🎯 Work Smart Wednesday - May 1, 2024
New tool I am excited about, business awards advice, and a quote on judging
Work Smart Wednesday
⚠️ Three departures from the norm today!
Referral rewards are now stripped back and time-based. The template you can earn by referring someone to WSW will now rotate monthly. When it is gone, it is gone. These templates are not available anywhere else.
Want to work together? It is no longer so easy. I have almost maxed my capacity, I have space for 1x StartSmart programme and 1x Always Optimal remaining. My lite subscriptions and Overload to Optimal packages are now sold out and likely won’t have space for at least another month.
To reflect my limited capacity, I have switched my “Work together” section from links to packages to one-off clarity calls and a quiz to see whether you and I are a good fit.
I now offer 1x free clarity call per week. These are first come first served and require adequate completion of some qualifying questions first. These limited sessions will be released every Wednesday at 14:00 UK time. If you don’t see availability, it has already been booked by someone else. Check back next week.
👋 Hey there!
Here is your weekly dose of Work Smart Wednesday
In these emails I will share with you 3 things to help you work smarter in 3 minutes or less. That leaves you with 10,077 more minutes to conquer your goals this week
🎁 Receive rewards for referring your friends 🎁
📩 My favourite template to identify areas for improvement in your business. Not sold anywhere, this template is only normally available to those that work with me 1:1. I rotate these templates monthly. This template is only available in May.
1. 🛠️ New tool I am excited about
A client of mine inadvertently introduced me to this tool when he invited both it, and it’s main competitor, into our coaching call together.
I became curious, checked it out, and was blown away (thanks Calvin!).
The tool? Fireflies AI.
Fireflies joins your meetings (Zoom, Google meet, Skype, whatever). Then it does some clever things:
It automatically records all meetings
Understated, super valuable. Always good to be able to review a sales call or similar and analyse performance. Easy to forget to record!
It can automatically send the summarised meeting notes + transcript + recordings + action points to all attendees immediately after each call.
This was perhaps the biggest value add for me. No more writing up notes.
It integrates with key software so you can give automated voice commands while in session to get things done automatically
Examples: update CRM in salesforce/pipedrive/hubspot etc, project management tools like Asana and Trello, note apps like Notion, etc
It provides meeting analysis done for you
This was the cherry on top for me. It analyses your conversations and provides feedback. Who spoke the most? How long were monologues? What was the “sentiment” of the conversation at various points (e.g. excited, confused, etc)?
Dive into individual metrics and filter them by meeting type or dates to compare a team member's performance with the collective average.
Imagine being able to review every client call, every sales call, and see an automatic analysis of how to improve.
It can automatically create content for you by “clipping” soundbites
It can spot interesting things you send and automatically clip the audio, video, and transcript of the point you made into a short video ready for sharing. Great for sharing short key points with team members, or as content for social media.
Creates a searchable database of information from every call
You can ask the AI to find a certain thing you spoke about, or interrogate it further about something said in the meeting and how that relates to other meetings, or provide all positive sentiment moments to spot patterns.
Track key topics in your conversations and analyse how often they come up. For example, this feature not only reveals the priorities of your customers but also enables you to, for example, pinpoint frequently mentioned competitor features. A simple click provides a deep dive into relevant conversations.
Amazing!
The entire feature set seems like such an enormous value add for me that I had to share it. It seems like an absolute slam dunk. I am testing it from today onwards.
I have absolutely no affiliation with Fireflies AI, I just love the product. Check it out.
P.s. Calvin invited both Fireflies AI and Otter (Fireflies’ main, more famous, competitor) to our calls. This was genius. Both tools offer a free plan. By inviting both tool to each call he lost absolutely nothing but could test both tools quickly at the same time and in a fair test (exactly the same meetings). This allowed him to more rapidly test which tool was a better fit for him.
P.p.s. This rapid concurrent testing is something I often help clients with, with software/offers/employees, it was good to see the lesson in action!
UPDATE: P.p.p.s I have just seen that Fireflies AI offers a referral scheme. If you sign up with this link then you will get 10% off your subscription and I will get $5. The $5 isn’t really worth messing around with for me, but the 10% off might be useful for you.
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2. 🏆 Business awards advice
I am a judge for the UK’s national Start Up Awards this year (in my capacity as Founder of my other business, ZeroSmart), and last week I judged the applications.
I was shocked by what I saw.
Absolutely basic mistakes were present in almost every application: questions not answered, no story or anecdotes, no data, no emotional hook, no clearly defined or realistic goals or next steps. The list could go on.
The businesses were good, but the applications were appalling.
Awards are an easy win. They give you huge credibility, and non-nomination-only awards are often free to apply to. It is simple and quick to write the application (if you follow a framework) and the ROI is enormous.
Besides, it feels good to win an award and everyone around you - your friends, family, even acquaintances - will think you’re fabulous. What is not to love?
So, I am following my own advice and resharing a popular post from 10 weeks ago.
Here are my top tips for applying to awards: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WGCffDgHjXNzRQNkVM6kNijZed9helPzOn3SXsrxjDc/edit?usp=sharing
P.s. Yes, you are award-worthy. I see people win awards for businesses that aren’t even trading yet. If your business is trading, you have something that is award worthy.
3. 💡 Quote I'm pondering
"We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior." - Stephen Covey
Hard hitting quote that has multiple meanings depending on the context with which you consider it.
In the context of business awards (and sales!), I believe this quote highlights a key issue that almost every entrepreneur makes a mistake with: you know your business and your intentions, nobody else does.
What this means in practice: you might give a brief answer that outlines what you intend to do, but that is rarely clear enough for the other person you’re communicating with who does not have your prior background knowledge or outside information. I can only base judgement on what you say and the past results/data you provide to me right now.
Imagine the person you are speaking with ONLY knows exactly what you tell them - how would your awards applications, and your sales calls, change?
Communicate with clarity. You have no idea what the other person knows. Assume nothing. "When you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'". Don’t be an ass. Make sure the person you are speaking with doesn’t miss something important.
That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. What did you find most useful? What do you want more or less of? Reply to this email now and let me know
Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it😊
Have a great week,
John
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