How to Succeed at Cold calling

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post called, “How to Waste Your Time When Cold Calling.” It sparked some conversation and several people asked me what they CAN do to improve their cold calling efforts.

So, here are 9 things you can do that will help you achieve better results when making cold calls. Please note that this is for B2B sales situation and not mass calls in a business-to-consumer setting.

1. Target your cold calls

The first and most important way to succeed at cold calling is to use a targeted list. Flipping through the telephone book or picking up the telephone to dial for dollars is not an effective way to prospect via telephone.

People who achieve the best results use a carefully targeted list of companies who have used or need their product, service or solution. Ask any cold calling expert and they will tell you that the quality of your list with have a direct impact on your results.

2. Research before you cold call

Once you have a good list of companies to contact, you need to do a bit of research. This research will help you determine the best approach to take and how to capture your contact’s attention.

For example, as a sales trainer, if I learned that a company recently downsized their sales team, I would use this information to craft my opening.

3. Refine your cold call opening

Your opening needs to be short, concise and to the point while also demonstrating how your prospect might benefit from your offering.

If we use my example from the previous point, my opening might sound something like, “Mr. Jones, Kelley Robertson from Fearless Selling calling. I read in the national paper that you just laid-off one-third of your sales force. Our research has shown that companies often experience an immediate decline in morale when this happens and their sales suffer as a result. What’s your experience been so far?”

The key is to open quickly and keep your opening as short as possible…ideally no longer than 20-25 seconds at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace.

4. Avoid the pitch

If you noticed, I didn’t immediately launch into a pitch about my services or what I do. Instead, I gave my opening and followed it by a question.

Now, the chances are my prospect will ask, “What do you do?” or “Who are you?” or something similar before answering my question.

Don’t get tricked into talking about yourself yet!

Instead, give a brief reply and ask your question again.

“I specialize in helping companies keep their sales team motivated and up-to-date with the latest selling strategies. When I saw that you had downsized I thought it would be appropriate to contact you. How has your team’s morale been since the lay-offs?”

5. Speak slower during your cold call

Most of the sales people who call my office tend to speak to quickly and they also change their tone while calling.

When you slow down your pace you come across more natural and your tone will become more conversational. Plus, it makes it much easier for your prospect to understand you.

6. Engage them

One of the keys to cold calling is to engage people in a conversation and the most effective way to achieve that is to ask questions.

However, you need to lead into your questions and start with softer questions. You can’t open a conversation by asking, “So, what are the three biggest challenges you face right now?”

You need to demonstrate to your prospect that having a conversation with you will be worth their time.

7. “Send me information”

Many prospects will say, “Send me information” in an effort to end the call. However, before you agree to this, you need to ask at least one more question.

Sending generic information will not close a deal for you so I suggest that you say, “I’d be more than happy to send you information. What exactly do you need to see?”

8. Use a referral

It is much more effective to connect with a prospect if you both know someone in common. Whenever possible, use your existing network to connect with new prospects.

It’s all about the numbers

Regardless of how you slice or dice it, cold calling is a numbers game. Recognize that the majority of calls you make will NOT result in a sale.

9. Start cold calling immediately

Very few sales people enjoy cold calling so they procrastinate and work on other tasks.

However, it is much more effective to get started first thing in the morning because it creates momentum and gets the unpleasant task out of the way.

Set a goal of making a certain number of calls or booking a specific number of appointments and don’t quit until you achieve that goal. If you’re new at this, set small, attainable goals and gradually work your way towards larger, more challenging targets.

 

Cold calling is still an effective way to generate new sales leads and revenues. Use the ideas in this post to improve your results and stop wasting your time.

 

Faking it?

You have probably heard the saying, “Fake it until you make it.” This expression suggests that you should fake something until it actually happens or comes true.

I don’t disagree with this…at least not for some things…

There have been times that I have been sick on the day of a presentation and I kept telling myself, “I feel great. I feel great. I feel great.” And when it came time to deliver my speech, I did feel better.

I have experienced days when I was wasn’t feeling tremendously confident but I changed my body positioning and tone of voice, and a little while later, my confidence level improved.

However, sometimes faking it isn’t the best approach.

A few days ago, my wife and I were taking a walk through our neighborhood and we came across a property whose owner had replaced the grass on his front yard with artificial turf.

