Many sales people believe the key to success is to be very aggressive – to push hard, and have a big “ask”, before they have established a trusted relationship with their potential client.

The principle of the “Small Ask” works in reverse:

1. Care about the problem your prospective client is trying to solve.
2. Think about an approach that is in the best interest of the client. One that mitigates risk, and builds confidence in the shortest period of time.
3. Start with a smaller deal that gives you the opportunity to build a relationship, and see the potential your solution can deliver.

This approach is not commonplace. Many buyers will be shocked by your less aggressive approach and actually embrace it. Many sales managers may also be surprised, and ask, why aren’t you going for the jumbo, enterprise deal?

Our response:
By going against the grain in the short term, you will have to opportunity to quickly build a relationship, establish value, and grow the deal size significantly over time. In today’s challenging and cynical market, an approach and a corporate culture that really puts customers first can be a powerful source of competitive advantage.

The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.- J.G. Holland

What does that mean? Here’s a sneak peek: based on our experience working with awesome companies and industry thought leaders, we’ll share techniques to accelerate learning, improve focus, and boost productivity – so you can drive outstanding results in 2010! It’s a live discussion – so a great opportunity to hear from others as well!

Join us to learn more!

But two weeks ago at HRTech in Chicago, David and I heard just that from one of our more prominent corporate users and we couldn’t be happier!

Of course, Rypple isn’t really going anywhere and the comment was actually good news with respect to the impact of social media on organizations. Let me explain.

HRTech is an annual trade show and conference. It’s coordinated by the dean of HR technology writers, Bill Kutik, who moderates a “Cool New Technologies” panel every year. My co-CEO, David Stein, delivered a fantastic demo of Rypple at this year’s session. The feedback from the live audience was super-positive and we got some great feedback via Rypple afterward!

One of our executive users pulled me aside for a quick conversation the day before the demo. He’s the CEO of a mid-sized professional services firm who’s been using Rypple for a year.  He wanted us to know he loved Rypple.  Awesome!

Then he said:

“I think you might have a real problem.  I’m concerned that using Rypple might make Rypple obsolete. We’ve been using it for a while now, and I’ve noticed that people are much more willing to give me feedback face-to-face.  They’re willing to talk to me — and to each other.”

To which we said:

That’s the furthest thing from a problem we can imagine! In fact, your observation of “increased feedback” is actually the goal of our service.  Using a social tool like Rypple to drive an increase in face-to-face interaction is precisely what makes Rypple so compelling.

The point is: social media is not simply narcissistic self-exposure online. When carefully and thoughtfully designed, social media can enhance real world interaction (ask anyone who’s been to a TweetUp!). We’ve worked hard to help support and encourage feedback as a social behavior in our customers’ companies because we believe it leads to learning, better execution, and success.

In fact, we’ve found that when an organization or senior executive integrates Rypple into their operation, they do so because:

• feedback, transparency, and communication are important to them
• there is a real commitment to continuous improvement
• what their people think matters.

Great social apps encourage people to develop real, actual social interaction.

If introducing Rypple to a firm filled with smart, high performing individuals made them more open to giving and getting feedback and increased teamwork and collaboration, then we hope more CEOs tell us that Rypple is going to be obsolete!

1. knowing what your employees really think is integral to cultivating good ideas, and,
2. reporting back on the impact of employee ideas is the key to getting more good ideas.

Fair enough…but surfacing employee thoughts and sentiments is one thing. Turning them into a tangible plan of action is quite another.

In fact, tons of great ideas are destined to be non-starters because we often don’t understand the process and barriers to acting on them.  We didn’t realize this, but it turns out that Rypple can help to uncovering barriers as well as solicit ideas.

Here’s an example:

The other day I watched  Kevin Schlabach on RyppleTV.  Kevin’s a project coordinator charged with driving innovative ideas and thinking at his company.  Kevin talked about using Rypple to solicit feedback and new ideas.

What was unexpected was that Kevin was using Rypple as a platform to uncover barriers to implementing ideas – cool!

He described how people were providing focused, constructive feedback on new ideas, but they were also appending their feedback with comments like:

“your idea is good…but it would never happen in our culture!“

NEVER happen in our culture you say!? Now we’re getting somewhere!

Not only had Kevin been able to identify a good, actionable solution to a problem, but he now had:

1. the basis for asking follow-up questions to drive his good ideas forward
2. a tool that would allow him to find out what people REALLY thought about the barriers associated with them by asking things like:

• “Why won’t the idea work in our culture?”
• “Who do you think would object the most to this idea?”
• “What would we have to do in order to bring this idea about?”

We love hearing stories of users like Kevin, but more importantly we love learning how we can help people and organizations use feedback to really drive themselves and their businesses forward.

Thanks Kevin!