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Leadership Conference Part II
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Nov 6, 2023
The Best of the Best Leadership Conference is kicking off on March 22, 2022. FREE workshop on “Leadership Always, Management Sometimes”. During these information-packed sessions, you’ll learn: ✔ How to lead vs manage ✔ How to best connect with your top clients and prospects ✔ Must-have skills to thrive and survive in sales management ✔ How to improve your Firms culture ✔ How to improve the way you eat, move and sleep. AGENDA • 10:00-10:10am. Colin Lake Open & Welcome. • 10:10-10:40. Alan Sterin Jr. How to Raise Your Game: High Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best (in Sports and Business) • 10:45- 11:25. Chris Johnson REST EAT MOVE -you have the power to feel your best!
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Thank you
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Thank you
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Hi everyone and welcome back to Leadership Conference 2022
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I'm your co-host for this session. Because it's not available, he'll be joining us after this session
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so we have had an amazing first half of this conference we talked about some great tips and
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tricks about how to become a good leader we also talked about how you can go ahead and make your
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emails better that was the previous session so now uh we have joining us jeremy he's the ceo of
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coin flip marketing and he's going to talk about leveraging the art of personalization
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and everyone who's tuning in please go ahead and use the comment section to post your comments you
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You can tell us from where you are joining, be interactive, and yeah, please follow code of conduct
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And without any further ado, let's bring our next speaker in. Hi, Jeremy. How is it going
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Simon, good to see you. Thanks for having me today. Great, Jeremy. Thank you so much for accepting the invitation
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I know you are really, really busy. So I won't take much of time. I have to see you share your screen
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I'm going to add it to the stream. Everybody else can see it. And next 25, 30 minutes is all yours
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All right, perfect. Well, so glad to be here, everyone. I'm Jeremy Blueball. I'm the CEO and owner of CoinFlip Marketing
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I'm going to start off by saying we now live in a world of too much, too much data, too much information
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And you could probably argue too much misinformation, depending on where you live out there in this world
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Too much digital and probably my Achilles heel, too much distraction. Thank you, Steve Jobs and the iPhone. It distracts me like crazy
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I have to put it away. But why we exist at CoinFlip Marketing, and we believe the best way
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to cut through this noise, through this too much, is you need to build solid relationships
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And we believe the best way to build solid relationships, whether with your existing
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clients or your most coveted prospects, is you need to implement personalization
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Now, I'm not talking about just any type of personalization. I'm not talking about the days of past where you mail merge a client's name and maybe their
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company name into email outreach, send the generic LinkedIn request, maybe sending out
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a kind of basic happy birthday card. Those are all nice little touches, but today is going to be a little more talking about
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how do you take those touches next level by implementing personalization. Before I get into my slides, I want to go all the way back to 1952
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And you're probably asking, why 1952? Well, back in 1952, a comic near and dear to my heart, Charlie Brown, is where I want to start the story of my presentation or my slides
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And this is not the year that Charlie Brown was actually introduced to the world. That was two years prior, 1950
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In 1952 was the year that Charlie Brown and Lucy became famous with the football skit
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Now, if you're not familiar with the football skit, it's where Charlie Brown would line up like he's kicking a field goal
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Lucy would hold the ball and Charlie Brown would run up. And sure enough, what would Lucy do
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She'd pull the ball up. Charlie Brown would smack, run on his back. Lucy would laugh and it was all in fun
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A nice little practical prank on her friend. Well, the reason why I tell this story is Charlie Brown not only fell for this once
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he fell for it 47 additional times. From 1952 to 1999, they showed this clip or this scene 47
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times. To everyone listening, this is Albert Einstein's true definition of insanity
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doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Charlie Brown simply thought
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Lucy would hold that football. She never did and every single time flat on his back
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Now, my next slides, I come up here in a second, for those who might be experiencing some insanity
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saying, hey, you know what? My emails, like Kim might be talking about from an earlier presentation, just aren't getting the responses that I would like
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Well, maybe some personalization might help those emails. Or my outreach to my best clients, those happy birthday cards or those happy birthday gifts
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or whatever you're sending to your clients to say thank you, happy birthday, happy anniversary
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industry just aren't getting the responses that you thought, it might be time to implement
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coin flip personalization. Or let's say you manage a team of people who do outreach like this. Think
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of a sales manager who runs a desk or whatever the case may be, and you're not getting the results
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based off what you're teaching. It might be time to implement some coin flip personalization
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So first slide, our motto here at Coin Flip Marketing is called flip the odds in your favor
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I named CoinFlip Marketing back in 2016. I came up with the name
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Didn't take my company live until 2019. I simply called it CoinFlip Marketing because when we implement strategies for our best clients
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we want to give you odds better than a CoinFlip. Heads, tails, 50%
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We want to be better than 50%. We think if you're going to outreach to your best potential clients or your best potential prospects
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we want to give you those odds and flip those odds in your favor. Well, my first bullet point there, marketing and prospecting is not a game of chance
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Sometimes the best way to have a chance is to make a change. In Kim's seven steps earlier, she talked a lot about some of these little steps you can make
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To simply just make a change, to give yourself a chance. We going to talk about some changes simply going left when everybody else is going right from digital to really give yourself a chance when it comes to all and not really kind of beat your competition out there Second implementing the art personalization can magnify what we call
