Guy Kawasaki vs. Guy Kawasaki

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Last week was BANANAS!

I had two powerhouse guests scheduled for podcast interviews this week: Alex Lieberman and Guy Kawasaki.  

I don’t usually get nervous these days but these two had my blood pressure raised a bit based on my admiration for them. 

There’s a lot to learn from the experiences with both of them so let’s get right to it. 

(p.s. These stories might be a little longer than usual but I promise they are worth it.)

SALES FROM THE STREETS: Personalization for the win

TACTICAL TIPS: Build your “hub and spokes” 

SALES TECH AND TOOLS: KawasakiGPT

SALES FROM THE STREETS 

Personalization for the win!

If you’ve been following along you know that a few weeks ago I was in NYC presenting at an event that my former colleague Morgan Ingram was hosting at Linkedin’s office in the Empire State Building.

I was one of the two main speakers along with Alex Lieberman, the founder and CEO of Morning Brew, who is now working on building his new company storyarb. We hit it off and I asked if he would be open to coming on the podcast which he agreed to.

As I watched his presentation, I took a bunch of notes since I’m trying to build my newsletter and “owned audience” which is obviously something he’s a master at (for those of you who don’t know, Morning Brew was a newsletter that he built and sold for $75M). 

During his presentation, he talked about his “content pillars” and how he identifies what he wants to write about.  Part of it was personal things to try and connect with his audience. 

He mentioned how he was passionate about Legos but since it wasn’t something he could consistently connect value to for his audience, he didn’t include content on Legos as one of his content pillars. 

After the conference he connected me with his assistant to schedule the podcast which was supposed to be this week; 2 weeks after we met.  

Last week I decided to put together a welcome package to thank him for taking the time to come on the podcast.  

In addition to some Make it Happen gear, I went on Amazon and found this awesome Lego mug that I thought was a fun play on his passion for Legos and Morning Brew. 

I also follow him on Instagram and saw a post recently about his gender reveal party where he found out that he and his wife were having a daughter.  

As many of you know, I wrote a book with my daughter called I Want To Be In Sales When I Grow Up so I included the book in the welcome package and congratulated him on having a daughter with a handwritten note. 

I sent the package out last week and asked his assistant to let me know when it arrived.  

I got an email earlier in the week from him asking to reschedule for later in the summer because he needed to focus on building his new business.

Being an entrepreneur in the middle of rebuilding my own business, I totally understood so I sent him an email wishing him luck and asked if he had received the package yet.

He hadn’t been in the office in over a week so he said he was going in that day and would let me know. 

About 4 hours later I got this email back from him:

“What an incredibly thoughtful package. Love all of it & no I didn't have the LEGO mug, but now it will get prime real estate in our kitchen. And how cool to get a long, handwritten note in today's day & age. 

Can't say no to the podcast after getting something so kind/thoughtful. Stacey, please help John & I reschedule the podcast for the next few weeks before I go away.”

Needless to say, we’re back on track. Personalization for the win! 🙂

P.S. “Personalization” isn’t just about finding something personal about someone as an excuse to make a connection. It’s about being thoughtful and making a genuine connection while ensuring it’s relevant to why you want to connect with them. Fake personalization is worse than no personalization at all. 

TACTICAL TIPS  

Hub and Spokes 

I’m going to stay with Alex for this one and something he said recently on his podcast about how he built Morning Brew from 0-10,000 subscribers.  

He talked about the early days of Morning Brew where he was going around campus and speaking in front of the business classes to get people to sign up for his newsletter instead of trying to get individual students to sign up one by one.  

He now calls it the “Hub and Spokes” approach. He didn’t know it at the time but this has been the foundation of his approach ever since. 

Basically, ‘spokes’ are all the customers he wants to get in front of and the ‘hubs’ are the channels that give him access to all those customers.

I’ve been speaking a lot recently about what reps need to do to be successful moving forward and one of my recommendations is very similar to his approach but it’s more about you being a hub for your customer. 

Here are the steps:

1. Be crystal clear on your ICP and get as many details as you can about them (BTW, there is a whole module on this in my Membership training if you want to learn how)

2. Identify all the other vendors or services that the customer could potentially benefit from or need

3. Call each vendor and ask to speak with one of their best sales reps 

4. Ask the sales rep if they want to meet regularly (weekly/monthly) to talk about some of the companies you’re both working with. Share intel and leads/referrals 

5. When you meet with a client try to learn more about their overall business needs, instead of just about what you want to sell them

6. Make referrals to other vendors when you identify a client’s needs that you can help with

We’ve all heard that you’re “network is your net worth.”  This is how you build one if you haven’t already.

As an added bonus, identify your top 3 competitors that aren’t great at the specific thing you are (see my post about “Sell to the 20%” for more context) but are great in areas you’re not. 

When you come across a client whose needs are more in line with what one of your competitors is great at, refer the client to them instead of forcing your solution on them that isn’t as good of a fit.  

I know this might sound counterintuitive but I promise you the short-term “loss” will come back around as a long-term “win” eventually. 

If you want to see a great example of this, check out the LinkedIn post I did about a Shark Tank episode where Daymon did this with Lori.

SALES TECH/TOOLS - 

KawasakiGPT   

In a previous newsletter, I shared that Guy Kawasaki had agreed to come onto my podcast.

He is, by far, the most “famous” person I have ever had on the show so I wanted to make sure I was super prepared for the interview.  For the first time in a long time, I was pretty nervous about interviewing someone.

I spent hours reading his new book Think Remarkable, taking detailed notes and reviewing some of his past interviews. 

I always hate asking people the same questions everyone else asks them so I try to come up with unique perspectives and questions I’m personally curious about and can’t find answers to in previous interviews.  

With over 20 pages of notes, I sat down the night before to distill them all into a list of prioritized questions that I wanted to ask.  

While I was reviewing my notes I found an interview he did at Google that was posted only 1 day ago.  

In the interview he mentioned his love for AI and that he had created KawasakiGPT where he had added every book, interview, blog and podcast he had ever done. 

He said, and I quote, “If you ask KawasakiGPT a question, you will get a better answer than you would get from me.”  

I thought it would be super interesting to use this opportunity to test his theory and help me prepare for the interview so I decided to ask KawasakiGPT the same questions I was planning on asking him live the next day.

The next day I tried to ask him the same questions in the same order and didn’t tell him that I had already asked these questions to his GPT the night before. 

I finished the conversation by asking him about his love for AI and told him about how I had this same interview with KawasakiGPT the night before and he was right, many of the KawasakiGPT were better than the ones he gave today. 

He jokingly said - “then why did I have to do this interview, I could still be out surfing…lol.”

My response was - “EXACTLY! If I can get better answers from the AI version of you, then what is the point of an interview like this?”

You’ll have to wait to listen to the podcast (insert launch date and where they can go to hear it)to hear his answer but this is the fundamental question I think we need to figure out as humans in this ever-evolving world of AI.

If you can get better, faster, cheaper answers from AI to any question then where does that leave us as humans, especially related to content and learning transfer?

I still don’t know the answer to this but I’m fascinated to figure it out. 

P.S. Another example of personalization for the win. Through all my prep and research for this interview, I found out that his favourite restaurant is The Olive Garden (no joke).  So, I sent him a welcome package similar to the one I sent Alex Lieberman and included a $100 gift card to Olive Garden. He was super excited about it and pulled it out of his pocket to let me know he was going to use it right after our interview 🙂. 

ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME 

• The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day!  2000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?

• The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode - TBD on the launch!)

• The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently. 

Until next week - happy selling!

PPS - I’d love any feedback you can give me on this edition so I can keep getting you what you need out of this newsletter.