There are a lot of situations where it feels you should quickly steer conversations toward business, but that’s almost never the right way to go. Even if you’re at a business-focused event, keeping the conversations more personal and other-focused will lead to better long-term results.
Gary Vaynerchuk can be a polarizing person, but I appreciate his general approach to life. His classic book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” could be re-titled as “Give, Give, Give, Sell”. In most cases, you could even take the “sell” off the end, as if you give enough the selling will take care of itself.
In a recent episode of his podcast, Gary put it this way: “Lead with reputation and legacy, not business”. Lead with helping people understand who you are and what you care about, and serve them the best you can.
Our story of how we ended up as clients of Blumer CPAs is a perfect example of this. They produced fantastic content and gave it away freely, to help show everyone what they stood for and how they tackled big problems in business. I think they also “took the ‘sell’ off the end”, as they never really had to give us a hard sales pitch or anything. Their reputation preceded them, and made us want to chase them down to become clients.
It can seem easy at times to lead with business and shove a card in someone’s face, but the more you’re willing to play the long game and offer unconditional value to others, the better off you’ll see yourself down the road.
