How Business Development Is A Heart And People Centered Sport With John Tigh
Welcome LinkedIn friends! Your weekly insight to grow your relationships and book of business.
You can subscribe to our weekly Growth Guide on LinkedIn here.
I had the pleasure of interviewing John Tigh, founder and partner at Clever Cognitive.
Mo asked John:
“Can you tell me of the moment that you realized growth is great?”
John responded:
“You know the truth is I was bitten by a radioactive statement of work about a dozen years ago and ever since then I’ve just had this incredible superpower for crafting the right statement of work in the right moment. The truth is actually a little less sexy than that.
Mo joked:
“Do you like spin a web and pull people? I know where you are headed with this metaphor. I love it!”
John continues:
“I don’t want to get into any IP conflicts with anyone over spiderwebs, but certainly webs of convoluted business process is probably about where I play. I’ve been working in consulting and you know there’s that dual life of delivery plus looking for the next gig. So, I wasn’t a very good sales person. I always thought sales was icky and a sort of car salesman kind of vibe. It wasn’t until honestly you and I had connected through GrowBIG and I really started rethinking that. I don’t even consider myself a sales person now, I’m a relationship person. The better I cultivate relationships, the more likely it is that I will be of service at some point to those individuals in the future. I have a sort of open door policy. I am a collector of people. One of my favorite things to ask folks when I go through this process of getting to know them is I ask them what I consider my uncomfortable question. Which is, “What makes you a unique and special flower?” That typically will crack people in two very specific directions: the high energy, “Can’t wait to get creative and talk about this!” and the recoiling, “Not exactly sure if I should call HR. Let me think about that for a minute.” Then is usually business related. That typically breaks right brain and left brain pretty consistently for me. So that is when I started in business development to think, “Wow this is a heart and people-centered sport.” If I can be of service, that really energizes me and I want to do more of that.
Dive deeper into the conversation with John Tigh here.
The better you can cultivate relationships, the more likely it is that you will have a chance to be of service to those people in the future.
Thanks for reading!
Don’t forget to connect with us on other platforms. You can subscribe to my Youtube, follow me on Instagram, and listen to more of my content on your favorite podcast app.
Sign up for our monthly email newsletter to stay up-to-date with the latest updates and exclusive content!
-Mo