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your return on relationship. Think of those best clients you have in your book of business
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Kim talked about referrals and a few other people talked about earlier today. Referrals are the best
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way to get an introduction to someone. Well, how do you get those referrals? We believe
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really kind of focusing in on your best clients, knowing things about them and leveraging that
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data. So you simply can maximize your return on relationship and last be different, stand out
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No one remembers the ordinary. One of my favorite people to follow right now is the owner of the
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Savannah bananas. If you haven't followed them, check it out. Savannah bananas on LinkedIn
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This guy wears a yellow suit has changed the way that things are done. He simply said
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I'm going to be different. And he simply turned that, I think it's less than single A baseball
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team around, simply to a juggernaut that we dealt with that everybody wants to get tickets to
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Being different can help you stand out. And if you implement personalization
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you can really move the needle. So why does personalization work? I put four bullet points
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up there. I'm going to talk a little more about the looking glass self here in a second. it. So imagine if I were to show you a picture and it's a picture of a baseball game. And within
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that picture, let's say there's 35,000 people maybe looking down from a blimp. And I would say
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you know what, Simon, you're in that picture. Well, what is the person most likely Simon going
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to do? Well, Simon is going to look for himself. This is why we believe when we implement
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personalization, you want to use pictures. Pictures are powerful. People love to see
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how the world views them. And when you use pictures and say, hey, Simon, you're the world's
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greatest dad or Simon, world's greatest, whatever the case may be, and say, this is what I know
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about you, or this is what I found out about you. Once again, you can take those outreaches
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or your relationships to the next level. The second bullet point there, the quote
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one of my favorite people, Dale Carnegie, a person's name to that person or a person's name
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to that person is the sweetest, most important sound in any language. When you use people's names
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in fun, unique ways, people tend to respond in a very positive way. One example I can share with
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you later here if you're interested, we love to do a lot of Photoshop in here at CoinFlip Marketing
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for our clients. People love to see their names. Example, let's say I, Jeremy Blue Ball, am a huge
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St. Louis Cardinals fan, which I am and I'll explain in a second. I would love to get a card
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in the mail that a picture of my name with Jeremy Blue Ball on the St. Louis Cardinals baseball
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jumbotron. Huge effect. I'm going to respond to that. You did the research. You used my name
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I love to see that. The last two, it shows that you care and it shows that you're different
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And one I didn't put on there, which I think I want to talk a few seconds about, is the most important. It shows when you use personalization that the client or that prospect
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It means so much more to you as your business than to the bottom line
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It shows that you care, shows that you're different, and shows that you're so much more to them to the bottom line
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It truly separates them, you, excuse me, from all the other typical outreaches, typical things that they get
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Take a step back. When's the last time that you got something that was very highly personalized
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My guess is you responded, and you responded in a very positive manner
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You probably showed a bunch of people. You probably talked about it. You might maybe even actually post it on social media
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Here at CoinFlip Marketing, those are the types of effects that we want to implement when we implement personalization
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So what are the categories you should be focusing on when it comes to personalization
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This is a piece I can send as follow up to anybody listening. Just shoot me an email and I'll provide it at the end of the day
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There's the word of personalization. There's eight different things that we really want to focus on
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When it comes to knowing our clients and on the back of this piece
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what did I put on here is actually a box where you can actually document everything
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you know about your clients so that you can leverage this information to your advantage
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So pets, one of my favorite outreaches to talk about people love their pets
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Heck, some people love their pets more than their kids. I know these people, they exist
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When you talk about their furry friends and leverage that and talk about it with them
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It puts you on a pedestal above any other type of personalization or outreach or communication that they've ever received
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Hobbies on there are probably the next big one that you really want to focus on
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People are very passionate about their hobbies, whether it be gardening, knitting, baseball card collecting
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Whatever their hobbies are, the more you know about it, the more you can ask questions about it, the more you can personalize how you deliver what you want to deliver to that individual
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once again can take your outreach to another level. And the last I'll go on there I'll say is probably sports teams or vacation habits
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and kind of the third, the ones you really need to leverage. Once again, people love their sports teams
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I'm putting together a proposal right now for a client who's fanatic about the Yankees
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So we're going to leverage that information. Use Photoshopping with the Yankees
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Use Yankee stadiums. Use a Yankee gift. Create a Yankee card that's really specific to them
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so you can obviously get the best response possible. So what is our definition of personalization
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when we talk about those? Well, number one, I mentioned it earlier, you want to use pictures whenever possible
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And there's some tools out there I'll introduce you at the end that you could actually put in
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to actually Photoshop a person's picture fairly easy. It's called photofunnia.com. The one on the left here with my picture actually shows you how to actually put that picture in there and have a dramatic effect
