How to create a sales conversation that generates sales!

1. Sales Conversations Diffrentiate: The sales conversations are one of the ways we can differentiate our brand and our solutions. How are you differentiating yourself today and the conversations you have? Another way I like to ask that is, would your customer would be willing to pay for the conversation with you? No, I'm not talking about paying for consulting. What I'm talking about is you bring enough value to the table, either through insight, a different way to look at things through value and conversation, or being able to articulate things in a way that they can't, that your customer finds true value in that the modern buyer today wants to be educated, are validated. They want to learn about the solutions to their challenges, as well as the challenges and options they haven't even thought of yet. Which means that you, the seller, must have a complete understanding of the challenges they face. As you're educating one value you can have and don't underestimate this is you can offer a unique perspective, not only by your own life's experiences, but also by your company's experiences and what you've been taught there, but also the way that you approach things. One thing that I think we all need to get better at as sales individuals is no two critical skill sets. Know how to generate revenue not only for ourselves but for our customers and solve problems. Another skill that you want to develop an effort to educate is two-way communication skills. Think about communication as this, in this manner. When you transmit a message, there's a receiver that receives that message. And then together, that message is validated, in essence, two-way communication skills, validation of what both individuals are hearing. And make sure that your agenda is this. Seek to establish mutual and meaningful value in every client interaction that you have. One way to do this is by educating the client as we've talked about here. So what do I hope you take away from the last few slides that your sales conversations differentiate not only yourself, but your brand and your organization. One way to differentiate yourself is by being able to educate your client, offer a unique perspective with good two-way communication skills and seek to establish meaningful and mutual value. Every customer interaction. 2. 4 Things Every CLient Needs: Hey, I want to put this together because it's I think four things that every client needs from you today. Four things that every client needs from every single salesperson, no matter what product or service you're selling out there for things that every client needs. I want to walk you through something I call the conversation model. And I think it's four elements that should be part of every conversation, a business conversation, your personal conversations. But really for elements that come through. And the first is carrying, right, are you care curious with your clients? There was an old coaching saying I was to say that, Hey, people don't care what you know until they know how much you care. And when was last time that you could make someone feel that they're the most important person in the world just by focusing on them. But more often than not, I see way too often agendas getting into play. And if we want to really understand what's impacting our clients, why don't we be more curious about them? Why? How? Tell me about that. We'd explain that to me. Truly be care curious about your clients. And what's the number one way you can show someone you care? Listen to them. Research shows us that, you know, in, in any sales engagement, sales is usually talking 70% of the time, customer, 30 percent of the time, that needs to be reversed. But it's not just about asking the right questions. It's about having the discipline and the want and the desire to be care, curious. So the first element in any conversation is to care. The second right, everything we do is said to be a trust sale. But trust isn't emotional too often than not, we think trust is something that's emotional. Know it's very defined. Trust stems from an area being consistent, be consistent with your attitude, be consistent with your actions, be consistent with your behavior. Consistency. Then you want to model the right character, right relationship, and establish the right competence. Too often than not, people think that trust is simply a round character. I talked to my daughters all the time and I said, Hey, do you trust that person? And that kind of struggled with the answer. And it becomes clear when you break it down in these three, Wait a minute. I said so you trust that they're, they're intelligent, right? You trust their competence 0, of course. And you like them, right? They're your friend. Yes. But you really can't rely on them because when they say they're gonna do something, they don't really follow up or they they said that they won't tell somebody and they do. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's why you don't trust them. Consistency. And if you're selling a different product or service, we see this with like commodity driven organizations trying to sell services to often than not, they don't create this logical adjacency, this consistent adjacency in a conversation. So there's a very essence, there's no trust because it's not consistent. So you want to care and then you want to build a level of trust. So the second element in every conversation should be trust. Once you've listened to that client and you've established a level of trust, then it's your right and what they want to be educated to be challenged. In essence, this is where value creation can start to happen. Research says that most of the time, 60 to 70% of the time, it could be even higher by the time somebody's contacting you. As from a sales standpoint, their decision is pretty much already made up and they're looking to be validated, to be educated. There was a book, right? The challenger model said teach, tailor, take control. And while I like parts of that book, there's other parts I really don't care for, but I will tell you that, that teach in Taylor is important. It's about educating, it's about challenging. Now, here's what's important. Too often than not, we try to go right in and try to challenge and teach, and these have to come in order. I do believe these have to come in order. Look, people don't care what you know until they know how much you care. I don't I don't know. If you're not valued in me, if you don't have an investment in me. And what you see in me, and use wanna shove a product or service down my throat, get out of here. Get out of here. If you won't clearly articulate how your product or service can provide value to me. Get out of my face. This is very important. So the third element, teach, educate. And so I used to do this when my team, a lot to say, Okay, we're forecasting. And I said, Okay, So have you listened to their needs? And okay, so, so you listen and then give me an example. Do they trust you? How have you taught them? Tell me what you've either taught, educated or challenge them on. And then the last piece is this vulnerability. And I do mean vulnerable because if you want to get into more intimate conversations, there's no better way to earn somebody's trust, then putting ourselves in a position of unprotected weakness, like this willingness to be vulnerable. For me, what it looks like I've sat in front of clients multiple times and they said, Hey, I'm like, okay, I want to go with this, this is what I need. Let's go with that. Hey, you know what? This is a new service or new product offering for us. And I don't have enough background on us yet. So instead of starting out largest, start off in a very small area, then let's belt it out from there. Let's just make sure that it fits in into your environment to your culture and we'll go from there. Oh, okay, that's great. Or hey, you know what, We're not a good fit. But I'll tell you what when you need this over here, we will be both. I don't think we're a good fit here. Like that doesn't take away. That just adds. But again, in order, Look, if you've listened to somebody and you've established a level of trust and then you've earned the right to educate. And if you've educated them, then you have brought value to the table. And so at that point, I think it's needed, it's Warrington and what people want. When people say I want more authentic, authentic conversations, I want more authenticity in my interactions day-to-day. What they're really wanting is more transparency and vulnerability. So the fourth element that should be present in every conversation is vulnerability. The conversation model. Make sure that you're carrying and you're being care curious with your clients, listen to them. Don't think trust is something that's an emotional or given you want to build it with the right consistency, the right character, and the right competence. When we bring value to the table, we're either challenging them or educating them with market insight, market relevance in our experience that we can bring to the table. And lastly, be willing to earn your clients trust by putting yourself in a position of unprotected weakness through the bravery and the boldness and the willingness to be vulnerable. The four aspects that should be part of every conversation. My name is Eric said woah, I do hope that you liked this brief module on the conversation model. 3. Relevance: So in this module, we'll talk about the concept of relevance. I think relevance is a powerful word. I think all of us strive to be relevant, not only in our personal lives, but in our professional lives. And in your conversations with your clients, whether you're prospecting or in front of them in person or you relevant. Does your client feel that their conversation with you will not only differentiate you from your competition, but more importantly, differentiate them as they strive to understand their challenges and set forth new plans to move their business forward, their key initiatives. In essence, they view you as someone who's relevant in that conversation. So the question I ask is, are you relevant? Let's explore this concept a little further. So I ask, are you relevant today? Relevant. The definition is closely connected or being appropriate to what is being done or considered. Meaning. There is a notion that when I before I make a decision, before I'm going to move forward in this task I'm going to do, let me contact my Sales Professional, are irrelevant with your clients. Think about this. Today's sales organizations must shift from trying to control their internal driven sales cycles and truly embrace the new customer driven buying cycle. Otherwise, prospects will eliminate you from their consideration list and buy from your competition. I thought this was an interesting quote because what this is saying is, Hey, stop focusing on your own internal agenda and start focusing on what your client's agenda is. Be able to go in and understand impact, short-term impacts, short-term challenges, and what are some key outcomes that they want to achieve maybe a year down the road. And I think one of the hardest things for us to do is really understand current state. Current state only, not only individually with ourselves, but