That’s right…artificial turf!

I’m not sure what his rationale was but replacing real grass with fake grass just didn’t work. His lawn stood out—and not in a good way!

Unfortunately, some sales people still think that faking it is an effective sales strategy.

In my profession as a sales trainer, I have encountered sales people who say, “If you don’t know the answer to someone’s question, just fake it” or “Baffle them with B.S.” or “Tell them what they want to hear” or even “They don’t know so it doesn’t matter what I tell them.”

I once heard someone say, “If you never lie to a prospect you will never have to remember what you said.”

I think that’s wise advice.

It may be tempting to pretend that you know something, but in the long run, your prospects will find out that you don’t. It is much more effective to say, “I’m not sure about that, let me find out and I’ll get back to you.”

Faking it can be a great way to improve your mental outlook or break out of a slump. But it is not an effective approach to use when engaged in sales conversations with your prospects and customers.

via Blog | Fearless Selling Kelley Robertson – Part 2.

The End of Relationship Selling

I am not going to sugarcoat this, and I am not going to be polite.

All of this talk about the end of relationship selling is pure, unadulterated hogwash. While those that declare relationship selling to be dead shout louder, ignore their words. They couldn’t be more wrong.

You will hurt yourself and your sales by believing and acting on this horrid and horrible idea. Relationships are an essential part of winning an opportunity. They are also the biggest part of retaining your clients.

Where the Critics Are Right (and Wrong)

There are two reasons that the critics bash relationship selling.

The first reason critics bash relationship selling is that too many sales people believe that a warm, friendly relationship is enough to win and sustain client relationships. The critics are correct; it isn’t enough. Your relationship must be built on the firm foundation of your ability to continually create value for your client.

The critics mistakenly suggest that relationships and value creation are mutually exclusive. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the stronger your relationship, the greater the likelihood that you will be trusted to sell the ideas that create value, especially the big ideas that lead your client.

The second reason the critics are crooked on relationships is because so many salespeople avoid the necessary conflict that accompanies selling. These salespeople are conflict averse. And again the critics are correct.

But the critics of relationship selling make the mistake of believing that a warm relationship and an ability to deal effectively with conflict are mutually exclusive, that they can’t exist in the same body at the same time. But relationships and conflict aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, a strong relationship improves the odds of a conflict being successfully resolved. Wouldn’t you want a strong relationship going into a conflict? Wouldn’t you want to have a relationship that could withstand a nasty issue?

What Is and What Isn’t a Relationship

A personal friendship is a surely a relationship, but it doesn’t rise to the level of an effective sales relationship. Your warm, friendly, personal relationship must be coupled with an equal or greater amount of value creation.

If your personal relationship means that you can’t effectively manage the conflicts that accompany selling, then you don’t have an effective sales relationship. One who can’t deal with conflict in sales is an order-taker.

An effective selling relationship is personal, professional, value creating, and built on trust. If you would be a trusted advisor, you are going to have to deal with conflict, and you are going to have to have the relationships to withstand those conflicts. If you are going to be a Level Four Value Creator, you are going to need the relationships that allow you to act as part of your client’s management team, and your clients don’t want people on their team with whom they don’t have great relationships.

You can make a lot of mistakes and still win in sales. Believing that you can go without relationships isn’t one of them. In a time when so many people are behaving like sales is transactional, swim against the current and build the deep relationships that success is built on.

All things being equal, relationships win. All things being unequal, relationships still probably win.

Questions

Are your relationships important to selling effectively?

Can you have a personal, warm, friendly relationship with your client and still sell effectively? Can you have that relationship and still create value?

Do your relationships enable you to effectively deal with conflict, or do they cause you to avoid conflict?

At the time of your dream client’s decision, would you rather have a strong personal and professional relationship, or would you rather just try to sell the value you create?

Have you ever lost a deal that you should have won because your competitor had the relationship? Have you ever won a deal that you should have lost because your competitor had a strong relationship?

 

4 Tips for Effective Pre-Call Sales Planning

Stymied about what to say when you contact a prospect?

