Thought Bubble - Robert Craven on New Business - Strangers, Friends and Lovers

VIDEO: 4:19 mins

AUTHOR: Robert Craven

Answering the question, ‘who will help me grow my agency?’: Strangers, Friends, and Lovers. Listen to Robert talking about this during this 4-minute thought-provoking video.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:07 

Hi, in this bite sized piece of IP, I'd like to discuss the idea of strangers, friends and lovers. We have strangers, friends, and lovers in our world, in our private lives, we have strangers, friends and lovers, strangers don't know who we are, they don't know what we do, they don't why we do it. They don't know how we do it and who we do it with. Friends, on the other hand, have a better idea of who we are and what we're doing and why we're doing it and where we come from. So they're kind of tend to be better, better people than we have the lovers were really closer, like your ambassadors who really care about what it is that you do and why you do and how you do it that showed the same thing applies in business. And in business development, there are strangers who haven't got a clue who your product is, or what your product is, or who you are, or who your customers are, or what you've done, or why you've done it.  

Robert Craven  00:50 

Then we have friends who kind of know what we do, then we have lovers who are ambassadors, we love what we do, can't get enough of it. But you know, it's kind of weird, because they, they will, they're the ones that we should be nurturing and looking after. So we can actually break this down, see something that looks a bit like this. Most people spend, you know, with their business development, they go off and they try and talk to strangers, they go off and they try and talk to people who don't know them don't know their product, don't know their service don't know, they're don't know anything about them. And yet people insist on going off and talking to strangers, they probably spend 85% of their time trying to talk to strangers, absolutely bonkers. And maybe they spend 15% of their time talking, to friends, people who know what they do have kind of heard them kind of feel they're okay, but they're not necessarily bought from them.  

Robert Craven  01:43 

And then most people in their business development plan, maybe attribute 5% of their time and budget is talking to lovers existing customers who adore what you do, who are your ambassadors, who will go out of their way to help you. Now, that seems totally bonkers to me, totally and utterly upside down. Because the strangers don't care. The strangers don't know who you are. There's too much education for them, for them to figure out what you do in order to get up to speed do something with you. So in the first in the early stages of your business development, for sure, this isn't just about waiting for referrals, this is about actively going out and talking and sharing and nurturing and developing. I think you've probably got the program upside down. And what you should be doing is you should be looking not at 85% Strangers, friends, and lovers like this, but actually flipping the whole thing over.  

Robert Craven  02:40 

So you spend maybe 5% trying to talk to a stranger because they haven't got a clue who you are. So the likelihood of them actually buying from us really remote. And maybe still the 15% talking with your friends 85% of the time talking to your lovers you need to nurture and look after, and woo and seduce and get the lovers to help you to grow your business because they know people they know what you do. They can sell you better than you can. So if you're going to run a private dinner, don't just have strangers in the room of strangers, friends, but more importantly, lovers, because what happens is that people will turn to your lover and say, Oh, why are you here at this private lunch? And they'll say oh, we've been with x y Zed company for five years? Oh, what have they done for you? They've changed the way we've done stuff. So really think about having a lover strategy. What will another strategy for your agency be? How can you grab hold of nurture and take advantage of the great relationships you have with your existing ambassadors so that they can go and do great things for you?  

Robert Craven  03:47 

Think about how you can focus on the lovers, and then the friends and wait for the strangers there's no great rush for you to actually develop with strangers. So that's the thought really strangers, friends, lovers. Is there a way that you can create a lover strategy so that you can get the lovers to really work on your behalf and help you grow your agency? That's it strangers, friends and lovers.