that is unexpected. It could be an extra feature or shorter delivery time. Every single touchpoint or interaction with a prospect is an opportunity to add a little extra. Every extra touch can drive a significant impact in terms of your overall results. It doesn’t always have to take the form of an extra service; it could also take the form of a unique experience. The dinner mint strategy can also help differentiate your business from other service providers. Another idea has to do with the notion of experimenting being very provocative. What if every week you ran five little experiments in your business processes? This is how you can find tiny innovations without risking too much, and if you land on a winner, you can expand it out once you have enough data to justify it. Instead of thinking you need to come up with one idea to transform your business, what if you came up with three smaller ideas each week? When you break them down into smaller bets, it’s much less risky and you increase the odds of winning over the long-term. Your creativity is more like your weight than your height. You can adjust your weight with your behavior and your creativity works the same way.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How do we use the Big Little Breakthrough concepts to deepen relationships? Creativity and innovation are tools that we use to focus on product development or marketing, but they also apply to relationships. In a relationship setting, think about the other person’s big problem and about how to solve their issue. The more you fall in love with your client’s problems, and the more they view you as someone who is aligned with them, the relationship becomes transformed. Mo had a similar experience with a lawyer friend he had where he had to have a difficult conversation with her but the end result was that it completely changed her career trajectory. Feedback is a gift. If you care about somebody you have to be willing to have hard conversations with them. If you do, you demonstrate that you care about them and that deepens the relationship. Failure is a part of life, in terms of relationships, those are opportunities to deepen relationships. Owning your mistakes and doing what it takes to make it right is how you show integrity in relationships. Doing a feedback session after a loss sets up the next win. Even when you win, there is an opportunity to ask for feedback on how to improve. This shows that you are always working on your game and are committed to over delivering. This takes your relationship from transactional to one of substance.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can we hack our habits with Big Little Breakthroughs? The short-term tends to scream the loudest, to the detriment of the long-term. Over the next 12 months, if all you do is what you’ve done before, you're likely to fall about 30% short of the results you could have achieved. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still. Think of your effort, time, and energy in the same way that you do as your stock portfolio. You wouldn’t take all your money and invest it entirely in one stock. The same principle has to apply to your time. It’s important to carve out some of your schedule to be strategic and think about the future. Some day a company will come along and put you out of business, it might as well be you. A constant stream of reinvention allows you to control at least some of the inevitable disruption that will happen to your business. The first thing is to try a 5% adjustment. Carve out just two hours each week for the next four weeks where you’re not going to do anything tactical and only focus on heads-up strategic thinking. Josh has issued this challenge to thousands of people around the world and found they experienced a 0% decline in productivity but by the end of the 30 day period, most people report that those two hours are the most productive time they spend. Use your creativity to solve your short-term problem and it will, in turn, solve your long-term problem. The first thing you need to do is challenge the assumption that it’s impossible to be more efficient or to find space to commit to head-up thinking. Creatively rebalancing your calendar and creating an untouchable day or untouchable morning can make a huge difference. If we want certain desired outcomes, it’s the rituals and rewards that will support them. If you need help saying no, make a list of things you are going to stop doing. Having a simple framework (Think, Do, Feel) can help you benchmark things against so you will make better choices.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Linkner. Don’t forget the dinner mint. Don’t forget to add an element of surprise and delight for each interaction you have with a prospect or client. That tiny amount of extra effort often has an outsized impact on the end result. There was a study that showed the effect of different ways of adding dinner mints to people’s meals and they found some pretty interesting results. Little good things have a big weight because they are unexpected. When you add up the little surprises and delights, they can outweigh the inevitable bad experiences. The most valuable things you can do are things that help your client succeed, both on a professional level and a personal level. These could be little ways to innovate the delivery or make the experience a little more unique. You could also improve the process or offer them additional information or connections. Tweaking the way you do things and measuring the results can lead to incredible breakthroughs. One example is the way that Mo offered webinars and follow up content. One simple tweak led to 10x times the result. Small, low risk experiments in each area of your business will yield some incredible results. Not everything will succeed, but that’s why they’re small. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. What can you deliver that will be streamlined and effective, but also unique? A simple improvement would be to describe what you do in your client’s language instead of your own. A little extra effort in the delivery and presenting the solution in the client’s own language will make it feel completely unique to them and create a much more memorable experience with your business.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com