Latest / What is Business Development? / Episode 147: “The Second Meeting” with Lee Levitt
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hello, BD pros, and welcome to the BD Podcast, the
- 0:03Speaker 1: official podcast of the Global Business Development Association, and today
- 0:08Speaker 1: we're with Lee Levitt. He's the author of this brand
- 0:11Speaker 1: new book, it's called The Second Meeting. And before we
- 0:15Speaker 1: jump into that book, let's jump into a book that
- 0:17Speaker 1: we always like to talk about, and that's the Business
- 0:20Speaker 1: Development Body of Knowledge. And the Body of Knowledge is
- 0:24Speaker 1: available on Amazon. And once you read that book, then
- 0:28Speaker 1: you can understand the universal principles, the tactics, the operations,
- 0:34Speaker 1: the strategy of business development. And then you can go
- 0:37Speaker 1: to the GBDA website at Gbdassociation dot org and find
- 0:43Speaker 1: out information about how you can get your Business Development
- 0:46Speaker 1: Professional certification. All right, so let's get back to the
- 0:51Speaker 1: discussion about this brand new book. It's called The Second Meeting.
- 0:56Speaker 1: And look, many BD leaders know something has changed in
- 1:02Speaker 1: how buyers buy. The Second Meeting asks the harder question,
- 1:07Speaker 1: who do you have to be to lead through it? Now?
- 1:12Speaker 1: Our author today, Lee Levitt, has nearly thirty years of
- 1:15Speaker 1: experience in business development, and Lee helps companies grow by
- 1:19Speaker 1: changing how their salespeople engage buyers, sales and service of
- 1:24Speaker 1: the buyer, not the number, and the number gets stronger
- 1:28Speaker 1: as a result, that's his whole focus and he really
- 1:31Speaker 1: brings that to bear here in this book that he's
- 1:34Speaker 1: published again. It's called The Second Meeting and it's a
- 1:37Speaker 1: leadership fable. So this is a fictional novel about key
- 1:42Speaker 1: principles and business development that I'm really excited to be
- 1:45Speaker 1: talking about, and it helps you understand about creating the
- 1:49Speaker 1: space for the authentic, trusting relationships that help buyers get
- 1:54Speaker 1: where they're going to. And So, with no further ado,
- 1:59Speaker 1: let's bring our guest to the stage, Lee Lovitt, Welcome
- 2:03Speaker 1: to the show.
- 2:04Speaker 2: Thanks, Tony, it's a pleasure to be here.
- 2:07Speaker 1: It's great to have you, Lee, and I think you
- 2:09Speaker 1: are our first author who's written a fable, a fiction
- 2:14Speaker 1: about business development. So I'm looking forward to jumping into
- 2:17Speaker 1: this one because it's a big first for us. But
- 2:20Speaker 1: before we get into that, can you tell us a
- 2:23Speaker 1: little bit about how you got into the business development profession.
- 2:27Speaker 1: I know you worked some really big companies in business
- 2:30Speaker 1: development roles and leadership roles. And also tell us, Lee,
- 2:34Speaker 1: why did you write the book?
- 2:36Speaker 2: So that's a big question there, Tony. So how did
- 2:40Speaker 2: I get into business development? Well, I wanted an airplane
- 2:45Speaker 2: and the fastest way to getting an airplane is to
- 2:47Speaker 2: sell something, right, So I sold seeds door to door
- 2:52Speaker 2: when I was twelve years old, and I eventually earned
- 2:55Speaker 2: the airplane. It was a little coxpowered airplane ran across
- 3:01Speaker 2: used I used little controls to fly around in circles.
- 3:04Speaker 2: But I sold seeds door to door. And I remember
- 3:07Speaker 2: very distinctly an experience that I had. I knocked on
- 3:11Speaker 2: someone's door, one of my neighbors, middle of the afternoon,
- 3:15Speaker 2: and this gentleman came to the door in a row
- 3:17Speaker 2: in a bathrobe, and I didn't know what to say
- 3:21Speaker 2: to him, and he didn't know what to say to me.
- 3:23Speaker 2: I think I probably he probably was working the night shift,
- 3:26Speaker 2: and I woke him up and we just stood there
- 3:28Speaker 2: and stared at each other. And at some point I
- 3:32Speaker 2: said to myself, I'm going to fix this for other salespeople.
