Laura’s Winning Ideas

I was amused when LinkedIn announced their decision to add links from member profiles to websites and blogs. I�m sure LinkedIn executives carefully considered the decision, worried it might dilute their traffic. Previously there were no links to connect LinkedIn with the outside web. I can hear the corporate skeptics now. “What happens if the visitor, who clicks out to a member’s site, doesn’t return to LinkedIn? That would be dangerous to our success…or would it?”

Transparency is profitable

I know what they will learn in the next few months….

True Story: When I began my consulting practice, I was uncertain how best to invest my energies. To help me get a handle on this, I kept careful track of my activities. After a few months I knew that I was spending a chunk of time each month on a particular type of fruitless endeavor I call fake-out prospects: Someone would call/email and over a series of conversations intimate that they were shopping for a consultant like me.

These friendly chats would result in a request for me to write a proposal to them for a specific offering we’d discussed and for which we’d worked out some details. Then I would burn some more hours researching and producing a proposal, following up, getting hopeful, and getting poor or no response.

I was learning to sniff out these “fake-out prospects” but uncertain how to contain the number of hours I was wasting on them.

That same year, I wrote my training manual, The Magic of Winning Proposals. A team of folks around the country worked on this project with me, and for our convenience I posted the sections of the document on-line so folks could always find the latest version.

It is common “knowledge” that this valuable confidential information should be guarded with my life. After all, this was my offering to potential clients. It’s what they were paying for when they hired me! (or so I thought)

After a few weeks, I noticed that my traffic was going directly to individual pages of this manual. The search engine spiders had found my pages and since they were especially rich in proposal terminology, searches were turning up these pages higher in ranking than my regular website pages. I made a note to take that manual down as soon as we finished.

After another few weeks, I noticed a shift in my work hours. I was no longer entertaining “fake out” prospects. They disappeared

Well, actually, they had found my training manual. Now, these firms were self-servicing, learning the nuggets they were curious about and not bothering me with requests for help, ur um, requests for proposals

I noticed another change. Instead of getting calls with a sly, slippery edge to them I was getting Thank You Notes. The psychology of the fake-out prospects had changed.

Before, in order to get the information they needed, they justified their fake-out prospecting as necessary and appropriate when dealing with sinister consultants who were “hiding” information.

Now, I provided the information freely, and they expressed gratitude instead. Over the years, some of these folks have moved on to larger firms, or become larger firms and when they are ready, I get a call from someone who tells me it was a big help to them several years ago when they needed to learn what a storyboard should look like and they found it on my website.

This became profitable in two ways:

• I freed up time to spend on more worthwhile pursuits, and
• I created a flow of future prospects that are in a positive frame of mind about my services before we ever meet.

Intention is incredibly important to sales success. Just as prospects can sniff out an aggressive “used-car salesman” at 50 paces, prospects change your sales outcomes by having a poor intention / perception of your services / firm.

True Story: A few years later I was working with a Fortune 200 firm. At dinner one night, the President of the Division was engaged in our discussion about the web and the changes possible for business in this medium. Soon they would launch a new sales campaign. Part of the preparation for this marketing push was creation of a database of State and Federal Regulations their salespeople would use to determine the requirements for their prospects.

They’d spent a good deal of money on this database and were in the process of locking it down carefully so no one outside the firm could see it. It was considered “business proprietary” and in need of protection.

I told them my story and then asked, “What does it cost for a sales call by one of your folks?”
“About $5,000.”
And “How many of these initial sales calls are actually to prospects too small or unprofitable to buy your product, but who must comply with these regs?”
“Too many.”
And “What would happen if some significant number of those fake-out prospects could look up their own requirements on-line, and be on their way, instead of asking you to engage in a sales endeavor with them?”

What LinkedIn Will Discover

I’m confident LinkedIn will discover the profitability of making their member profiles more useful and valuable. When folks find someone critical at LinkedIn, they will be sure to join, and will invite other folks to join them, explaining how valuable it is to them.

After all, LinkedIn profits from increased membership, not keeping volunteered information secret.

How Can you Try This?

Question whether a “Business Proprietary” item is really confidential. A database of public regulations is not business sensitive, just the process in which you use this information to speed a solution to your best customers.

You may find that exposure costs you nothing, and there may be profit in “giving it away.”

Some would argue that my training manual is “business proprietary” but I know the information is available in a variety of places. I’ve simply compiled the information I feel is critical for proposal teams facing stiff competition. Even one of my largest and oldest competitors, Shipley and Associates, now shares copies of their proposal manual. The value of my services is only partially in the material delivered with the training. The prime value is in the teaching and demonstration of the material, the support to make the change take hold inside an organization. My value is in delivering a better hit rate, not a manual.