A strategy isn’t luck…

…but it does includes making your own luck.

If you send one mail and win a $1m piece of business…that’s luck. If you phone a company and the call is answered by the CEO and they give you a chance to pitch…that’s luck too. If your phone rings and it’s someone you’ve not spoken to placing an order…that too is luck.

The difference between luck and strategy though is that luck is neither predictable nor repeatable. If you get one of those pieces of luck today you might get another tomorrow or perhaps not again for a year. That’s luck (or not).

To be successful in the modern landscape there’s a huge benefit in building a strategy that does two things: i) it creates a predictable and repeatable outcome which is an inevitable consequence of implementing it, and ii) it generates some of that luck along the way.

Don’t get me wrong, good luck is very nice but you can’t rely on luck. What you can do though is work with luck.

The harder I practice, the luckier I get. - Gary Player

We are working with a company that has seen first had the proof of this particular phenomenon. They have implanted a social selling and influence programme in their business and, after four months have generate some significant pipeline ($1,000,000), are also forecasting a deal of transformation proportions (which, if landed, will double their size) and have already closed one piece of business in a month (their usual deal cycle is 6-24 months on average).

They have achieved this in just 4 months.

Now, we wouldn’t ever claim that the deal that closed in 4 weeks or the transformation sized deal was anything other than just luck but when you ramp-up your social activity it’s amazing how often that increase in visibility and engagement does in fact deliver that “lucky break” that you had been hoping for.

The interesting thing is that this isn’t a one-off instance, it has happened to me, to Tim, to Eric, to the rest of the team and to the majority of companies we have worked with. Sometimes it’s a complete left-field opportunity, sometimes it’s a deal we thought was dead, and sometimes it’s a chance encounter…”hey man I saw your post and I realise I’ve not seen you for ages, fancy a coffee?”

Luck, yes…but engineered luck if you will.

You only start to see the lucky encounters if you have a plan that facilitates this rather than relies on it.

I know, you’re thinking that “this isn’t rocket science, my team just need to be more visible, more active and post more” which is absolutely right.

But they’re not are they. They’ve all been on LinkedIn for 15 years and haven’t completed their profiles, they have 1500 connections…(100 people per year) and they haven’t published anything for 6 weeks.

An old friend of mins one sort me the saying “people usually do what they usually do” and this seems like a perfect example of this.

So, what should you be doing?

Getting started in this is quite simple. It begins with people taking the initiative and starting to do those things…more active, more visible, more posting. However in your whole organisation you probably haven’t got more than a couple of people doing this and even those people could be doing more. So even the good ones are going to need help.

The purpose of having a strategy is to get ahead of the curve, to make sure that you are preparing for that “first impression” that you look like you know what you’re talking about AND that you look like a decent person, and perhaps most of all that you are thinking about the account rather than the people in it. So often we hear “well I could have done that” or “if only I had connected to more people in the target account” or “I wish I had published some more relevant content before reaching-out to that account”…so everyone needs to dress their shop window to get the outcome they want. Not only does this maximise the chances of being taken seriously it also spreads the risk. Spreading the risk means that (for example) if you want to talk to the CMO but the CMO doesn’t want to talk to you it doesn’t need to be the end of the road. Having multiple entry points in to a target organisation spreads the risk and maximises the chance of finding someone who really likes you and wants to do business with you.

This type of thinking forms the basis of an individual strategy. For each person this helps them to achieve their unique objectives around visibility, influence, conversations and sales.

Of course this should also be part of a wider organisational strategy to dominate a niche/industry/sector - if everyone in your organisation looks better Than your competition what is the only logical conclusion I can draw from this…that you actually ARE better.

The reason that this “dominating” is important is because we all jump to conclusions. If someone looks like the best person to be talking to it’s usually because they are, this again creates those lucky/chance encounters.

Be lucky…but remember that luck is a byproduct of the strategy and NOT the strategy itself.