It’s especially tough if you feel like you don’t know enough about their organization to craft a relevant message. Recently, Katrina wrote to me about her frustration with pre-call sales planning:

“In your books, you talk about the importance of doing research prior to contacting a prospect. I’m having a hard time with that. I sell to marketing departments. But since companies don’t share that information publicly, it’s really tough to find out what issues they have. What should I do?”

She’s right. It’s virtually impossible to find that kind of information online. Companies don’t want to have their problems exposed to the public unless absolutely necessary.

4 Tips for Pre-Call Sales Planning

If you consistently sell to the same decision makers, make assumptions. Assume that they have similar objectives and face similar challenges as your existing clients. For example, most marketers today are under intense pressure to bring in more high quality leads or to justify their marketing spend. My Buyer’s Matrix is an excellent tool to help you outline the challenges your prospect is facing. (Click here to download it for free.)

If you typically sell to certain industries, immerse yourself in them. Join their associations, attend their meetings, get their newsletters and dig into their websites. Another great resource for learning more is via LinkedIn groups. You’ll find groups focused on certain industries as well as job positions. Personally, I belong to groups for VP’s of Sales just so I can keep up-to-date.

Prep some questions ahead of time to ensure you learn what’s top-of-mind for your prospect. Use your assumptions and what you’ve learned in your immersion as a starting point. When you actually meet with prospects you’ll want to find out their perspectives on these important topics.

Don’t be afraid of not knowing everything. No one expects it. They just want you to be knowledgeable and show you’ve done your homework.

 

If Winning Isn’t Everything, Then What Is?

Topping the leaderboard. Being first to complete a mission. Earning the most points. Much of the current talk around enterprise gamification understandably focuses on competition and status as the primary human drivers of an effective gamified experience inside corporations.

But new data suggests it may be time to start challenging that notion.

Yes, it’s true that a desire for mastery and tangible rewards are key human motivators. These drivers grab the brain’s attention, focus its energies and inspire repeat performance. And this effect absolutely can be amplified when employees are able to compare their performance to others and compete within the same experience.

The question is: are these the most important behavioral drivers? Not so much, according to new research by The Maritz Institute:

In a recent U.S.-based employee study, we found that the most engaged employees work for companies they perceive to value “self-expression” in the form of self-direction, stimulation, and universalism. Yet, this constituted only 21% of the organizations. The least engaged employees work for companies they perceive to value “self-enhancement” in the form of achievement, power, and conformity. This constituted 60% of the organizations.

These insights are reinforced by the findings of the World Values Survey. It shows that as more workers are lifted out of poverty and the world becomes an increasingly connected place, values globally are shifting away from material gain and toward self-expression. Business that want to succeed in the new normal should be paying close attention to this trend.

So, what does this mean for your employee engagement strategy? One guide might be The Maritz Institute’s re-imagining of Maslow’s well accepted, but (IMHO) slightly tired, Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. In their revised model, the desire for self-expression sits on high, trumping the desires for material success and basic security. This says to me that while generalized competition and rewards can be part of effective engagement design, an exceptional gamified experience will focus even more on the top of the pyramid, where personal meaning, collaboration and trust-building within the organization are the most critical drivers.

This can show up in your engagement design in three key ways:

Personalized Missions – One-size-fits all really means challenges that fit no one. Recognize that you have noobs and experts, thinkers and doers, and that your sales people and your IT team have different needs and values. Creating missions that are personally meaningful to them and their work will have a far greater impact than asking everyone to do the same thing.

Group Challenges – Collective action is a significant part of the global shift toward self-expression. Be sure you can create challenges that require the effort of every member of a team to complete, or which encourage different parts of the company to form spontaneous teams working together in order to level up. And if you still want competition in the mix, encourage competition between teams while your encouraging collaboration within them.

Choice – The human brain uses iterative processing cycles and feedback loops to explore options and make choices that match personal values. This means we attach more strongly to that which we choose, vs. that which is dictated to us. You’ll see more engagement when you offer employees a variety of challenges, mission types and rewards to select from, letting them be masters of their own destiny inside of a structured gamified experience.