- 3:38Speaker 2: I don't ever want salespeople to be uncomfortable the way
- 3:41Speaker 2: I was. So that's why I've been in sales enablement,
- 3:44Speaker 2: sales support, sales training coaching for many, many years, and
- 3:50Speaker 2: that's been my chosen path. I want to help other
- 3:53Speaker 2: salespeople to be more successful in what they do. Now,
- 3:57Speaker 2: about a year and a half ago, I interviewed Jeff
- 4:00Speaker 2: Lipsius on my podcast Thoughts on Selling, and Jeff is
- 4:05Speaker 2: Jeff is a sales guru. He's also a fan of
- 4:10Speaker 2: Tim Galway's work The Inner Game of Tennis, and the
- 4:13Speaker 2: perspective is we already know what to do, we just
- 4:17Speaker 2: shouldn't get in the way. Tim Galloway taught people to
- 4:19Speaker 2: play tennis by saying, bounce hit, not pull back your racket.
- 4:23Speaker 2: Cock your wrist this way. Now, start to swing right,
- 4:26Speaker 2: he said, bounce hit. So Jeff said, the purpose of
- 4:31Speaker 2: selling is not selling. The purpose of selling is buying.
- 4:36Speaker 2: And I sat with that for a bit and then
- 4:37Speaker 2: I said, hmmm, Actually, the purpose of selling is not
- 4:41Speaker 2: even buying, because buying is just a way point. It's like,
- 4:46Speaker 2: you know, if you're going someplace, buying the ticket at
- 4:50Speaker 2: the counter isn't the purpose. It's getting where you're going.
- 4:53Speaker 2: And so the purpose of selling is helping people to
- 4:56Speaker 2: achieve their strategic objectives. And that's where I got to
- 5:02Speaker 2: and twenty years ago, as an analyst at IDC working
- 5:05Speaker 2: on sales productivity issues, i stated out loud for the
- 5:08Speaker 2: first time, I'm going to fix how the tech industry sells,
- 5:11Speaker 2: and for twenty years I've been working on that. I
- 5:15Speaker 2: ran sales for Bipointment Only, I sold predictive analytics software.
- 5:20Speaker 2: I ran a field enablement for a part of Oracle
- 5:23Speaker 2: for seven years. I ran part of Google's global enablement
- 5:28Speaker 2: for a couple of years, and then three years ago,
- 5:30Speaker 2: three and a half years ago, I went out on
- 5:31Speaker 2: my own to coach people and to do sales enablement
- 5:35Speaker 2: project work. And then in January, I took everything I've
- 5:40Speaker 2: ever written, all my podcast transcripts, my fifteen years of
- 5:43Speaker 2: blogging on thoughts on selling, all sorts of other stuff,
- 5:48Speaker 2: and I dumped it into Gemini and I said, Gemini,
- 5:50Speaker 2: let's write a book. And gem and I said, I
- 5:54Speaker 2: can't really do that. We tried, but it couldn't. So
- 5:57Speaker 2: I took a second pass at it, and Claude and
- 5:59Speaker 2: I went off on a on a long process of
- 6:02Speaker 2: building this, this book called Together We Win, which is
- 6:06Speaker 2: an approach to selling. It's very different than how do
- 6:10Speaker 2: we make the number? How do we pull one over
- 6:12Speaker 2: in the customer? How do we get our maximum? It's
- 6:15Speaker 2: the context of together we win. If you win, I win,
- 6:20Speaker 2: if I win, you win, If I win and you
- 6:21Speaker 2: don't win. Neither of us wins. So we we got
- 6:27Speaker 2: most of the way through the book and then Claude said,
- 6:30Speaker 2: do you know someone in your world who might be
- 6:35Speaker 2: a good sample of how he or she progressed over
- 6:41Speaker 2: their career. And I said, yes, absolutely, Stacy. Stacy Bishop
- 6:46Speaker 2: call out to Stacy and and Claude said, well, let's
- 6:49Speaker 2: see if we can profile Stacy for the book. Then
- 6:53Speaker 2: we went back and forth on that, and Stacy was interested,
- 6:56Speaker 2: and we ended up not doing that. What we ended
- 6:59Speaker 2: up doing instead was I wrote a fictional story about
- 7:03Speaker 2: Alex Mercer who follows this trajectory of selling the old
- 7:07Speaker 2: way and then being really frustrated that the old way
- 7:11Speaker 2: is really uncomfortable, that it there are a lot of
- 7:15Speaker 2: personal costs, both for the seller and for the buyer,
- 7:18Speaker 2: and Alex watches buyers get really uncomfortable and then tune out.
