Forget the swan. Sell the duck!

by Colin Kennedy 9 April 2010

written by Colin Kennedy 9 April 2010

Are swans wasting your opportunities?

My fellow BNI director Brian Noble (Achievement Discoveries) came up with a great quote the other day. He said: “Don’t waste time developing the swan when you should be selling the duck”.

Brian was referring to the fact that many of us spend too much time fine-tuning and building-up a product or service offering, when we should be out selling the basics.

I think it’s an expression that can also be applied to how we sell to customers and our networks.

Too often we will stand up and try to push the swan, when we should just stand up and sell the duck.

Time is short; we’re competing with heaps of other messages and the internal dialogues of our ‘listeners’.

Keep your presentation – especially your referral request – precise, simple and specific.

Effective selling – whether face-to-face, your elevator speech or 60 second presentation – is not a public speaking competition. Your job is to be heard, understood and acted upon.

Sell the duck! It’s a foot in the door. Once you have a relationship, then you can go after the swan.

My fellow BNI director Brian Noble (Achievement Discoveries) came up with a great quote the other day. He said: “Don’t waste time developing the swan when you should be selling the duck”.

Brian was referring to the fact that many of us spend too much time fine-tuning and building-up a product or service offering, when we should be out selling the basics.

I think it’s an expression that can also be applied to how we sell to customers and our networks.

Too often we will stand up and try to push the swan, when we should just stand up and sell the duck.

Time is short; we’re competing with heaps of other messages and the internal dialogues of our ‘listeners’.

Keep your presentation – especially your referral request – precise, simple and specific.

Effective selling – whether face-to-face, your elevator speech or 60 second presentation – is not a public speaking competition. Your job is to be heard, understood and acted upon.

Sell the duck! It’s a foot in the door. Once you have a relationship, then you can go after the swan.

Colin Kennedy

Colin is the Marketing Director of BNI New Zealand, a director of Iron Road Ltd and a professional speaker and copywriter. While this is an outsourced function, Colin manages - at an executive level - all marketing and communication functions for BNI New Zealand. Colin is also the official spokesman for BNI New Zealand, and is responsible for building relationships with media and partners, including Hospice NZ, as well as representing BNI at all public speaking engagements (when BNI receives requests to talk at those functions). The core focus of his business is writing compelling copy for clients. Colin believes that in this era of low trust, social media and word of mouth dominance, a different approach to marketing is needed - one about conversation, relationships, engaging stories, delivering value... "We have to engage the market with compelling 'stories'; we have to influence the people who influence the customer's buying behaviour, we have to join the conversation. "People don't like to be sold to anymore. They like to shop." His business is to develop strategies for clients using compelling messages and stories for websites, email blasts, newsletters, brochures, press releases, articles etc. to increase leads, improve conversion rates and raise profile.

Forget the swan. Sell the duck!

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know… right?

Mini Workshop – Inviting Visitors 005

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