The Golden Goose Parable
Thought I would start out the new year with some observations.
Like many people, when a new year comes around, I reflect a little bit. I’ve always been a big fan of Stephen Covey and have read many more of his books than just the 7 Habits, which became a mega-best seller for very good reasons.
One of the most impactful things for my own life is Covey’s adaptation of the parable of the Golden Goose (you know the one… guy kills his goose that lays golden eggs to get all the eggs at once rather than patiently waiting for each golden egg to be delivered):
“Most people see effectiveness from the golden egg paradigm: the more you produce, the more you do, the more effective you are. But as the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose). If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be without the asset that produces golden eggs. On the other hand, if you only take care of the goose with no aim toward the golden eggs, you soon won’t have the wherewithal to feed yourself or the goose.”
– Stephen R. Covey, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
This year, it occurred to me that the parable also applies to Social Selling. One extremely misunderstood aspect of Social Selling: many think of it as “transactional”, like “E-commerce on social media.”
This could not be further from the truth.
The Source of Truth
Social Selling is about how you can successfully use social media to connect and build deeper relationships with your prospects. Nowadays, with so few prospects answering their phone or responding to email, social selling is one of the few techniques with a chance to get their attention.
So where does the Golden Goose come in?
Done properly, a huge part of Social Selling is ensuring that you feed the Golden Goose by laying a proper foundation. That means:
- Frequent posting to your social platform – 2-3 times per week
- Quality posting images that ‘catch the eye’
- Nuanced posting to build your social reputation
- Authentic posting of content that your prospects actually care about
- Engage! Connect and build relationships
We know that you are incredibly busy, but the care and feeding of that golden goose – your process of turning suspects into prospects and prospects into customers – is critically important.
As we like to say at Vsbl, you never know when a prospect is going to raise their hand to discuss what you have to offer – but you “Must Be Present to Win”. Posting more often yields that presence.
Something to think about for 2024.
We have built Vsbl to be the Social Selling Success™ platform – we make it easy for you or your sales reps to frequently post high-quality, nuanced content that your marketing team has blessed that will kickstart the engagement of people you might not otherwise reach.