- 7:24Speaker 2: So that was the origin of the books. That's where
- 7:28Speaker 2: the second Meeting comes from, and it's a very direct
- 7:31Speaker 2: The title is a very direct reference to most salespeople
- 7:34Speaker 2: don't get the second Meeting.
- 7:38Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. I love the name of the book,
- 7:41Speaker 1: the title of the book. I also love the origins story.
- 7:46Speaker 1: I've read and learned a lot of objections, a lot
- 7:50Speaker 1: of prospect objections before Lee, But I've never seen one
- 7:54Speaker 1: that says guy answers the door in a robe.
- 8:01Speaker 2: Well, that wasn't necessarily an objection, it was just it
- 8:04Speaker 2: just was I've called on part when I was with
- 8:08Speaker 2: Texas Instruments in the in the reseller channel, we called
- 8:11Speaker 2: on people in their houses and they would come, you know,
- 8:14Speaker 2: they and their dog would come to the front door saying, Yep,
- 8:17Speaker 2: we want to resell some TI hardware. It's like, eh,
- 8:20Speaker 2: maybe not, We'd like to buy one evaluation copy at
- 8:26Speaker 2: eighty percent of I see the play here.
- 8:30Speaker 1: Yep, oh man, good stories, good stories. I'd love how
- 8:34Speaker 1: you you seated the topic talking about this really this transition,
- 8:41Speaker 1: this shift for you, yep, from the sales mindset to
- 8:45Speaker 1: what I would argue is fundamentally the business development mindset,
- 8:49Speaker 1: which I kind of went through the same journey when
- 8:51Speaker 1: I wrote The Business Development Body of Knowledge, and I
- 8:54Speaker 1: really wanted to understand, what is it the root of
- 8:56Speaker 1: everything that we do? What is that first principle in
- 8:58Speaker 1: business development? Well, turns out it's all trust. You can't
- 9:01Speaker 1: get anything done in business development unless you have trust.
- 9:05Speaker 1: And trust. Then I said, okay, let's trust. You look
- 9:08Speaker 1: it up in the dictionaries, this vague, mushy term. That's right.
- 9:11Speaker 1: But then there's actually neuroscience that proves trust consists of purpose, empathy,
- 9:16Speaker 1: and truth. Each one of those triggers a brain chemical
- 9:22Speaker 1: and it continues to grow as long as you continue
- 9:25Speaker 1: to deliver on purpose, empathy, and truth. So I like
- 9:28Speaker 1: how you started with that first fundamental element of purpose.
- 9:32Speaker 1: You have to they need to get your prospect needs
- 9:34Speaker 1: to get from point A to point B. They don't
- 9:36Speaker 1: want to go to c F whatever you have onmind, right,
- 9:41Speaker 1: they want to get to point A to point B.
- 9:43Speaker 1: So help them. You understand their purpose and get them
- 9:46Speaker 1: there and do that in a selfless way. So okay,
- 9:50Speaker 1: I can't really wait any longerly to jump into your book.
- 9:53Speaker 1: And folks listening again. The name of the book is
- 9:56Speaker 1: called The Second Meeting. It's available on Amazon. A a fable,
- 10:01Speaker 1: it's a fiction writing. So let's jump into the key
- 10:06Speaker 1: takeaway number one from the book that you would like
- 10:08Speaker 1: to share.
- 10:09Speaker 2: So so, Tony, it's so funny that you you just
- 10:14Speaker 2: discussed the purpose, empathy, and trust. I can't give away
- 10:19Speaker 2: too much of this story as I've as I've been
- 10:22Speaker 2: coached as an author to say, and by the way,
- 10:26Speaker 2: for people that want the easy way to find the book,
- 10:28Speaker 2: it's at get the Second Meeting dot com. Get dot
- 10:32Speaker 2: the Second Meeting dot com. And if you go to
- 10:34Speaker 2: the Second Meeting dot com, you can talk to Alex,
- 10:37Speaker 2: the protagonist. She's got a chat window that that's opening.
