Chapter 19: Dipping into Modelling 303
frames how he handles the meeting and treats the person with the utmost
interest because he wants to get to know them well. This was definitely
not something I could have predicted and yet I saw that it made a huge
difference in his attitude towards a prospect.
In the seven-step model that Rob now teaches, he suggests that delegates
approach every meeting by setting their intent to be very interested in the
client, and shares the story of the successful manager who behaves ‘as if’
he’s going on holiday with that person in the future.
Rob also tried a simple fun exercise based on the sameness and difference
meta program, and found that all his exemplars sorted the coins for sameness
and did the same thing in business – identifying the things they had in
common with their prospects. (See Chapter 8 for more on meta programs.)
They very quickly looked for ways in which to connect and build rapport, as
in ‘I see we both have two sons’ or ‘I like to read The Economist too.’
As a result of his modelling work, Rob developed his training programmes
and the way he now coaches professionals to hone their business-generation
skills.
Key Stages in Modelling
We’re confident that you can identify someone in your life who has
demonstrated specific skills that you’d like to have at your disposal. In this
section, we lead you through a generic process of simple modelling so that
you can take on aspects of your exemplar’s skills.
The key stages are as follows:
- Knowing your outcome.
- Identifying your exemplar.
- Finding a modelling method you can work with.
- Gathering your data.
- Building your model.
- Testing the prototype.
- Refining for simplicity.
We describe these steps in the following sections to give you some tips on
how to get started on your own modelling project.
