Ron Tite Displays How to Land More Business While Being The Authentic You

Ron Tite shares the insights behind the Think. Do. Say. framework and how you can use it to create an effective personal brand, do more of the work you truly care about and be more authentic. Learn the four C’s that make communicating your brand belief easy, the five questions that get a prospect’s head nodding during a pitch, and how to innovate consistently while still delivering your best work.

Mo asks Ron Tite: What’s your big idea on how the audience can grow their book of business, grow their career, and grow their relationships?

• The first thing is to stop gaming the system and stop looking for shortcuts to business development.
• You need two things: a consistent brand narrative to sell the things you have and to be entrepreneurial so you can create the resources that people need.
• Business development is bound by purpose, defined by actions, and adopted by other people by how you communicate it.
• Your purpose has to go beyond the thing that you sell that speaks to your brand belief. If you can’t articulate that, that’s where you need to start.
• You will be defined by the actions you take to fulfill and live up to your purpose, it’s not by the things you say.
• Those first two are not enough though. You can be living in your purpose authentically, but you still need other people to adopt your purpose as well if you want something to grow.
• Even in a retail setting, you can still act in an advisory or consultative role. REI is a good example of a company that embodies that principle as they have a purpose that is strategically aligned to where they make their money. They inspire, inform, and equip people with the proper tools to have a greater enjoyment of the outdoors. Your purpose should align with what you sell.
• REI also communicates its purpose in a way that conveys trust and authority, without sounding too corporate and separated from what the customers really care about.
• Your brand narrative flows consistently out of those three foundational ideas and is composed of these five things: What’s going on in the world through your lens? What problem does that create? What do you believe about that problem? How do you solve that problem? Why should someone believe you?
• This set of questions establishes your brand narrative and gets people’s heads nodding. It’s not about selling, it’s about framing the conversation around where you add the most value.

Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we get better at creating and closing the meaty work that we want to do?

• The first step is identifying the meaty work where you can add your best value. Ron recently had someone resign from his agency after they had a conversation about what she really wanted to do. It wasn’t until she asked herself that question did she realize that she wasn’t happy because she wasn’t doing what she really wanted to do.
• You need to put yourself in a position to close after building an organization that people want to work with.
• Who are the specific people that can best use your service and how can you put yourself into a position to win their business?
• In terms of communicating your brand belief to the right customers, there are four C’s: Consumption, Curation, Creation, Connection.
• Once you have your brand belief, you need to operationalize the strategic consumption of media that supports that. You need to consume media that makes you smarter and better.
• Curation is about taking the media that you find compelling or valuable and sharing it with your community. Editorialize it with your own opinion and put your own spin on it. Ron also categorizes content and insights that he finds and adds them to categories for use in his future speeches and books.
• At some point you have to create your own stuff and get that out into the world.
• The connection part is about the conversation that happens when someone challenges your thinking or adds to it. That’s where your personality shows through: it’s not in the post, it’s in the comments.

Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we deepen relationships and win the relationship advantage?

• If you have great relationships, know that some of them will convert, but that’s not why you invest in relationships.
• When Ron started his agency, his first client was a woman that he knew and had a work relationship with 15 years prior. She didn’t have a need for his agency, but she created a project for him and launched his agency.
• Far too many think they need to create relationships to grow their business but if that’s your primary motivation it’s not going to work. To properly build relationships you need to have a genuine desire to get to know someone as a human being.
• Authenticity means to be comfortable with your imperfections. Don’t show up as the stock photo version of a lawyer, consultant, marketer, or business development professional. Your imperfections are not bugs, their features and that’s what people buy.
• People don’t know where to look or who to trust, and if their gut reaction is that you are hiding the real you from them, it’s not a good way to start a business relationship.
• Ron’s background is in stand-up comedy and there is a line in comedy that comedians use; “never ignore the reality of the room”. Call out your mistakes and the reality of the situation. If you get the sense that they aren’t interested, acknowledge that. Even a catastrophe can be used as a way to stand out and be completely human.
• The beginnings of meetings and the ending of meetings are very important. Just like comedy, you should start with an insight and tie the ending of the meeting back to that same insight.

Mo asks Ron Tite: How do we stay on top of retention and growth activities when everything is yanking us away?

• In car manufacturing, there are two sides that are critical to the business. The money is made on the assembly line because that is repeatable behaviour that strips out inefficiencies over time. But if they only did assembly line work they would go out of business.
• The other side involves concept cars and experimentation. They have no expectation that concept cars will go into production, but it allows the assembly line to consistently innovate over time.
• You need to look at your day the same way. Is it a particular task assembly line work or concept car work? It’s important to innovate but you need to focus on the assembly line work without changing too much, too fast.
• You need to carve out time for concept car work because, like exercise, there is always something more important to do. You also have to establish metrics to evaluate the success of the experiment.
• Put all your effort into the concept car activity so you don’t give yourself excuses later on.
• Limit your concept car activities to just one at a time. This forces you to prioritize it because delivery is going to take up the rest of your day.
• When the business dynamic changes like it has over the past year it creates new problems. Start with thinking about what problem exists right now that no one is solving right now.

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Tite.

• Think: What’s the thing you believe in so much that you would be happy to work on it for the rest of your working life?
• Do: How do you exemplify that? People don’t judge you by the things you say, they judge you by what you do. Actions are what signals what you believe deep down.
• Say: How do you communicate what you believe? Too many people jump to this part before figuring out everything else.
• Be comfortable with your imperfections. Authenticity means being okay with who you are, even when you make mistakes or ask dumb questions. Share your journey because we are all always learning.
• When people are focused more on progress than a result, they are more comfortable with sharing that they are not perfect and those are the kinds of people that others want to be around.
• Add some humour to your communication. Ron’s background in stand up comedy gives him a good foundation for making a conversation enjoyable.
• Be a good entertainer and great host. Don’t be so focused on the content you’re teaching or discussing that you become boring.
• Studies showed that if you tell a joke at the beginning of a negotiation it reaches a better result and people rate the negotiation higher. Even an attempt at humour that doesn’t hit the mark is better than being boring and dry.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

rontite.com

churchstate.com