- 10:40Speaker 2: You can ask her about her experiences. So so purpose,
- 10:45Speaker 2: empathy and trust. So Alex goes through the perspective, authenticity, trust,
- 10:55Speaker 2: and helm. Now we originally had purpose sorry uh, perspective, authenticity,
- 11:03Speaker 2: trust and guidance because once you have trust, then you
- 11:06Speaker 2: then the salesperson can guide. But P A T G
- 11:09Speaker 2: doesn't come off the tongue the way P A T
- 11:12Speaker 2: H does, and so path is one of the two
- 11:15Speaker 2: key learnings that we explore in the Second Meeting of
- 11:22Speaker 2: when a salesperson engages with a perspective or a purpose
- 11:27Speaker 2: and has authenticity, then they can start to build trust
- 11:32Speaker 2: and then they're in a position where the customer may
- 11:35Speaker 2: give them the helm, give them the opportunity to guide.
- 11:40Speaker 2: And the first part of the story is about Alex's
- 11:44Speaker 2: exploration of those learnings from her coach.
- 11:49Speaker 1: Okay, So let's make sure I understand P, A, T H.
- 11:53Speaker 1: The acronym purpose, authenticity, trust, and the helm I guess
- 12:00Speaker 1: the hell, meaning like the helm of a ship.
- 12:03Speaker 2: It's perspective. You walk in with a perspective. You walk
- 12:07Speaker 2: in with a purpose. Right, You walk in with a perspective,
- 12:09Speaker 2: and the perspective constantly changes.
- 12:11Speaker 1: Right.
- 12:12Speaker 2: If a salesperson's in discovery and they learn something, their
- 12:15Speaker 2: perspective should change. We don't walk in with a fixed perspective.
- 12:19Speaker 2: This person needs to do X. Well you learn something, hmm,
- 12:23Speaker 2: maybe they should do why instead of X.
- 12:26Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, So that first key takeaway is obviously the
- 12:30Speaker 1: acronym path, but also with that foundation is understanding what
- 12:36Speaker 1: is that purpose in your first meeting. Let's get to
- 12:39Speaker 1: under before we talk about a pathway, before I lead
- 12:42Speaker 1: you down the primrose path. Why don't we just try
- 12:45Speaker 1: and figure out first where the heck you want to go.
- 12:48Speaker 1: And once we've established that and we both agreed, you
- 12:51Speaker 1: told me what your purpose was, I repeat it back.
- 12:53Speaker 1: I make sure that I'm very clear on that. Right then,
- 12:56Speaker 1: unless that purpose changes somewhere in the future, which rarely
- 13:00Speaker 1: it does, that serves as kind of that grounding point
- 13:05Speaker 1: where you can always go back to that if things
- 13:08Speaker 1: kind of start to go sideways. So I really like
- 13:10Speaker 1: what you're saying here is first of all, I understand
- 13:13Speaker 1: the acronym that's going to give you the quote unquote
- 13:16Speaker 1: pathway if you will, pun intended to understand how to
- 13:20Speaker 1: move into that second meeting. But you really have to
- 13:22Speaker 1: be grounded in the purpose. Okay, let's talk through key
- 13:28Speaker 1: takeaway number two.
- 13:30Speaker 2: Key takeaway number two. This is my favorite one, and
- 13:37Speaker 2: it's why I dedicated the book to my dog Max.
- 13:43Speaker 2: It's about presence. There is no animal on earth more
- 13:48Speaker 2: present than a dog lying on the sofa, tail flipping
- 13:53Speaker 2: back and forth, getting his belly rub, big brown eyes
- 13:57Speaker 2: staring up at you. There is nothing else on earth
- 14:00Speaker 2: important to that dog. And I learned presence from Max.
- 14:05Speaker 2: Uh he was. He was a cabrachan, a mixed between
- 14:08Speaker 2: a Bijon and a spaniel. He was with us for
- 14:10Speaker 2: fifteen years. We said goodbye to him two years ago,
- 14:13Speaker 2: and every morning I walk out to the garden where
- 14:15Speaker 2: we scattered his ashes and I talked to him. And
- 14:19Speaker 2: one morning I did a drive by. I said good morning, Max,
- 14:22Speaker 2: and I went over to pick up my my, my
- 14:24Speaker 2: newspaper on the driveway, and something grabbed me by the
- 14:28Speaker 2: scruff of the neck and dragged me back to the
- 14:31Speaker 2: trellis that I built and said be present and this
- 14:35Speaker 2: was this was Max giving me that gift that lesson.
