The game has changed
The Internet, social media, mobiles, wearables, voice recognition, cheap processing power in every pocket has changed everything and will continue doing so. The people who used technology made fortunes and the people who stuck in the past ended up on the factory floor.
What remains unchanged is the economy. It is still looking for a better product with a lower price. Small teams are starting to deliver high quality at a lower cost in many niches. Small teams can source products and ideas faster and more cheaply than the industry incumbents can.
The success of Uber and Airbnb has shown that owning an asset isn’t a requirement anymore. Being the person or the company that coordinates the lives of people is more valuable.
Technology is only valuable when….
A bad singer becomes a louder bad singer with a microphone in their hand.
Technology is only valuable when in the hands of someone with a powerful message. Without a finely tuned and articulated human element, all the technology in the world isn’t helpful.
Today we have social media as a new microphone. But just like a singer analogy, a bad boring business will get ignored when it goes online. Today you need to get good at pitching your ideas, productizing your value, building your profile, partnering with other influential people. You don’t always need to get perfect with websites, apps, devices and other tech.
You need to get good at signing rather than setting up microphones.
Now is the time to be a key person of influence.
The Key Person of Influence (KPI) Method
There are 5Ps you need to have in place to demonstrate you’re a KPI:
Pitch: Your ability to communicate your value and uniqueness
KPIs can answer the question ‘what do you do?’ with power and clarity. They understand that pitching is a vitally important skill and if they have something of great value to offer but no one can understand it, they’re going nowhere.
Publish: Your ability to gain credibility through authoring content
Everyone can publish something today. It’s inexpensive to make beautifully designed visuals, carefully crafted reports and it’s almost effortless to make it go globally. KPIs understand that if they publish something of great value for their audience, their ideas get seen and spread faster.
Product: Your ability to scale your value elegantly
Products are at the center of your value proposition. They help you become known and transfer real value. Even service businesses can create a productized service and develop additional products that complement core services business. KPIs understand that as soon as they develop quality products, they’ll increase their opportunities to grow and go globally if they want to.
Profile: Your ability to become known, liked and trusted
Being a KPI means coming up on the first pages of results when people do a search for your name. There’s no longer an excuse for being invisible online. If you’re invisible, you won’t scale elegantly and close bigger deals no matter how good you pitch.
Partnership: Your ability to structure and maintain strategic relationships
Rather than two people competing over slicing a pie, they work together to build a bakery and bake more pies than they know what to do with. That’s the spirit of partnership that generates a multiplier effect. KPIs understand there’s already someone who has a list of thousands of potential customers for their products and that they would happily pay them a healthy percentage for making the sale.
Newcomers, Worker-bees and KPIs
The newcomers are enthusiastic, excited and full of dreams. They believe this new venture will take them places. They’re willing to put in effort in the short term that rewards will come later. Typically they’ve seen results that a KPI has achieved and they want to replicate similar success.
The worker-bees are working hard, but not necessarily getting ahead. Some of their previous dreams have been knocked out of them. When they were a newcomer, they thought their venture would be rewarding. Now it seems a bit stale and they’re secretly resentful of the KPI and the newcomers.
KPIs always have a lot of opportunities flowing around them and they achieve great results faster than the other two. Their email inbox is full of people trying to get good opportunities for them. With a few phone calls they can make magic happen and get some of the spoils. They also attract lots of newcomers into their industry because they make success look easy.
It’s time
You have an important pitch to share, you have quality content to publish, you have a valuable product to produce, build your profile and partner with opinion leaders to amplify your message. It’s time to invest your time, energy and money in getting those 5Ps right. Never underestimate the power of simplicity. It won’t be easy but it’ll definitely be worth it.