Gamification is a proven tool for driving higher levels of engagement, but it’s a tool that will be most effective when applied with an understanding of the differing and shifting values of your employees. Simply put, figure out what winning really means to them and engagement will follow. Just don’t assume it always means topping the leaderboard

 

5 Reasons to Apply Gamification to Your Sales Team

don’t even like to call it a buzzword, because the idea of sales gamification is really grabbing hold. Where? See some examples of making it work are out there, like this, and this, and oh yeah that.   So how do you know if you could benefit from using gamification within your own sales team? Will it really make an impact, or just drive a short-term spike? Below are 5 reasons your sales organization may benefit from gamification:

1. Your Salespeople Are Competitive Beasts

Gamification helps you tap into the competitive nature of your salespeople by creating competition around the behaviors you need to motivate. Salespeople are often checking out the company sales reports to see where they stand relative to quota, and relative to their peers. That’s one of the main reasons you created sales dashboards in the first place – to provide visibility and keep people motivated. By applying gamification concepts within Salesforce.com, you can build competitions around just about any behavior you want. Just pick the activity you want to drive, and create a competition around it. The data is in your CRM, now you can reward people for it.

2. There’s Always Some Key Initiative

There are always times throughout the year that you need to drive specific activity from the sales team. Your base compensation plan should keep people motivated to sell and hit their goals. However, there is always some other specific behavior you are trying to get your team focused on. Maybe it’s taking a new product to market, making a few extra phone calls this week, following up on trade show leads more quickly, or booking more meetings. Your comp plan is focused on closing, but you can use gamification to point people toward some specific activity you need to motivate.

3. Your Sales Pipeline Has Inaccurate Data

Do your salespeople keep their opportunities updated? This is one of the biggest struggles for sales managers – having a solid view of the sales pipeline. Salespeople tend to do one of two things: Put opportunities into the system and then never update them until the deal is won or lost, or put opportunities in at late stages only before the deal is about to close. Both scenarios result in an inaccurate view of your business that you can’t take action on. So apply a little gamification to it – every time someone updates the close date or sales stage, give them a point. Every point is an entry to win, or whoever has the most points at the end of the month wins.

4. You Want to Drive Collaboration

Today’s sales organizations are more separated than ever before with folks working from home offices, or huddled behind their desks living in social media. By creating competitions around a key initiative, you rally everyone together around some specific objective. Everyone on the team can see a real time leaderboard on where they stand and how others are doing. This motivates people to want to learn from their peers to see what they are doing differently, and gives you a reason to talk about it in team meetings and one-on-one sessions.

5. To Make Your CRM More Interesting

All CRM systems could use a little creative boost. Applying gamification ideas keeps people inside of Salesforce.com. Since the competition is all tracked based on data in Salesforce, the sales team becomes motivated to keep their data updated and can be regularly reviewing the leaderboards and status updates on the competition.

The benefits of gamification will be unique to the environment and goals of each company. Have you applied gamification ideas to your own sales organization? What have you seen work?

 

8 Ways to Successfully Sell Using Social Media

There’s this age-old problem with selling: If we could only get more people to pay attention to us, we could build relationships that lead to sales.Fortunately, social media offers an amazing source of business opportunities. If you approach it the right way, you can build many relationships that could be crucial to your business growth and success.Check out this video to see the sales potential of social mediaThis article is about successfully “selling” with social media. I’ll explore how to achieve success with the “two people getting to know each other and starting up a conversation that might go somewhere” kind of selling.Here are 8 ways to strike up social media conversations with people you want to meet:

#1: Boil the Frog

There’s an old wives’ tale (some truth to it), that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will sense the heat and jump out. But put a frog in cool water and turn up the heat slowly and the frog will hardly notice.

When reaching out online to people you’d like to meet, don’t come on like gangbusters. Nothing screams “jump out of the hot pot” more than a blatant “let’s talk so I can sell you something” message.

Start cool and warm up slowly. Comment on their blog post. Retweet them thoughtfully. Compliment something they wrote. Become familiar to someone—even if they don’t engage you right away—and it’s more likely that they’ll engage you in the future.

For example, this person wrote to me personally, said something pleasant and left it there. Nice start!

Dr. Rachna Jain, who studies the psychology of social media, says, “When people see you more, they like you more. The shorthand is that familiarity breeds likeability.Especially if you’re seen as giving them value or good content or information.”

#2: Givers Gain

The world of social media changes faster than the Clippers change coaches. But some things never change—like the golden rule of networking (social or otherwise).