- 14:39Speaker 2: A year after he was gone, Alex learns the same thing.
- 14:43Speaker 2: Alex learns not to be on her email, not to
- 14:47Speaker 2: be doing four things at once, but to be listening,
- 14:50Speaker 2: actively listening. When I was at Oracle, we always joked
- 14:53Speaker 2: around that that Oracle salespeople have two ways of communicating,
- 14:57Speaker 2: talking and waiting to talk. Alex talk. Alex demonstrates being present,
- 15:06Speaker 2: really listening. And she has someone on her team, Julie,
- 15:10Speaker 2: who is who is a master at being present, and
- 15:13Speaker 2: there's some other people on the team that learn that
- 15:16Speaker 2: lesson over time, but I I I dedicated the book
- 15:21Speaker 2: to Max for that lesson and it comes up a lot.
- 15:25Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm really learning to be present. And you
- 15:29Speaker 1: gave us some tips there. It's just to avoid those
- 15:31Speaker 1: distractions in those meetings. And it's so easy to be distracted,
- 15:36Speaker 1: especially on those virtual calls where you have so many
- 15:39Speaker 1: things that can pop up on your screen, whether it's email,
- 15:42Speaker 1: whether it's some other project or trying to work at
- 15:44Speaker 1: the time. I've been guilty of doing that.
- 15:45Speaker 2: I think we all have, Tony. Here's a simple cheat.
- 15:50Speaker 2: Maximize the video window. You won't see anything else. Put
- 15:55Speaker 2: your phone under your butt, right, literally sit on it.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Why while you're while you're on the call, and if
- 16:01Speaker 2: your screen is maximized, that all you've got is that
- 16:04Speaker 2: big face of the person you're talking to. You can't
- 16:06Speaker 2: help but look at them. It's a video cheat.
- 16:11Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go, bounce and swing. Just
- 16:15Speaker 1: keep it simple, right, yep, just maximize the view and
- 16:18Speaker 1: you're locked on. Yeah, and that's great. That's great advice,
- 16:22Speaker 1: you know, is really just being present in the moment
- 16:25Speaker 1: and kind of being sensitized or sensitive to again by
- 16:31Speaker 1: step one, you know, the key takeaway one is are
- 16:34Speaker 1: we shifting away from what the original purpose was? And
- 16:37Speaker 1: are we getting to understanding of how we can achieve
- 16:45Speaker 1: whatever their purpose is? And you can't do that unless
- 16:48Speaker 1: you're all in on the on and you're present and
- 16:51Speaker 1: you're actively listening. So I love that. I love that
- 16:54Speaker 1: being present. That's key takeaway number two. What's key takeaway
- 16:57Speaker 1: number three?
- 16:58Speaker 2: Key takeaway number three is it's a mix. It's a
- 17:03Speaker 2: combination of be ready for the pivot. As everyone in
- 17:07Speaker 2: business development knows. If the customer goes that way, you
- 17:11Speaker 2: go that way too, right. Don't be attached to the
- 17:17Speaker 2: results if the best answer for the customer is we
- 17:21Speaker 2: probably shouldn't do anything together. In fact, I have someone
- 17:25Speaker 2: else I can recommend that's the right thing to do.
- 17:28Speaker 2: So many salespeople are attached to one result, and the
- 17:32Speaker 2: one result is I need this deal. Well, customers can
- 17:37Speaker 2: smell that. And the more they smell that, the less
- 17:40Speaker 2: authentic you are. Guess what, no authenticity, no trust, no trust,
- 17:44Speaker 2: no deal well.
- 17:47Speaker 1: And I think this comes back full circle to the
- 17:50Speaker 1: fundamental understanding of the difference between sales and business development.
