If you are involved in attracting clients, customers, sponsors and funding the chances are that you undertake a range of activities such as presenting, pitching, appointment setting, networking and meeting prospects.
Each of these experiences provides an opportunity to improve your ability to attract more business.
A simple and powerful process to improve your performance
After each activity take a moment to ask yourself
What happened during the activity? What went well and what could have worked better?
What conclusions can I draw from the experience?
What am I going to do differently next time as a result?
Give yourself the opportunity to improve
If you ask these questions at the end of each experience you create the possibility for enhanced performance. If you don’t ask yourself these questions and you act next time in the same way that you have previously, the chances are that your future result will be the same
Here are examples of how you can learn from all your experiences
Learning from the things that go well
Let’s say that you observed that the research that you undertook on a prospect prior to a meeting allowed you to engage in a meaningful conversation about their business
The experience reinforces for you the link between prospect research and productive prospect meetings.
So what are you going to do going forward? You will ensure that you undertake research before every meeting
Learning from the things that go less well
Let’s say that you left the same meeting not 100% sure about the real needs of the prospect.
You replay the meeting in your mind and recall that you did not confirm back to the prospect your understanding of their needs at the end of the meeting
The experience tells you the importance of confirming back (part of active listening) to ensure that you have clearly understood their needs and to demonstrate clearly that you understand their needs
So now what are you going to do? You commit to undertake “confirming” at every meeting and to spend time practicing these skills
The advantages of this approach are that
Like a snowball (the larger it gets, the faster it goes, the larger it gets and so on), the small improvements that you make, activity by activity and day by day can lead over the course of a year to a significant increase in your ability to attract business
So take a few moments today to start your snowball rolling