Most people hate cold calling. Even if you can turn your connections into a visit or a phone call, you’re still starting off with nothing: no reputation to precede you, no interest, no warm lead. Chances are, you’re walking into a cold brick wall—someone who knows they’re going to humor your sales pitch.

This is the trick I’ve used to overcome the cold call and turn it into a warm – or even hot lead.

It’s a pretty simple phrase, actually:

“Let’s take a look at what your competitor is doing.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to Roy’s Hardware or a Fortune 500 company: people are competitive. If they’re best in the industry, they are desperately looking for something to help them keep their lead. And if they’re not the leader, then the customer is going nuts realizing that their competition is winning.

I used to go into a sale from the angle of “here’s how I can help you.” But that implies that the customer needs you to fix them. People don’t like feeling broken.

The competitor angle speaks to a more definite urge. You’re on the same team, now. Their competitor is your competitor, and your expertise can help the customer kick their butt.

As a web marketer, I’d pull up the competition’s website. I’d make notes of what they did right and what they did wrong. I’d make lists of search keywords that the competition performed well on. Where they were winning. I’d make careful note of their weaknesses.

The competition’s weaknesses are opportunities for your customer. They’re positive things they can focus on.

When you call or visit your prospect, start off by making informed assessments of their industry. Ask if they saw what they competitor has been doing recently. Ask how much time they’ve spent on their competition’s website. Mention the competition by name.

That’s when you tell them you can help them beat (or extend their lead on) the competition. Now you’ve got key points from your research to carry it on to the next meeting. Don’t give it all up then – use this newfound interest to schedule your first meeting, make a presentation, send more information about your business, etc.

What’s the difference between inventors Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison?

Da Vinci created. Thomas Edison innovated. Edison (and his team) methodically processed hundreds or thousands of options for filament materials until they arrived at the best result. They prototyped, tested, revisited, and revised.

(Flickr Photo by Sam the sham)

Innovation isn’t luck. It’s a process. Even when the figurative light bulb pops on, the idea needs nurturing and development before it can be carried out.

The Ground Rules of Innovation

1. Generate ideas first, evaluate ideas later.
2. There are no bad ideas. The worst ideas are often stepping stones to good ideas.
3. Nobody owns an idea. Evaluate ideas on their merit, not based on who came up with them.
4. Be inclusive.
5. Maintain the team.

The Right Team

Who can be innovative? Everyone. Creativity can come from the most unlikely people, given the environment and framework. It’s better to be inclusive. Innovation requires different thinking, and an approach from the outside is a great way to help spur a change of perspective.

More importantly, the team needs to work well together. If team members don’t value each others’ ideas, refuse to contribute, or overpower the other members, remove them. Get the right people on your team, and get rid of the wrong ones.

The Process of Innovation

A process can draw innovative thinking out of the furthest corners of our minds. It’s an iterative process: one idea builds on the last.

Step 1: Start with Something

Take something familiar and start there. What could you do to change it? What would make it better? What might improve on it? It’s really hard to start from scratch. A blank canvas is creation; innovation is about incremental improvement. A starting point gives you something to react to, to build upon.

Let’s imagine we’re starting with a simple square. Changing a square is easy – add some colors, change the width of the lines, etc.

Step 2: What are the factors?

Identify the individual factors that make up your starting point. List them all out.

• A square has four sides
• Connected at 90 degree angles
• The sides are all equal in length
• The inside of the square can be filled with color
• The square can be rotated to any angle

Get as detailed as possible. Don’t take anything for granted, such as the fact that a square is two-dimensional.

Step 3: What factors could you change?

Go through your list of factors and ask how you might change them. How would it affect the square? Could you combine these changes?

Obviously, we could switch up the colors and lines, as we figured above. But we could also change the length of the sides (a rectangle), angles (a parallelogram or trapezoid), or replace the colors with a texture or anything you like. Let’s add another side (a pentagon).

Step 4: Go nuts

What about the off-the-wall ideas? Here’s your blank slate. You’ve already identified incremental improvements, but you’re not limited to small changes anymore. What huge changes or new ideas could you try?

So forget about our square. Let’s throw a bunch of sides in there, and make it three-dimensional. Let’s add gradients and make it bigger. A little big of texture… And voila: dodecahedron!

Application: The Real World

It’s important to apply this process within the real world. Combine your idea generation with research, customer input, and testing. Prototype, apply, revisit, and revise. Edison’s team would revisit their experiments and tests once they acquired new information.

Acknowledgements

Much of this post is borne out of a fantastic seminar put on by Linkage. I’ve spent a month kicking these ideas around and letting them settle before trying to share them.

In a conversation about web companies, we compare ourselves to Google.

If you’re talking branding, Nike is sure to come up.

For product development, it’s Apple we admire.

If you’re a marketing blogger, you want to be Seth Godin.

The list goes on and on.

They are outliers. They are the greatest of success stories in a million ways. And it’s not fair to hold yourself to that standard. You don’t have what they have and didn’t fight their battles to win their positions. You can’t follow the exact same trajectory.

Perhaps instead of comparing yourself to those companies now, you should look at their beginnings. As Jim Collins did in Built to Last, what did those companies do to become great?

Anyone who’s worked with me probably realizes I don’t mind offending people (and I barely consider graphic designers to be people) in hopes of improving the work. This post will certainly offend. Enjoy.

I’ve been meaning to share this gem from Seth Godin for a while, and apparently so did Jeff Brooks at the Donor Power Blog.

From Your brand is not your logo

Smart marketers understand that a new logo can’t possibly increase your market share, and they know that an expensive logo doesn’t defeat a cheap logo. ... take the time and money and effort you’d put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

I’ve said this to a lot of clients in the last few years. I’m always on the agency end of the project, creating a logo for a client. But since I went through the process of having my own logo redesigned I realized it was a joke: the finesse and tweaking and painful revision process was more about my own pride than it was about helping my company. We spent many hours creating a logo, rather than creating value.

I wouldn’t do it the same way again.