Giving Up More Than You Believe You Are Giving Up

The fact that you can send an email has caused you to give up on using the telephone. Choosing an inferior communication medium simply because it is more convenient is laziness or fear, neither of which are a justification.

The fact that you can view a profile on LinkedIn has caused you to do less research, and mostly the wrong kind. The insights you need aren’t going to be found in a single location, and deep insights are going to require a wider, deeper approach.

The fact that you can automate communications with your dream clients has eliminated the effort of nurturing relationships. Without meaning to, you have given up caring and absolved yourself of the responsibility to be known for something.

Because you acquire inbound leads, you have dropped all outbound prospecting. You have traded one method of acquiring leads for all of the other methods for creating opportunities. Read this sentence again to take in the full meaning here.

Now that a lot of communication is electronic, you pay less attention to the person sitting in front of you, whether it’s a peer or a client. You have traded intimacy for the distractions of the open laptop lid and the tiny screen of infinite distractions. The technology that allows you to communicate without having a physical presence has reduced your face to face visits. You have given up depth in exchange for something less.

The SMEs that accompany you on calls have caused you to abandon the efforts you need to develop real business acumen. You have given up your role as trusted advisor, trading it for the role of passenger in critical conversations, observing, but offering nothing of substance.

Because you can generate reports without having the person report their own effort and results, you have given up accountability at all levels. You have also given up the best performance your people are capable of.

The discounts that you routinely agree to have prevented your team from learning to defend your pricing and justify the delta between your price and your competitors. You have given up capturing part of the value you create to make selling easy.

Most of the time, taking the easy way also means giving up the greater, long-term results that accrue to those who make a better choice, a choice that you are unwilling to make, but perfectly capable of.