Recapping the week

One Big IDEA: We approach work based on our worldview of community, productivity, and performance. Those thoughts affect our expectations.

A few highlights from the week.

When you do marketing and sales, you are in a battle for attention. But be careful that you aren’t caught up working to get your prospect's attention when they show no sign of having real buying signals. E.g., If you sell software to accounting firms, you could create a piece of content that gets their attention and makes them smile or comment. However, that doesn’t mean that they are ready to buy. Don’t make the mistake that I made - just because someone enjoys your content doesn’t mean they are ready to buy

What gets in our way of persuasion? In the book Resistance and Persuasion, they discussed Omega and Alpha strategies:

OMEGA strategies are those in which you reduce the resistance to say no, whereas more traditional methods, which are widely known and taught, are ALPHA strategies, which increase the offer to gain a yes.

Alpha strategies attempt to overwhelm resistance by building up the desirable reasons that promote attitude change and compliance. Omega strategies, on the other hand, attempt to remove or deal with the resistance to persuasion or change.

Alpha Strategies

• Make messages more persuasive
• Add Incentive (Buy 2 get 1 free)
• Increase Source Credibility
• Emphasize scarcity

Omega Strategies

• Address resistance directly
• Redefine resistance ( instead of saying it’s a sales call, say it’s a consultancy or conversation)

What happens when your teammates don’t value what you value? Some thoughts:

• Tie the work they are doing to how it benefits the company
• If you can’t make this connect, you probably shouldn't be giving the teammate this project to do
• Once you have alignment, please find a way to ensure the outcome is aligned with how they get compensation (especially when they are in sales)

Understanding Perception problems

• Some problems you will face have more to do with how they “appear” rather than how they actually are
• When someone comes to me with an issue, i always try to validate their feeling
• After I do this, the next step will be to quantify the problem. How often is it happening, when is it happening, where - and most importantly, how does it compare to others on the team or some industry best practices
• Things can be a nuisance for your teammates; however, it might be within the acceptable limit of what makes you jump to take action on the problem
• Not every problem should be fixed right away. In fact, in startups, there’s ALOT of issues that you learn to live with. Things will never be 100% perfect. Once you learn what that acceptable limit is for you, then you can share that with your team
• I like to think about it, like working out. Let's say you start working out, and you are sore. Because you know you are in a workout routine, being sore might feel uncomfortable, but you still show up the next day. It’s still business as usual. It’s more of a feature or working out rather than a flaw. On the other hand, if you workout and sprain your ankle, this typically means that you will need to stop working out. This is a problem that needs to be fixed and dealth with. This is a flaw. One is a real problem, while the other is a perception of a problem