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What's interesting about that picture, though, what I recommend was when you go left, everybody should go right
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We do the opposite. Whenever he goes right, we go left. I'm a big believer taking a picture like that and put it into a card can have the biggest impact via US mail when it comes to personalizing your outreach
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Second, using information to your advantage. So I don't know about you guys, but it's 2022
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There's this thing called the World Wide Web that you can find a lot of information about people
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So whether you're prospecting or it's your current clients, you can leverage this data to your advantage
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So if you were to probably do a quick Google research or search on me, check out my LinkedIn profile, you're probably going to find out that I love the St. Louis Cardinals
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That's a picture of Bush Stadium where the Cardinals play. That's my favorite player, all time Ozzie Smith
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You could find that out and you could use that to get my attention out there
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What's great though, with this world wide web, people might say that might be creepy it weird Well I put this data out there I want people to know it I want people to leverage this data when reaching out to me Here the other side of it If it your current client and they been clients for 10 plus years and you happen to go on their Facebook
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page, the client's not going to think it's creepy that, hey, I knew you were a St. Louis Cardinals
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fan. Jeremy probably just took notes of me over the last 10 years that he knew I was a St. Louis
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Cardinals fan and leverage that data. Third, always tailor the message to each individual
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For those who tuned in earlier, Alan showed a picture of the Coach K note. That's exactly
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the type of outreach that you want to have, the type of impact you can have, not only when you
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tailor the picture on the card, but you tailor the note has dramatic effect. Third, which I didn't
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put on here, excuse me, fourth, I didn't put on here. If you really want to have a dramatic impact
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take kind of personalizations of the whole next level. It's going to cost a little more
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You do a card, personalized message, and a personalized gift can take it all to the next
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level. So what I like to talk about the gifting, and this gets into the point, if you truly want
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to elevate your outreach, especially from a prospecting standpoint, you need to implement
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these three things. And I call it USP gift giving or USP strategy. And that's unique
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surprised, and personalized. And why I do that on here and talk about it, you can see there is my
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name. I'm a golfer too. Right there, if you're a golfer, that's the master's leader board
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That's my name on top. That's my name on the top left. Looks like I'm having a heck of a round on
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minus five through five holes. This is the type of personalization that we're talking about
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The great thing, you can reach out to me. We have a ton of templates that you can kind of get yourself cut into. I would love to share those with you. Have a conversation on how you do this stuff for your clients
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So talk about the typical cold outreaches. I have on there cold emails. The average person now receives 146 per day. That's that average person
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The people that you're reaching out to, busy executives, busy business owners, are probably receiving 250 to 300 emails a day
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To stick out, to get their attention, you have to be different
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And doing things like this, photoshopping names, using pictures, can get their attention way faster and help you build a relationship quicker than typically how you've done it before in the past
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Cold calls. I'm a big believer cold calling is dead. You can challenge me all day with that. And the reason why
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I say that I have a cell phone. I'm not picking up if it's a number I don't know from. Everyone I
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talk to is pretty much the same way. Not saying it can't work. It's not going to work on me
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but personalizing your outreach to that person, like we're talking about now, can break through
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that noise. So when you implement unique, surprised, and personalized, what we have found
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you can get odds greater than 50% down there in the bottom in green with your most coveted
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prospects. Think about the people that are possible to get ahold of, impossible to talk to
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impossible to respond to email. This type of strategy will get their attention that gets you
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have those conversations that you want to have with your most coveted prospects
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So what if you don't have pictures? What if you can't find anything about them? Well
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there's ways that you can leverage that for a client. We just did actually a March Madness
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mailer that time of year. We use names. We were able to find where they went to college
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through the database that they have. But you can see there, did a March Madness and we leveraged
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where they went to college, not personalized like using pictures, but we are personalizing
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based off of their name and where they went to school. Second, same client. We actually put
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together a master's card. There's a great company called Dreamstime.com that you can actually
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purchase photos like this one on the master's and actually edit it and use it within your business
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You can't resell it, but you can actually use it to send to your clients. So what we did with this
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client is we created a master's card, bought a beautiful looking master's koozie for $15
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He sent it out to 30 best clients. They should be hitting on Monday, possibly Tuesday before the
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masters. Can't wait to see the type of responses they get. Once again, this is going to be an
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outreach that these clients have never seen before. Last, and before I kind of close it down here
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here's a quick summary. If you say, Jeremy, this is all great. How do I implement this type of
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personalization? Well, first, feel free to reach out to me. I'm going to share my email here in a
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second, my contact information. But on the left are some tools that you actually use to send cards
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whether you want to create them yourself or automate them. So sendoutcards.com is a great
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website to create your own personalized cards and send them out. And for a buck a month or a buck a
