For Impact Daily Nuggets

Think Different. Here’s to the Crazy Ones.

2012-05-30T16:16:49Z

I came across some great stuff about Apple’s 1997 THINK DIFFERENT campaign. (Many of the young Social Entrepreneurs we work with were in grade school… and may not remember this!)

It was one of the most effective slogans, commercials and print advertisements.

I found 3 versions.

Here’s the short version.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

These are the people we love to work with… crazy enough to think they can change the world!

Here’s the full version in a pdf format that you can print and post.

And, if you’re really into this… here’s the original version, which includes a line that works for us at For Impact as well: “We make tools for these kinds of people.”

Sales or ‘Forging Human Connections’

2012-05-30T14:40:23Z

I’m always getting great stuff from my partner and friend Nick Fellers. He is busy running the company, leading our amazing coaches, working with clients across the country… and getting ready to have Child #2!

He doesn’t always have time to write up these nuggets, but this one I couldn’t let pass.

I’m all about SALES. Sorry, especially using this line: “You’re in Sales. Get over it.”

It works for me at my age.

Nick and the other coaches are often with some amazing people who are changing the world… and either don’t understand/get this whole idea of ‘sales‘… or actually don’t want to get it.

Nick quotes a great line from an author named Bob Burg that works really, really well for these people.

Burg says, “Sales is about ‘FORGING HUMAN CONNECTIONS’!”

Now that’s really hard to be against!

Forging human connections is directly tied to relationships in our For Impact Mantra of maximize relationships… at this given moment.

Even if you’re not into sales… you need to be thinking every day about how to forge human connections!

*Bob Burg is the co-author of The Go-Giver (along with John David Mann) and Endless Referrals. He also just out a new book with Mann entitled It’s Not About You.

Have A Great Holiday Weekend!

2012-05-24T19:53:41Z

For Impact | The Suddes Group shutting down Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Be back engaged with you on Tuesday.

Life’s a journey… enjoy the trip.

Oscillation… intense work with intense recovery.

It’s called a ‘holiday’ weekend for a reason.

Everything will still be there next Tuesday.

Take A Quantum Leap

2012-05-23T17:56:11Z

“The mind once expanded to dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nick has been on a ‘mission’ this week, while staying on the aptly named Mission Bay in San Diego. He’s helping two of our best strategic coaching clients, San Diego Hospice and Solutions for Change, take a literal QUANTUM LEAP.

He spent time with the CEO’s and the entire teams at both organizations learning how they are, literally, changing the model of hospice care and homelessness, respectively.

This kind of ‘change the world‘ attitude can be captured pretty effectively by comparing it to thinking from the world of QUANTUM PHYSICS… which is often described as the most powerful science ever conceived by human beings!

A QUANTUM LEAP is the explosive jump that a particle of matter undergoes in moving from one place to another!

Here are some notes and thoughts to help you build your own QUANTUM LEAP CULTURE.

QUANTUM LEAPS are about exponential jumps in your Impact and your Income… not about kaizen, tweaking, or 3% to 5% growth tied to the adjusted cost of living, tuition increases or annual fund goals.

QUANTUM LEAPS are like taking any BIG JUMP… You don’t focus on the ‘middle’ of the hump… but where you want to land!!!

QUANTUM LEAPS are NOT about ‘trying harder‘! Trying harder produces only incremental gains not QUANTUM LEAPS. Physicists studying Quantum Mechanics note that particles make these ‘jumps’ with no apparent effort… and without covering all the bases between the starting and ending point!

QUANTUM LEAPS never happen by doing the same thing you’re doing now. Price Pritchett says, “Be ruthless about trying something different. Conventional growth comes because we think along conventional lines.”

QUANTUM LEAP means violating the boundary of the problem. Give yourself permission to dream, to risk, to try stuff.

QUANTUM LEAPS come when you seek simple, elegant solutions. Look for an approach characterized by SIMPLICITY, PRECISION and NEATNESS.

QUANTUM LEAPS allow you to do MORE with LESS! Less resources. Less people. Less money. The paradox: This creates MORE resources. MORE people. MORE money.

QUANTUM LEAPS are NOT about the ‘how to’. Skip the detail. Stay at 30,000′. The answers will come to you. When they do, you’ll probably find them to be simple, streamlined solutions, rather than complex, complicated confusion.

