Building klt through emotional connection with your team

Great article by Melissa Smith - building klt through deep and meaningful with her team 

It occurred to me today that if anyone else was looking in on my team eating lunch, they would have either thought that our relationship was weird or would have been outraged by the level of personal conversations taking place on every topic imaginable.

We have gone through periods where we have been very close to our team, and other times where we have been burned once too often and have set up structures to ensure that we don't discuss anything other than work and the mandatory "what I did on the weekend" conversations.

For kicks, today we chatted about the things we liked about each other. Instead of being what most people say, it was deep...very deep. For instance, one person said that they liked how everyone including management have each other's back and they had never experienced that before. Another said that our team was their family, and I was like their Mom. 

While leaders are meant to inspire and that definitely was a common thread, we try and get real with our team and have conversations that may be uncomfortable but act as a release. One lovely employee talked about how bullying at high school affected her even now. Another about the issues associated with coming to terms with their sexual preferences. I talked about my desire to have a family by myself through IVF and how my dog dying is going to be worse than anything else I have experienced.

Tears often well in our eyes when we go through something deep and personal but it is by choice that these conversations occur, not because a consultant has come in and asked us to "share". 

Some would say it's too much, other's would say it's refreshing. Who is right and who is wrong? Only time will tell.

Unsuccessful Sales Speak

John Dean - (JD) will inspire , enthuse and engage you and your team to become a more effective sales machine. 

We look forward to hear him speak next Thursday 17 October at our Innovation forum.

Below is a great article of his talking about Unsuccesful sales speak and the 5 things you can do to create more effective sales people in your team.

There is a language that unsuccessful sales people have. They use it to diffuse the scent, and ask management to suspend judgement about their performance. And for some reason Sales Managers fall for it, "better the devil we know, cost of finding someone else, upsetting the apple cart...." whatever it is it doesn't make sense!

The language can also be described as having a victim mentality. There is a tendancy to blame many things and never take responsibility for a lost deal. In talking to tens of thousands of sales people I have only ever heard once, one person say that they were to blame for a poor result.

Here are the signs your sales team are doormats that your prospects walk all over.

They tend to answer a question (about deal qualification) with such a long, and irrelevant answer such that everyone forgets the original question.

The pipeline is 10 x the sales target with mostly new opportunities that haven't even been met yet. (They will not sack me if my pipeline is strong).

Responses like..

• "They will buy next month..."
• "It was price, we were too expensive"
• "We lost on functionality"
• "We are just waiting for one more signature"
• "We need a better website" (I actually heard this in a sales meeting).

If you recognise this language what should you do about it? Every situation is different but here are some ideas...

1. Conduct a review of one opportunity. Ask them to tell you about any prospect. See how long they speak for. Rough rule, the longer they speak, the more they know, the better they are
2. Go on a sales call with them (coaching call), see how much they talk vs listen (As a guide, listening and questioning - 70%, speaking - 30%)
3.  Prepare a Performance Improvement Plan - a plan to help them improve the situation.
4. Buddy them up with a high performer.
5. Get sales training, or organise a coach for them.

Join us next Thursday with JD Dean 

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/bsi-innovation-forum-powered-by-bbg-tickets-50474712223

Testimonials for accountants

The 10X IP opportunities for accountants

Spark - the fuel for Business

Venture Capital in Australia: Spark - the fuel for Business: Some amazing Articles by Business Owners and Leaders keen to share their knowledge Which is your favourite article?

Great summary of how to 10X

16 types of posts that work well on LinkedIn

Mark White  shares his knowledge 

Foundation Posts

Foundation posts - or  "Pillar" posts -  focus on the key subject areas that you want to communicate to your connections and potential prospect.

 Given their importance, they are likely to be longer than other posts, quite focused in the content and, more often than not, will contain tips or practical advice centred around your main topics.

The post is a summary of the main post  and  should contain a link through to the full article ... perhaps added in the 1st comment if we are to play the algorithm a little!

2. Expertise Sharing

 Share information on important topics relating to your expertise, with each post focusing on a particular aspect of that topic.

Creates trust in your ability . 

3. Lists

Lists get a lot of information over in a short space of time. People can dip in and out as they see fit, so these are also the type of post that often gets referred to and shared across social media and beyond.

4. News Delivery / Reporting / News Breaking

On the spot and sharing  news and information that we have found with our connections. 