current state with our clients. What is their current state? And while everyone has this notion of this ideal state, right, this future state, I think things are changing so rapidly the day that it's really important to understand current state and what is the transitional state in, in that transitional state, how can you align your product or services to move the ball forward for your client? In essence, become relevant, in essence, become closely connected to what is being considered and what is being done are irrelevant. You know, it's interesting. Look at the shifting sales landscape. There's this concept of the modern buyer. And today the buyer is much more informed, harder to reach, less likely to spend time exploring options with the seller. Early in the buying process. They know what they want before they even reach out to you. Think about this, 62% of decision-makers look for information on a LinkedIn profile when considering talking to a sales rep. So is your sales rep just an advertisement of what a great sales person you are? Or isn't an advertisement about how you can drive business outcomes for your clients. What did your profile say about you? 62% of your decision-makers or potential clients are looking at your profile online. What does that say about you? Great salesperson or great business person? Remember the mindset concept? 90 percent of buyers would be willing to engage with sellers earlier in the buying process. So why don't they, sellers aren't providing enough value to differentiate themselves from other options. In essence, think about this. Selling is simply exchanging product or service for money. Now if you take product or service off the table and money off the table, what are your assets? What are your clients assets? How do those align? There's where the value lies. There's where 90 percent of buyers will be willing to engage with you earlier in the buying process if they knew what that was. But personalization is the key. I think that's really important to personalize everything you do. There needs to be a process. You need to have techniques and tools. And you want coaching, not training, not to development, but ongoing coaching. Obviously you've taken this course, you're bettering yourself, but that's what's really important today. Think about this. 84% of B2B purchases start with a referral. Lot of fundamentals in here, a lot of things that we knew, but it's still very, very applicable today. So as a sales professional, How do you need to adapt? How are your future conversations going to be one of the ways that you differentiate your brand or solutions. How are you going to stand out from the crowd? The first is, we'd ask this concept of relevance to react, to scale and to re-imagine, Hey, I want to understand how your business is reacting the current times and what do you look into due to scale moving forward? And what can we do to re-imagine what your business may look like? To rethink how to leverage information technology or your people differently to move the ball forward. Right? It's about a mindset. It's about looking at things now as a sales professional, but as a business professional, that normally wants to generate revenue for yourself but for your clients, It's about understanding how to solve problems, being able to articulate your client's problem better than they can, because that's powerful. If you can articulate their problem better than you can, there's a sure bet that they're going to look at you more for information and insight about how to move the ball forward. Be able to educate, right? We talk about this education and, or earlier concept, but it's about offering a unique perspective, two-way communications. And in everything you do seek to establish mutual and meaningful value in your interactions. And be able to not only teach, but Taylor, but educate and move your customer forward. No customer value drivers, no customer priorities. You can identify not only economical but technical drivers and be able to leverage those to improve and empower your conversations with your clients. And let's be clear, you want to be very specific about the value you offer each and every prospect. In effect, you want to personally tailor your value proposition to each client that you're talking to. And lastly, be this mentor, be this guy. Be comfortable discussing not only money and technology, but you can push the customer to where you want to be. Not, not convinced, not, not mislead, but push the customer to help them avoid potential landmines and be able to move forward to accomplish their goal and impacting the bottom line. With value. If you can do these five areas, I promise you this, you become relevant not only in your business, not only in your profession, but to each and every customer that you're having conversations with, are you relevant today? My name is Eric Stovall. I hope you liked this module on relevance. Part of the how to differentiate yourself in sales conversations. Course. 