The golden rule? Givers gain. (Bet you figured that out from the section header.)

As Dr. Jain said, “…especially if you’re seen as giving them value or good content or information.” How? Share a white paper. Share a relevant piece of research. Invite them to a private local business event.

Remember, starting relationships can take many touches. Do this right, and people will perceive you as valuable even before you interact with them personally (which we’re getting to), and you boil the frog at the same time.

#3: Make Henry Kissinger Proud

There’s an old story that’s been told and retold about how Henry Kissinger approached getting the best out of his staff. Before reviewing anything from his people, he’d ask, “Before I look at this… is it your best work?“, and the staff would go back and keep working until they could say yes.

When reaching out through social media, give it your Henry Kissinger effort.

As president of a company and publisher of a reader publication (RainToday), we have about 150,000 subscribers and followers.  And they reach out to me fairly regularly and want to connect.

Many of them remain strangers because they made no effort to relate to me. A standard, “my products would be of value” overture does not catch anyone’s attention. No personalization… no genuine connection. Even something better than bad would be good.

#4: Be Brave

Call reluctance is common on the phone. It happens online, too. People don’t reach out online because of some kind of fear. “They won’t respond.” “They’ll say no.” “They’ll be angry with me.”

The fact of the matter is most customers believe salespeople don’t reach out enough. In the online world, there’s a heavy emphasis on the concept of inbound marketing. I think inbound marketing is a great approach. But that doesn’t mean proactive outreach—the online equivalent of cold-calling is either dead or bad. (By the way, cold-calling isn’t dead. See the research in Bloomberg Business Week from 2007. The 2010 study revealed the same thing.)

When you find a particular person you want to connect with, reach out.

As long as you keep points 1, 2 and 3 in mind, you’ll be fine. As business guru Wayne Gretzky said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Be brave. Take shots.

#5: Be Positive and Pleasant

When some people gear up their bravery for outreach, they think, “I’m about to reach out to a big-time person. I need to seem big time too!” So they puff out their chest and brag about how awesome they are.

Who made the rule that “important” people should be temperamental and full of themselves? Not endearing. I’ve had the good fortune of interacting with lots of guru types and most of them are pleasant and humble.

Don’t try to come off as the BMOC. The fastest way to come off as inconsequential is to keep saying how influential you are.

Todd Schnick says it so well:

Actions make you influential. Not your words or tweets. People who serve, people who help others, people who share the cool things that others are doing… those are the actions that make you influential.”

Right on, Todd.

#6: Prepare for Window Shopping

When you reach out to people, expect that they’ll check you out. When someone writes to me and I’m curious, the first thing I do is Google and see what comes up.

Make sure when the people reaching out to you search for you online, you’re portrayed exactly how you want to be. Determine how your personal brand andonline reputation come across, as they’ll greatly affect people’s impressions of you.

#7: Let Your Personality Shine Through

People build relationships with people they like. If you want to build relationships, be endearing. And the best way to do that? Let your personality shine through.

Boring is forgettable. Personality is memorable. And social media outlets are the perfect place for you to be yourself.

For example, in my research for this piece, I came across articles by Amy Porterfield. I visited her website, and saw her nifty little description of herself:

I BELIEVE in:

  • Hard work, but that you have to be able to throw it all away for love and family.
  • No drama. Really… not even a little!
  • Acceptance. No judgment lives here.
  • Wearing my heart on my sleeve.
  • Embracing whatever’s next.
  • But most of all, I believe that social media should be something you enjoy, not dread, every day.

No drama. Not even a little. I love it!

Now that’s letting your personality shine through.

#8: Take It Offline, When It’s Time

Social media outlets are great places for starting conversations, but they’re not theonly place to have them. When the time is right, take the conversation offline.

You can start with a phone call or go right to face-to-face (assuming you’ve boiled your frog correctly). In any case, take the leap.

Selling is a contact sport. After you’ve begun your conversation and built rapport, find a good reason to take the conversation offline and see where it takes you.

What’s Behind Gamification’s Spectacular Growth

M2 Research recently updated its bellwether forecast for Gamification Industry revenues, projecting aggregate spending of $2.6Bn by 2016 in the US, climbing from $242m in 2012. Revenues among the leading gamification platform providers are set to approximately double per year from 2011 to 2016. Wanda Meloni, lead analyst and CEO at M2 will further analyze this data and present entirely new findings at GSummit in June.

