Show of hands, how many people have been in their current line of work for at least two years? Keep your hands raised if it’s been five years. Seven years. Ten years. Twenty years?! Wow.
Ok, so there’s some variation but for the most part we’ve been at what we’ve been up to for a while. Do you have any idea what your closing percentage is? For some of us that looks like initial connections converting to sales, and for others – in larger volume businesses – it may be an initial sale that converts into a longer term relationship.
Today, I want to take a look at what I call “simple structures.” It’s the little actions, and awarenesses, that add up to the big wins. Michael Nerenberg knows how this works in baseball, right Michael. It’s not about the homeruns – though they’re pretty and have the potential for glory. It’s about manufacturing runs through base hits.
Simple and Sufficient Structures. How many emails or phone calls or advertisements do you have to initiate to generate a piece of business? Rich Heller, how many landscapes do you visit and provide estimates for on average in order to create a greener client? Jeff Weiskopf is always generous with his willingness to take calls even if they’re ultimately not someone he’d take on as a client. How many of those calls do actually turn into business?
We may all have different mechanisms to fill our funnels, but there tend to be analogous structures. Take a moment now and think about the manner in which potential clients initially come your way. The internet? Word of mouth? Email blasts? Whatever it is. Choose one of the modalities that you believe tends to be an effective structure for you. Now, what’s one specific action you can take to drive it forward this week?
Can you send one extra e-blast? Or make three phone calls per day? Maybe it’s following up with one referral source each day. Think of one daily action that will lead to filling your pipeline in service of converting business for you.
Next, let’s take a look at what we can do in this room. One area that I’m working on is inviting guests. Some of us really excel in this area. But whether you tend to invite lots of guests or very few, imagine the buzz of energy in this room if everyone had a guest here next week.
And what would that take to create? How many invites would you have to extend to have one of them be accepted? And it’s funny, everyone that comes down here has a positive experience. Imagine if you made one call or sent one text or email, each day, to offer the opportunity to have access to this group.
Simultaneously, we can look at referrals. Clearly this isn’t a new structure. It’s pretty much the main dish down here. But give some thought to a category of professional that for whatever reason you tend not to refer to. Go ahead, look around the room and find someone. Imagine what would be possible if this week everyone created one referral in a new area.
Metrics can be measured. And leveraging simple, daily and weekly structures can have a big impact – a powerful impact.
