Hey, welcome back. Here's another Friday Fast Tip from Growth Dynamics. I'm Charlie Hauck, President, CEO, and founder of the business. I love the opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas with all the people out there in the world trying to make a living in the greatest profession of all, business development.
I want to put something up in front of everybody today that I think is so critically important, because it is so perfectly true, and that is that business development scripts are death.
You're not going to die, but I really think scripting is going to kill more opportunities than it's ever created. There's a lot of reasons why, but the single most important reason is they aren't structured for spontaneous conversation between the business development professional and the person that you're trying to do business with. There's a lot of assumptions that if I say this, then they'll say that and, frankly, I just don't know of any business development process that could ever give a true professional, that much control of the conversation that anyone would want to have with them. So I really wanted you to understand scripted selling is death, but business development concepts are cool.
Wouldn't we all rather be cool than a dead on the feet recitation robot, that can't do anything, that spit out the words that they memorize to get their district manager happy about the work that they're doing? Of course, we'd much rather be cool than that kind of dummy. So, here's what I want you to think about when you're trying to develop your approach to getting people to schedule a conversation with you, and talk about making a simple business decision.
First and foremost, conversations sound genuine. You should just think of your business development conversations the same way you think about the conversation you have when one of your good friends calls and says, "Hey, do you want to get together this weekend and play some golf, or go to the theater, or take the kids to the park or whatever it is." Just commit yourself to having a genuine conversation with another human being and not trying to close a deal or force them to buy something they may not want to have.
The second thing I think you've got to understand about scripts and why they're so deadly on the negative side is, if you're working with a script. For it to be as effective as it could be, all the different parties need their copies of the script. And as good as automated technology and artificial intelligence is these days, there still is no way that you can send your script out to the people that you're going to talk about doing business with. If they don't have a script, your script is going to be disjointed, disconnected and ineffective. Until we can figure out how to make people follow the script that we've written, we've got to get out of scripted sales approaches and surefire snappy answers to problems and objections and stalls that they come up with. So get out of it, it's not going to work because they're not holding the same piece of paper you are.
Lastly, one of the things that I think is a true sign of a professional, is someone who can think on their feet and maintain the structure and control of a business development process that is engaging and is committed to the act of collecting the decision that's mutually beneficial to both parties. This is the idea of planned spontaneity.
Now, that's one of those oxymoronic statements like clean dirt, loose tights, military intelligence. Planned spontaneity, when you watch a true business professional get up and do their thing and have a true business conversation that sounds like it's off the cuff, I'm telling you, that's not what it is. They know exactly where they're going, but they've mastered how to sound like it just happened. They knew from the moment "Hello" crossed between the two people.
So, get out of the business development script stuff. It's bad juju, bad mojo, bad practice. Get into business development concepts of structured managed conversations. Be genuine. You can't get your script in everybody's hands, so don't try to do it. Become a master of the art of planned spontaneity. That's my tip for the day. If you don't know how to do it, talk to someone that can help you. We'd be happy to give you a hand with that stuff. Thanks. Have a great weekend. Get up on Monday and go make money.
