Did you know I've created a dozen courses for LinkedIn?
These are courses that I've written and put together for their LinkedIn Learning platform.
These courses cover a range of my expertise, including everything from sales coaching, to data-driven sales management, to customer retention, to customer experience, and dealing with demanding customers.
What's in it for me?
Besides getting to teach concepts that I'm passionate about, I get a royalty check for those courses every month. Since the pandemic, with more people at home, those checks have been increasing in size.
But last month, I got my biggest check yet. This surprised me. I did a little investigating and found that one course had surpassed nearly everything else I'd created.
Curious which course?
Well, most of the courses are short, containing 12-20 or so videos and lessons. But this one, it's almost hard to call it "course."
A couple of summers ago, when I was out in California filming, we had some extra time, so we filmed a short mini-course called Listening to Customers.
The running length?
A grand total of 16 minutes and 39 seconds.
16 minutes to improve your ability to Listen to Customers.
I learned that the course has been viewed over 400,000 times. Not only that, it's so popular, it became a featured course for employees of one of the largest companies on the planet (about 160K employees!)
Who doesn't wish every employee in the organization could listen to their customers more effectively?
At first, it made me chuckle (what is it about this 16 minute course?), but it's a great reminder…
"More" does not mean more value. Longer doesn't mean better. It's not just about doing more, giving more, providing more, with the assumption that more equates to value.
It doesn't. It's the reason you don't see many luxury all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.
A core part of my methodology is "Cleaning the Messy Closet," a concept first introduced in my book Evergreen,
Here's how I explained the concept in the book.
Imagine that every piece of clothing in your house was dumped unceremoniously into a single closet, with no rhyme or reason.
Every morning before leaving the house, you have to sort through a random collection of the clothing owned by everybody in your home.
Trying to find a specific piece of clothing becomes a ridiculous chore.
On the other hand, a well-organized closet makes it a breeze to find what you're looking for. Your closet's tidiness immediately makes it apparent what you have, what you need, and what goes together.
The Messy Closet Theory applies to all areas of your organization, and cleaning up once and awhile is essential.
Instead of throwing more stuff in the closet, consider how you can clean things up for your existing clients.
Is the value you bring to clients crystal clear?
Is it incredibly simple for prospects to understand the steps required to engage with you?
What do you need to clean up?
In other areas of your organization, ask yourself about your closet:
- How can you tidy up and make your customer experience more enjoyable?
- How can you make our website easier to navigate?
- How can you make calling your customer support line a better experience for prospects and customers?
- How can we convey your value better?
- How can you add more value without adding more stuff?
You could work for years trying to add more, be more, do more…
You could work for years trying to figure out what your customers want, why they're leaving, how to keep them – and burn your team out in the process.
Or, you could work with me for 16 minutes and be able to make actionable changes now.
I've worked with companies that struggled for years to figure out why they weren't getting the sales/retention/ growth they knew were possible. Sometimes, we're able to get to the heart of the issue within minutes.
The rest of the engagement was walking them through the steps to apply the insights gained in those 15 minutes.
Many 15 minute conversations are the start of business relationships that last for years.
I can't promise that I can generate those lightning-bolt bursts of insight in every 15-minute call I have, but it's certainly worth the quarter of an hour to find out if I can help.
Reach out if you want to set up a time to talk.