4. Who Am I talking to : So there's this conversation around buyer personas. And it's about the more that you know the buyer, the more that you're able to tailor to specifically their needs. Who are you talking to? But I think we get way too complex in buyer persona's even down to the personality, their likes, their dislikes. And I find that somewhat, I'll say it comical in the fact that listen in, in, in B2B sales and it's been argued there is no B2B anymore truly be the B? Yes. Yes, there is. That there is I'm a business that we sell to another business that comes in, but at some point you're selling to an individual and you can't tell me, like these buyer persona's, it's like looking at someone's LinkedIn profile and then thinking, you know, how to sell to that individual. And what do they really want to know. And I think even before that, right, it can be argued around the buyer persona's. It's more about the buyer journey and everything within that. But let's go back to who am I talking to? And I think that we overlook something about mindset. Who am I talking to from a mindset? And that's just by position, but who they are. Make no mistake about it at telling an effective story is a business conversation. It's a business conversation that you can convince people to take action by emotionally connecting with them, logically reason with them, and then giving them a path that they trust that they want to inspire to go after. That motivates them, that moves them. And I think in this case, you're really have two individuals that you're talking to. From the standpoint. You have an individual called an optimizer, right thing from a mindset, just talking about two mindsets in this. And then you have a mindset of an innovator, optimizer and an innovator. Let's look at each one of these individually. So an optimizer right there, very point, focused individual. You may have talked to this individual and don't think just by position. Sometimes we get Lord, in the fact that, Oh, I'm talking to a manager, not the VP or the leader of the organization. And so they're going to be more tactical, not as strategic, know an optimizer. Their capabilities are, they wanna take care of the immediate need? Hey, I have a problem and I need you to help me. They only going to want to outsource a narrow set of functions. And their main motivation is really to improve a targeted area function. Try to go outside their realm, outside note that you're going to lose them. You're going to lose them. Don't talk about long-term vision. Take care of my immediate needs. That's their capability that they can handle very focused. They still want to optimize things. So they still are want to improve. So what's their mindset? Their mindset is that they have a definite more traditional outsourcing mindset. They're tapping into providers to improve efficiency and effectiveness only in a targeted area. This is their mindset. What do they want to talk about? I want to talk about a number of things, right? They want to innovate, they do, but only in a particular area, their business, traditional outsourcing strategy. Hey, look, let's talk about that, but let's improve functional efficiency and effectiveness. Again, in a targeted area, I do value a consultation with strategic skill set in a service provider. I still want that, but in my wheelhouse, what my immediate needs are, That's what I want. Don't go outside of that. They're more likely to source from a specialized service provider in respective function. This is where a lot you hear about specialization is the key. It's also the mistake that some organizations make by trying to do too much. And this is their main buyer mindset, an optimizer, because they're not at the right level getting to more of the innovator mindset, which we'll talk about. What are their aspirations? They want to focus on outcomes, productivity, performance, predictability of risk and compliance, right? Those are key. Agility and growth is not a big key for them. Hey, how do I measure that? What do I get after transformation talk? Not a big positive for them. Their concerns and fear is, is they, they obviously want to trust and they want confidence in a provider optimizer. This could be happening at any level. You'd be talking to a CEO that's an optimizer. You can be talking to the lower level That's an optimized. We're talking about mindset, not even put persona's at this point, the mindset. Who am I talking to? A point focused person. I think that's very, very critical. Know who I'm talking to and speak to their level. I see more often than not, conversations happening both in business and personalize where people lose people and they don't understand why and it's because they not realizing, look, I'm talking to this type of mindset of individual. Now, let's look at the opposite of that, or innovator, right? And innovator has a very broad vision that they're very. Strategic oriented. They want to effectively move the model. They want to drive business model change. They want to outsource a broad set of functions and they definitely want you to talk about aligning with their business strategy. This is where they want new ideas. Ideas outside the box, bringing those ideas outside the box and come with me. What's interesting, right, is, is I think COVID made a lot of these optimizer type organizations, right? Just organizations be more of innovator type. And you really saw a lack here of what would that be? What's their mindset, right? They want to outsource more of their business across IT infrastructure business processes. They're sourcing services to drive innovation. They understand, they have to keep up the rate of change and they want to move fast and forward as quickly as possible. They have a higher priority on agility and innovation, which contributes to business objectives. Their aim is primarily drive greater operational efficiency and effectiveness. So this is where transformation talk, aligning technology, not to be seen as simply a cost center but a strategic asset. How do you turn your data in the actual intelligence that's going to ring with them. Whereas the optimizer, It's Wait a minute, that's a little bit. What do you mean by that? Like, what what are you talking about? What, what's the actual product or service like very focused in. They're