A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the breakfast counter at the Rye General Store, where I bike most mornings when I’m at the beach, and I looked up from my Globe to see Dottie sitting at the opposite end of the counter. Dottie and I grew up together at the beach pretty much from our earliest childhood years through high school since our parents had cottages right next to one another. After we both bumbled through the normal awkwardness of not having seen one another for 35 plus years, we quickly connected on spouses, jobs, kids and kids’ kids, and then got down to the interesting stuff of what had happened to the pods of kids that we grew up and surfed with.
Growing up on the beach as a kid-back in the day-was perfect and like nowhere else. We lived in really rough sun-beaten cottages right on the ocean’s edge. Washed out during the winter storms, these small buildings were perched on concrete blocks and stilts, there was no heat, showers were a communal outside hose for everyone and hot water was only available when your mother fired up the two burner stove in the tiny galley kitchen. And absolutely nothing could have been better as a kid. There were strict rules growing up on what was then known as The Irish Riviera, many of which defied logic like waiting an hour after lunch, having at least one adult on the beach at all times although it didn’t matter that there were 50 plus kids spread out everywhere, and, of course, never worrying about SPF since the concept of “suntan lotion” was baby oil mixed with iodine.
In under 30 minutes, Dottie had re-connected me with her extensive network of beach people, which she has fastidiously maintained over the years-all immediately drawn from her memory banks, while I sat there numbly trying to place forgotten names with distantly fading faces and struggling to come up with any tiny fragments of information that I could add to an old puzzle that hadn’t seen the light of day in a long time. Connections: 99.5% Dottie, 0.5% me.
Over the next couple of days, I had the opportunity to connect with Dottie and her husband, Larry, a few more times as she re-introduced me to other ex-beach kids who then started showing up at the same breakfast counter that most of us had been visiting for 50 plus years given that it’s still the only store around.
Chris Colbert, a good friend of mine and the CEO of Holland Mark, one of the hottest communication and media companies in Boston, constantly talks about “collecting life-long connections”, and as I biked back home after these breakfast encounters with old friends, I realized that he is so absolutely correct.
Every connection, every contact that we make either socially or in business should be treated as a privilege and categorized, filed away, nurtured, protected and communicated with consistently in some manner. If it’s a social connection, obviously you would treat it differently than a business connection, but then many social contacts frequently become business referrals and often customers, so the lines blur and cross over, which merely enhances the importance of maintaining that connection.
Making connections is what most of us do constantly in our personal and business lives. Dottie reminded me of the importance of maintaining and nurturing those connections so that one never loses touch. Dottie does her reconnections mostly in real time through her annual month long trips back to the beach. For me, living mostly in an analog world of constant business meetings and a digital ecosystem built largely on the back of hundreds of daily emails and Linked In, sharing ideas and information, making connections and nurturing relationships is so much easier today than ever before. Quite frankly, one of the primary reasons that I enjoy writing this newsletter is the opportunity to reach out, connect, share a couple of thoughts and maybe an opportunity or two and receive readers’ comments-both the good and bad-in return. Every edition reminds me about the importance and responsibility of making and maintaining these connections.
As the last month of summer winds down, it’s a great time of year to do a bit of quiet thinking either by yourself or with your sales managers about your own connections related to the upcoming revenue push through to the end of the year . What do you need to feed your pipeline in order to make your numbers? How many and what type of leads? What marketing campaigns can you kick off in early September that will create enough lead gen to fuel quotas over the last 100 days ?
At this time of year, working through the numbers is absolutely critical since it’s all about the math and creating, qualifying and nurturing connections at the top end of the funnel. More on this later in this newsletter.
In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the summer. Make sure you squeeze in a few more days before Labor Day, since once the September 7th through December 15th period ramp up begins, there’s no slowing down, no timeouts, no finger pointing, no injuries, and no second teams. It’s crunch time for all of us in Sales, and a time for total accountability-no whining about Marketing or Service not doing their jobs. This is our time of year to excel !
Thanks very much, and b/t/w if you want to get a free copy of our most recent edition of our book, Writing the Winning Business Plan, just send me an email or DOWNLOAD here!
Jack