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day, excuse me, you can send one card a day. Phenomenal. You can't even go to Walmart now or
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Walgreens and get a card for five bucks. You can send a highly personalized card for a dollar if
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you send out cards on one a day. Thanks.io is a great tool to leverage automation, but personalization
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as well. You can actually do those March Madness cards or that master's card I just showed you a
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few seconds ago and actually automate that. And with the click of a button, using your CRM and
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connecting those tools, send out a bunch of cards to your favorite basketball fans and your favorite
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golfers. Canva.com, I believe Kim talked about this as well. Canva is an unbelievable tool for
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those who aren't creative to kind of just scour their kind of website to find some ideas to
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personalize. One of the tools I love to use in there is magazine covers. I love to Photoshop
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people's faces onto magazine covers and change the name of the magazine. So if it's a financial
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advisor, I'll Photoshop their face and put on top finance magazine, or let's say if they're a
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baseball card collector, I'll put baseball card magazine. Great tool. All you have to do is have
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a picture and be able to obviously click on your mouse and change the names and things of those
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nature very quick and easy tool to use and I mentioned it earlier our comments
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photofunnia.com is a great tool to get some newspapers that you can Photoshop
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street signs you know New York Times Square's bulletin boards whatever you
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want to use it's in there I think you got 750 different templates to use to
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actually kind of implement personalization very fast once again all you need is a picture saved you load the picture up poof click download and
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have a personalized picture that you can use to send to your best clients or your most
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coveted prospects. And then if you want to up it a lot and say, hey, I want to get that response rate north
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of 50%, the best places to actually buy some personalized gifts are Etsy, Zazzle, and
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Personalization Mall, all great websites. You can pretty much personalize anything you could possibly think of within those websites
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Last, as you can tell on the right there, I have a little bit of sense of humor
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We don't always implement personalization. Just kidding. We always do We big believers here I hope you can tell through my comments and what we showed you We very very passionate about this On the left there is my contact information
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You can find me on LinkedIn. When you just type in Jeremy Blue Ball or Coin Flip Marketing
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Down there in the bottom, it might be hard to see is my phone number. Feel free to text me
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It's 574-360-3431. We work with clients in two ways. And I'll leave you with that
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And we'll just turn it back over to Simon or Colin. Number one, where we do most of our work, a lot of people come in and say, Jeremy, this is all great
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I love what I just saw. I would love to do that with my client base. I just don't have the time. We actually do the work for you
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You provide us the list of the people you want to wow, people that you want to do some USP gift giving
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And we put together the packages for you and send them on your behalf. The other tool that we have is we do do some consulting
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We set up three one-hour calls and actually sit down with you and walk step by step on what to do, how to implement the tools, and help you implement personalization that gets you results
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So that's what I have for the day, Simon. Colin, thank you so much for having me
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If you are interested about personalization, please go to reach out. Love the help in any capacity possible
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That was awesome, Jeremy. Thanks for sharing. and there's a lot of people listening on different platforms
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but I'm talking to all of you. There is so much there for us to use in our lives
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You gave us so many different websites and tools and ideas and longer-term strategies and tactics, shorter-term
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That was just really, really well worth the listen and very generous of you to share all of your shares
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So thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. All right, I have two questions for you
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Sure. First one is, one of the fears that you address is people will say, oh my God, are you stalking me? How did you know that? How do your clients handle that when they do get it? If they ever do get it, I imagine it rarely happens, but if they do get it, how would you suggest they have that conversation
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you yeah so i've done north of 4 000 usp gift giving mailers personally for clients i've
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haven't happened it twice and it wasn't necessarily that they didn't appreciate it it was more the
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client that i did it for that person that told them hey stop sending me stuff i told you to take
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me off my list and i got this um what i found though i'm sure there's others that didn't what
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you find is you just don't get a response which once again is what you're already getting from
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that prospect anyways. So my point is no harm, no foul. They're not going to respond anyways
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I've yet to get something back from it says, Hey, I don't appreciate this. Don't use my picture
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Don't use my name. Not saying that it's not going to happen, but usually what I think happens is
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people just don't respond, which is put you in the same boat that's already happened. But I'll
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leave you with this though, Colin, let's say you did a 200 of them and we can truly get you north
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of a 50% response ratio. So that's a hundred people that you've never spoke to. And one gets
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mad. I'm going to take those odds all day long. Even if five get mad at you and say, don't ever
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do that to me, most likely those people weren't going to work with you anyways, but you just got
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a hundred new conversations going that you didn't have with game changers within your business
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I believe the return that you get for the risk that you take here is so great that even if you
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do upset someone, you're still going to win in the long term. Yeah. I've implemented some of this
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stuff and I'm a big believer in what you do and what you suggest others to do. I'm a very big
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believer in it. I don't think I've ever had it. Sometimes I'll get people like, how the heck did
