John Tigh's, Linda Klein's, and Andrew Robertson's Favorite Business Development Strategy

Mo asks John Tigh: What is your favorite science, step, or strategy from the GrowBIG Training or the Snowball System?

• John has been involved in the Snowball System for a long time and the Gravitas Model is a strategy that he uses every single day.
• It’s the perfect framework for taking any conversation where you want to go. It has an incredible level of flexibility and imparts a character to your conversation that people can’t help but enjoy. It also gives you the ability to keep the conversation going.
• When you ask great questions, you get a triple win. With the way the Gravitas Model is designed, they light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind when they are sharing their personal perspective, you learn their priorities in their words, and the questions highly correlate to likability. The more they talk and the less you talk, the more the other person will like you.
• John’s perfect buyer is in the C-Suite or someone dealing with content creation. During a conversation with his perfect buyer, John would talk about what they have in common, the challenges they experienced in the past, and their current role and their current projects.
• Typically, the goal for each meeting is to secure the next meeting.
• By addressing the base level mechanical questions, John can take a conversation up to higher level vision-based goals. He often asks people how calm the seas are and what they think the future holds, with a hook at the end about any questions that John didn’t ask but should have.
• John is always looking for an opportunity to offer value in some way or to make a connection or introduction for the other person in an effort to secure the next meeting. The framework is simply built around looking for ways to make the other person look good.
• Once you get the Gravitas Model in your bones, it really does help every kind of conversation, whether that’s spoken or written.

Mo asks Linda Klein: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?

• Linda never wants to be unprepared in her work, and the same is true in meeting with a client, which is why Dynamic Meeting Prep is Linda’s favorite strategy.
• A potential client’s business always has important area-specific language that they use that you should know.
• It’s amazing how much companies have on their website and what you can learn by doing some research. Those insights are invaluable during a meeting, and preparing for a meeting pays dividends when you land the business because then you have a huge head start.
• Everybody prepares for delivery meetings but rarely do people prepare for the initial meeting.
• You can’t prepare for the first meeting at a dinner before the meeting day. Research is crucial. Make preparation a priority and get the team strategy outlined ahead of time.
• Your team needs to show the client that they are seamless, working together and solving the client’s problems.
• Figure out what your goal for the meeting is, what the frame for the meeting is and how to kick it off, what the big questions that might be asked, natural next steps, and potential cliffhangers you can use to get the next meeting.
• Being direct can be a challenge but being authentic about the fact that you want to simply be helpful is the best approach.
• Be ready to discuss what the client wants to discuss. The more prepared you are in advance, the easier it will be to switch gears and the more comfortable you will be.

Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System?

• Writing down the seven relationships that are the most important to growing the business was a technique that changed the way Andrew thought about business development.
• Andrew has a lot of great relationships with CEOs in various other businesses, but a lot of them didn’t start out at the top. Those relationships were nurtured over time with people that moved up in their organizations or moved around in their industry.
• Think about how you got into your position and where people are right now that you can connect with.
• When asked to list our most important relationships, we tend to think of our best current relationships by default, but that’s the wrong approach. We should think about the relationships that will have the most impact on our business first.
• The number seven forces you to make choices and really identify those relationships that will move the needle.
• Your list should contain people you have a relationship with, people you don’t know but would like to have a relationship with, and the people you need to have a relationship with who won’t necessarily send you business directly but can help you find it elsewhere.
• You only have a limited amount of time, so you need to be clear on your priorities, not just around what you do but who the most important people are.
• Create a shortlist and give yourself a short timeframe to connect and advance the relationship with those people. If someone is not going to make an impact, it’s better to figure that out in three months rather than three years.
• Be thoughtful. Sit on the other side of the desk and empathize with the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

john@clevercognitive.com

linkedin.com/in/johntigh

clevercognitive.com

lklein@bakerdonelson.com

linkedin.com/in/lindakleinlaw

andrew.robertson@bbdo.com