Decision creates accountability, even when what you’re deciding is to go into the unknown.
Making the decisions required to generate sales and organic growth can be scary, whether you’re the CEO or the CMO. There’s always a moment before you launch a new marketing program or campaign, or before you pitch a potential whale, or before you give the approval to update your brand promise, that you start second-guessing yourself. Maybe you back off a little. Maybe you pair down the offer to something you think is more achievable. Maybe you water down the message to leave more options open.
In Ryan Holiday’s new book The Perennial Seller, he says “We’re afraid of taking full responsibility for everything that happens next,” and you can imagine why. Decision creates accountability, even when what you’re deciding is to go into the unknown.
I saw this play out with a recent client who participated in a marketing masterclass we run occasionally.
You may be tempted to think the example that follows isn’t relevant to you. It’s about real estate after all. But trust me. Look for the lesson it teaches. I’ve worked with people at multi-billion dollar healthcare companies, ubiquitous soft drink companies, manufacturers, banks and more. People are people, and people with accountability care about the effects of their decisions because they’ve got skin in the game.
My client had wrapped up the section of the masterclass where we have them develop a detailed buyer persona, and she’d had an epiphany that was so insightful, so clear, it was like the hand of truth had reached down and tapped her on the shoulder.
Her ideal target was literally right under her nose on the worksheet. The Director of the Estates Division — at a high end residential real estate company in Beverly Hills — realized that her business’s ideal clients were not just families looking for swanky homes, it was the mother in those families that really mattered. Mothers looking to secure a future for their children, and whose major criteria for choosing a location had to do with the quality of of the schools in the areas they were shopping.
It felt like a revelation. As she thought back through all of her sales and biggest successes, she saw clearly now that her best clients had been the ones where she collaborated with the mother of the family to find a home that checked the biggest box of all — a place where the mom could raise her children and give them the ultimate advantage: an exceptional education, and a peer group that would endure and open doors in the future.
Two weeks later, she flinched and abandoned the idea. The targeting felt too narrow and the doubt crept in. She decided to stick with what she’d been doing for the last 10 years even though she was after a different result.
Fear is often the thing that keeps leaders from doing the things that will advance their companies.
Businesses are merely collections of humans with a common goal. And guess what, humans aren’t always rational, and this applies equally to the human in charge. Sometimes, even the smartest leaders get stuck or go down rabbit holes. Every business leader knows the basic formula for success. In order to grow, the business must be fed with new sales. Growth comes through sales to new and existing customers, and through marketing to stimulate those sales.
With such a simple formula, why don’t people follow it? Regardless of industry, in my experience working with business leaders responsible for growth, there is a recurring theme: fear disguised in some other form. (If you’re in the $5 million to $50 million revenue zone — often called the ‘kill zone’ — this is especially for you.)
Fear keeps many business owners from crossing the threshold that will take their business from the level of simply surviving in a steady state, to thriving (reliable, scalable growth).
So let’s approach this problem from a simple human perspective. The responsibility of growing a business is like a hero’s quest.
Growing A Business Is Like A Hero’s Quest
Whether you’re the CEO, the sales leader, or the marketing leader, you are on a quest. And like any classic quest, there will be trials. This is when fear can set in, and it takes 3 forms. See if any of these feel familiar.
1. Fear in the form of paralysis or indecision
In a way, it comes down to where you are in your quest. In any new quest, there are countless unknowns. You’re called to solve a problem. You have skin in the game. But things find a way of interfering and you get stuck before taking decisive action. Fear of the toll the trials will take, or of taking the wrong step that could lead to metaphoric death, paralyzes you and your business is doomed to an existence of mere survival. You know what you have to do, but you can’t find a way of doing it. You never cross the threshold.
It comes down to basic, human psychology and the fear of failure. The fear of living with the consequences of your decision. Once a plan is hatched, one is obliged to start working on it, and then are you confronted with the niggling thought that maybe this isn’t the right plan. Maybe it’s not the answer to your problems. Maybe you should try something else. The paralysis sets in.
If you want to seize the treasure, you’re going to have to slay the dragon. You’ll have to find the inner resources to take decisive action.
2. Fear in the form of impatience
Perhaps you’ve made moves in the direction of creating a sales and marketing system, but haven’t seen consistent results. You’ve failed to see it through to the end, to anticipate what could go wrong and how long it will take to seize the treasure.
Or maybe you have crossed the threshold, bravely and enthusiastically, only to come face-to-face with the trials, the adversaries, the rings of fire and the dragons. Feeling defeated, you turned back for the shorter road home to safety, yet you are empty-handed without the ultimate prize.
Many businesses spend good time developing clear-thinking strategies and yet fail miserably when it comes to implementing & executing those strategies. Or, a company starts a plan, but failing to see any early indicators of success, impatiently abandons the plan for fear that it’s the wrong plan. Why?
Most businesses that succeed do so through relentless endurance. The successes you see in businesses you admire are thanks to leaders who didn’t quit.
3. Fear in the form of distraction
Perhaps you’re one of those with shiny object syndrome. You’re addicted to ideas and action. You’re a better initiator than you are an optimizer (if this is you, get an optimizer!). Or, very often, you have multiple priorities competing for your attention.