more likely to source from a specialized service provider in respective function, same as the, as the optimizer. Their aspirations are to focus on, focus on core competencies of outcomes, agility and growth. Their competitive differentiator, right? They want to focus on agility and growth. They understand the a side note. And if you haven't seen it, what we'll talk about the impact areas, but remember the impact areas that we talked about. There's six impact areas, how information technology is impacting organization, predictability, productivity, performance, risk and compliance, agility and growth? No, those impact areas and this is where their aspirations are to get to it. Optimizer wants to lower for innovator, wants to be more of agility and growth. Their concerns and fears. Again, they still want trust and confidence in a provider be consistent. Have the right character, have the right competence. At the end of the day, right? Know who you're talking to, you talking to an innovator. Are you talk into an optimizer because it's about telling an effective business conversation story, touching both of these individuals emotionally, logically and with the white path. Know who you're talking to. An optimizer, narrow set of functions, innovator, broad vision, focused optimizer innovator. I wanted to talk about a broad set of functions. 5. Meet the Modern Buyer: So let's talk about the modern buyer today. And what does that actually mean? So sales is never changed. We've talked about this before. But the definition of sales is exchanging a product or service for money that has never changed to a 100 years from now, that hasn't changed today. But what has changed is the buyer. And so let's dig into this a little bit more. And what does the modern buyer look like? There's four key things that come up most in each and every time when we talk about guiding the customer and the customer wants to be educated, the customer is educated. The Internet did to sales. Is it trance formed? The power? It used to be that sales had all the power, right? We had all the knowledge and this is where the the the thought process of oh, I'm going to mislead or I have more information so I can mislead OR, or NOT convey. A great example of this is just take a look at what we've learned in the movies. I'll include a segment here that you can see where, hey, what have we learned from sales from the movies? And it's very misinforming that that's the society's perception of what sales is misleading. They have all the knowledge. Well, that's not the case anymore, right? The modern buyer, think about your own behavior, your Google first, she, you know more information. And so I, I either want to be validated or, or provide education. I use my own experience from this. You know, I have a master's in technology. I have a lot of certifications. I do this for a living when it comes to technology and I needed to upgrade my Wi-Fi. So I went to Best Buy. Not for knowledge, not enough for actually insight. I wanted to starving to talk to somebody just to be able to be validated or educated in something I didn't know. And yeah, even at that level. And so I think the first bullet point and the last bullet point are really, really critical. How are you educating your clients today? There's a saying that when you start to use media for appointment setting, right? Give, give, give, give, ask. Here's what I mean by that. Or you just asking for the appointment or have you started to build a rapport with that individual? Have you educated them onetime, hey, here's, here's five things other organizations are doing to keep up with the speed the act today, hey, here are five ways to leverage technology to write at two different times. Give, give, and then maybe a third time. Hey, I sent you two other bits of information, would love an opportunity to meet with you, to talk to you further about that. Give, give, ask. The other thing I think is so critical and simple as that personalization is the key. They don't just send me a form letter. Don't just copy and paste know that you're targeting me specifically. Individually. I went with him directly by name and and do your research be prepared. Personalization is really, really important. And look, what hasn't changed in sales is relationship is still very, very critical. Care about me. Big care, curious to know to research and prepare, but know about me specifically, and start to build a rapport by providing me education and valuable insight that you can bring to the table and listen, don't think you have to be some subject matter expert that take the time to do the research for me and then break it down. Don't just send me a PDF of a whitepaper that your company did. Why didn't you break out? Hey, on page 5, here are four bullet points that I think you should do that would be critical. That does a lot of things right here that that's happening. Follow me on social media. I know what I'm doing, at least when I'm putting out there on the web and then maybe comment on that. Pair. A guy like your one-minute coaching that you're doing. I think that's really cool. What's your goal with that? That's gonna get me talking to you a little bit. Think about that. This is what we're talking about, meat, the modern buyer. It's interesting if you look at the facts, right, I put these facts up here. 61% of buyers do extensive research before contacting a seller. There's 21 times more likely to enter in a sales process if the content is easily access on-demand, meaning if they had information right away that you provided and quality content, right? That significant impact on buying decision. Make sure that you have the right data and providing me real valuable insight that will guide me or validating me in my decision process. Meat, the modern buyer. So I think one thing that comes with this as well, and that we'll talk about in the next segment is, who am I talking to? And I'm not talking about persona's. I just think there's two aspects to understand who you're talking to. My name is Eric civil law. I hope you've found this brief overview of meeting the modern buyer helpful and informative. 