Bill Gallagher argues leaders get more yeses by listening to what others need instead of perfecting their pitch. He uses Steve Jobs recruiting John Scully and Apple buying Toshiba's hard drives to show how identifying the other party's immediate needs creates committed action.
Foreign. Bill Gallagher. You know, one of the things that leaders need regularly is yes, yes to our proposals, yes to our pitches, yes to our offers, yes to our suggestions, yes to our hiring offers. Everything in our world needs yes and action if we're going to be effective as a leader. And that is something we want to get a whole lot better at. There's an interesting little secret about this I'm going to share with you that can make anyone much better at getting yes way more often to your proposals, invitation, requests, pitches, whatever they are, raising money, selling something, partnering you need. Yes, you need action. I'm going to tell you a simple way to improve that. Young Steve Jobs, right long before he was in his first iteration with Apple Computer, he needed a CEO with a huge background to take over. When Mark Marcola wanted to retire and he decided to pick John Scully, who was at Pepsi at the time and it was a well known marketing exec, but Scully and Pepsi, that was like mainstream stuff. And Apple Computer was like not the company it is today. And Scully was not particularly interested, but he was intrigued by this guy, Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs spent the time to get to know him. And then based on getting to know him and starting to court John Scully away from that, Steve famously asked him, hey, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to maybe come with me and change the world? And that was exactly the secret that we're talking about now. That whole thing kind of went bad for a while and Scully stayed and Jobs left and things got up. But Jobs had some growing up to do and that kind of thing. Flash forward some years later and Jobs and team have an idea for a music player. Now at the time there were all kinds of music players out there. The rio made an MP3 player and others had different MP3 players, but none of them were easy to use and contained all your songs and you had to load and reload them and all kinds of funny stuff like that. So they identified these hard drives, these small hard drives that weren't selling very well. And Steve and the team at Apple went to the manufacturer and said, listen, Toshiba, we'll buy out all of your 1.8 inch hard drives and we're going to put them in this player and we want all the production out and we're going to just buy up the whole thing and do that. And he raised the money for it and he bought up the whole thing and he got them to say yes as well. And here's the secret. The Secret is knowing what other people need right now. We don't always know what other people need. You can't necessarily do great research, but if you'll take the time and court people and listen to what they're dealing with. Toshiba didn't really have anybody buying these drives. And Apple wanted to buy the drives, which they were happy to sell them, but they wanted to buy them all out, so they couldn't sell them to anybody else for a while. And that required a little something extra. So finding that balance, right? If you want yes, and you want people to take action consistent with yes, you want people to commit and act. Right? That's what yes is all about. Commitment and action. Then you want to get way more interested in what's going on with other people than perfecting your pitch. Your pitch will be fine. Set your pitch aside. We spend way too much time worrying about our pitches than we do thinking about what's really going on with the other person. What do they really need? What's their world like? So you could do some advanced research. You can do your homework, you can prepare. But then when you're in conversation with people, what's more important is not what you say at first anyway, the pitch. That's just the beginning of a conversation. It's all of the listening and the questioning that you do. When you're listening and questioning for what's going on and what does this person care about? How are they responding to this? And you're asking them directly, as well as listening for all the little clues, the cues in their behavior, you'll notice what they really need, and you'll be able to express your proposal in a way that actually fits what they need in their world. And they'll say yes. When people hear what they want, what's an opportunity for them? They say yes naturally, easily, effortlessly, and they begin to act on that. So the key is not so much of what we say, but all of the listening. Become a better listener, become more curious, and you'll get yes far more often. Not every time. There are plenty of times when there's no matchup between what you need and want and what the other person needs and wants. So you move on. But you'll know it. And you're not just shooting in the dark trying to get better at creating a clever pitch that is very much like yesterday kind of sales strategy. So get better at listening. Dial it in. Especially if you're like me, like so many of us. You spent a lot of your life being persuasive, being a talker. And if you want to get really master masterful, you'll learn to listen more and be intentional about your listening. Thank you all. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of this Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week, at least once a week with something that you can use to grow and scale your business. Hope it's been helpful. Keep Scaling Up.
