How can we make this a top priority?

Transcript

Hi there! It’s Peter Winick. I’m the Founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And today, I wanted to share with you a fairly common struggle that I witness many, many authors, speakers, thought leaders, and such struggling from.

And that is this. They, they work with a client. Maybe it’s delivering a keynote in person or virtually, having that client pick up their book, whatever the case may be. And someone inside the client organization is really really excited. I mean they’re like a super fan. They love what you have to say. They love the way that you say your models, your frameworks, your methodologies, etc.

You start engaging in conversations around how to bring your work inside that organization at a bigger level. Maybe starting with a pilot but the objective is clearly to immerse subsets of that organization into your into your work. Right. So, this is a great opportunity. However, it tends to sort of fizzle out. Right. There’s lots and lots of conversations. There’s interest. Then, there’s ghosting. Then, there’s interest. Then there’s quiet.

And I think that one of the things I’ve learned over the years is if you have an opportunity, or should I say you need to make the opportunity, to say to that potential client: “How are you going to make this a top priority in your organization? And what I mean by that is I’m sure you, we have competing initiatives and objectives going on for money, for time, for, you know, bandwidth for space, etc. What do you have in place in order to make this, this thing that we’re talking about, this thing that you’re excited about a top priority in your organization so that we can move forward collectively?”

And I think it’s okay to put that welcome hurdle, that burden, if you will, back on the client, or the prospect before diving in really deeply. Because it’s a lot of work and energy and effort to nurture something that’s going to lead to a no. And I’d rather get to a no early and quickly if that individual on the other side of the table doesn’t have the ability, or the wherewithal, or whatever the case may be to make it a top priority.

So I think it’s a good question to throw out there and I’d love to hear how some of you have experimented with variations on that theme. Thank you so much.