STARTING LINE

Quick reminder that I've got a survey to learn more about how this newsletter can help me help you. The average time it has taken readers to complete it is under three minutes.

I helped a client last week whose most significant customer is up for renewal. She wanted help with questionsshe and her team should ask themselves (and the customer) during the early stages of the renewal. Allow me to share a few of them, keeping in mind these do have other applications than contract renewal.

• Pain Points: What are the problems we’ve solved or could solve? Are we asking about other areas of the organization? Do we ask every time we talk to them?
• Key Contacts: Who is our day-to-day contact? How strong is that relationship? Who is the decision maker? What’s our relationship with places like Vendor Management/IT?
• Senior Manager Relationships: Do we have other relationships within the organization?
• Hot Buttons: What do we need to be careful about? Any phrases they don’t like? Any bad experiences with us or people within the organization who don’t like us?
• Budget: Do they seem to have the ability to expand the relationship? Have they expressed any concern about reducing their spending?
• Other Partners: Do they have relationships with other companies that might want our part of the business? Any we might want to work with?
• What are the top 3 Strategic Goals for each side?
• How will we accomplish these goals? Be specific.
• What are our short-term goals (0-3 months)? What are our intermediate goals (4-6 months)?

If you look at these questions before a meeting with a client you've had for more than six months and can't answer them, you're not asking enough questions during your meetings (in person or by Zoom). Don't wait for the renewal to raise your chances it will go smoothly.

LET'S ASK SOME QUESTIONS

Accessibility: Is my content accessible to my entire audience? Joe Pulizzi offers suggestions for engaging the 30%-40% of your audience who may have difficulty consuming your content.

Storytelling: Why are the words “therefore” and “but” so important in storytelling? This is 2:14 of gold writing advice from Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park, with an additional focus on why “and then” is a deal killer.

Problem Solving: What’s the monkey in the problem I’m trying to solve? Jeff Haden talks about while it feels great to pick the low-hanging fruit, it's more important to identify the bottleneck.

Content Creation: Should you gate your content? I just had this discussion on LinkedIn about someone linking to an interesting article that was gated, but Robert Rose really drives home this point in his Content Marketing Institute post:

Business Plans: Do I have a great business idea? Eric Butow and Entrepreneur magazine offer 10 questions to ask before investing a lot of time and money in it.

Personal: Should You Charge Your Phone Overnight? As someone whose wife constantly gives me a hard time about overcharging my phone, I found this post from The Conversation interesting.

LINKEDIN POSTS THAT RULE

​From Katelyn Bourgoin​

You don't "need a personal brand"
(Despite what the LinkedIn gurus say)
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You already have a personal brand—everyone does.
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To understand how others see you... answer these two questions:
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1. How would someone describe you if you weren't in the room?
2. How do you make people feel?
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*That's* your personal brand.
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Don't like it? Get to work.

HOW CAN I HELP?

I just finished an RFP response and a grant proposal for two clients. The template I created for RFPs also works in a skinnier fashion for grant proposals. Here's a link to my RFP template. It's yours to use (but please don't share), but if you don't have the bandwidth, consider giving me a call.

PROMPTS ARE QUESTIONS TOO

You have a product. Now you have to figure out who to sell it to. Try this prompt: "I am selling XXX in LOCATION. Name 10 potential target customers for this product. Then explain why each target customer would like this product." Don’t forget to provide as much context and detail as possible.

I welcome your comments or suggestions for future issues. Drop me a note here. If you found this on LinkedIn or had it forwarded to you, you can subscribe by clicking the button below.

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