6. Why A Business Conversation1: So why a business conversation? First off, I think every if you're in the profession of sales, you need to change your mindset because you're quickly becoming not relevant anymore. Now, hear me out. If you have a mindset of that, of a business professional, you're no longer having sales conversations. You're having business conversations with your clients. Now follow me on this. It's not semantics. Look, you need immediately. You're a business professional who not only wants to generate revenue for yourself, but you want to generate revenue for your clients. Alignment. You generate revenue for yourself by helping your clients solve their issues in generating revenue for them. Business case, business conversation, listen, you can look at all the data that's out there. Customers know how to do research. 70 to 80 percent of the decision is already made up. They're looking for either to be validated, educated, or, or quite frankly challenged on their thought process. No longer is it convincing, no longer is it misleading? It's not what we learned from the movies. Boiler room. We're not putting a coffee down. Now. It's about having a business mindset, business professionals, having business conversations. And in that, you have to ask yourself, and my relevant today. What is my influence in my accounts, not only with current clients but with others? This is where you talk about having assets that you can bring to the table far beyond just your product or services. How do you align those areas? That's ultimately to do what you want to get to. What are you trying to solve? This seems so simple, but think about it. Chasing end-user experience, digital transformation, innovation. There's so many of these buzz topics out there that more often than not, what are you trying to solve? I asked this question in almost any single meeting I'm in, what are we trying to solve? And believe it or not, about 50% of time, there's not clarity on that. And if you don't know what you're trying to solve, how can you build a case and build metrics to have a business case of knowing what you're solving. How can you identify the return on investment if you don't know exactly what it is that you're trying to solve. There's an old adage, don't throw money at a problem. Well, don't go technology at a problem. What are you trying to solve? So think about this. If you are in sales, what are you trying to solve for your client? This is where it comes into understanding, hey, I just wanna have a business conversation, understand how or if there's alignment between our two organizations. What's the alignment being more relevant with your assets, with your resources, with your knowledge and your insight to see if you can do what helped them try to solve their problem. And even if it's at coming across in identifying where it's at, that's helpful. What are you trying to solve? And typically you're trying to solve really two components. Impact. What's impacting your business right now. What are you trying to solve immediately right now? Where you're trying to solve in your personal life, where you're trying to solve in a business aspect immediately right now, impact and outcome. What I'm always talking to clients, I wanted to say, hey, listen, I just want to understand two things. What's impacting your business today and what are some key outcomes you want to achieve no longer than a year, don't go past a year. And really, what we're saying is impact, current state, outcome, future state. Where does that come into play? And then lastly, I think the profession of a business conversation, whether it's sales, whether it's just a normal business conversation, is you learn to co-create with the other individual. I know that I want this. I want to talk to people that can either grow me personally or professionally that have assets outside of just what I can do for them to see how we can align those assets together to achieve what we both want to achieve. Alignment, co-create, collaborate. This is the power of a business conversation. And yes, I'm kind of mixing just a regular business conversation, but also quite frankly, a sales approach. Listen if you're in sales today, this is a very relevant approach. Transform your sales mindset. Hey, we do that. We have this, we do that to more of a business mindset. Hey, I really want to understand how or what you're trying to solve where some gaps are in your organization to see where we can come in, I just want to have a simple business conversation. Maybe look your company a little differently. I can provide some insight, maybe some clarity, some other relevant areas outside of that market insight bring light to their day. What do we mean by bringing light to their dates? So often than not, leaders are just inundated with the day-to-day grind in their own organization. They don't get outside knowledge coming in. Be more relevant. And then understand the impact and outcome. Short-term, long-term impact, 0 to 90 days outcome, 90 days to a year, trying to go outside of that, I think change happens way too quickly. And then the old adage, Oh, I want to find the pain. Listen, what happens