John Boyd's Illustrated Guide to Selling You Part 1

John Boyd’s Illustrated Guide to Selling You Part 1 - The principles of attraction, relentless resourcefulness and creativity

Where are you in your job/career quest?  It took John Boyd 7 years to distil his ideas for his book and he gave up several times.  He credits his wife, Karen, and friends with their support in the process.  Never fail to give others their due credit for your success.   Being a successful sales professional, John knows the skills to properly sell a product.  In finding a job – the product is you.  I’m going to start with one of his concepts and illustrations (fly fisherman properly baiting and casting his line to attract the fish) and compare it to finding a job or opportunity.  You can’t force the fish to take the bait but with proper skills and techniques mentioned in his book, you can get more fish to bite.  To assist me in learning to apply the concepts of John’s book, I’ll compare it to starting a business as a headhunter or talent manager in a later post. 

John’s presentation stressed several key principles:  Relentless Resourcefulness and Consistent Creative Action.  Some people are more successful in finding their next opportunity because their skills are in hot demand and they have good attracting talents.  In the next blog I’ll talk about one skill that is often overlooked – the power of optimism and how one can learn to be more optimistic in the face of adversity.

John talked about Admiral Stockdale, prisoner of war, who never gave up, never passed on information or took the easy way out to avoid continuing deprivations and infliction of pain as others did appearing before the camera and reneging their allegiance to the US.  Every motivation speaker touts Victor Frankl, another prisoner of the Jewish concentration camp, who was relentless in his desire to have meaning in one’s life.  While we may not be prisoners of war, we do face challenges in life that test our mettle.  John indicates that life has it zigzags and we should focus on the end or long term goal (i.e.  ride out the business or other life cycle).  When John was exhausted from a serious 5-week hospital stay with a 6 year old son, he noticed a piece of paper on the hospital elevator:  “In the end everything will be okay; if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”  These people never gave up because they had a vision of tomorrow’s improvement.

What are you doing now in your commitment to Relentless Resourcefulness?  How are you adding to your network of influential connections?  How do you identify those who are positive about life, who are experts or passionate in their field you’re pursuing, who you can help so they are looking out for you?  Do you have an engaging elevator speech?  Are you networking with hiring managers or those with connections to people you should know and grow?  I’ve indicated in other blog posts and training seminars how to grow your network and how to build warmer connections on LinkedIn.  While LinkedIn helps you identify people you need to meet and network with, it doesn’t take the place of in-person networking.  John provides the principle of asking proper questions. 

Good networking questions might include:  What do you like about your current job?  What are the challenges/pain points that keep you up at night?  Where do you see your industry going in the next few years and how can I assist in that effort?  John indicates that we should sometimes throw out our powerpoint presentations about “me, me” and do more informal listening to the hiring manager’s or vendor screener’s challenges.  Get your potential hiring or vendor manager or networking partner to talk about their passions, their challenges, and their dreams.  In a job interview, do you have prepared questions that address these concerns?  What are your favorite questions?

How are you consistently acting creatively?  How are you being relentlessly resourceful?  How are you learning and growing in your journey with a spirit of optimism?  See next post.