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Thoughts on Brian’s preferences when walking someone through a strategy session.

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The dreaded strategy session.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I’ve worked a long time as a strategist and one of the things that are very common in the field and in the field of consulting is the concept of the strategy session.

When I first started, it was an uncommon term, but it has become synonymous. It’s been everywhere, ubiquitous, I should say.

You see strategy sessions are offered all the time, are strategy sessions.

And I’m saying this from the perspective of somebody who uses strategy sessions, I still haven’t renamed my strategy sessions, maybe by the time you’re watching this will have a different name for it. Because I don’t like to be painted in the same sense of how other strategy sessions are.

So I’m going to tell you, for those of you who don’t know what they are, I’ll explain that this is for people who have either been through one worthy recipient of strategy sessions, or for those who are putting on strategy sessions.

I like to talk with you because this is a really interesting concept.

When I first started out, I’ll tell you how it happened is when I first started working in the field of consulting.

This concept of having a strategy session, and I can’t remember what we were calling it originally something like a discovery meeting or something of that sort. And there’s a handful of phrases that describe them out there.

And what they?

What they really are, in the long run is a sales pitch.

In most cases, they’re a disguised sales pitch.

I went through one today, and I wanted to tell you more about it.

I was interested to see where it was going to go based on who was putting it on it was by a rather large company. And also, I wanted to see, you know, the process, I figured there would probably be some type of pitch toward the end that’s in most cases, what happens. And I just wanted to see how that how it ended up working.

I love going in and being able to see this from the customer’s point of view as much as possible. Because one thing that I found that works in a strategy session is to not pitch at all, at the end you offer a doorway to walk through if they’re interested in having a further conversation about working with me, or what have you.

But try to offer as much value upfront, and then see where they go from there. That has worked out well for me, it’s allowed me to be able to set aside people who would not make good clients, and partners, and also be able to have further conversations with the people that would and so it’s really for my benefit, it’s for their benefit because they get something out of it.

And that was always my goal is that give something and to eventually get something from the right people.

So that’s kind of how business works, isn’t it, but it tends to be used more and more as a sales tool and that’s it.

And so you a lot of times people are put in this position, and there is a very specific process that they take you through of asking questions.

If the person’s very skilled, they’re good at asking questions following having follow-up questions, getting down to the meat.

And especially if you have a sale at the end, you want to make sure that the person qualifies for the sale.

One of the things that I think today the process that I was put there was interesting.

The person was very professional and had a lot of background in the marketplace. But one thing that I noticed is that if I were in charge of the process, I would have excluded myself pretty early on, I was not qualified to be able to move any further into the process if I was to be happy with the end result.

I didn’t know that at the time and so I was going along with it to see where we were going. When I saw when I researched the final product later I realized that would not have succeeded in getting what I wanted. But if your goal is to make more sales, then you will push people into a product or service that isn’t necessarily for them.

Whereas if you’re a business owner or the person in charge, more than likely you’re going to try to get away from a situation where a person is by purchasing something that they would not be a good fit.

So this was one of those scenarios and there tends to be a very clear cut, push at the end not only an offering but a push to get you over the edge.

It’s also a thing, it’s never been my cup of tea, it’s never really fit me to have a pushy salesperson.

I understand a lot of people need that and a lot of people respond actually well to it. And I get that.

And probably, it could be that in your marketplace that would work.

For me, it’s always been a turn-off. Even if I was interested in the thing, I wouldn’t be interested as soon as someone started pushing me toward it, like okay, so what’s wrong with this that there needs to be a push. I always enjoying the takeaway, I always enjoyed the process of Well, I’m not really sure if this would be a good fit for you and if they take it away from me, now I know I’m going to be more interested. Now I want to know more.

If the person is extremely friendly and straightforward, and opening up to further conversation, not just making a one and done sale, which I know is that’s another hot thing that’s promoted by people who promote any type of sales material assistance, that one-time sale.

The sit-down, we got one time we’re going to get through it, and you’re going to it’s all or nothing. And that’s fine. I guess for a lot of people.

For me, that was never, for me, it’s about the relationship. And if you’re putting on any type of discovery days, or strategy sessions, any type of one on one encounter, to open up the chance for the person to build a relationship with somebody.

And I know that doesn’t fit all business models, I get it or all products or services. But if you’re doing if you’re going that far, to begin with, to put on the show, that there’s a relationship blooming, that there are questions being asked and there are that the other person is actually listening to the answers.

If that’s actually being played out, you might as well go all the way with it.

It’s that whole concept of most things are not sold the first time that a person comes across it, you know, they got to come across it whenever they say 7, 8, 9 times, some people say a whole lot more than they got to be asked over and over and over again, they got to get comfortable with the person that they’re that’s doing the asking, they have to, they have to have basically been worn out in a sense, and that’s fine.

But you got to give people a chance to get worn out if that’s the case. And but this is an ongoing issue with sales and there’s always going to be a back and forth.

I realized that certain markets need to have that high-intensity situation for them to be able to move forward and I wouldn’t give any guff to them. It’s just never something that ever sat well with me and the services I provide.

So just as an example, if you were ever to sit down with me, I talk about strategy sessions in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

I actually have some free offerings. So if you go on my website, you can purchase a strategy session for $627, to sit down with me for an hour and go over, go over your situation, and you’ll walk away with something right off the bat.

But you get some free ones in here, very specific to these specific areas, you can go and check that out.

They’re only available in this book, they’re not available on my website and you can get a free copy of AmazonProofBook.com. I offer nine different strategy sessions in this book and you can go and check those out.

Those are not any type of sales deal. They’re in the sales process, in a sense that the only way that I’m able to ever get a person to purchase anything from me, for the most part, is to build a relationship.

And we’re either going to build a one-way relationship this way through podcasts and videos, or through my book, or we’re going to meet and talk have a conversation as the only way things tend to go especially if I’m looking for a long term relationship.

So in terms of business relationships, so if you would like if you’d like to talk further about the ideas in this book, go check it out, and then contact me through the ways provided in the book.

That’s all I got for tonight.

I’d love to find out, have you ever had a strategy session? Do you put on strategy sessions?

How have they been useful for you?

Let me know in the comments wherever you’re watching or listening to this, or you can comment over BrianJPombo.com. That’s all I got for tonight. You have a great one.

Get out there and let the magic happen.