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Become unforgettable in any customer meeting with prompts and communication frameworks.

This Week's Digest At-A-Glance

Read time 2-3 minutes

✏️ Brain Booster: Why It’s Easier To Give Advice To Our Friends Than To Ourselves (Solomon’s Paradox)

🤓 Post-Sale Breakdown: The framework for learning how to delegate work to avoid burnout (Exact script included)

✏️ Brain Booster

I’ve been feeling really burnt out lately.

Now, if a friend told me they’re struggling with X problem, I'd know how to deal with the problem. But it's a different story when I try to judge my own acts and behavior. I sometimes feel stuck and can't figure out a way out of a situation I could easily fix for someone else.

Can you relate?

If so, allow me to introduce to you the Solomon paradox.

Solomon Paradox is when smart, knowledgeable people make bad choices in their daily lives, even though they know better. Like a chef who makes great food for other people but only PB&J for themselves. This paradox calls into question the idea that if someone is an expert in a certain area, they will always make smart choices in their own lives.

The paradox says that feelings and biases can get in the way of logical thought and make smart people act irrationally.

We don't know why this paradox happens, but it shows how hard it is for people to decide the right steps to take.

🤓 Post-Sale Breakdown

Note to self: "that's okay I'll do it"—the five deadliest words that throw you in "to-do list" jail.

Hard to escape and even if you do, you’re exhausted. That’s how I’ve been feeling the past few weeks. If I could go back to my past self, here are 2 pieces of advice I’d give myself:

1) Working with customers is a team sport. If you want to play basketball but you're the only one on your team that’s on the court, you won’t stand a chance.  

Customers will ask you questions or want assistance in areas that will require reaching out to other members of your team. Whether you're talking to an account executive, account manager, your boss, technical support, or other partners, do your best to make sure the request is clear, brief, and actionable.

Framework Example:

Hey [teammates name] - could really use your help with this customer since it might impact their decision to renew; could you take a look below and let me know what you think?

[Insert 2 sentence context]

See clip here [insert a clip from the Zoom call or attach a screenshot as visual cue]

Could you or someone on your team join me on a call to consult/give our recommendations to [customer name] in real-time? Reason being: [customer name] is super technical, and I think having a member of our team speak the same language as [customer] would go a long way in turning this around.

Opposed to me looking at your calendar and offering some times for the customer?

2) Stop the flow of reverse delegation

Imagine this - you’re engaged in deep work - and all of a sudden, you get a ping on Slack.

It’s a member of the support team asking you to step in as the customer’s main point of contact and they wanted to “put X situation on your radar, and needed your input.”

Sounds harmless, but you end up becoming the bottleneck. And now, you’ve got one more thing added to your to-do list.

Instead, pause, and simply ask:

“Reviewing this now; thanks for surfacing. What do you recommend?” 

99% of the time, they'll know what to do or give you suggestions that you can look over. This is better than coming up with your own ideas and having them shoot them down, which would put you back at square one.

1) Working with customers is a team sport. If you want to play basketball but you're the only one on your team that’s on the court, you won’t stand a chance.  

2) Stop the flow of reverse delegation

💡 To Ponder

If you loved this issue and want to make sure you keep getting it, please do these two quick things:

1) Move this email over into your primary inbox

2) Hit reply and let us know your process for delegating so that you don’t manage 110% of the responsibility for making the customer "happy."

Our mission is to impact 100,000 CSM leaders positively. If this playbook would help someone on your team, please forward it to them.

Above all, let me know by replying: How do you deal with burnout?

Want to win 45 minutes of free consulting? Share this message on LinkedIn, tag me, and we'll schedule a 45-minute call to discuss whatever issue I can help you with the most. (Career, Work, CSM Strategy, Life, Get to Know Me etc)

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. Are you tired of being a customer's personal assistant and ready to be a leader while working less? Keep an eye out on our upcoming database of hundreds ChatGPT prompts and templates that make guiding customer meetings easy and stress-free. With the course, you can copy and paste hundreds of templates to achieve success. It's affordable and easily expensable with your learning and development budget. Get ready to crush every meeting with confidence! [Coming Soon - Stay Tuned]

2. Advertisers: Promote yourself to my devoted readers. [Coming Soon - Stay Tuned]

And if you have an idea for a future issue, send 'em my way.

Until next time, happy advising

NLCS