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you know that? And I get that. And then I said, if I'm doing my job, I probably should be pretty
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prepared, shouldn't I? If I'm reaching out to you. So yes, I thought that was awesome
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Well, and to, and not to interrupt. So let's say if I was like, you know, obviously you and I dealt with financial advisors with you. Let's say I was an advisor and you've been my client for 10 years, Colin, like you have a social media presence. People are just going to assume, oh, Jeremy took good notes of me over the last 10 years. Like he knew that I was, you know, a Philadelphia Eagles fan or whatever the case may be in your life. Like I knew that. Or like, I think if I remember correctly, when I sent you the first one, you do some triathlons, right? Like that's probably out there
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You're just going to assume, oh, Jeremy knows I did triathlons, or I've talked to him about the triathlon I was doing that week, and he just took notes
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Now, where it might get a little creepy is, hey, you just signed up with me, and next day something comes like that
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And I'm like, yeah, okay, that's a little different. But that's where we try to have this when we consult with our clients
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What's the tactical way to do this so it doesn't come off that way? Yes
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Okay, last question, and then I listened for your answer. I'm very interested in it is share the math with us
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Like how long does this take? So let's say I say, I love what you do in order for me to be successful
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How long is it going to take me to do this for, let's say, I say I have 50 prospects
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How long is it going to be like to put together a personalized message for each one of those
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50, just so I can like get that straight in my head if I'm not going to hire you, but I am going to take your advice
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Oh boy. So 50 of them, I mean, kind of doing just the message or the card or what do you like
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kind of like what i do is that what you're asking not not what you do you you you have
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a very strong elaborate successful program i'm just saying like so i so that my outreach i put
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you know like learn what they do put together something on canva and then send that to them
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via email and regular mail let's just say i do that give me an estimate is it five minutes per
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person is it 10 minutes i mean i i probably at first you can probably get it down to 10 minutes
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per person i think at first it's going to take you a good 30 minutes to an hour to kind of
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figure out where to look, where to get that information. But I think once you've done 10, 15 of them
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you're going to start to really kind of fine tune and get it down to maybe 10
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max of 15 minutes and go from there. And, you know, what I tell people to do
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especially like on the verbiage is really kind of have a template within that
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verbiage, but then also to have like maybe two places that you can implement
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personalization. So it's scale, but it's kind of not quite scale, if that makes sense
28:46
Yeah, that's great. Okay. Well, I'm grateful for it. I imagine the folks listening were taking notes feverishly. I certainly was. And, you know, just, just so nice to hear those things. If I'm a leader and I'm trying to reach out to my employees, you know, from a leadership conference perspective, which is what we're doing is if I'm a leadership, like, how nice would that be to reach out to my employees with, hey, I know you're a big Eagles fan, Colin
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And I wanted to share this photo with you. Those things are just so seldomly done
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And you're showing us how easily they can be executed. Yeah, that's a, I mean, we talk more about from just the prospecting outreach
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I spend a lot of time with clients. How do you implement this for your employees too, right
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This is not just be done from your outreach for your best clients. This should be done internal
29:34
And I can't remember who said it. You know, the most powerful part of your business is your people
29:38
implementing this stuff and you really want to show them the care. Exactly what you just talked about is a whole new level that most managers
29:46
business owners just don't do. You know, I've had 12 plus managers in my career
29:52
and I can think of one that knew anything really about me. That's crazy
29:56
No, that's awesome. And it was by the way, it was Chris Johnson at OnTarget. living who mentioned it yeah okay our biggest asset then the employee's health is their biggest
30:05
asset so that we should really care about the employee's health and um you know their mental
30:10
health is a really big piece of the equation of course what he was suggesting all parts of their
30:14
health but like if you have someone who's engaged with you and knows all these things about you and
30:18
is reaching out to you in a personalized way your mental health is going to be improved at work
30:22
right it will connect like that yeah i mean it'd be powerful like to your point like uh you know
30:28
baseball season starting up. I mean, I got this going up to my best client. I'm sending them an
30:32
opening day card. Now I've got the Mets logo in there. I bought them like a nice little
30:38
it hasn't showed up yet, but it's going to be like a Mets bat opener. Just to say, thank you
30:43
man. I mean, you've referred me a ton of business. You've been an advocate for me from day one
30:48
You're telling everybody about my business. Like, hey, you told me this. He probably doesn't
30:52
remember telling me this, but I wrote it down and I'm leveraging it and using it to my power
30:57
Well done. Well done. All right. Thanks again for joining us. And I appreciate you being here
31:02
And hopefully everyone will reach out to Jeremy Blueall at CoinFlip Marketing
31:06
I'm a big fan. Thanks, Colin. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Okay, folks
31:11
So we're on the home stretch here. I'm going to take us to the end of the conference at 2 o'clock
31:16
And we're 1.32 now. So hopefully it'll be a few minutes earlier than that
31:21
the last piece of this equation is how do we communicate our value in today's world
31:29
And there is so much to consider. If you just take based on what we've heard to this point
31:35
depending on how long you've been a part of the event so far, and just take that like the world
31:39
that we live in. There's just so much to think about and so much to consider. And you as a leader
31:46
or you as a professional or you as a parent or you as an athlete, any way you think about yourself
31:53
like how do you communicate your value? And it's vitally important as a professional and as a
32:00
leader. I think most of you would all understand that. It's important for you as a salesperson
32:05
I think you get that. But like as a person or as an athlete like that, that seems to be like
32:10
disconnected a little bit. Like, why do I care about my value so much as a person? And so when
32:15
we understand our value and we truly understand our value, we tend to be, and this, by the way
32:22
isn't my opinion. This is what science says. We tend to be much more confident people. And that
32:27
you know, that seems to be a perfect equation. And that tends to help us improve our relationships
32:32
and by improving our relationships helps us live longer. And so like, think about this idea of like
32:39
Am I successfully able to communicate my value? And if I am, that means I truly understand my value
32:46
And so how do I truly understand my value so that I can communicate my values, so that
32:51
I can live my best life, to use an overused expression these days on social media
32:55
So I'm going to share a few slides with you, tell you a little bit more about our organization. And I'm real excited to do all of that
33:02