QUANTUM LEAPS are tied to Jim Collins’ BHAGs. They are not Big Hairy Audacious Goals if you’re GUARANTEED that you can reach them. Collins and Pritchett say if you have the ANSWERS and STRUCTURES and CERTAINTY UP FRONT… it’s NOT a BHAG/QUANTUM LEAP!

A QUANTUM LEAP, by definition, means moving into unchartered territory with NO GUIDE to follow. You personally draw the map as you go.

Note:

‘Guides

QUANTUM LEAPS require you to take the OFFENSIVE. You can’t achieve exponential gains from a defensive posture, a passive stance.

QUANTUM LEAPS require FAILURE.

FAILURE IS A SIGN OF PROGRESS!

resource

edge

OFF COURSE

“FAIL. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.” (Samuel Beckett)

‘FAIL. FAIL FAST. FAIL FASTER.” (Suddes)

“Success is going from FAILURE TO FAILURE with no loss of ENTHUSIASM.” (Winston Churchill)

“We need to FAIL in order to SUCCEED. Our only decision is HOW TO FAIL. By not going far enough… or going too far. I prefer the latter.” (Harriet Rubin)

QUANTUM LEAPS regard ‘ZERO DEFETCS‘ and ‘PERFECTION‘ as HOSTILE CONCEPTS. ‘GETTING READY‘ (research, fancy brochures, perfect design, etc.) is a stalling tactic, an act of anxiety.

Finally, you don’t ‘prepare’ for a QUANTUM LEAP. You MAKE IT, and then you frame out the DETAILS and STRATEGY on the way!

‘A Scarf in the Orchard’

2012-05-23T15:36:15Z

Find out how this ‘scarf’ hanging in our newly planted apple ‘orchard’ can help answer a lot of your big questions/issues ON PROSPECTS!

Sigh up here for our Teleseminar tomorrow… and hear Tom Suddes, The Old Guy, share his lessons and ideas ON PROSPECTS.

1 Million Push-Ups: Now That’s Math!

2012-05-21T20:45:15Z

You can read this article on the US Marine Sgt. who is doing 1 Million Push-Ups this year!

Highlights:

Made the vow in January to raise awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project.

Marine Sgt. Enrique Trevino is committed 2,732 push-ups every single day… every single 24 hours!

Here’s how he does it: 200 push-ups during morning PT. At work, a set of 30 push-ups every 10 or 15 minutes. After work, does a half-hour of just push-ups knocking off another 600 to 850. Then, at home he finishes the rest.

Whew!

*It makes 63,000 push-ups look absolutely paltry!

Special Note: If you want to raise $1M this year, you could use the same Math:

Raise $2,732 every day! That’s almost $20,000 a week, $80,000 a month.

Talent: 6 Huge Hiring Mistakes

2012-05-21T11:59:39Z

Here’s a great article from Fast Company on 6 Huge Hiring Mistakes Everyone Makes.

Here they are. Read the article.

Full Disclosure: I have done every one of these 6 things… multiple times! Old dog hoping for new tricks.

Facebook’s 5 Core Values

2012-05-18T15:35:58Z

Today Facebook goes ‘public’.

Regardless of what you think about Facebook, Mark Z and his ‘hoodie’, the almost 1B (that’s billion) users or the expected valuation… there’s something pretty amazing about the Facebook ‘story’.

(My partner Nick will probably add to this post, since he actually built the first ‘Facebook’ with a couple of other guys while he was at Notre Dame. I think they even called it ‘eFacebook’ when they went to other schools.)

I’d encourage our For Impact audience to read Zuckerberg’s letter that went with the offering. It talks about the Hackers Way, which Nick is waaaay more able to speak to than I am.

From ‘Hack-A-Thons’ (I think there was one last night before the IPO) to ‘Boot Camps’, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. From my perspective, the distillation of their principles should have meaning to all of us.

Here’s their 5 CORE VALUES:

FOCUS ON IMPACT

“If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time.”

I’m all in on this one.

MOVE FAST

“Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster.”

“Move fast and break things.”

“If you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.”

Again, I’m all over this.

BE BOLD

“Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the things they should. However in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks.”

“The riskiest thing is to take no risks.”

