Someone asked my husband once what I did for a living and he responded with – she drinks a lot of iced tea and hangs out in coffee shops meeting people. Doesn’t that sound like my job isn’t work?
I am one of those coaches who believe you must practice what you teach to have credibility with your audience. And also, this stuff really works. This blog is a little about the day in the life of a SalezWORKS coach.
We work with a large segment of clients in the financial services arena. One of the foundations of our process is to be able to offer a comprehensive solution to our clients for their growth challenges, which means we spend our time looking for coaches and resources our clients might be in need of on their path to success. We have a financial service advisor we are partnering with who referred us to 2 resources he has worked with successfully. Our blog is the result of those 2 meetings and to share with you characteristics we have found are present in great partners for us. And probably they’ll be present in your great partners. And even more importantly – how do you recognize a partnership that will be a one way street not heading your way…
Meeting #1 – Highly successful career exec who has been in a leadership role in a fast growing company about a year. He’s known as a problem solver, innovative thinker and all around good guy.
Scene – Coffee shop in the a.m., he arrived 15 minutes early, Joyce and I were right on time. He immediately let us know that he had to wrap the meeting up right on time to get to his next appointment about 10 minutes away. I then asked, ‘since we have to manage time carefully, what would you most like to accomplish during our time together?’ He responds with ‘Ted asked me to meet with you, he’s a good friend and I follow his direction’. We set our meeting agenda with a let’s get to know each other and see if there’s reason to explore collaborating in the future.
Stage set – here’s what happened. We began asking our guy, let’s call him John (not his real name) questions about his business, industry and direction. Each question he responded with a host of ‘I did’ and ‘my vision’ and ‘my approach’ and ‘my challenge’ was how each sentence began. And he went on. There were 3 different times he made assumptions about what we do that were completely off base, finally the last time I was pretty impatient and replied with ‘that’s not what we do at all, did you spend any time reviewing our profiles on Linked In or website prior to meeting to see what made sense to collaborate on?’ His response ‘No, I think pretty well on my feet’. And you can see how the meeting went. Finally after a very long 45 minutes we thanked him for his time, he responded with ‘oh and I thought you might enjoy reviewing my process’ and handed us a laminated chart of his brilliance and full page bio. Meeting ended.
Meeting #2 – Highly successful career exec who has been in a leadership role in a fast growing company about 8 years. He’s known as a problem solver, great relationship builder and amazing connector.
Scene – restaurant over lunch, he arrives 5 minutes late (parking was not easy to find) Joyce and I were waiting. He apologized profusely for keeping us waiting asked us about where we normally hold meetings and was highly engaging.
Stage set – We began by asking Ron (not his real name) what he would most like to accomplish during our time together. His response ‘ I reviewed your profiles on Linked In and spent some time on your website and have some areas I think we could collaborate on needs our clients experience frequently’. Sound different than meeting #1? We then began asking him questions about his business, industry and direction. Each question he responded and then countered by asking us a similar question. It was a great meeting. He was very engaged in learning about our business and how we might provide value to his clients. He was also good about understanding questions before answering them.
Night and day difference between the 2 meetings. Although they look alike based on who was in attendance. The clear difference was in the mindset of our potential partners. We recognize very clearly who it makes sense to invest time with on client collaboration. John is very absorbed in what’s going on with him and hasn’t recognized the wisdom shared with me by my grandmother – ‘God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason’. You learn by gathering information, not talking about yourself.
The interesting part of this is we went into meeting #1 with a client in mind who was in desperate need of John’s services and eager for us to share our findings. And based on what we found out about John’s product – he would have been a good fit. And our client was one of 10 who look just like him that we could have opened the door to. When I related the result of our meeting with the client his response was ‘Next, I need someone who actually cares to understand my business before telling me everything he knows’.
Our follow up from meeting #2 is pretty exciting – 2 connections have been made so far, 1 for him and 1 for us. There is work to be done to create structure around the relationship. But that’s what we do. When we meet at coffee shops all day.
Have a cup of coffee and conversation with a potential partner, and let us know which meeting you experience…
Have a great week!
Good Selling!