So the branding, which, of course, is just communication of your value pieces, is at
33:08
the heart of what we're going to talk about today. And I'll start with like who developing
33:13
the next leaders is. And for most of you who are dialed in now, I know many of you through our
33:19
seven minutes to better selling podcast. I know some of you through working with us from a coaching
33:24
perspective. I know some of you through the training programs we've done and learning development
33:29
programs we've done for your organizations. And so I'm going to tell you just in a brief way of
33:33
who we are for those who don't know who we are. For those who do know, just remind you of some of
33:38
the work we're doing. So developing the next leaders started back in 2015 is when we actually
33:43
opened our doors. And we opened our doors as a charity, a 501c3 that is designed to take people
33:52
who are leaving the military, people who have served this country so bravely and are looking
33:57
to make a successful entrance into the financial services industry. We believe that the next leaders
34:02
should come from people who are servant leaders. For example, we believe these people should be well-organized
34:10
focused, driven, and be strong leaders. Not managers of people, but leaders of people
34:18
And that was the theory back in 2015. And that has only expanded and blossomed into what we've become today
34:27
So Developing Next Leaders has added a for-profit piece to the equation
34:31
where we coach entrepreneurs and folks from all walks of life on how to communicate their value
34:38
how to brand themselves better, how to differentiate their message in a very noisy or crowded market
34:44
And so that's what we're going to talk about today. And so as we move along to the next slide, you'll see I was involved with or have been part of two books
34:54
And so the first book on the left there is called Practice Matters. And that is exactly how advisors create efficiency in their lives
35:05
And so think about it from this way. So like there's legal advisors, people who advise other folks on, you know, give them
35:11
legal advice. There's tax advisors, people who give tax advice and tax planning
35:16
And then there's financial advisors, people who give, you know, overall financial planning advice
35:20
And there's lots of other advisors, you know, lots of us are offering our advice these days
35:25
And so this is a six chapter book on exactly how people who operate like at a really, really high level, exactly how they do it
35:32
And then the second book on the right, which is the Better Business Book is, and this is a fun one
35:36
It takes 100 entrepreneurs and says, OK, what's your best story? What's your best idea and how well can you tell that
35:43
And then they put us all together in a room and help us work through telling that story in the best way possible for the reader
35:49
And then it gets edited and put out in this fashion. So this Better Business book was on the New York Times bestseller list and is a wonderful, wonderful representation of like, you know, being the best leader you can be in all parts of your life
36:02
So, you know, the business starts as this charity moves into this coaching and training
36:07
And these books have helped bolster what we've done with so many of the folks that we have done
36:12
And we tell these stories of like, here's one of the great lessons we've learned from this person
36:16
And here's one of the great things that this person has done that they let us share with others to make them better, to make their lives better
36:22
And so that's what these two books are all about. So as we transition into the heart of the presentation and truly communicating your value in this world, you'll see that like the development of us as a human being has changed greatly over the last, say, 50 years or so
36:39
And specifically, the story goes is that one of these global alcohol distribution companies recognized that every time they were playing German music and every time they were playing German music in the background in their stores where people were in buying alcohol, people tended to buy more German beer
37:04
So there was music playing in the background. They never had any plans of trying to sell more German beer as a result of playing German music
37:12
Yet every time they played German music, German beer sales increased. So they brought a consultant in to talk about this and figure out what actually this means
37:21
And he said, well, let's do a little bit further research. And so what they said on these off weeks so on the first week we play German music The second week we play French music The third week we play German music The next week we play French music And on and off they went
37:37
And what they learned was when they played German music, German beer sales increased by over 50%
37:43
And then the next week, when they played French music, French wine sales increased by 75%
37:49
And this went on and on over weeks and weeks and weeks
37:53
And so what they did is they were continually collecting data from the people who purchased the German beer, purchased the French wine out in the parking lot
38:00
And they said, why did you buy that? What you bought? Why did you buy the German beer? Why did you buy the French wine
38:05
And what the people said was like eye opening or startling. Their answer was, I don't know
38:12
I just don't think I've drank German beer in a while. Or why did you buy the French wine or why did you buy the wine that you bought
38:18
Did price drive it? Did the label drive it? I don't know. No, I just bought French wine. I hadn't bought French wine in a while and figured I'd give it a try
38:27
And so the point is that everything that happens, whether we recognize it or not, makes an impression and makes an impact on us and on the folks that we talk to every day
38:40
Everything we do, every email we send, every voicemail we leave, it makes an impact on the people we talk to, the people that we touch every day
38:51
And so I wonder how often we think about that with our conversations. I wonder how often we think about that with the way that we ask the questions that we ask
39:00
And so I'll ask you, if you are actively able to listen here, is do you think that the questions you ask are indicative of the value that you want to communicate
39:17
The questions you ask, do they truly articulate the value that you as a human being would like to expose to the world
39:28
And so as we move to the next slide, I'm going to give you three tools to give you a really, really confident answer to that question
39:34
And so the first one comes from, it's a story from Kahneman and Tversky
39:38
And so some of you know these two folks, Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman
39:42
They're the behavioral finance folks, and they've done wonderful research on all things
39:46
psychology and biases and why we think the way we think as human beings
39:52
But they're the ones that were one of the first people who talked about these cognitive biases
39:56
And Kahneman Tversky first identified that people in general and specifically investors are not rational thinkers
40:04
They have cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are these little mental shortcuts that we take or these mental shortcuts that we make because we have to in order to deal with this busy world that we all live in
40:19
So we touch things. We hear things. We see things. We smell things
40:23
And our brain says to us, that's a lot of input. And as a result of that, I have to just make decisions based on what my instincts tell me
40:33
They're called cognitive biases. If you see a salesperson walking up to you in a networking event with their business card out, you're like, uh-oh, I'm going to get sold something here
40:44
That's a cognitive bias. If you see that it's gray outside, you think, uh-oh, is it going to rain today
40:52
our brains just make these decisions for us without us ever really recognizing it
40:57
And that has a lot to do with the conversations we have, the emails that we send, the voicemails
41:01
that we leave, the presentations that we do. All of these things are impacted by these cognitive
41:07
biases. So everything we say, people are making decisions based on how we said what we said
41:13
And so what we're asking you to think about is if everyone has these cognitive biases
41:17
and they dramatically impact the way people perceive what they hear, then we have to think about how we say what we say
41:26
And if we do that effectively, if we're really carefully, is what I'm saying and then how I'm saying what I'm saying
41:32
does it truly articulate who I want to be in this world today
41:37
If we think about that, we will be really, really effective communicators
41:44
And so I give you tool number one here. So tool number one is ask a question that you want to know the answer to
41:49
I say that you want to. You, the asker of the question that you truly want to know the answer to
41:55
Because when you ask that question that you truly want to know the answer to
42:00
