How to Use Whole Brain Business Development to Create and Close More Opportunities, with Karim Nehdi

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use our cognitive diversity to create and close more deals?

• What if you could read the minds of your customers and predict their response in advance? That would be an incredibly powerful business development skill.
• The first step is understanding yourself and where your preferences lie. For Mo, he fell into the experimental/analytical spectrum and knowing that helped him understand what was really on his mind and how he approached life.
• Your unique thinking style comes with strengths but also potential blindspots. Your default thinking may be leading you in the wrong direction for a deal, and if you never look back or get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, you will keep making the same mistakes.
• Once you know what your thought process is like, you can use that as a model to consider how a prospect might be thinking. Think about one of your most important customers and take a guess about what they might be thinking about in terms of what you are offering.
• If they are a big picture experimental thinker, maybe they are looking for something more innovative. If they are more relational thinkers, maybe they want to know they are going to be taken care of and are really concerned about what everyone else thinks. If they are structural thinkers, they are probably hyper-focused on the details and whether the offer will deliver exactly what they need. If they are analytical thinkers, they can be very price sensitive and looking for the greatest measurable ROI for them.
• Understanding the different types of buyers can allow you to position your product or service around what their needs might be.
• Don’t assume that people are on the same wavelength as you and ask the question about what they need.
• There are certain ways of thinking that tend to manifest more often in certain industries. Analytical thinkers like actuaries are probably all about the bottom line and being efficient in their communication. Structural thinkers are probably all about the details. Relational thinkers may ask you about your personal life and will probably engage with you beyond verbal communication. Experimental thinkers will ask a lot of questions to try to connect the dots, and you might see them work out their thought process in the conversation.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

thinkherrmann.com/mo