Again, you can see why I love these principles/core values.

BE OPEN

AUTHENTICITY

*It’s probably worth reading the exact wording which could or should be a mandate for most, if not all, of our organizations.

“We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater IMPACT. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest IMPACT.”

IMPACT

BUILD SOCIAL VALUE

“We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.”

core values

Special Note: As part of my work with Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, I met with the Head of Facebook Europe/Africa, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. 3 things amazed me that day:

1. The unpretentiousness of both the facility and the ‘head guy’. He was smart and easy to talk with about Entrepreneurship, Economic Development, etc.

2. Size. I think he said he had 400 or 500 people in the Dublin Office… overseeing roughly one-half of the world. (Google, on the other hand, has 2,000 people in their Dublin Headquarters and just announced plans to add 1,000 more!)

3. Facebook had no ‘policy’ on philanthropy! We forget that they are not even a public company until today. They have not really thought about or dealt with philanthropy.

transformational gift

Team Selling

2012-05-18T15:36:19Z

Ideas from 3 recent training sessions have come together to provide another For Impact FRAMEWORK that we think can really help you execute on our Sales-Driven, Top-Down, Predispose-Present-Follow-Up Methodology.

Here’s the visual [pdf handout here].

These 3 Concentric Circles represent a great way to look at your organization’s ‘TALENT’… and how it might be most effectively used.

The Blue-Red-Green Team is a great visual, frame and answer re: ‘How to Get Visit‘.

Use your ‘Blue’ Team to help with predisposition, open doors, and even set up the visit.

‘Blue’ Team can be engaged before the visit, on the visit or after the visit

‘Blue’ Team represents best example of 3 Degrees of Separation. (Kevin Bacon/6 Degrees actually 2.78. Less than ’3 moves’ from any other actor.)

Note:

1 person

Ireland

North Dakota.

‘Blue’ Team never goes alone/solo on a visit!

*We don’t do ‘peer-to-peer’ solicitation. Just ‘trading dollars’. Always a professional staff person engaged on visit.

‘Red’ Team can also help with visits, especially with phone follow-up and call backs.

‘Green’ Team is always the R.M. (Relationship Manager). No exceptions to this. (But, doesn’t mean they have to be on every visit.)

This visual provided a real EPIPHANY/EUREKA moment for a College Sales Team: Deans can help get visit, but the Deans don’t have to be on every visit. And, they (‘Green’ Team) don’t have to set up every visit themselves.

Action: Use this Team Selling framework to increase the number of visits… and your closes/commitments.

Note: This framework works for a ‘Business’ Sales Team as well. Share it with your Board as a ‘nugget’ they might find helpful.

Special Invitation: I will be covering this as one of the ideas/nuggets in next week’s teleseminar ON PROSPECTS. SIGN UP HERE!!!

The Three Roles of the Sales Manager

2012-05-17T14:30:14Z

Note: Tom and I (but mostly Tom) write these ‘nuggets’. I have to shine a lot of light on our newest partner, Steve Elder, who has spent 20+ years building sales teams at health care organizations and throughout higher-ed. Much of the latest ‘sales team thinking’ comes from Steve as we diagnose organizations as a Suddes Group team. The three roles of the sales manager are a result of months of conversations with Steve (and other team members) about this function.

Following up on my post about the ‘Sales Driven Funding Operation’.

A CRITICAL position on a sales team is THE Sales Manager.

IF you are committed to a sales team then you should identify THE sales manager. This is the person who fulfills these duties:

Is the ultimate PLAYER/COACH: This person has the street cred and is usually the organization’s BEST sales person. This person has also accepted the role of COACH to the team.
Has ultimately ACCOUNTABILITY: This person is 1) accountable for the sales team results, and 2) the person to whom each sales person is ultimately accountable.
- There are also cases in which the sales manager can use others to support this function. Example, let’s say your team has ten sales people: they can report to a deputy but ULTIMATELY report to the sales manager.
Is the ultimate PLAY CALLER (or referee): If three sales team members want different changes to the engagement tool (for instance) the SALES MANAGER is empowered to LEAD and make-the-call, end-the-dispute, or unite-the-team around a clear decision.

Just having this vocabulary has been powerfully clarifying for organizational leadership responsible for building sales-driven funding operations.