What sparked my #BAMFAM post this week? Unfortunately, the sting of pain. Humblebrag: I was at an event last Saturday completely surrounded by 7- and 8-figure/year celebrities and experts, a situation I hadn't been in since I was about 16. Back then I'd had the good fortune (thanks Dad!) to work for Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly at his summer camp for teens, where I was surrounded daily by Warren Moon, Bernie Kosar, Phil Simms, Boomer Esiason, Troy Aikman, and more, plus a variety of well-known NFL wide receivers, linemen, etc. The handling gap: due to the new situation, I didn't have good muscle memory for BAMFAM'ing so many people at once. 😂 Said another way: I neglected to treat every single one of these interactions like the qualified BAMFAM opportunity that it was. The result: People who know me are aware that even if I nail 9 out of 10 situations, while I'm thrilled with the achievement, even though I try not to I still also obsess over the 1 out of 10 I missed on. Continuous improvement! In this case the one that got away was a celebrity/expert and their brother who was second in command, and we all got along super well and were excited about teaming together. As part of meeting them, though, I'd already BAMFAM'd their third in command so it seemed like we were all set. The issue: I met with the 3rd-in-command earlier this week, and he wanted to radically change what the brothers and I agreed on. He'd booked a starting meeting for an hour (yellow culture flag #1... I find 60-minute meetings wasteful), and I intervened 15 minutes in and said, "It doesn't seem like you guys had a chance to talk before this call, is that right?" which he confirmed, and I said "That's the clear next step in that case - this isn't how this call should be going. Please connect with them and we'll pick this call up from there." Radio silence ever since. I was willing to lose this opportunity since there are so many others available right now, plus this was a mismatch within their organization - but if I'd gone the extra step and BAMFAM'd with the _best_ person (probably the brother in this case), we'd have one more partnership under our belt.

Let's talk about #BAMFAM. Every top sales performer has this as a habit, even if they haven't named it this way. It's short for "book a meeting from a meeting." It's been one of the secrets to my career success that didn't really fit into Customer Success conversations and yet helped me boom my $400M CS org 5x to $2B+ in under three years (in tight collaboration with an army of awesome sales colleagues). More than once, a team member has noted, "Shack loves meetings." That's no more true of me than anyone else. But what IS true is that I'm willing to do more than most people to secure revenue that's sitting right in front of us if we only put in the work. You're there for a reason, they're there for a reason - so keep working it together unless/until it's either over the finish line or not going to happen. Point being: don't book meetings just to book meetings, but if revenue is on the line... #BAMFAM every time!

Hi all, we finally landed on Trust-Led Income - new branding coming tomorrow! Excited to keep building out this community.

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