Those of us involved in the Lilead Project enjoyed one full and two half days of learning and networking before attending the AASL Beyond the Horizon Conference. Being face to face with the Westcoast Fellows, Claudia Mason, Debi Shultz, Janet Wile, Jenny Takeda, and Trish Henry is always a pleasure. I have learned so much with and from them, and we are less than half-way through our Lilead journey!
I have also been fortunate to work closely with other Cohort 2 Lilead Fellows. Last week, I had the opportunity to contribute a post about the Lilead Project on the Texas Association of School Librarians TxASL Talks blog: “Lilead Fellows Program Holds Potential to Positively Influence Texas School Librarianship.” Go Texas Lilead Fellows!
During our time together in Phoenix, the Lilead Project members shared the results of our Strengths-Finder Inventory (Rath 2008) and further explored our “WHYs” (Sinek, Mead, and Docker 2017). We also learned with and from a panel of school administrators and from Sean Lockwood, Senior Vice President of Sales at Junior Library Guild (@JrLibraryGuild).
I was delighted that John Chrastka (@MrChrastka) and I shared a special affinity for one of our strengths: “maximizer.” We had the opportunity to talk about how that strength has played out in our professional lives thus far. When I first got the results of my Strengths-Finder, I was happy to see “maximize” in my top five. All four of my ALA Editions professional books have “maximizing” in the title, including my forthcoming Maximizing School Librarian Leadership: Building Connections for Learning and Advocacy.
I also had the pleasure of sharing five professional life stories with Lilead Fellow Elissa Moritz (@ElissaMoritz), Library Media Services Supervisor, Loudoun County, Virginia. Together, we searched for themes in each other’s stories and further supported each other in refining our “whys.” (See my Find Your Why blog post.) I tweeted during the administrator panel so I have already published my takeaways from their presentation.
Since the Lilead meeting, I have thought a great deal about Sean Lockwood’s sales presentation. He started his talk with this comment:
“Everybody is on commission. Everybody is either buying or selling.”
He offered five steps to sales success:
1. Correctly identifying your customer.
2. Understanding your customer’s view.
3. Aligning your value proposition.
4. Following a pre-determined process.
5. Delivering more than you promise.
The value proposition was a new concept for me. Sean showed us and explained a matrix that identified a series of values and aligned them with the customer’s issues, the advantages the new product offers the customer, and the significance of the outcome from the customer’s perspective. I have been pondering “sales success” in terms of my forthcoming book. Rather than selling a “product” per say, I am definitely putting forth a strategy for school librarian leadership. I am not yet ready to complete the value proposition document in terms of my book, but I am thinking (hard) on it!
I am also thinking about the connections between what we traditionally refer to as advocacy and sales. Hmmmmm….
Besides that piece, I resonated with the final step: Delivering more than you promise. Promising less and delivering more sounds like a trust and confidence-building proposition that could be applied with good results in any area of our lives.
Thank you to the Lilead Project Team, all of the Fellows, and our special guests for making my/our Lilead learning impactful.
Works Cited
Rath, Tom. 2008. Strengths-based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow. New York: Gallup.
Sinek, Simon, David Mead, and Peter Docker. 2017. Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team. New York: Penguin.
Image Credit: Logo created by Robin Ellis for Judi Moreillon’s Use