when your customer doesn't know the problem? And I know this. I've heard this from clients before. They want someone who doesn't have the answer, but has the resources, has the mindset is willing to come in and co-create to collaborate together with their mindset and their resources. When a client three years ago that said, Hey, you want to be more relevant in in our business. I want you to come in and have a business conversation for three days with us. We call that a Kaizen event. And you're not going to talk about your product or service, but you're going to solve a problem both short-term and long-term for us, impact and outcome. And we don't really know what we're trying to solve, but we're going to ask you to co-create together. And at the end of that, we're going to bring in our CIO. You're going to work with our staff. And if you the CIO agrees, probably you just kinda go out to bid based on the what you I've identified to solve our problem with a product or service, we want to leverage your resources. Will you be willing to do that? It's a fascinating ask. But what it did tell me is that this is the way that business is going to happen. More transparency, more authenticity, and what a great way to understand someone's knowledge, their character, their competence, by working with them and co-creating with them in advance. Come strategize with me, see if there's alignment and if there is, I wanna get your services. A business conversation. Make no mistake about it. Sales is not transforming the progress of sales is always been exchange a product or service for money, in essence, business, commerce. What is changing is people's mindset. Their approach of working together. Here are five very tactical ways to change your approach. And today's current climate. My name is Eric default. I hope you enjoyed this setup around a business conversation. 7. 4 s Conversation: In this module, we're gonna talk about having a more relevant business conversation. I've been part of painfully long trainings or development programs around trying to teach people and MBA in like two hours. And that's not my intentions here. My intention here is to take the fundamental information that you got about making your conversations differentiate yourself. Not only at a personal level, by helping you better listen, speak, and validate information. Not only on a personal and professional level, to be able to really care about an individual, established a level of trust, educate, and then be vulnerable, but at a business level, and to walk you through what I consider a very valuable framework of a business conversation. I call that the four S conversation, and we'll touch on that here shortly. So in review, there are four elements to all conversations. Personal, professional, that should be present at all times. You want to make someone feel like they're the most important person in the world. Do you want to truly be focused in on them? You want to understand and look at them and in drop everything else to focus in on them. People don't care what you know until they know how much you care and truly be care curious about that individual that you're talking to. You want to establish a level of trust, right, through character competence and consistency. And they get to a point where you can educate, teach, and get to a point if you've actually cared for someone really truly listened to their problems, then you've taught them something in, in, in, in, build some trust. Then it's your right to either challenge or educate. And lastly, let's have a level of transparency. Let's see about what we're really bringing to the table and who's willing to be bold enough, brave enough to be vulnerable and authentic. Four elements to all conversations. Now this was in review, we covered it earlier, but I think it's helpful to review it again. When working with clients or potential clients, I recommend this simple strategy session or framework for a conversation, kind of breakout their organization in four areas, strategy structure, skill systems. This allows me to really understand goals, initiatives, struggles, challenges. What I'm really saying is this allows me to understand two things. What's impacting their business today and what are some key outcomes they want to achieve? Maybe a year down the road. How does this look? Hey, humor me for a second. If we look at your department, maybe just a little differently. And we broke it up into these four areas, strategy, structure, skill systems. And maybe I drew a line right in between. How much of your time is really focused on the top, really strategy approach initiatives versus the bottom right skills and systems. Typically to that answer, it's like 70, 20. And but what I find is that more and more people, especially with strategy or their role or their tight is, is involved. They don't really understand this concept. So let's break this down a little bit. Use this as a framework or baseline for our conversation of a more relevant business conversation. Let me explain. So strategy, what is strategy? Strategy is simply an approach, how your company makes decisions, how organizations make choices. Strategy for you is how you make decisions or make choices accordingly in your area of business or area of influence, right? Company's plans and response to anticipated changes in an internal and external environment. What are their choices? Most companies have a goal of initiatives on behalf of the owners or, or the organization based on consideration of resources, assets both internal and external, and how the organization wants to compete. Now, I think this is important because I find that a