Structure and Spontaneity

Key Reminders:

• Develop and follow your process and guiding principles to ensure you are on track, notify you when you’ve veered off course, and warn you when you are best served to walk away.
• The questions you ask your clients, the way you walk them through the process, what you uncover, and your intent, all give you a unique opportunity to set yourself apart from the competition.
• Create a system / approach / process that is bigger than any one person and build it into your culture. Make this a part of how you and your team think, act, and talk every day with clients. Your process and how you engage with clients create points of differentiation between you and your competition beyond differences in service or product. Dare to be different, thoughtful, bold, and savvy in the process you take new prospects and existing clients through to get new business.

Preview Points:

• Having more structure to your new client engagement process actually frees you up to be more spontaneous and present.
• Your intuition about what question to ask and what next step to take is most likely right on target. Know when and how to trust it.
• The better you can get at “managing the moment” with prospects, the more people you will help and money you will make.

Structure & Spontaneity:

Optimal skill & discipline for managing the moment. Now that you have a number of new elements of process structure, guiding principles, and even specific language scripts, let’s talk about spontaneity. This entire approach is about heightened levels of disciplined awareness, effective preparation, and consistent structure. At the same time, what I am suggesting is also an approach that is about having the freedom to be spontaneous and fully in the moment during your conversations with prospects and in any high stakes negotiations. I realize this may seem paradoxical, but they actually fit together perfectly. It’s only by having a structured approach and superior preparation - of your thinking, your language, and your process - that you can be freed up to better listen and respond to your clients. This structure, or framework, supports you in listening more effectively, asking better questions, and providing answers that are specifically relevant to their needs.

The misperception that people have in initial conversations with me about the work I do and how it might be relevant for them or their organization is that it’s all about process and structure. They are either excited or spooked by the idea of having a disciplined, rigid, point-by-point, structured process they take clients through. Much of this book has been dedicated to laying out more structured approaches to the client engagement process and ways that you can gain and maintain more control of that process. Truth is, that’s only half the story. This approach will not work optimally if you are just rigidly checking off boxes and robotically reading scripts. I do want you to have a strong framework, key steps, and guiding principles. But I also want you to be human and flexible when appropriate. This is a learned skill, although some natural talent will certainly help. “The key process elements” and “The scripted language” are only optimally effective if you are able to inject yourself and your personality into them. Getting people that don’t know you to open up to talking with you, meeting with you, and sharing important information with you is all about trust.

Our discussion until now has prepared you to be able to anticipate questions before they are asked. Simply following your process and using your scripted words mechanically can create blind spots. This often keeps you from making adjustments in the moment and capitalizing on opportunities that arise unexpectedly. For optimal effectiveness at developing more of the right kinds of new business there has to be room for spontaneity. The spontaneity is actually created by the presence of the structure/framework that holds everything together.

Having access to and being able to trust your intuition is an essential aspect to an optimally successful new business development presentation or negotiation. The key is being able to “slow things down” when it seems like everything is happening quickly and you feel put on the spot. Professional athletes, musicians, and other people at the top of their game talk about being “in the zone.” It’s the same thing in high stakes sales calls, business negotiation, and presentations. To succeed, you need to be able to drop down into the zone, where you are at a different level of awareness. From this place there is less emotion and fewer distractions from hyperactive thoughts. You are focused, present, and your heart rate is normal.

Getting to this place is not quite as simple as describing it. The first step is realizing when you’re NOT in it. Catch yourself when you are breathing more heavily or your breath is more shallow than normal. Notice when you feel like you’re talking too much, when you’re face gets flush, or your body feels like its getting overheated. I’ll say it again: slow down. Take a breath. Shut up for a second. Relax. Remind yourself to follow your process. No one is going to die if you don’t get the business. You might have a heart attack if you don’t relax a bit, though. Find your own routine for preparing for a “big” meeting and for catching yourself when you get off track and bringing yourself back

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