you'll listen a whole lot better. And when you listen a whole lot better, boy, are you
42:06
communicating something different than most other people in our world today. Lots of us ask questions
42:13
Lots of us ask questions that we think we know the answer to. So then we stop listening
42:18
In fact, it happens on the phone a lot. You ask someone a question, did you see the Phillies game last night
42:26
Yeah, I saw it. It's just an instinctive response. Now, did you see the Phillies game last night
42:34
and what did you think of what happened in the third inning? That's a totally different question
42:39
and it elicits or inspires a different level of conversation. So thought number one is ask a question you want to know the answer to
42:50
If you truly want to know the answer to it, you're going to listen a lot better, which pushes us to point two
42:56
Point two says Princeton over the last 50 plus years have been studying the evolution of the human mind
43:05
And over the last two million years, we have developed what is the majority of our brain or the majority of our mind
43:12
And the majority of that mind, which they consider mind one, as you can see on the green there, is instinctive
43:19
It's like these cognitive biases. I see this. I think that. I act that way
43:25
And so, like, when we ask questions that people, like, know the answer to or think they know the answer to, they never have to get out of their instinctive brain
43:34
Over the last 180,000 years, maybe 200,000 years, we have developed this mind two, which is the prefrontal cortex
43:47
And mind two is this strategic mind or the relational mind or the creative mind
43:55
That's where all of those things happen, or I should say all of those. The very large majority of those strategic decisions, those relational decisions, those creative decisions happen in the prefrontal cortex
44:07
And so our job is to, number one, ask questions that we want to know the answer to because we'll listen a lot better
44:12
For a better listener, that's communicating our value in a different way. The second piece is when people ask us questions that we know the answer to, we simply react to them with this instinctive mind
44:24
Okay, now, when people ask us questions that make us think, that truly make us think, and truly make us think strategically and relationally, we then get out of our instinctive mind and get into our relational mind
44:43
And so how do we do that So what Develop a Next Leader says is ask a question that your client or your peer or your colleague or your friend hasn heard before or at least hasn heard asked that way in the past And if you able to do that you able to push them out of that instinctive mind
45:05
and push them into that prefrontal cortex or that relational mind. So thought one, ask a question
45:11
you wanna know the answer to. Thought two is ask them a question that they haven't heard before
45:15
And then thought three is make sure that they wanna know the answer to that question
45:20
Excuse me, make sure that they wanna answer that question. If your questions have those three components to them, you will find that those conversations are engaging, are enthralling
45:35
I've walked away from many conversations in my life and be like, that was a total waste of time
45:40
I've walked away from other conversations in my life and been like, that was an incredibly constructive or beautiful conversation
45:50
I've actually said things like that in the past. them, like, that was just awesome. Because the questions that were asked, we both wanted to know
45:57
the answer to. We both wanted to talk about. And we were both, like, learning things as we were
46:03
talking because the questions were asked in a way that forced us to think. And that is the essence
46:08
of excellent conversation today. That is the core of communicating your value today
46:16
if you could master these three things. And so I'll share a story with you that highlights, like
46:20
our ability to do these things in light of any situation. And you say, geez, Colin, that's a big
46:27
statement in light of any situation. Can I really ask a question that elicits these three things
46:32
And we would say yes. And so I like to do adventure races and I like to do endurance events
46:40
and different things like that. And so in 2018, I was doing a five day endurance event up in Maine
46:46
the main adventure race. And it was from the top of Maine all the way down to like southern New
46:52
Hampshire, 300 plus miles, kayaking, hiking, orienteering through the woods and mountain
47:00
biking. Had to find different checkpoints in the wilderness. It was really an amazing event
47:05
So in the morning of day three of the event, it's about five o'clock in the morning
47:09
4.30, 5 o'clock in the morning. And I wake up. And unfortunately, I wake up in the back of an
47:18
ambulance, unknowing where I am. And what wakes me, what like jolts me is the bumps, because I'm
47:27
coming down the side of a mountain in the back of this ambulance. And I'm getting poked with a
47:33
needle. Someone's trying to put an IV in me. And I look over and I said, is this the first time
47:40
you've ever put an IV in? I asked a question that was harsh at the time. I was scared. I didn't know
47:48
who the person was. I hadn't communicated with them in the past. And I asked them a closed-ended
47:52
question that they didn't want to answer. And I didn't really care about the answer, the answer
47:57
to the question either. I wanted to take a shot at this person. And then I said, after no response
48:03
Do you know what you're doing? No response again. And all of a sudden, I recognize that
48:10
I need to communicate my value to this person. This person needs to know that I have three
48:17
children and a wife. And this person needs to know that I want to live because I felt absolutely
48:22
positively worse than I've ever felt in my life. In fact, I prayed. I prayed that this was not my
48:30
last moments on this world. That's how ill I felt. And so I had that conscious thought and thank God
48:39
I did. And I said to him, how do you even work in such a difficult situation with us bouncing down
48:46
this mountain, me as stressed as I am, and you working in this small confined area
48:54
I asked him a question that I wanted to know the answer to, that he wanted to talk about
49:00
He wanted to say, this is really difficult. Give me a break here. I'm doing my best to try and save your life
49:06
And so I said, how? How? And when I asked him that how question, he started answering
49:13
And he started telling me, it's not the easiest thing to do
49:17
But as long as I have the patient relaxed, which you are now becoming, which is good to see
49:23
They had me strapped down. I have the patient strapped down. and we stop with these bumps, I can get the IV in there. My next question was
49:36
will you share with me, please, the two or three situations you've been in that are worse than this
49:43
one? That are worse than this one. He smiled. He laughed. And before he ever had a chance to answer
49:50
the IV went in my arm. I figured out at that time that anytime, no matter how challenging
49:57
the situation, how complex or confusing the environment that we're in, if we ask these
50:05
questions that get people out of their instinctive reactive mind and we get people using the front
50:10
of their mind, we are able to truly communicate our value or you're able to communicate your value
50:16
It wasn't long before he was asking questions. Do you have children? Tell me about your children
50:22
He knew I wasn't feeling well. Tell me about your children. He wanted to remind me of what I was
50:26
what I knew I needed to know, which is I needed to live. And that conversation lasted all the way
50:33
till we got to the emergency room and then ultimately the ICU. And as you know, since I'm
50:37
standing here, he saved my life. And so the idea of us being able to communicate our value starts
50:44
with the way we ask questions and the way that people react to the questions we ask. And remember
50:49
it's how we ask and what we ask. And we give you those three tools. Make sure you want to know the
50:54
answer, make sure they want to talk about the answer, and make sure that you're asking in a way
50:59
that they haven't been asked it in the past. So as we move over to the next slide, you'll see one
51:03
of the things that, you know, we as human beings have to deal with is this big challenge. Well
51:10
This slide's a little messed up there, Simon. But the point is all the same
51:16
One of the things that conspires against us is we as human beings tend to ask closed-ended questions when we most need to ask an open-ended question
51:32
Now, closed-ended questions aren't all bad. I know that's one of the things that people talk about a lot is closed-ended questions are a problem
51:40
Too many people ask closed-ended questions. Those things are true, but not when you dig deeper into them
51:46
Closed-ended questions can be effective when used at the right parts or the right points in conversations
51:52