lot of people don't understand the differences in challenges of some key aspects. A goal is abroad primary outcome, right? You have a goal. Hey, our goal is to hit plan this year. A goal. Then you have a strategy and strategies on an approach that you will take to achieve that goal. So you want to hit plan this year. What is going to be your approach to get after that? This is something very specific. Well, my approach is to focus on fundamentals, re-evaluate, re-invest in myself personally and professionally, and start getting some tangible objectives written out where, where we can hit this. I think I will focus on becoming a better problem-solver. I think I will focus on finding new ways, tools, methods for me to sell remotely. And I will put measurable benchmarks in, in play, right? Strategy. So now you have your goal, now you have your strategy, and then you should have objectives, right? This is a measurable state, is ste, step that you take to achieve that strategy. Okay, What? Walk me through that? And then you have tools, right? Tactics are tools that you're going to use to pursue those objectives. I find that companies, especially organization, especially a larger you get kinda don't understand the subtleties of these differentiators. Here's a way that you can provide insight through this conversation. Now, here's a coaching point. Don't go in and go, hey, can you tell me your strategy, like the word strategy and of itself will lose people. But what you can't say is, hey, how are you making decisions today with all the variables, how you make decisions? How are you, how are you measuring those, those decisions? And what tools or tactics are you doing differently to move into that strategy? When you get in a structure, this is kind of the basis or coordination of everything moved into play. There's, there's building blocks within an organization, right? The organizational DNA and structure comes into play. How does the organization may make decisions? What does the organizational hierarchy look like? Hey, tell me about your infrastructure. Structure is a powerful word that can be performed. Here's a little coaching point. If they have an organization chart, do they follow it? If you're working in a place of business, do you follow an organization chart? That's a really good sign to understand. Do people follow best, best-practices? Is their method or, or idea for hiring people put in the play, or are they not following that? Let me explain that a little bit. I worked at a company where you can have an organization chart with someone's a VP and or they may have a Chief Officer. I'm Experience Officer or something that nature, but it is that person really where they go to, to make decisions or they empowered in their decision and do people follow the organizational chart and his power minute empowerment followed with that. It's a really good understanding of how or how not only decisions are made IE strategy, but how the company implements those strategies. And who takes ownership of those strategies, right? Structure, where it good, good thing to come back and skills really what you're looking for as time gap, skill gaps. And really this is the scope and capability of the current organization. A tool I have used for a lot of times is kind of a maturity model. Where are you on this? And I want to touch on this here because in, not in this course, but later in a different course, I'll expand on really this whole conversation. But for this just kinda high level introduction of the, of the four S's. But here is where you want to focus on the right data and the right information to be able to identify skill gaps. See, there really is no set skill gap definition. But the consequences of this is huge to organization. We're actually seeing that right now. Organizations are now having to do things differently to work remotely. And I'm starting to see a lot of organizations have skill gaps in basic technology usage. How to apply things differently. Even selling remotely is a skill gap that can easily be bridged, but have you identified it as an issue? Skills? And lastly, when we're talking about systems, this is not just technological systems, this is people systems process systems, workflow systems. So let's think about this. If strategy is the way an organization thinks and plans and processes are the way the organization operates, then your business strategies. Should we formally look to your business processes? And your business processes should be formula onto your information systems. Most of the time, this is not the case. This is why I say the word misalignment a lot. People usually look for technology to drive innovation or to drive their overall strategy when it really needs to facilitate. Systems. Systems are very powerful way that helps an organization aligned and execute on goals, objectives, and the overall strategy of the organization. The four S conversation, strategy, structure, skills, systems. It's a great framework for business conversation. What do I hope that you gained from this model? By simply making somebody looked at their organization differently. You can bring insight and almost light to their day by providing a new unique way to look at their organization. Hey, what if we broke up your company into like four different areas? Strategy, structure, skill systems. And let's just talk about some pains or initiatives in any area. Let them talk to great framework for a more relevant business conversation. My name is Eric stuff Allah. This was a brief module on the forest conversation, strategy, structure, skill systems, a great framework for relevant business conversation.