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Your Campaign Plan

one of the things, I mean that I think has been a real through line during the course of our conversation has been the importance of authenticity and of generosity when we're dealing with personal brand. Too many people shy away from even having a discussion about personal branding or networking. You know, these sort of elements that complement each other because they have this reputation in some people's minds as being fake, sleazy all about pushing things on other people that people don't want. And as we've heard over the past two days, that's really the opposite of what we're talking about. A relationship, quote unquote that you form through being something other than yourself isn't even really a relationship because it's founded on false premises. What we want to do is really understand ourselves. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to drilling down on our narrative and understanding what is our brand and then communicate that with other like minded p...

eople. So that when we form relationships, we are sharing our brand on the basis of honesty and transparency and giving. And so one of the things that I think really is most critical in this element is that it's not all about us, it's about the relationship, which means it's about you and another person and what you can give to each other too, make sure that one plus one equals three. That's that's really the goal so Harvey McKay came up with something that I think is fantastic and it's actually available on his website for those who are interested in it, but it's a concept called the Mackay 66 and this was something that he gave to all of his salesman at his envelope company and he said, Look, this, this is how we're going to get people to choose us to do business with us. Um you know, if you have, if you have a powerful brand, it means that people, you know, they recognize you for some special skill or something that you do. But it also means that they like you as a person that there's a kind of connection that kind of just crowds out everybody else they focus in and say, I must have Samantha bee, my photographer, you know, I don't even care who else is doing it? I'm taking her. And so that's the kind of thing. So the Mackay 66 allowed them to do that basically what it is is a list of 66 questions And clearly if you were sitting with your envelope salesman who's coming to visit you, you're not going to sit there and be interviewed and answer 66 questions in a row from your, from your envelope salesman that would take like three hours and nobody wants to do that. And so that was actually the nature of the challenge. The questions were things like what college did the person go to? How many kids do they have? What are the ages of the kids, where do the kids go to school? What's your favorite color? What are their favorite foods? What are their hobbies, What's their husband or wife's name? You know how, you know, all these things, what charities are they involved in all of these incredibly detailed things? And these are things that because the salesmen were not permitted to literally sit there and ask like you're grilling or interrogating someone, It inspired them to do something very different. The requirement was they had to fill out over the course of, say a year. They had to fill out the Mackay 66. The only way they could get that information was to spend quality time enough with the people that you know, with their customers so that they could pick it up by osmosis or ask a few questions at a time and really learn about the people in a deep way. So at the end you have this sort of dossier on the client, you know, all these things about it, but it's not because you've done a road exercise, it's because you've spent enough time that you legitimately know this person and have such a close relationship that at the end of the process, They would never dream of doing business with somebody else. So if you adopt your own McKay 66 with your best clients and the people that you really want to form strong relationships, with I mean that's the secret. And so if you can think about ways in everything we do to try to push the envelope to go above and beyond and surprise people. I mean, people unfortunately, right there used to mediocre service. They're used to things that are good enough. And if you can find ways to really say you are special to me, I want, I want to build a relationship with you, not, not just, you know, you do this for me and then I send you a thank you note or you just do this for me and I'll send you a gift card. That that's great. And it's better than most people. But if you say you and I have an ongoing connection, that's, that's something that will yield you, not just a more personally satisfying relationship, but it will be 10 times the business results. Because you can imagine that person he's telling all his friends, he's on social media saying you would not believe what just happened to me. I got the greatest surprise, so surprising and delighting. That's, that's something that if we can strive for can be really powerful in terms of how we bring things together and make it happen. So, I wanted to talk to you a little bit, You know, I have a background in politics about a concept that we use in politics called power mapping. And, you know, this maybe