However, earliest points of conversation, closed-ended questions are horrible. When we're asking someone to do something, closed-ended questions are way less effective
52:04
In particular, in the last two years, closed-ended questions have become so much less effective when we're asking someone to do something
52:14
And here's what I mean by that. Is 20 years ago, you could say to someone, are you going to do business with me
52:21
And people reacted well to that or reacted with a better response than they do today People do not like those hard closed questions when they being asked to take the next steps or to do something So closed questions are
52:36
effective at certain points of conversation, just not at the beginning of a conversation and not
52:41
when we're asking them to do something. Okay, so how does that relate to what we're talking about
52:45
here? We as human beings have this wiring in us that says, I'm going to ask a closed-ended
52:53
the question at the beginning of a conversation and when I want someone to do something
52:57
Will you do this for me? That's a yes or no. Can you do this for me? That's a yes or no
53:01
At the beginning of a conversation, is now a good time? Do you want me to try later
53:08
Do you work with? Are you A? So very early on in our outreach to our prospects
53:16
our outreach to our clients, when we're in a networking situation, at the earliest points
53:23
and at the most complex points of conversation are when we most need to ask open-ended questions
53:29
And it's when we as human beings are wiring has us ask closed-ended questions. So what I'm
53:34
asking you to do is to think about it. So Colin, I need to, I need to number one
53:37
have three components to every conversation, every question I ask, which number one is
53:41
I have to want to know the answer. Two, they have to want to answer it. And three
53:47
as I've mentioned, ask it the way they haven't been asked in the past. Now, I need to take that and ask it early on in a conversation. And I need to ask it when I'm
53:56
openly trying to close them or ask them to take the next steps. So something like
54:02
thank you. So I'm reaching out to someone said, are you the person I should be talking to
54:07
is thanks so much for taking a minute to talk. How best to communicate with the person who
54:12
makes decisions on how best to communicate with them? Well, cold calling is not the right answer
54:20
That's if you're cold calling. Okay. Well, how else would you recommend that I do this
54:25
Then they start opening up. We've got, we've asked the question in a way that they have never
54:29
answered it before. They're assuming never been asked it before and never been forced to answer
54:33
in their lives, and we truly want to know the answer. You will listen wonderfully. They will
54:39
talk and share. Early on in conversations, do your best to ask open-ended questions. Stay away
54:46
from closed-ended questions. Later on in a conversation, when you're wrapping up meetings
54:51
or wrapping up the conversation, ask open-ended questions. How best to stay in front of you with
54:56
this? How best to continue to communicate our value to you and your practice, you and your
55:01
business, you and your friends, you and this group you belong to, how best to, that gets people out
55:07
of their instinctive and gets them into their relational brain. And if you're able to do that
55:13
you're able to so quickly communicate your value that you value communication. You value the
55:18
relationship. You value the resources you bring in the relationships you have. And it's not the
55:25
easiest thing to do, but awareness is important, number one. And once you have that awareness
55:29
Now you have the tools to overcome it. You want to know the answer
55:33
They want to talk about the answer and ask in a way that maybe they haven't heard in the past
55:38
And so we'll move over to one more slide and then we'll bring this whole thing together here
55:44
We'll do these last two slides because they connect with one another. In the past, we have been able to use other platforms to get out there and communicate our value
55:55
Like cold calling has had at its place for a long time in the sales world or the leadership world
56:01
I could call people and say, hey, I'd like you to work for us if I'm a sales leader looking for more people to work with me
56:06
If I wanted more clients, I could call people. And that used to work. I used to do seminars
56:11
You know, you get into a room and you try and get 5,000 people to come in and tell your story
56:16
Those things aren't working in this COVID world. And so advertising and buying books of business and, you know, all these things used to work
56:25
over the last, say, maybe 30 years. But the last two years, things have changed
56:32
And so, Simon, move to the last slide, if you would, please. Things have changed. And they've changed in a way where the three tools in order to most successfully take what
56:42
we learn and communicate out to the world happens in the social media world
56:48
These are the best ways for us to communicate our value, number one. Number two, through networking
56:53
and number three, through getting referrals. And these things have all been mentioned
56:57
which is a wonderful way to close our session for the day
57:01
But these things have all been mentioned from Alan to Chris to Kim to Jeremy
57:08
and now you're hearing it again. Social media, networking, and building a successful referral source
57:15
are the most successful ways to build a practice. Now, the reason why I bring this up
57:22
And the reason why this is a wonderful slide to wrap up on is, although these are the ways that people are really successfully communicating their value and growing their business and improving themselves, these are the three ways they're doing it
57:36
They're using these three platforms or mediums to do that. The challenge is they require little to no structure for you
57:46
If you post every once in a while, yeah, I kind of use social media. if you build your business through networking, how do you do that
57:53
Well, I'm always kind of like out in the community or I'm always trying to like talk to new people
57:57
I'm always trying to. If you're always trying to, there's no structure around that
58:01
I, you know, I'd like to build my business through referrals. How do you do that? Well, you know, I asked people if they would send me referrals if they would
58:08
You know, that there's just no structure to that. And what we're asking you to think about is if you're going to successfully communicate your value
58:16
as a sales leader in today's world, as a leader of people in today's world
58:23
these three platforms are the most successful ways for you to do it
58:28
Now, our job is to take what we have learned over the four hours that we've spent together
58:33
again, depending on how much time you were able to dial in, over that period of time
58:38
take what you've learned and bring it to these three platforms and do it in a way that clearly communicates your value
58:48
the way that you take your superpower, as Alan Stein told us earlier
58:52
what is your true value that you bring? And then bring that to these worlds
58:57
not the way where you're telling everyone how good you are, but the way that you're asking questions
59:01
about things that relate to what your clients and prospects and the folks that you're networking with care most about
59:09
And so I'm going to wrap with this thought. my father sold cars and he sold cars for 42 years. He was the number one salesperson
59:21
for Ford Boater Corporation for years and years and years globally in Pennsylvania
59:27
He had done some amazing things. He raised nine kids, put us all through private grade school
59:33
and high school. And my mother never worked outside of the house. She couldn't have with nine kids
59:37
And she just, you know, the way that we grew up was just amazing
59:43
And so my father had so many wonderful lessons he taught us, and one that's lasted maybe the longest
59:49
There's so many that I have with me still. But the one that I think will last longest is he said, my definition of hell, my definition of hell is when you..
59:59
die, the person you became meets the person you could have become
1:00:09
And so what he meant by that is, if you don't do all of the things that inspire you to operate
1:00:17
at your highest level as a leader, as a person, as a human being, if we don't do these things
1:00:24
then we're not truly becoming the best selves, our best selves. We're not truly living our best life
1:00:32
And so like every day I think about what am I doing to become the person that is like my ideal or is my hero or is my best self
1:00:45
Because when I die, I want the person I become to be the person I could have became
1:00:52
I want them to be the same person. And that will be heaven for me
1:00:56
Simon, thanks so much for running a wonderful show and thanks everyone for joining us
1:01:02
hope to see you again next year at the Developing the Next Leaders and C Sharp Leadership Conference
1:01:08
good selling Thank you
#Personals