One of the more intriguing elements of M2’s report is on enterprise gamification – or the use of game mechanics that face internal processes and employees. Though common estimates put enterprise gamification at approximately 50% of all activity in the market, vendors today only account for roughly 25% of spending according to M2. This is in sharp contrast to the marketing vertical where platforms like Badgeville, BunchBall and BigDoor are perceived to have upwards of 85% participation. The unaccounted for segments are mostly comprised of DIY solutions, built internally to solve specific business needs – often without the benefit of formal gamification training.

Although the core design techniques in enterprise and consumer gamification are mostly identical, they are perceived very differently inside most organizations. Vendors typically sell consumer gamification to marketing, product and community-management executives. Enterprise projects tend to channel through Human Resources, Training, IT or Finance groups looking to improve existing processes. This bifurcation is allowing some vendors to “double-dip”, entering companies via one track and then selling their platform a second time when the other group becomes gamification-aware.

 

8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture – This is a great article

Excerpted from Passion Capital: The World’s Most Valuable Asset © 2012 by Paul Alofs.

Several years ago I was in the Thomson Building in Toronto. I went down the hall to the small kitchen to get myself a cup of coffee. Ken Thomson was there, making himself some instant soup. At the time, he was the ninth-richest man in the world, worth approximately $19.6 billion. Enough, certainly, to afford a nice lunch. I looked at the soup he was stirring. “It suits me just fine,” he said, smiling.

Thomson understood value. Neighbors reported seeing him leave his local grocery store with jumbo packages of tissues that were on sale. He bought off-the-rack suits and had his old shoes resoled. Yet he had no difficulty paying almost $76 million for a painting (for Peter Paul Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, in 2002). He sought value, whether it was in business, art, or groceries.

In 1976, Thomson inherited a $500-million business empire that was built on newspapers, publishing, travel agencies, and oil. By the time he died, in 2006, his empire had grown to $25 billion.

He left both a financial legacy and an art legacy, but his most lasting legacy might be the culture he created. Geoffrey Beattie, who worked closely with him, said that Ken wasn’t a business genius. His success came from being a principled investor and from surrounding himself with good people and staying loyal to them. In return he earned their loyalty.

For the long-term viability of any enterprise, Thomson understood that you needed a viable corporate culture. It, too, had to be long-term. So he cultivated good people and kept them. Thomson worked with honest and competent business managers and gave them his long-term commitment and support. From these modest principles, an empire grew.

Thomson created a culture that extended out from him and has lived after him. Here are eight rules for creating the right conditions for a culture that reflects your creed:

1. Hire the right people

Hire for passion and commitment first, experience second, and credentials third. There is no shortage of impressive CVs out there, but you should try to find people who are interested in the same things you are. You don’t want to be simply a stepping stone on an employee’s journey toward his or her own (very different) passion. Asking the right questions is key: What do you love about your chosen career? What inspires you? What courses in school did you dread? You want to get a sense of what the potential employee believes.

2. Communicate

Once you have the right people, you need to sit down regularly with them and discuss what is going well and what isn’t. It’s critical to take note of your victories, but it’s just as important to analyze your losses. A fertile culture is one that recognizes when things don’t work and adjusts to rectify the problem. As well, people need to feel safe and trusted, to understand that they can speak freely without fear of repercussion.

The art of communication tends to put the stress on talking, but listening is equally important. Great cultures grow around people who listen, not just to each other or to their clients and stakeholders. It’s also important to listen to what’s happening outside your walls. What is the market saying? What is the zeitgeist? What developments, trends, and calamities are going on?

3. Tend to the weeds

A culture of passion capital can be compromised by the wrong people. One of the most destructive corporate weeds is the whiner. Whiners aren’t necessarily public with their complaints. They don’t stand up in meetings and articulate everything they think is wrong with the company. Instead, they move through the organization, speaking privately, sowing doubt, strangling passion. Sometimes this is simply the nature of the beast: they whined at their last job and will whine at the next. Sometimes these people simply aren’t a good fit. Your passion isn’t theirs. Constructive criticism is healthy, but relentless complaining is toxic. Identify these people and replace them.

