Jamie Nast’s new book Idea Mapping caught my attention at the Columbia, MD Borders Bookstore.  Introduced to mind mapping in grad school, I drifted away from using it as a tool to brainstorm and take notes.  The subtitle hooked me on a second try, “Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business.”

People have told me that I must have a lot of hidden brain power.  I was never quite sure how to take that?  :  )

Seriously, I’ve started “idea mapping” again and use it for everything from note taking to speech planning.

Her book, complete with a Mindjet Mindmanager CD included, was a huge boost in my ability to harness frayed thoughts and execute on untapped ideas.

I emailed Jamie with my compliments on her gift to someone like me whose best thoughts seem to escape without capture.

Jamie was kind enough to feature me on her IdeaMapping blog today.  She included an idea map I did in Freemind (free and open source) of the True Colors Consulting services delivery model.

The beauty is ANYONE can do it and you don’t need software.  It’s so simple, you can do it on the back of a napkin.

Jamie hits the heart of the problem, “When asked to perform an unfamiliar task, an untrained brain will search for a solution by going to multiple parts of the brain seeking answers (and often not finding them) and is therefore inefficient.”

She says, “Training your brain to learn more effectively will have an enormous impact on your overall efficiency.  For a trained brain, learning requires less brain activity, while the performance outcome increases multiple times over.”

I like anything that requires less brain activity and produces greater results.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Jill Konrath is about to release a book about how to use social media to grow sales in a corporate environment.  She’s asking for KEY DIFFERENTIATORS in the form of a story.  Why, when down to the point of a decision, would a buyer choose you?

That triggered a memory of this story from when our team at the Boise Cascade Corporation faced a moment of truth.

Game Day

It was 5:00 pm and our team was 5th out of 5 presenters on the short list for a national law firm that decided to consolidate all their purchases with one supplier to leverage their spend.

We did our research, prepared our slide deck, rehearsed three times, and ordered gourmet delicacies for the big event. We knew the “committee” would be bleary-eyed after flying into DC, sleeping in a hotel, and listening to eight hours of presentations before ours.

Decision-makers from eight cities were in attendance, forming the committee that would award a $5M contract as the lucky prize.

Before the First “Pitch”

Instead of “pitching” our stuff, we started by acknowledging the parade of presentations in what must have felt like a marathon to them.

Then we asked if anyone had time constraints or other concerns that should be addressed before we began.

A woman on the committee whom we’ll call “Lois” piped in, “We were just talking before ya’ll got here about how I’m going to miss most of your presentation because I have a flight to catch back to Dallas…I’ve got 20 minutes.”

Ditching Our Agenda

Then we did something that the others (we found out later) were unwilling to do – we deviated from our agenda.   We said, “WOW thanks for letting us know Lois!  Why don’t we start with your issues or concerns first?”

Our contact at the firm had shared that the Dallas office had family ties to their local supplier.  They (Dallas) were a potential hold out.  We knew we needed to understand Lois’ concerns and adequately address them or we could risk a split decision.  If that happened, the entire deal could have crumbled.

We spent the next 20 minutes answering some really difficult questions posed by Lois who turned out to be… the tie-breaker in a pivotal decision that fortunately went our way.

The Debrief

Our contact shed some light on the competition, “The other guys all pretty much sounded the same, but you guys were willing to listen.  It was obvious you changed your plans for us in order to address Lois’ needs.”

The willingness to put our client’s agenda ahead of our own, even though it interrupted our plans, was counter-intuitive and bucked conventional wisdom.  On the other hand, it was THE key differentiator.