- 17:53Speaker 1: And some people say, ah, it's synonymous. You know, tomato, tomato, sales,
- 17:57Speaker 1: b D. It's all the same. And my answer to that,
- 18:00Speaker 1: having done the deep exploration and writing the business development
- 18:04Speaker 1: body of knowledges, No, Fundamentally they are distinctly different roles. Now,
- 18:09Speaker 1: do some business developers actually do sales and close deals? Yes,
- 18:12Speaker 1: absolutely they do, And do some salespeople do business development
- 18:16Speaker 1: prospecting functions? Yes they do. But at the end of
- 18:19Speaker 1: the day, sales is converting a prospect into a client
- 18:24Speaker 1: as quickly and efficiently as possible. And there's nothing wrong
- 18:29Speaker 1: with that being your discipline and your specialty. But if
- 18:33Speaker 1: you're going to be dual headed doing business development and sales,
- 18:37Speaker 1: just know you need to put that hat away, that
- 18:40Speaker 1: your sales hat when you're clearly in the business development phase. Now,
- 18:44Speaker 1: when the client raises their hand and says yes, or
- 18:47Speaker 1: the prospect, I should say, raises their hand says yes,
- 18:49Speaker 1: this is what I want. Great, move out, do it
- 18:54Speaker 1: and get them onboarded as quickly as possible. But in
- 18:57Speaker 1: the meantime, I think this kind of also speaks to
- 18:59Speaker 1: your authenticity portion of this. I mean, we talked about purpose,
- 19:03Speaker 1: we talked about the trust, we talked about the helmsmanship too.
- 19:07Speaker 1: Maybe it kind of goes hand in hand with authenticity,
- 19:10Speaker 1: but you know, and authenticity is one of those the
- 19:13Speaker 1: overly used words I think, and so vague. But I
- 19:17Speaker 1: think what you're really saying is authenticity means you're not
- 19:20Speaker 1: afraid to tell the truth, and you know when you
- 19:23Speaker 1: know the truth, and the truth could be that very
- 19:26Speaker 1: painful truth to you, which is you know you know
- 19:28Speaker 1: what I'm not We're not the right company for you.
- 19:31Speaker 1: We don't have the right product for you. But I
- 19:33Speaker 1: tell you what, let me show you somebody who does,
- 19:35Speaker 1: or a product that does. The trust goes through the
- 19:39Speaker 1: roof when you do that, and so you know you're
- 19:43Speaker 1: building a long term relationship that could turn into a
- 19:45Speaker 1: referral source. You know, because I've seen that happen. They
- 19:50Speaker 1: just really are overwhelmed by the amount of trust that's provided.
- 19:54Speaker 1: So wow, I did I kind of connect the dots
- 19:57Speaker 1: properly or did I miss something there? You got it?
- 20:00Speaker 2: You know, as I used to do a lot of
- 20:02Speaker 2: onboarding of new business development folks, people who in May
- 20:07Speaker 2: were at Senior Week and in June they were wearing
- 20:09Speaker 2: red Oracle t shirts. And so I would I would say, so,
- 20:13Speaker 2: here's the first thing. You are now sales professionals business
- 20:16Speaker 2: development professionals, And I want to be careful not to
- 20:19Speaker 2: mix the two. You are professionals. What did professionals do?
- 20:22Speaker 2: They practice their craft. They don't just show up at
- 20:26Speaker 2: the park and go hmmm, wonder, what wonder what I
- 20:29Speaker 2: should do now? They practice their craft. They prepare. And
- 20:32Speaker 2: the second is, particularly for bd rs, they might be
- 20:37Speaker 2: the first touch that a customer has ever gotten from
- 20:40Speaker 2: that company. And even with Oracle, we had we we
- 20:44Speaker 2: had customers that had on the line of business software
- 20:47Speaker 2: we sold. People had never heard of Oracle. I mean
- 20:50Speaker 2: the I T people knew about us, but there were
- 20:53Speaker 2: there were customers for whom that that BD touch was
- 20:56Speaker 2: the very first And so there's a there's a lot
- 20:59Speaker 2: carried in that of how do you represent the brand?
- 21:03Speaker 2: How do you represent yourself? And those are two separate things.
- 21:06Speaker 2: You are not your company. You represent your company. You
- 21:10Speaker 2: also represent yourself because when you leave that company, you
- 21:13Speaker 2: take your reputation with you.