You want to become the go to person 

Try and add your own prrsoective to the story.

5. Guides / Instructional

“How to” guide is an excellent way of passing on information and creating something which has the ability to get real engagement. 

Dependent on what your topic is, the power of video is undeniable particularly if you are showing something practical, so think about whether a text based post or a video - or a mix of the two - would be the best format. If they are short, then you might post as a 'native video' which LinkedIn currently favours, but for longer ones, linking back to a nicely set up Channel page on YouTube or Vimeo can be really effective.  

6. Link Baiting

A  contentious or provocative post to incite people to read and comment - its sole goal is to provoke a reaction and generate comments and engagement.

7. Surveys & Polls

Facts and figures lend weight to an argument and by using figures from a recent survey or report and then adding your own commentary, can be really powerful.

8. Article Reply

So you've seen something that caught your attention on some one else's feed or website and perhaps even left a comment on it but you want to expand on that. The length of comments is limited on LinkedIn (though more than enough for most) but sometimes you may want to expand on those initial thoughts and embellish with images etc.

Great, write a post which references the original but then goes on to either develop and expand on the points it makes, or to counter them. You can then reference the original to engage with the author and, if you wished, also go back and edit your original reply and link to your own post.

9. Rants

Never get abusive or personal, but if you write about something that really bugs you and you believe is worth sharing, then this can come over very powerfully in a post. It adds to the 3D view of you, the person, and helps tell your connections or prospects something more about you. Hey, we also like a little bit of Victor Meldrew, letting off steam now and again.

10. Industry Commentary

You are going to be well placed to pass on information about what is happening in your industry and how events are likely to effect your connections and other players in it. So make sure that you become the person that people turn to when they want to get informed opinion about what’s going on by delivering posts which report on developments in your industry.

Clearly, you will quite possibly be aware of what's going on in any case because those are the circles you move in, but I also find that a simple tool like setting up a Google Alert for certain relevant keyword phrases is also a great way of listening to what is being talked about and reported. 

11. Conferences / Exhibitions / Seminars

A great way of getting across information and sharing with a larger audience is to take information from a conference and report back via a post or series of posts. This could be your own conference or one that you are attending as a delegate – beforehand, highlight that you will be there (and willing to meet up no doubt) and then feed back what you found interesting or particularly useful.

If you are in a position to also comment on say the keynote speakers, highlighting a couple of key takeaways for you from their talk then that again allows you to associate yourself with those ideas and will also be of great value to those who were unable to attend in person.  

(LinkIn the speaker and message him/her asking if that’s ok)

12. Company Specific

There may be some specific news about your company which will be of interest to your readers, perhaps new capacity, extra staff or additional clients, all of which reflect favourably on you and your business. A constant stream of these might be considered unimaginative and prove boring, but the occasional one thrown in adds to the information pool your readers have about you.

13. Press Releases

If you believe that it is relevant and interesting to your readers then there is no harm in putting PR information 

A recent additional to the functional side of LinkedIn means that you can also add a document to a post - simply text on a page doesn't work wonderfully well from a visual perspective but does allow people to download it which can have its benefits.

14. Links / Signpost Post

There's always going to be information that you have unearthed during the course of the week that you'd like to share and is useful to your readers, but which doesn't suit a full post on its own. So create a post with a series of links to articles, information sources, new stories etc. with just a short one line commentary on each.

(Ik - I have Spark - from paper.li - it’s really cool - https://paper.li/bsivc/1372196625#/

15. Reviews

A review might be of a book or white paper, or perhaps of a service or product which is relevant to your connections allowing you to give your own opinion on it and then open it to the floor and get your connections' opinions as well. 

Of course, as they give them they will also distribute the content to their networks as well which has great value too. 

16. Video or Podcast

It's become really easy to integrate either podcasts or videos clips into your posts and they are also a great way to offer something a little extra to your readers. Ideally make them your own but you can of course embed videos from sites like YouTube that you believe would be beneficial

. If you put commentary around them, potentially captions and a transcript for your own, then you'll take the value on the post up a notch as well.

Of course, a post doesn't need to fall into just a single category this one, for example, is clearly a list post but I would like to think also falls into the area of expertise sharing. At the end of the day, focus on what will appeal to your readers (you could always ask then what they are looking for!?) but hopefully you’ll find some ideas here to be going on with!