sounds a little Machiavellian, but I can assure you it's not, uh, it's, uh, it's a helpful technique which, you know, sometimes advocacy groups use and things like that because basically, what we need to do is if we want to make a connection with somebody, maybe it is a potential client. Maybe it's, uh, it's a potential mentor that we'd really like to cultivate. Or just somebody that it's, you know, you don't have a connection to them now and they might be a little tricky to figure out how to get to you create a power map to see if you can find a way to tap them. And so here, here's how we do it. Basically. I'll draw you a map here. Um, so power map, you find your person and make a circle for them. So let's say, I will, I will invent I will invent a scenario here. So, Tamara wants to be in touch as we were talking about earlier. She wants to connect with the Ceo of the International Racing Horse Federation. Okay, so this is good. So this is the Ceo and if we want to try to really understand how this works, what are the connections? You want to try to do everything you can through. Maybe it's research online. Reading articles, you can begin to see if, you know, like on linkedin if their mutual connections and things like that, but you want to try to figure out who influences that person, because if you can't get to them directly, maybe you can find a way to connect with them through their channels. So, in terms of power mapping, maybe it's that here we go, who are the people that would influence the Ceo of the International Racing Horse Federation? Maybe there is the editor of my writing is pretty bad. So I apologize, but there's an editor of the International Horse Racing Journal. And so of course the CEO is reading that every week. You know, it's like, oh, it lands on his desk. Yes, I must read it. So this person is going to be pretty influential, who else would do it? Maybe there is a huge donor and so that person is going to be pretty influential as well, Maybe there is somebody who is a member that is particularly important Because we'll call them an owner of like 100 racehorses. And so clearly the CEO has to listen to that person. Probably there's a board structure. So maybe the board chair would be a big person that would be influential. And then, you know, let's, let's say one more, oh, well, you know, we can't forget people's personal lives, right? Let's say the Ceo has a wife and if that's the case, then all of these people are pretty much being influential toward the, toward the Ceo. So tomorrow's secret goal is that she would really love to get a contract from this person to photograph every racehorse in America and she knows there's a budget for it and this could happen, this is going to be fantastic, right? So, but she doesn't know the Ceo, she can't connect there. So really what you want to do is to try to ask yourself, okay of the people who influence the Ceo directly, how what is your relationship with these other folks? And sometimes it may be a second degree connection. So maybe tomorrow knows some of the folks directly, Maybe she knows people who knows who know them. This is like where Lincoln comes in. So, for instance, it could be that to mars a friend is friends with the editor of the Horse Racing Journal. So, the next way to think about it, once we've kind of created the baseline map here and for those of you who are employees at organizations to this is this is actually based on an article that I wrote for the Harvard Business review in the november 2012 issue, a campaign map for your career. And you can actually do this literally thinking about like your boss and who influences your boss because if you want to try to have a positive relationship and get a good performance review if you, if you want to make sure that happens, it's useful to think about all right, well who's whispering in your boss's ear and do I have a good relationship with those folks. So, it applies in many levels. So let's say tomorrow has a really good, well market green, if it's a good relationship, she's a really good relationship with her friend. And then she also, it turns out amazingly enough, she knows the wife of the Ceo. And yellow doesn't really show up on camera too well. So we're gonna use purple instead. But say purple is like maybe you know the medium? Well, she knows she knows the board share a little bit and maybe through her friend at a party, she met the editor once she knows the editor a little bit. And then there's plenty of people that she doesn't know at all. They're they're a little harder. She doesn't know the owner of the 100 Horses. She doesn't know the Ceo yet and she doesn't know the big donor. But so from this power map, you're able to really begin to think about, okay, it might seem really hard and impossible on the surface to get to the Ceo and to be able to reach them. But there are ways to do it. I mean even though she doesn't know him directly, you see a route, then you go through the people with the green, the people that you actually have a pretty good relationship with and you say, oh, can you help me get introduced or can you help me spend more time with this editor and the people, you know, a little bit you say, oh well, you know, is, can I ask you for some advice and it's just showing you a route that you can cultivate so that you can begin to create the connections that you need.