- 21:17Speaker 1: Yeah, and I like what you said about training your craft,
- 21:21Speaker 1: continually improving yourself. And folks, if you want to train
- 21:25Speaker 1: your craft, you can read a bunch of books on
- 21:28Speaker 1: business development tactics, and there's plenty out there, but you
- 21:32Speaker 1: could also read this fable by lead love It. It's
- 21:35Speaker 1: called The Second Meeting. Grab that copy and you'll walk
- 21:39Speaker 1: through this fictional story that really conveys a lot of
- 21:43Speaker 1: the tactics we talked about today and a lot more
- 21:46Speaker 1: principles that can carry you through well into the future
- 21:49Speaker 1: as you progress. And it's probably a little more fun
- 21:53Speaker 1: than reading a book stuffed with tactics, Lee, so let
- 21:56Speaker 1: me summarize the top three takeaways. Today we talked about
- 22:00Speaker 1: the key takeaway number one, which is path understand the purpose,
- 22:04Speaker 1: Approach it with authenticity, build that trust, and understand that
- 22:08Speaker 1: you're at the helm helping guide that prospect to ultimately
- 22:13Speaker 1: achieve their purpose. And then the second step is just
- 22:17Speaker 1: being present, putting away the activities that are distracting you
- 22:23Speaker 1: on those virtual calls, open it wide, make it the
- 22:26Speaker 1: full screen mode, really understand, listen, pay attention, think about
- 22:32Speaker 1: what they need and how you're going to help them
- 22:35Speaker 1: get there. And then the final key takeaway is being authentic.
- 22:39Speaker 1: And I know there's a lot of ways that people
- 22:40Speaker 1: describe authenticity, but it's really meaning having the guts to
- 22:45Speaker 1: be truthful and letting that prospect know whether you are
- 22:51Speaker 1: or are not the right solution for them. Lee, You've
- 22:55Speaker 1: been the right solution for me. Today. It's so wonderful
- 23:00Speaker 1: bringing the first fictional author onto our show and talking
- 23:04Speaker 1: about your book. Folks. Again, we talked about the second meeting.
- 23:08Speaker 1: It's available on Amazon. It's also available on and Lee,
- 23:12Speaker 1: if you could say again the website.
- 23:14Speaker 2: It's at get dot. The second meeting dot com, which
- 23:18Speaker 2: takes you right to Amazon. So it's it's it's an
- 23:21Speaker 2: easy link.
- 23:23Speaker 1: Great. Great, And how can folks connect with you? Leave,
- 23:25Speaker 1: follow your work and bring you on board for some services.
- 23:30Speaker 2: So people can find me at acelera dot group A
- 23:34Speaker 2: C E L E r A dot group and there's
- 23:38Speaker 2: a contact form there. There's all sorts of good stuff.
- 23:40Speaker 2: There's links to my podcast, my blog, there's links to
- 23:43Speaker 2: the two books I've written. First is The Second Meeting
- 23:46Speaker 2: and the second is Together We Win, which is in
- 23:49Speaker 2: final draft form right now. That's that's the longer manuscript
- 23:52Speaker 2: that walks through the what does an organization have to
- 23:56Speaker 2: do to support salespeople and business development secialists to be
- 24:01Speaker 2: themselves because today or most organizations aren't in that space yet.
- 24:06Speaker 2: So I'm also on LinkedIn, Lee Levitt l Evit happy
- 24:10Speaker 2: to connect with anyone that wants to have a conversation.
- 24:13Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 24:14Speaker 1: Well, thank you for bringing yourself to this podcast today, Lee.
- 24:17Speaker 1: I can't wait to have you back. Love to talk
- 24:19Speaker 1: about your next book when you're back on the show,
- 24:22Speaker 1: and also want to thank you for everything you've done
- 24:25Speaker 1: for the business development profession. You real pioneer out there
- 24:29Speaker 1: establishing the key principles at these major corporations, So thank
- 24:33Speaker 1: you for that and thank you for joining us on
- 24:34Speaker 1: the show today.
- 24:36Speaker 2: Thanks Tony, it's been a pleasure.
- 24:40Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to the Business Development Podcast. Join
- 24:44Speaker 3: our free community of corporate partners and business development professionals
- 24:48Speaker 3: advancing the art, science, and ethics of the business development
- 24:53Speaker 3: profession at GBD Association dot org.
- 25:00Speaker 2: Yeah.