4. Work hard, play hard

To obtain passion capital requires a work ethic. It’s easy to do what you love. In the global economy we can measure who has a superior work ethic, who is leading in productivity. Not many industries these days thrive on a forty-hour work week. A culture where everyone understands that long hours are sometimes required will work if this sacrifice is recognized and rewarded.

5. Be ambitious

“Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” These words were uttered by Daniel Burnham, the Chicago architect whose vision recreated the city after the great fire of 1871. The result of his ambition is an extraordinary American city that still has the magic to stir men’s blood. Ambition is sometimes seen as a negative these days, but without it we would stagnate. You need a culture that supports big steps and powerful beliefs. You can see these qualities in cities that have transformed themselves. Cities are the most visible examples of successful and failed cultures. Bilbao and Barcelona did so and became the envy of the world and prime tourist destinations. Pittsburgh reinvented itself when the steel industry withered. But Detroit wasn’t able to do the same when the auto industry took a dive.

6. Celebrate differences 

When choosing students for a program, most universities consider more than just marks. If you had a dozen straight-A students who were from the same socio-economic background and the same geographical area, you might not get much in the way of interesting debate or interaction. Great cultures are built on a diversity of background, experience, and interests. These differences generate energy, which is critical to any enterprise.

7. Create the space 

Years ago, scientists working in laboratories were often in underground bunkers and rarely saw their colleagues; secrecy was prized. Now innovation is prized. In cutting-edge research and academic buildings, architects try to promote as much interaction as possible. They design spaces where people from different disciplines will come together, whether in workspace or in common leisure space. Their reasoning is simple: it is this interaction that helps breed revolutionary ideas. Creative and engineering chat over coffee. HR and marketing bump into one another in the fitness center. Culture is made in the physical space. Look at your space and ask, “Does it promote interaction and connectivity?”

8. Take the long view 

If your culture is dependent on this quarter’s earnings or this month’s sales targets, then it is handicapped by short-term thinking. Passion capitalists take the long view. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year, but underestimate what we can do in five years. The culture needs to look ahead, not just in months but in years and even decades.

The writer Arthur Koestler said that a writer’s ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years’ time and for one reader in a hundred years’ time. Lasting influence is better than a burst of fame. Keep an eye on the long view.

Excerpted from Passion Capital: The World’s Most Valuable Asset © 2012 by Paul Alofs. Published by Signal, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

 

Questions you want to avoid

You finally got the meeting you sought with a top executive at a prospective client. You prepare well for the session, researching the company and the individual you’re meeting with. After the small talk dies down, you ask your “killer” question:

“I’d like to get a better understanding of your issues. So, what keeps you up at night?”

Terrible question. Awful. Clichéd. One of my clients, the CIO of a large bank, told me that he kicks people out of his office when they pull out that question.

(I’ll get back to why it’s a bad question to use with a prospect you don’t know well in just a minute.)

Good questions can be incredibly powerful. But just as there are powerful questions, there are lousy ones. Here are some of the questions you should avoid:

1. Closed Questions

Anyone who has ever had to sell something knows that closed-ended questions are the least productive type of question you can ask. If you are trying to build a relationship with someone and want to understand how they think and what their issues are, you want to move as quickly as possible from closed-ended to open-ended questions. Some examples:

Instead of: “What’s your market share?” Try: “What are the main reasons you’ve gained market share in the last three years?”

Instead of: “When did you start your new job?” Try: “What’s the most rewarding part of your new job?”

Instead of: “How long do you want the training session to be?” Try: “Why do you want to do a training workshop?”

2. Judgmental Questions

Some questions are really just hidden judgments. For example:

“You didn’t really mean to do that, did you?”

“Why do you think you always arrive late?”

Judgmental questions stop the conversation dead in its tracks. They shut the other person down.

3. Sarcastic Questions

Sometimes we ask questions that aren’t really questions—they are just vehicles for sarcasm and anger, a blunt instrument to beat up on someone. I once heard a parent, for example, ask their high school junior, “Why do you think a competitive college is going to admit you with those kinds of grades?” Other examples would include questions like, “You’re so moody, why would anyone want a relationship with you?” and “Do you seriously think that is going to be acceptable?”