Prolific versus Perfect – 2

Excellence, Marketing, messaging, persistence

Excellence requires repetition.

Some call it the 10000 hour rule. Int is said that you need to do about 10000 hours of practice at learning something, before you become an expert. Its about ensuring persistence in your endevour.

This issue came up in a discussion today where the people supposedly are passionate about what they are doing but we are not getting the results. They had this argument that they were also getting frustrated when not getting results.

When we tried to analyse the challenges, one of the key challenge was the fact that we did not have enough feedback of how the customers react to our messaging. You have to test a lot of messaging till you are able to actually get to the right piece.

You can refine your messaging or sales pitch only when you interact with enough people, understand the inputs that the prospects give and what the competition is doing. Now if you are a prolific sales person and do 200 calls a days (just for example) and there’s another who’s doing 100 calls a day and both fail 90% of the time, with the first sale person after 20 days of calling you would have got a feedback of 3600 calls, and at the end of a year this would be close to 45000 interactions versus the other person’s 22000 failures.

Within one year the company whose sales people are prolific and are getting 45000 “no” would be way ahead of a company with sales people with just 22000 “no”. They would have refined their product pitch / messaging that many more times to come to near perfection within a year.

To the above argument I get a very standard response, and maybe you also would have it going on in your mind, that after some time statistically the changes would be minor. You are absolutely right about that. But the faster you reach that point, the more sales you pick up till the other company reaches that point.

If I can get my 10000 hours of practice in 3 years versus someone else who will take 5 years then the 2 years window that I have I can exploit to earn so much more , sell so much more or whatever I wish to. While the 10000 hour rule has been around for a long time now, the idea of speed in getting to the 10000 hours was something that I got from hearing Joe Polish in his Ilovemarketing.com podcasts.

The more prolific I am the more I can try new things, the more feedback I will get and the faster I can improve. Now if you have a coach along the way it becomes that much more quicker to climb the curve towards expertise. But you still have to do the hardwork. There’s no easy way out of it.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prolific versus perfect

confidence, persistence

I generally write at the end of my workday. Everyday before I start writing I have a question mark on what I would be able to write today. Everyday I think about what topic would of interest to my readers and where could I add value.Everyday I have this very strong inclination to not write.

But then I don’t want to break the momentum. As Joe Polish says it’s better to be prolific rather than perfect. If you practice something so often you will make lots of mistakes, but the faster you make mistakes, the more you will learn. The more you learn the higher is the chance that you will win eventually.

So my writing is not perfect. I write short notes so that while you are waiting in the line to pick up your coffee, you can read it. Over the years I hope my writing is becoming better.

One thing though is that based on this principle of being prolific rather than perfect, I can get into a flow state faster. Now once I start hitting the keys on my tablet or computer, my brain goes into a flow state and I start typing whatever ideas come into my mind. Being prolific is all about being persistent. As you persist, you also get the confidence to do even more.

Does that mean that I have become a “writer”. Absolutely not. I just pen my thoughts in a free flowing style. As a matter of fact a lot of authors may find my style absolutely rubbish. Can I eventually become a writer. Well maybe, who knows.

Can anyone following this model become a writer – maybe. But if they don’t start practicing writing, they anyway won’t become a writer.

Can this be used in other areas as well.

I know of sales and marketing for sure. Sales is a job which requires you to be hard skinned to face rejection and to qualify prospects better. If you get scared in calling out a prospect, from fear of rejection, you anyway won’t get sales to happen. I have learnt it the hard way. However if you call enough of the “right” prospects, you will eventually figure out ways to sell better. Add a mentor into the recipe and you can actually shorten the learning curve dramatically.

So this brings me to the end of the post for today. I hope your coffee is ready.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Persistence trumps Genius

Great People, Habits, History, persistence

I didn’t know what to write today. I was way too exhausted, having had a long day at work.

This word persistence was playing in my mind for a long time today. So I just started writing. As I started writing more and more examples started coming in my mind of whether great people in history were geniuses as we attribute them to be or were they persistent.

Was Michaelangelo persistent or a genius – was David a master piece because Michaelangelo had a vision for David – if he had not kept chipping away at the stone consistently day-in and day-out, he would have not realized his vision.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling would not be so amazing if he had not persisted in doing those paintings.

Look at Edison or Einstein in the scientific arena, they were persistent in their work. No doubt they were brilliant in their own right but that brilliance would not have seen the light of day, if they did not put in the work.

Having said this, identifying the leverage points and then doing the work will anyway give much better results than just doing “donkey”. Persistence does not mean wasting energy in entropy.

If you focus your energy on the key points and then work, chances are you will trump genius any day.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Thinking long term

B2B, competition, execution, Marketing Stamina, persistence

One of the key things to be successful is to have the stamina to play for the long term

If you can just be in the game for a long enough period of time, a lot of your competition will just fall by the way side.

The reason for that is that most people on play for the sport term and if they don’t become successful fast enough then they quit. Some others quit because they don’t have the wherewithal to last long enough.

Yesterday I was having a discussion , with my colleagues, about engaging with partners . One of the points that came out was that it takes almost a year before the partners actually start trusting you to talk about opportunities.

This is for a specific case of services where we were looking for partners. But the important point is that if we don’t have a long term plan to stay in the game we will give up this market.

When you plan your business for the long term, then you next figure out the Financials accordingly. Based on that you work on the kind of mediums you can use to do your marketing. You can decide the best possible market for you to focus such that you can play for the long term.

You will win the war if you just have the ability to fight a lot of battles. This is true for a physical war as well as in marketing.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!