I’m going to be a bit controversial here, but I’m willing to bet that if you can’t stay in the narrow lane of your quest, it’s because at some level you don’t have full faith in it. You’re afraid one of the trials will be fatal, so you leave your options open. You hedge. And in so doing, you veer from the path.
I know from experience how easy it is to commit to something that has real potential, and then to abandon it the minute someone approaches with an open checkbook asking you to do something any of a cast of thousands could do.
I run a company that helps leaders align their entire culture and operations to a brand promise, and build programs that help them consistently interact with prospects and customers with integrity. And yet, this has happened to me more than once:
Them: Hey Ginger, can you build me a website? Does your company do PPC? Do you do social media? Can you build my sales funnel?
Me: Yes, we can. But are you willing to let us work with you on strategy first?
Them: We already have that figured out, we just need someone to execute.
Me: Well, that’s not how we usually work. But, assuming your strategy is sound, we can probably help.
And then I kick myself later. Their strategy was sound on paper, but their business operations weren’t designed to support what they said they stood for. The brand promise was empty. And though I don’t run an ‘execution’ agency, I agreed to function like one as an exception. I got distracted! Why did I abandon my noble quest for easy money? FEAR. I was afraid I wouldn’t get this client’s business ever, if I didn’t meet them on their own terms out of the gate. And it was a mistake.
Distraction is everywhere. Keep your eye on the prize. Resist the temptation of distraction.
How to Defeat Fear In Business
Sustainable growth is reserved for those who figure out something with lasting power. Only the hero that crosses the threshold, survives the trials, goes to the innermost sanctum without getting waylaid by some other shiny object, seizes the treasure and then returns with the prize gets the real rewards of any sales and marketing program.
Consider these 5 steps For Defeating Fear in Business.
Step 1: Start with inquiry to get CLARITY. Clarity is Power.
Who are you trying to serve? No matter what your business is, you’ll benefit from a deep dive on the person you’re trying to serve. Not a population. A person. No matter how big or small the clients we work with, we insist on developing a highly detailed and evidence-based buyer persona to challenge ourselves to think about the customer (or client) deeply. And you should too. It will push you to dig for answers that will give you a new awareness and clarity of how you can target, attract, and serve your prospects in a way that serves them, and makes it more likely that they do business with you repeatedly.
Step 2: Understand the landscape. Think about the trials you will likely face in advance.
Failure to anticipate the inevitable trials you will face is irresponsible. In Robert Greene’s excellent book The 48 Laws Of Power, law 29 states “Plan till the end, so you won’t be caught by surprise.”
Projects fail at a spectacular fate. Leaders tend to be overconfident. Do a premortem. Make a list of all the things that are likely to go wrong, in advance. You know there will be trials. What will they be? Think forward 12 months and imagine your effort being a glorious failure. Now ask yourself, ‘Why did it fail?’.
- What led you to get your targeting wrong?
- Why was your messaging off?
- Why did the automation fail? Or the onboarding?
- Where was the weak link in your systems?
- What assumptions did you make without validating them?
Here’s a suggestion. Think through some of the ‘reasons’ your projects have failed before. What are you doing to avoid them now?
Step 3: Hatch a plan around an offer
An offer is different than a product. An offer is a provocation, something that excites the emotions with the right audience and compels them to say yes. We do storytelling workshops for corporate teams to build more persuasive presentations that get projects funded, land more deals, and speed internal decisions on complex initiatives. Would you like to know more? That’s an offer!
Step 4: Take that offer to market
Having an offer is not enough. Offers are not like inventory that you hold in a warehouse until someone makes an order. Offers must be made to people who have the power or influence to say yes. I’m going to say that again. Offers must be offered. What marketing and sales channels are you focusing on?
Step 5: Be aware, be disciplined, and use facts to guide your actions
There’s a reason that the companies that make it, make it. They build programs for growth. Programs — systems — are what separate the strivers from the thrivers.
- Brushing your teeth morning and night — that’s a program.
- Having an exercise routine to stay healthy — that’s a program.
- Consistently and proactively making offers to your target market — that’s a program too!
Those last few things (awareness, discipline, following the facts) are easier said than done. So much so, that we started a compliance program for our clients just around Step 5 so we can help them maintain some discipline as they work through the inevitable successes and setbacks that accompany any marketing program.
When FEAR isn’t the reason you’re not growing, get resourceful.
Of course there are other reasons your growth may be stunted. You may simply not have the funds or enough of a financial runway to keep feeding your efforts. In that case, it’s time for ingenuity and resourcefulness. What resources, skills, networks do you have that will benefit others? What mutually beneficial partnerships can you start? Where do you fit in the customer journey and what behaviors come before (or after) that could be the basis of a business partnership. I won’t go into all of the ways you can get more out of what you already have, Jay Abraham has already done that well in his excellent book Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got.
Fear is a nebulous monster, and according to Seneca, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Many are harmed by fear itself, and many may have come to their fate while dreading fate.” — Seneca, Oedipus, 992.
So the next time you find yourself resisting a decision, pivoting, or getting distracted, ask yourself, ‘Is there any fear at work here?’. And if it is, get clarity, look at the facts, and take an informed and well-considered step forward.