Okay, I need to write a newsletter now. I think I want to make it about the human touch and how that's more important than ever. And also how meeting people in real life beats meeting over Zoom any day of the week. I met John Westman at an event at HubSpot's Unbound conference and immediately connected with him. He seemed to be extremely genuine and kind, as well as knowledgeable. We talked about sales, and without knowing me that well, he invited me to speak at Harvard Business School for sales management, a class that he does. It's a two-day class, and he wanted me to come in and speak about AI. When I got to the class, he handed me a thank-you gift for showing up, and it was these bracelets that he had made for me with all my phrases that I talk about. Including one "human kind - be both" which is a shirt I was wearing the day I met him. Even when I was talking with him the day before the session, leading up to it, he was asking me how I was doing. I had expressed to him that I was stuck in an interesting space at 50 years old: wishing that I had put myself in a better position to not have to work as hard, but also feeling very fortunate that I still can work this hard and have the ability to push through. He reminded me that I already have everything that I need. It was a really good chance to stop and reflect on what's really important in life and how fortunate I am to have a healthy wife and daughter, a roof over my head, and way more than the vast majority of the rest of the world. Getting back to how the little things matter and personalization matters, I had done this a long time ago with Guy Kawasaki when he was on my podcast. In the prep that I did for him, I realized that he liked the Olive Garden, so I sent him a welcome package that included a Make It Happen T-shirt when he was coming on the podcast and a gift card to the Olive Garden. He was so excited that he told me about it when we started the podcast, but he also sent me an email two weeks later with the image of him at the Olive Garden using it. In a world of AI slop and personalization at scale, these things matter more than ever, and caring and the give-a-shit factor are more important than ever. Here's the text for the LinkedIn post that I did on the opportunity to speak at Harvard."Had the opportunity to be a guest speaker at Harvard’s Professional & Executive Development Sales program today. John Westman invited me to speak and greeted me with one of the more thoughtful gifts I’ve received at any event. He made these bracelets with some of my favorite phrases. The genuine personal touch matters more than ever these days." https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7523785781291814912/. Here's the text on the post that I did for Guy Kawasaki. ""Personalization at scale." I've always hated that phrase.
To me it's an oxymoron. You can't be truly personalized at scale.
And now that AI has made it easy for anyone, regardless of skill level, to "personalize" a message, it's become a commodity.
However, that doesn't mean personalization stopped working. It means we have to actually care and put in real effort if we want to stand out anymore.
I got reminded of this twice in the past couple of weeks.
I was down at Dale Dupree's Totality conference last week and watched a live prospecting session. His team had mailed trash cans with letters inside to a list of prospects. Then three cold callers got on the phone in front of 100 people and dialed them.
Almost every one of them got through, and every prospect who picked up had gotten the trash can and either laughed or smiled about it before the caller said anything about what they were selling. Those calls turned into real conversations, and the trash can did most of the work.
It brought me back to one of my personal favorite personalization moments. When I was prepping for Guy Kawasaki to come on Make It Happen Mondays, I found a line buried in an old interview where he mentioned he's written almost all of his books at the Olive Garden.
My experience with people at Guy's level, who get invited on a hundred podcasts, is they sometimes bail last minute which I really didn't want to happen since I was so excited to interview him.
So, I mailed him a welcome box before we recorded. A Make It Happen t-shirt, a book for his granddaughter, and a $100 Olive Garden gift card.
When we got on the show I asked if he'd received the box. He immediately reached into his back pocket, pulled out the gift card, and couldn't wait to show it to me. He said he speaks all over the world and everyone hands him a trophy or a plaque he has no idea what to do with when he gets home. He told his wife he wishes people would give him Olive Garden gift cards instead.
A week later I got an email from him with the subject line "Thinking of You." It was a picture of him at the Olive Garden holding the card.
Neither of those took a tool. They took someone paying attention, finding the thing nobody else bothered to find, and doing something with it. AI is a force multiplier for the research, but the caring part is still on you.
What's the most personal thing you've ever sent a prospect, and did it work? Let me know in the comments.
" Help me come up with a thoughtful newsletter post about this that adds value to my audience and talks about humans as the last mile, the give-a-shit factor, and how the little details matter.