I had a conversation last week with a potential client. The conversation was fairly, well, typical… at first. I gave the Actionable Workshops spiel, she listened politely and asked a few questions.
And then, quite by accident, we stumbled into her passion for reinventing her industry. Of taking what exists as a common occurrence in many people lives and making it extraordinary. Not only did she have the passion, she had the plan, and the company backing, to make it happen.
And suddenly it was a whole new conversation. Her enthusiasm for making her vision a reality encouraged me to open up about what we were trying to do – my own dreams of what’s possible in leadership and employee development, far beyond the “here’s what we do” information exchange we’d been having previously. The conversation sped up as we both fed off each other’s enthusiasm and plans, getting deeper and richer until the end of the call. I submitted a proposal and her enthusiastic response was almost immediate.
I think we can forget sometimes that in a world that’s constantly talking, real emotions (particularly positive ones) are a welcome change.
This (soon to be) client is already a leader in their field. But best in class is an attitude as much as it’s a number on a balance sheet. To attract the best, you need to be willing to expose your own best in class attitude, despite all the fear and self-talk to the contrary. In my experience, the balance sheet follows.
