How To Win The Battle For Attention

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. So how does an entrepreneur going into the marketplace, how do you differentiate yourself from other people? It's a great question, and I've kind of narrowed it down to two answers. The first answer is, as an entrepreneur, what do you really want? When you look at your ambitions for yourself as an individual, but secondly, as an entrepreneur, what do you really want where you answer in a way that's just totally positive and totally confident?
 
We have a book called Wanting What You Want, and I think where people go wrong, they only state their goals in terms of what they need. In other words, you know, I wanna be able to pay the bills, I've got these expenses and I got that, and it's about need, okay? And it's almost like you're asking the world permission, could you please give me this because this is what I need. But I think if you state your goals going into the marketplace, you can do this in terms of years, you can do it in terms of a year, or you can do it in terms of next quarter—one of the things I do is I have two time systems. I operate continually on two time systems.
 
One of the systems, the period of time is 25 years, and the other one is 90 days. And I don't pay much attention to what's in between the next 90 days and 25 years. And the reason is, my experience, and I've been, you know, I'm pushing 50 years as an entrepreneur, is that less and less can we see clearly what's happening beyond the next 90 days, but if we're committed to something that we truly, truly want to achieve, and I say goals are actually a picture of yourself in the future, you're having a much bigger impact, and you're just much better, much more skilled, you're much more confident.
 
And then every quarter, so then I work backwards, and the neat thing about 25 years is you get 100 quarters—what's available to me during the next 90 days? Then I start looking at clients and customers because all of my future lies in helping them with their futures. People say, well, what's the right product? What's the right service? And I said, well, I guess, any product or any service that your customers and clients think is really important in their future. So they'll be going to lots of different places to get what they need in their future, but there's probably something that you can provide that nobody else can provide.
 
So, you know, I don't care about advertising. I don't care about marketing because if I know people, I can ask them questions. And we have, of course, the really powerful D.O.S. question. If you and I are talking three years from now and looking back to where we are today, what has to happen in your life over those three years, personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress? And just by asking that question, you've just immediately differentiated yourself from anybody else that they're going to be interacting with. Nobody else is gonna ask them that question, because all your competitors, it's not competitors in what you do, it's competitors for the client's time and attention. The competition isn't over products and services, the competition is over somebody else's attention.
 
And then, since you got their attention, what do you think? If you had a choice between talking about you or talking about them, and they gave you your attention, what do you think they'd respond best to? Think if you went in and you just talked about yourself; that would be a good use of their attention. If I were in their shoes, I would end the conversation really quickly. I don't need any information about you. But if, on the other hand, someone gives you their attention and you make your communication with them during that period just about them, you'll have their full attention for a long time.
 
And that's why we use the D.O.S. question, because once you ask the question, they are so interested in what's happening to their thinking because they're with you. And it isn't anything about you that they find interesting, it's just that you have allowed them to think about themselves in a way that they've never thought about themselves before, and they can see their mind going, and they say, my golly, I've never thought about that. Three years in the future, looking back, you know, what kind of progress do I have to make to feel happy with it? Well, you know, I really want to think about that.
 
And that's the whole point. That's how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace these days. Don't talk about yourself. All the people who are advertising and marketing are talking about themselves, but they're competing with millions of other people who are talking about yourself. So the way to differentiate yourself is be so calm about your own future that you can put all your attention on the other person and then just ask them a question that gets them hooked on their own future.
 
And guess what? The hour, first hour they spend with you is probably the best first hour they've ever spent with anyone in their life. They'll talk about you, you know, that talking about you, boy, this guy, if you just talk to him, all of a sudden you can see all sorts of things that, you know, this woman just, it's like she knows me totally, but she just asks me all those questions. I would say if the competition of answers, and that's what marketing and advertising is, my answer is better than everybody else's answer. The only problem is it doesn't relate to anybody's question.
 
The only question I think is really important to ask customers and clients is just to ask, how are you seeing your future? What's that look like? And open-ended, you don't have the answers, they have the answers. You have the question, they have the answers. And they'll feel a partnership with you, and it's the partnership that gives you a chance to go forward with the people who have the biggest futures where you can be useful.
 
So, two things: Know who you are 25 years from now, and then over the 100 quarters, just keep improving. And in the marketplace, make it all about other people with their future. Don't talk about products, don't talk about services, talk about their future. Just keep asking questions, how's your future get bigger and better? You'll have them for the next 25 years. So this year, I have 30 Strategic Coach clients who are crossing over the 30-year mark. Five days ago, I had seven of them in one workshop. 120 quarterly workshops. Every time they come, they work on their future.
 
So that's it. That's the product we have in Strategic Coach. We have questions that open the eyes of our clients and customers to their own future. And their future just keeps getting better because every time they come back, we ask them new questions about their future. That's how Strategic Coach is totally unique from every other organization in the world, and it's always about the futures of our prospects, customers, clients. Nobody else has thought about doing that.